Chapter 16 #2
“Damn it, woman, I’ve been waiting all week for this one to show.” Pete raised his voice, but it trembled as he grew agitated. “Can I have five minutes’ peace?”
The nurse winked at Clay. Maybe she could see how mortified he was.
“I’ll give you ten, Mr. Yancy,” she called across the room, her stethoscope gently banging against the door as she leaned in. “But I’m hoping for a sweeter disposition when I return to swap out your IV bag.” She closed the door again.
“Fricking zoo in here. Like some IV bag matters when I’m gonna kick off soon anyway,” Pete grumbled, his eyes closing for a long moment.
“So does Mia know about the money set aside for her?” Clay asked, hoping to get back on track so they could sew this conversation up soon.
“No. It’s in a trust for you.”
“For me?” Clay straightened. What the hell?
“Don’t act so surprised. You were always trying to save the family even when I didn’t give a rat’s ass.” Pete’s voice cracked a bit.
For a moment Clay thought he might recognize regret in his eyes. Not that it mattered now.
“So when did you want me to give this money to Mia? When she’s eighteen?”
“It’s a good bit of cash, actually. That Amanda got herself a sugar daddy for a few years before she started to really hit the pipe.” Pete shrugged, but he looked to be in pain. Uncomfortable. “It’s meant to help take care of Mia. Maybe send her to college. Whatever you think.”
Clay wondered if he should call the nurse back to ask about some pain meds. He rose out of the chair. He couldn’t argue with Pete about the money right now when his father seemed to be going grayer.
“I’m going to call a nurse.” He reached for the call button by Pete’s bed. “You don’t look so good.”
“No.” Pete lifted a hand and clapped onto Clay with surprising strength, restraining him. “Wait.” The hand fell away again. “I just wanted to say…” He took a long breath. “I know you blame me. About Eddy.”
Clay went very still. The sounds around him intensified. His father’s ragged breathing. The steady beep of the monitor. The rattle of a food cart out in the hallway.
He hadn’t expected a discussion about this. Pete’s eyes had closed again.
“I just want you to know,” Pete continued, dragging open his eyes with an effort. “He didn’t die for nothing, you know.”
Anger surged through Clay, swift and fierce.
He clenched his fists at his sides.
“No? I can’t imagine a better example of dying in vain.
He bled out in a prison knife fight after stealing a car to make his loser father proud.
” Clay had argued with Eddy about the rough crowd he was running with.
Hated that Eddy had tried renewing a relationship with their drunk-all-the-time old man.
“He should have never been in there, and you know it.”
His voice had risen more than he intended. He heard it over the loud hum of an electronic blood pressure cuff squeezing Pete’s arm. His own blood pressure was probably through the roof.
“I know.” A lone tear slid down Pete’s gray-green cheek. “All I meant was, his death made me sober up. I was able to get Mia—help her—because of that. If it hadn’t been for Eddy, you wouldn’t even know about that girl, and she’d…who knows what would have happened to her.”
If his father expected forgiveness…Clay damned well couldn’t find any to give. He paced away from the bed. Tense. Angry. So full of old grief that hadn’t gotten any easier to deal with over the years.
Dragging in long breaths, he was glad Pete was quiet for a minute so he could think.
It was good that he’d pulled Mia out of the foster system if she really did have problems in her old home.
And yeah, it was good he’d tried to put away some funds from her mother to benefit Mia down the road.
It was a hell of a lot more than Pete Yancy had done for any of his other kids.
As Clay stared up at the clock ticking down time, he could almost hear Gabriella reminding him that he didn’t have forever to make what amends he could with his father. To make peace with his ghosts.
Thinking of her calmed the angry fire inside. Made him want to be a better man. He needed to settle things with his father before Mia and her boyfriend returned.
Turning on his heel, he moved toward the bed, hoping he could find the right words. Pete’s eyes were closed. Vaguely, Clay became aware that the constant beeping sound he’d heard throughout their visit had slowed. A lot.
He was about to grab a nurse when an alarm went off and two hospital staffers ran in the room.
“Is he okay?” Clay asked, wondering where Mia had gone. “Where is his daughter?” he shouted into the hallway toward the nurses’ station. “Can someone find Pete’s daughter?”
A man pushing a janitor cart gave him a nod and jogged down the hall.
“Cardiac alert,” an electronic voice announced calmly over the loudspeaker.
