Chapter 21
Colleen
When you worked in an ER and you heard the sound of running in the hallway, you ran, too.
As two people in scrubs shot past her, Colleen heard words no one ever likes to hear:
head injury
long fall
complex fracture
not looking good
But as she raced to join the team, an alarmed Doc Blythe stopped her mid-run, his grip on her arm so strong, she felt her biceps tear slightly with kinetic force, her hip slamming into the wall.
“What are you doing?” she snapped at him, the old man surprisingly strong, a pen clattering on the tile floor as it fell out of his front coat pocket. “Ow!” Thankfully, he’d grabbed her good arm.
His gray brows knitted together, kind eyes sharp. “Colleen. No.”
“No, what?”
“Don’t–don’t go in there. Not yet.”
The grip remained iron tight.
“You’re hurting me, Doc. Why not?” And then she froze, because the only reason Doc Blythe would stop her was if she knew the person. The patient.
And the only people she knew who might have long falls, head injuries, and complex fractures were her Dad and Kell.
“It’s not Dad? Kell?” she whispered in horror. “Tree accident?”
He shook his head.
“Not Luke?” she guessed.
“No.”
“Then stop playing Twenty Questions with my damn heart, Doc, and tell me what the hell you’re doing?”
Doc cleared his throat as cacophony reigned around them.
“It’s Moore.”
“MOORE?” she half screamed. Her eyes bugged out of her head. “MOORE? What was Moore doing in a tree?”
“Tree?”
Her mind struggling to piece this all together, she heard someone call for a crash cart.
“No tree. He fell, Colleen. Off a tall ladder while painting the lodge. Fell a good fifteen feet. Bad hit to the head.”
She moved to the left, enough to peek in and see blood soaking the discarded gauze on the floor, a team working fast and furious to stabilize him.
“Moore. Moore Mottin?”
“Yes.”
“My Moore?”
“Honey, yes.” Something in Doc’s eyes made terror shoot through her.
“Oh, my God, NO!” Wrenching herself out of his grip, she sprinted into the room, stopping short at the sight of him.
His right leg was splinted, the fracture forcing her to go into clinical detachment.
If she could triage him, assess the wounds, know that the best doctors at Luview Medical Center would care for him and–
“Colleen!” Luke’s messy paint clothes clashed with the pristine medical equipment, white coats, and green scrubs as he rushed into the trauma area, glancing over at Moore’s prone body, then turning back to her, fast. “I came to find you. I was at the hardware store, buying more primer. Heard the 911 call and–”
She collapsed into his arms.
“You were right,” she sobbed into his shoulder as she watched Doc join the team around Moore.
“What?” Luke’s hand caressed her hair, soothing her. “Shhh.”
“You were right. I did this to him.”
“You–no! He fell off the ladder. Kell says he insisted on doing the high section because he had so much painting experience and–”
“We slept together, Luke. Last night. And now here he is…”
They both looked over.
“...in my emergency room.” She felt a sound rise up in her, the vibration deep and lonely, a mourning tone that turned into wordless feeling.
“I cursed him.”
“That–it’s just a–no. No, no, no. You didn’t do this to him, Colleen. You can’t think that you–”
Doc peeled away from Moore’s side and looked over her shoulder, forcing Colleen to follow his gaze. In the distance, she saw Leander and Francine at the ER desk, Moore’s father’s voice rising, louder and louder.
She caught, “...demand to see him!” before Luke pulled her close again, shuffling them out of the way of the team.
Medical terms she used daily floated through her consciousness as Luke held her, Francine and Leander running past them.
“Where’s Jordy?” she gasped, looking up at Luke.
“Back at the camp. Mom has him. Told Francine and Leander to just come straight to the hospital and she’ll manage him for them. She’ll bring him over if it’s bad enough.”
“Bad enough?”
“He hit his head bad, Colleen. Fell on a paint can with a scraper on it.”
Blunt words, but anchoring words. Colleen knew what those words meant. Plenty of people survived worse falls completely intact, though with scars.
But plenty didn’t.
Injuries like Moore’s were crapshoots, and for someone so unlucky in life, the odds weren’t in his favor.
“He never falls! He’s so sure footed.”
“I know. Shocked the hell out of us.”
“You saw it?”
“No. Kell and Kylie. Dad and Mom were in the work shed with Harriet getting some trim and–”
“Get him into surgery!” Doc said urgently, the attending, Dr. Singh, pulling with the team as Moore’s gurney went in the opposite direction.
