41. CHAPTER FORTY
“Itake it these are the rest of your men?” Finneas asked as he surveyed the four of them as they stood side-by-side in front of his hospital bed.
It had taken me an extra four days to work up the courage to bring them along to the hospice center with me and now I was wondering why I was so nervous about it because Finneas was grinning at them.
“Yes, these are mine,” I said as I organized the photos on his bedside table that had been jostled about by the morning housekeeper.
Finneas had told me that there were more photos at the house, but I hadn’t been able to make myself go there yet.
The fact that he had never moved from that place made me realize that he’d been just as stuck in the past as I was.
“Handsome lot, good job,” he gruffed to me as he leaned back in his bed.
He seemed even more tired than usual today, his pallid skin a deeper shade of yellow.
Orla had warned me yesterday that things were looking worse and I was trying my hardest not to think about what that meant, but seeing him now I knew she was right.
Leith was the bravest of the bunch and jumped in to introduce himself first. “Nice to meet you, sir, I’m Leith and this is Enzo, another alpha in our pack and finally our omega, Artie.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Artie said, looking nervous as he and Charm stood at attention like a pair of soldiers waiting for their marching orders.
“I see…” Finneas looked between them. “So which one of you got my daughter pregnant.”
I gaped at him. “How do you know about that?”
He wasn’t supposed to know that information yet and I’d been wearing oversized clothing to hide the bump from him in the first place. I hadn’t been sure if I wanted to tell him or not, though that seemed to be a moot point now.
Finneas shot me an incredulous look. “Ciara. You may think I can’t hear you going out into the hallway to boke into the trash bin, but I assure you it’s been very obvious. Oh, and Dr. Monning loves a good craic and told me all about it after examining you.”
I hadn’t seen that doctor since that first day, but apparently Finneas had.
“So, out with it, which one of you impregnated my daughter?”
Artie slowly lifted a hand, his normally pale cheeks ruddy with a blush.
“I see,” Finneas repeated again. “And are you going to take responsibility?”
“Oi,” I warned, turning to face him fully. “I don’t know if you giving the protective da speech is really appropriate considering the situation here, Finneas.”
“What? I’ve never gotten to do it before and while we’re not in the states and I can’t threaten them with a shotgun the way those dads of yours over there can, I can still make sure that they’ll take care of you.”
I really couldn’t say anything to that and I leaned back in my seat and crossed my arms over my chest, giving in to the entire messy business unfolding in front of me.
Finneas seemed pleased by that and he turned back to Artie again with an incredibly smug, incredibly silly smile. “So? Are you taking responsibility?”
“Yes,” Artie squeaked. “I mean, I guess we already have? She’s already bitten me.”
The omega gestured to the silver bite mark that was high on his neck, just underneath his ear.
“Good. I’m not long for this Earth and just as soon as they find Father Lafferty I plan on meeting my maker and atoning for all of my sins, but I want to make sure that Ciara here is happy and taken care of.”
It was the same words he’d been repeating for the past week and when I asked Orla about it she’d told me that Father Lafferty had passed away last year and no one had the heart to tell Finneas.
“You might want to consider Father Murphy, Finneas,” I cut in. “I hear he’s very good.”
My accent had gotten stronger over the last couple of weeks, though I knew I still sounded oddly American to most of the people that I’d spoken to since arriving.
It seemed to surprise the three men who were staring at me as if they’d never heard me before and I felt my cheeks warm.
“Pah, Father Murphy is barely a priest. What is he, twenty-four-years old? How can he give me last rites when he’s barely been given his first ones?” Finneas waved a hand in the air before he began to have a coughing fit, the machines around him starting to beep wildly.
As if on cue, the room began to fill with nurses.
“Could you all please step out for a bit?” Orla, dressed in her usual clean, white uniform, said to us as she stepped inside.
“Now hang on a minute,” Finneas managed around a cough. “I’m not done talking to them.”
“You’re going to be done talking to them forever if we don’t get a handle on you,” Orla scolded as we were shooed from the room.
Once the door snapped shut behind us, we stood in the hallway for a moment until Enzo spoke first.
“You have the same smile as him,” he said with wonder. “And the same laugh too—the way you throw your heads back and the crinkle in the corners of your eyes. It’s almost eerie.”
“That’s genetics for you,” I said with a shrug. “Though don’t be fooled, my stubbornness comes straight from the Peterson clan. No sharing of blood needed.”
“Oh, we know,” Leith said, making the other men laugh.
We were just walking away when the door reopened and Orla stepped back through and hurried over to the desk.
“Can you call Father Murphy here please?” she asked the attendant before turning to find us staring at her.