Four other staff members in scrubs poured into the room, one pushing a crash cart with paddles, another moving things away from Pete’s bed at a lightning pace.
“Clear the room, sir!” someone shouted.
Clay backed out, almost running into Mia as she burst through the door.
One look in her anguished eyes was a kick in the chest. He’d been so busy avoiding his family—his father—that he’d failed her unforgivably by overlooking her.
He was a PI, and he’d made it his mission to find his siblings and yet he’d missed her. Robbing her of family for years.
And now she stood to lose the father she loved.
Grabbing her in his arms, Clay hugged her tight before she could rush to Pete’s bedside.
“We need to give them room to help him.” Leading her just outside the door, he watched in a daze while the staff crowded the bed in a controlled frenzy of movement.
Clay could hardly breathe. He hadn’t expected this hollowed-out feeling in his chest. He’d been about to make peace with his father. Finally. Forever.
And now?
The chest paddles were out.
Mia shook and sobbed against Clay, her cries noisy and gasping. She clutched her cell phone in a death grip in one hand, her knuckles white from squeezing the device.
“Wait.” A female voice barked from the bedside, her command making the room go still. “I have a pulse.”
Mia lifted her head from Clay’s chest. She watched the freeze frame moment in the hospital room with him, her body as motionless as everyone else’s in that breathless instant.
A machine at Pete’s bedside beeped once. And then again.
Every gaze went to that machine, where a tiny digital heart flashed on and off the screen. The number twenty-three popped onto the display beside it. Climbed a few digits in the slowest moments of Clay’s life.
“Cancel code,” one of the attendants announced, the words putting everyone back into motion again.
The team with the paddles and crash cart retreated, the apparatus wheeling past Clay and Mia in a blur of red and silver. Doctors and nurses filtered out of Pete’s room until just one nurse remained. All the while, Clay kept his attention on the bed where his father was still breathing.
There was time to make peace. Put the past behind them. For the first time Clay truly understood how big a burden it would be to carry the guilt of a hardened heart with him all his life. Gabriella had tried to warn him, but it had taken this hellish night to make him recognize it.
“Can we see him?” Mia straightened from his side, swiping the back of her hand under both eyes and sniffling, still holding tight to her phone.
Seeing how much she cared for Pete—how deeply affected she would be by his passing—shifted Clay’s perspective even more. Pete had done something good with his sobriety by reaching out to his daughter. He’d changed Mia’s life. Won the affection of a prickly, seen-it-all teen.
Wasn’t that the same thing Gabriella hoped Clay would do once his father was gone?
Be a positive influence for his sister. What a sorry wake-up call to realize that, despite all the times he’d denounced his father, Clay might not be able to live up to Pete’s success in that area.
Clay seemed to have a wrecking ball effect on his relationships.
“We can ask.” He led the way into Pete’s room, Mia close behind. Her boyfriend was a quiet shadow a few paces back. He gave the kid a lot of credit for sticking around.
The boy seemed genuinely worried about Mia. As if he could protect her.
Too bad nothing in the world would slow down the deterioration of Pete’s health.
“Can we sit with him?” Clay asked the nurse.
“Of course.” The woman smiled at Mia and waved her closer before speaking more quietly to Clay. “May I have a moment with you privately first?”
Clay nodded, watching Mia fold their father’s hand in hers as she lowered herself to sit on the bed near him. She handed her cell phone to Davis to hold.
Was it Clay’s imagination, or did the kid stare at it like she’d just handed him a grenade?
Clay shook his head to ward off the odd image. He was just emotionally wasted and that was why he was seeing trouble wherever he looked.
The nurse stopped a few feet from the bedside, her voice low and her back turned to Mia as she spoke to Clay.
“Your father has told all of his nurses that he plans to sign a DNR—an order for Do Not Resuscitate—just as soon as he speaks to you. I had no legal choice but to call for the cardiac code just now because he hasn’t signed that order yet.
But he’s been very vocal about it and I wanted you to be aware of his plans.
” She bit her lip and peered back over her shoulder where Mia leaned down, resting her dark head on their father’s thin shoulder.
“Mia has called to check on him hourly over the last two days.”
“She has?” Clay’s gaze went back to the phone in Davis’s hand. Mia’s phone. “Did you tell her the hospital will notify her if there’s any change?”