She wanted to go to him, hold his hand, kiss him, tell him she was sorry–oh, so sorry–because she was. Their argument earlier today was so stupid, an aberration in what should have been a healing moment, but instead was nothing but unnecessary conflict because they were in pain.
Pain they should have talked through together, instead of using it as a weapon against each other.
She knew running after the team would only slow them down, and time was of the essence. Rational and clinical, she let that part of her take over, the tears slowing as she folded her fear into a small, neat square of terror that she tucked into a corner of her mind.
Wiping her face, she looked around, a bit startled. Luke’s frown deepened, his blue eyes now worried for her.
“Are you in shock?”
“Shock?”
“You’ve gone flat.”
“Flat?”
“Colleen.” He closed his eyes, but didn’t move his hands from her shoulders. “If anyone in the world know what it’s like to–”
“He’s not dead like Amber!”
Her voice carried, and a handful of her colleagues looked up and stared at them like deer caught in headlights.
Luke’s face was a mask of shocked pain.
“No,” he said slowly. “He’s not. But he might die, Collie. He really might die. And–”
Reeling from his words, she lost control of her legs. He held her up.
“If you want to try to see him before they put him under–” Luke began, but she cut him off.
“No. I don’t want to delay his surgery. But Luke, we had a big fight right before I left for work.”
“We heard. Haven’t seen you yell at Moore since we were kids, other than chewing him out for eating the last mozzarella stick on a platter at Bilbee’s.”
She gave a sniffly, snotty huff of laughter.
“We were about to go public.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“When you skipped out on us at Bilbee’s? That wasn’t really about Jordy?”
“No. It was. And then it wasn’t.”
“What was your fight about?” he asked gently, leading her down the hall to the nurse’s lounge. As they entered the room, two of her fellow nurses, Sara Mosk and Colleen’s friend Yulia, gave them sympathetic looks, momentary surprise crossing their faces as they took Luke in.
“You two need anything?” Yulia asked.
“Moore’s in surgery,” Luke explained. “Head trauma.”
“We heard.” She gave Colleen a half hug. “We know how close you all are. We’re here if you need us.”
“Sandy’s calling around to get your shift covered,” Sara added.
“I’m fine,” she said out of habit, then burst into tears.
Because nothing was fine.
And if her last words to Moore turned out to be What us, Moore? I don’t even know what your idea of us is...
…she would never forgive herself.
"Being a nurse has its perks here," Yulia said, accompanying Colleen into the recovery room.
Moore was one of three patients and Dr. Singh gave her a skeptical scowl.
"You shouldn't be here," he said, but then turned away. "I don't see anything for twenty seconds."
Years of working with patients hooked up to IVs and ventilators had numbed her to the sight, or so she thought. Turned out she was wrong.
Nothing prepared her for the sight of Moore's hospital bed. His head was wrapped in a white gauze helmet. Various tubes were bringing liquid in and taking liquid out of his body, a fine-tuned system.
A team was required to make all of the outcomes as positive as possible. Much like raising a child, helping a patient recover after surgery took a village.
"Moore," she whispered, touching just the very tips of his fingers, not wanting to harm him in any way or wake him too quickly. Coming out of anesthesia was a delicate process.
She scrolled through her memory and couldn't find another instance when Moore had ever undergone general anesthesia. She hoped he would sail through with no complications.
Yulia pulled a curtain around them for privacy, then patted her on the back.
"One minute," she said quietly. That was all Colleen got, her time with Moore partitioned and restrained, even here, in the place where she belonged.
"I love you," she whispered, her lips trembling as the words flowed so easily out of her mouth. "I know you can hear me somewhere in there. I'm so sorry."
A lump in her throat made it hard to talk, but she forced herself, knowing that time was limited.
"This won't be the only time I tell you. I swear to God, it won't, Moore, but I have to say it now in case..." She interrupted herself, unwilling to entertain the thought of what “in case” encompassed.
"We didn't need to fight like that and I shouldn't have told Jordy without talking to you first. You're right.
I just did it because I love you so much and all I want is to start what's left of our life together.
I feel like I've lived half a marriage with you, only we weren't actually married, now I want the married part.
I want the love and the babies and the daily life and living together.
All of it with you. I don't want to be cursed anymore.
I want to break the curse. I want to break the curse with you. "
She squeezed his hand, knowing that he was unable to give back. That didn't matter. She just wanted to fill him with her love.
"When this is over and we have a good laugh about it, you're never allowed near a ladder again. Do you hear me, Moore? I mean it. No ladders."