Chapter 4
Four
Mae blinked away the blurriness in her sight as she tried to focus on the words coming out of the doctor’s mouth. She just wanted to hear how Stone was. Right then and there. Was there hope? A faint ringing started in her right ear as heat crawled up her spine.
“He was in bad shape when he got here, I’m not going to sugar coat that.
We were not only dealing with the internal injuries from both bullet wounds, but Mr. Lawson suffered massive blood loss as well from where the bullets struck.
” Her arms and legs were tingling something fierce.
Mae just needed this guy to get to the point.
“We transfused him, several times, and— Ma’am? Are you alright?”
“Gunner! Grab her!” Why did Lily sound hysterical? Shit. Gunner’s arms wrapped around her as the room tilted.
“Okay, Mae. Easy. Easy. Just breathe.”
“Why don’t you have her sit down, with her head between her knees, for a moment while I grab a nurse?”
“No!” she cried, her stomach churning more as the room continued to spin.
Her hearing was starting to come back, but that woozy, lightheaded feeling was relentless.
“I’m fine. I just…” She swallowed roughly.
“I just locked my knees. I know better. Is he… Is he still alive? Please. Please just tell us that.”
“I’m sorry…” Her heart crushed painfully in her chest. “I should have led with that. Mr. Lawson made it through the surgery. He’s going to be in the ICU for a while while we continue to monitor him and assess his head injury. For now, he is doing as well as we could expect.”
“Mae, sweetheart?” Cheryl’s voice drifted over her.
Stone’s mother, and his brother, Rhett, had made it to Dallas sometime in the early morning hours the day after Stone was shot.
It was nearly a full day of driving to them, but they still made it there with barely any delay.
Mae hadn’t left Stone’s side the entire time, and there had been no change in his status.
She knew that his body was using the time to heal, but god, there was nothing Mae wouldn’t give to see his hazel eyes one more time.
It had already been days since she’d seen them, and she was suffocating under the weight of that knowledge with each passing moment. “Honey, why don’t you take a break?”
“No.” Mae cleared her throat as she lifted her head from next to Stone’s hip. She was going to have a permanent curve in her spine from sleeping hunched over like that, but it was worth it to be by his side.
Two visitors were allowed in Stone’s room at a time, and she damn well sure was going to be one of them.
She didn’t care who the other person was, and there had never been a time when she’d been alone there since they were first allowed back to see him.
Whoever it was always brought her something to eat.
Tried to get her to go out for a walk. To take a break.
But unless they finally found out who was responsible for his shooting, she didn’t want to spend the energy talking to anyone else.
It was pointless. Her only goal was to get Stone to wake up.
That’s where she wanted to focus her energy.
Nausea rolled through her. The smell of her own body was overwhelming, even though she’d freshened up in the small bathroom that morning. She needed a shower, another reminder she was neglecting her own health.
“I think it’s important you take a break. The girls are down the hall in the waiting room. They want to take you to lunch.”
“It’s lunch time?” The thought of food made the pain in her stomach double. “I’m not hungry. And I need to be here.”
Cheryl sighed, placing her hand on Mae’s arm.
“There needs to be something left of you for him to come back to. Taking care of yourself… getting a good meal, taking a shower, sleeping in your own bed for more than an hour… those are all things you can do to help Stone when he wakes up. He wouldn’t want this.
He wouldn’t want you to waste away at his bedside. ”
“I don’t want to leave you here on your own.”
“You’re not. Nash is here, and he’s going to sit with me until Rhett gets back from picking Sara up at the airport.”
Sara, Rhett’s wife, was a nurse in the local emergency room back in Delaware, and wasn’t able to make the trip down originally with Stone’s mother and brother. God, Mae was thankful that she would be there now, if nothing else than to provide a distraction for Cheryl and Rhett.
“Are you sure?” Mae lifted her shirt and sniffed. God, she could definitely use a shower. “You’ll call me immediately if anything changes?
“Of course. I have you on speed dial. Now, go.”