Her expression told me everything I needed to know and my world seemed to tilt on its axis.
It was only when Enzo’s hands wrapped around me and held me up that I realized that my knees had buckled.
Orla came to join us, her expression grim.
“It’s been thirty seconds since he was up and talking, what changed in thirty seconds?” I asked, my voice tight as I stared at the door where the sounds of the machines were still going off.
Orla shifted guiltily on her feet. “I didn’t want to tell you this because you seemed so excited to introduce your pack to him, but we all thought he might go last night. His vitals have been downright awful since yesterday and the doctors have just been focused on making him more comfortable as he progresses to the end.”
I pointed at the door. “That man in there didn’t seem like someone who is close to dying. No one that lively could die in the next few minutes.”
“Sometimes patients get a single surge of energy before they pass… it happens quite often here,” Orla explained, her lips forming a thin line. “I’m so sorry, I should have prepared you better.”
They continued talking, but my ears had begun to ring as the weight of it all finally settled on my shoulders.
I thought I would have at least a few more weeks, if not at the very least days.
There were so many things I hadn’t asked him about yet and so many things I hadn’t told him about my life.
I still hated him—at least a little bit—but the past few weeks felt like I had my da back and now he was going far too soon.
“Mo ròs,” Leith’s voice cut through the haze and I found him in front of me, crouched so that our eyes were level.
“What?” I asked dazedly.
“The nurse wants to know if you would like to sit with him.”
“Sit with him?” I wasn’t processing anything, much less what he meant.
“Until he goes, Ciara,” Orla said gently.
Glancing around, I realized I was sitting down in a chair in the hallway. I wasn’t sure when someone had put me there or how much time had passed, but the sounds of beeping were still coming from Finneas’s room telling me he hadn’t gone yet.
“You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” Enzo was crouched next to my arm, his expression understanding. “You can stay here with us if you need to.”
“No.” I shook myself, trying to bring myself back to the present. “I need to do this.”
Looking up at Orla, I found the nurse’s blue eyes bright with unshed tears. She’d love Finneas—probably more than I ever could—but at the end of the day she was still just his nurse.
He at the very least deserved to have his daughter and only living relative by his bedside.
“Do you know how long it will take?” I asked, my voice small.
Orla shrugged. “Doctor says it can’t be more than a couple of hours, but you never know with these things.”
I nodded, giving myself a minute to process it. “Can they sit with me?”
“One at a time, yes, if we have all of you in there it will make it hard for the nurses to work,” Orla said, offering me a hand up.
“We’ll rotate,” Wiz assured me once I was on my feet.
“I’ll start,” Artie volunteered and handed Charm’s harness to Leith. “Can you take care of her for me? I don’t want her to accidentally be under foot.
Once Charm was safely out of the way Orla opened the door to the room which we’d just been laughing in together.
Artie held his hand out to me. “Are you ready?”
I shook my head. “No, not even a little bit.”
“That’s okay,” he whispered as we stepped through the door. “I won’t let go of your hand this time.”
Finneas Callaghan died the next morning just as a fresh autumn rain fell outside, drenching the world completely and shrouding it in a gray pallor.
Even though Ireland was a typically rainy place, to me it felt like the world was weeping as he took his last breath.
Father Murphy, who was indeed a very young priest, read out Finneas’s last rites as the monitor flatlined and I stared at his almost serene face.
He never did wake up after he met the guys, the doctors explained that his body was shutting down and there was nothing more they could do other than to make him comfortable.
In the end, it was Enzo who was by my side when Finneas finally did go, and despite everything that had happened between us, I turned my face into his chest and let him comfort me.
For once, I couldn’t find it in me to cry as we watched the nurses do their job and begin to dress his body for its trip to the funeral home.
Finneas had been very clear about his memorial wishes, so there wasn’t much for me to do other than watch as the bed was wheeled from the room and Enzo and I were alone.
“I didn’t realize how quickly things happen,” Enzo said, his voice a bit far away as he held me to him.
“Me either,” I whispered. “With my mam, I wasn’t even awake when they fished the car out of the river. The dads handled everything.”
“I wasn’t even in the same country when my mom died,” he admitted, stroking my back as I let out a shuddering breath. “I was still on the plane and when I landed I saw the text from my dad that she was gone.”
We sat in silence for a long time and at some point Orla must have called the rest of my pack because they filed into the room, their expressions sad as they enveloped the both of us into one large hug.
“We’re going to be okay, right?” I asked as I inhaled the mixture of our scents.
Whether Enzo was answering me about Finneas or just in general, I wasn’t sure, but he nodded. “Yeah, I think we’re going to be just fine.”