Mae made it to the doorway of the waiting area, where the girls were all sitting.
She caught Lily’s eye before the bile she’d been swallowing down decided to force its way back up.
Mae turned, running down the hall to the small bathroom marked for visitors.
The tile floor was cold on her legs as her body fell to the floor, her stomach cramping so hard she thought it might actually stop her heart.
There was nothing to come up. She couldn’t even remember the last time she felt hungry. The toilet paper holder squeaked as she unrolled a few squares, swiped them quickly over her mouth to clean up as best she could and flushed them away.
The door to the hallway opened with a rush of cold air.
“Mae?” Lacy’s voice wavered as her footsteps got closer to the stall where Mae was still curled in a tight ball against the wall. “Are you okay?”
“Define ‘okay’?” she laughed, but there was no emotion behind it.
Her sweet friend sighed. “Dumb question on my part. Can I get you anything?”
Mae pushed off the ground, bracing against the wave of dizziness that surged forward. “No. Just a queasy stomach from not eating and being stressed out.” The lock slid over, and Mae walked from the stall over to the sink.
Was it gross to be using the hand sink in a hospital bathroom to splash water on her face? Yeah, absolutely. Was that going to stop her from doing the one thing that would hopefully help her feel more human in that moment? Hell, no.
“Want to talk about it?” Lacy asked, handing Mae a paper towel.
“No.”
“Okay. I just… I guess, listen then?” Mae’s eyes went wide.
“I don’t know exactly how you feel in this situation, but when everything happened with Embrie…
not knowing if my daughter was going to be okay…
I understand that feeling. I was so beside myself I made myself sick with worry too.
I’m here if you need someone to just sit back and shout at.
Someone to give you space to crash out, and then get a hug from. ”
Mae wrapped her arms around Lacy and let the pressure of her friend’s arms ground her.
“Thanks. That was just the reminder I needed.”
“Good. Now, the girls and I are taking you back to Silver Springs. We’re going to feed you, then you’re going to take a shower and get into your bed to sleep. We have strict orders from Stone’s mom not to bring you back until tomorrow.”
“I can’t—”
“No,” she interrupted. “You can. Because if Stone could see you right now, he would be furious that none of us were strong enough to step in and take care of you before now.”
Lacy looped her arm through Mae’s and the two women left the bathroom, Sloane and Lily waiting at the end of the hallway.
The walk out of the hospital felt wrong.
Every step she took away from Stone’s room felt like more and more of her was unraveling.
By the time they made it back to Silver Springs, there wouldn’t be any of her left.
“Call me if you need anything tonight.” Lily smiled as they walked the hallway to their apartments.
“Who’s staying at the hospital?” Mae asked as she cleared her throat. She felt better than she wanted to admit now that she’d eaten some real food and been able to decompress with her friends.
“Your brother. He’ll be with Cheryl tonight. Rhett and Sara are going to stay in the hotel across the street instead of coming back here tonight. They’ll go over first thing in the morning and spend time with Stone before we get back.”
“Okay.” Mae sighed as she turned to put the key in the lock to her apartment with Hawk. “Thank you,” she whispered. “For seeing I needed a break, but couldn’t get myself to take one.”
Lily sniffled from across the hall as she unlocked her apartment door. “I’m sorry I didn’t do it sooner. I didn’t see you drowning. I should have—”
“No. I’m not good at asking for help. And I don’t feel like I deserve it. Not after how Stone and I left things. Not when I’m not even sure he would want to wake up and see me there. But I can’t not be there in case…”
“He’s stable. He’s going to improve and wake up. It’s just taking his mind a few extra days to catch up to his body.”
“I know you’re right. I just need…”
“A bath.”
Mae gave a soggy laugh. “Damn, I know I smell bad, but it’s another thing completely for my best friend to call me out about it.”
“No, you goof. You smell fine. I just mean, you deserve to do something relaxing. Don’t just lay in bed and research all the worst case scenarios out there.”
“I wasn’t going to do that.” Yes, she definitely was. There was a reason she’d left her phone in her bag on the other side of Stone’s room the entire time she’d been there. The temptation was there, but being by his side was more important.
Now that she was on her own, and had the long hours of a night alone in front of her, Mae planned on putting the power of the internet to use.
“Sebastian brought in Dr. Anderson to help consult on Stone’s case. I trust him.”
“And yet, you’re still going to spend all night spiraling.”
“I do love a good spiral. Cinnamon buns, galaxies, existential. Those are just some of my favorites.” Mae shrugged and smiled.
Lily sighed as a screech came from inside her apartment. “That’ll be my cue to duck inside. Poor Sage is getting in molars that are testing all of our limits.”
“Go. I’m fine. Thank you for bringing me home.”
“Call me if you need anything.”
Mae waved as Lily stepped into her apartment and closed the door. And then she made a dumb decision.
Because everything in her heart was telling her to go back to her bedroom in her apartment with Hawk. To go to sleep there. To spend whatever time she had to in that place before heading back to the hospital. But her body was on autopilot. It wanted to go home. And home was with Stone.
She needed him. But she would just have to settle for something of his. His body wash. His clothes. A blanket from the bed they shared. Her feet carried her down the stairs and into the apartment.
It hadn’t changed. Not that she expected it to. But with Stone’s family staying in the space, she expected there would be some feeling of not being welcome there. Especially after how she’d left. There was none of that. Just a deep, weary sense of homesickness.
The body wash. His clothes. Go and get out.
In a daze, she stumbled through the rooms. When she got back to the living room, her arms were full of his clothes and the bottle of soap. She stumbled into the kitchen, her breath catching in her throat.
Oh, god.
It was so hard to breathe. Why? Why had she let herself go back?
Her body collapsed to the cold tile floor as more fucking useless tears welled in her eyes.
She wasn’t a weepy person. So why had she become an endless spigot?
The room spun around her and she did the only thing she could think of.
Mae pushed the clothes she was trying to take with her into a pile and laid her head down, letting her tears and the whirling room rock her to sleep.
“Mae? Hey. Mae? Are you okay? Can you open your eyes for me? Fuck. Fuck!”
Rhett’s voice startled her. Mae’s eyes flew open, her body jerking off the floor. “Whoa. It’s okay.” His hand rested on her arm and he squeezed gently.
“Sorry. Oh, god. I’m sorry.” She was still on the kitchen tile. Had she cried herself to sleep? “I fell asleep. I didn’t think you were coming back here tonight, and I fell asleep.”
“I forgot some stuff here that Sara needs. Come on. Mom’s been sleeping in Stone’s bed, but I think that’s got your name written on it tonight.”
“I wasn’t planning on staying,” she admitted.
Rhett laughed. “You don’t say? I figured you were reenacting a ‘B and E’ with all that stuff lying around you on the floor. Either that or you have recently started living like a little gerbil and you needed Stone’s clothes to make your nest.”
“Something like that.”
“Hey,” Rhett helped her up, wrapping his arms around her in a bear hug. “He’s going to be fine, Mae. We’re going to get to the other side of this, and then it’ll be back to him hogging the covers and sleeping like a starfish.”
“How do you know he does that?” she asked, smiling as she remembered the feeling of Stone’s warm body lying in bed next to her.
“We shared a bed at our grandparents’ summer camp. Worst two weeks of my life every year. I don’t know how you do it.”
“He’s never been like that with me.”
Rhett nodded. “Do you need any help bringing this stuff back into the room?”
“No. Leave it. I’ll grab it all in the morning. His pillow will still smell like him,” she whispered. “That will be enough.”
“Alright. Well, I’m going to grab what I need from the spare bedroom and I’ll get out of your hair. See you tomorrow?”
“See you tomorrow.”
Mae snatched one of the shirts off the floor, making her way down to the bedroom before shutting the door.
She slipped out of her clothes, draping Stone’s shirt over her head before crawling into bed.
The last thing she remembered doing was reaching over to grab his pillow, burying her face in it as exhaustion pulled her under again.