Chapter Thirty-Five
Grant associated hospitals with pain. Stitches, broken bones, shots. Even though he wasn’t the patient this time, he was in a world of pain.
Jodie met Lorelai at the hospital in Madison to take Gemma home, and the Underwood siblings sat in the ICU waiting room in armchairs that were supposed to be comfortable but weren’t, holding cold cups of coffee that had never been quite hot enough.
“I should have known something bad was going to happen today,” Austin said, focused on his cup. “Dad told me everything was going to be okay this morning. I told him I wasn’t sure about a self-tape I did, and he told me everything was going to be okay.”
“God, did you cry?” Piper asked, shocked.
Austin shook his head. “No. But I did say thanks. So, if that had been our last conversation…no one would have believed me.”
“He told me last night that I’m an excellent mother,” Lorelai shared. “So, naturally I asked him if he was comparing me to mothers that eat their young, because sometimes, I get it.”
A nervous chuckle popcorned around the group.
“Dad asked me about softball and offered to practice with me,” Piper said. “I said we could practice if I could use snowballs.”
The chuckles grew to snickers.
“My last words to Dad were almost ‘You can keep my tools,’ and then I flipped him off,” Grant confessed.
That was the straw that broke the morbid camel’s back. They all started laughing, the sound of joy mixed with anxious relief and tears. Their dad was alive, but not out of the woods, and all that emotion had to get released somehow.
“What’s so funny?” Grace asked, putting her hands on the back of Grant’s chair. “Did someone fart?”
That made them all laugh harder.
“Pack of hyenas. We are in a hospital,” she said, but there wasn’t any bite in her admonishment.
They gradually settled. “Your dad is awake. He’s going to have to be here for a few days, but the doctor said everything went well.
” Grace squeezed Grant’s shoulders. “He wants to talk to you first, kid.”
“We can’t all go in?” Lorelai asked, frowning.
“The nurse said one at a time because we are a large, overwhelming group and he needs calm.”
Grant dropped his coffee cup into the trash and went to the room his mom told him to go to, the guilt becoming more crushing with every step. He opened the door with a shaking hand.
Tim looked more tired than Grant had ever seen him, and it was hard to look at him with all the wires and IVs surrounding him. But his dad smiled, lifting the tubes of his cannula.
“Hey, buddy.”
Tears fell down Grant’s cheeks before he even knew they were in his eyes.
“Dad—” he croaked, and Tim shook his head, barely moving it side to side.
“Come sit.” Grant did what he was told and cautiously took the chair next to the bed. “I owe you an apology.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Yes, I do. You were right.” Tim stopped to take a breath.
“Dad, we don’t have to do this right now. You should rest. Lorelai wants to see you.”
“Rest and Lor are opposing concepts,” his dad joked.
“If I’d stopped. If I’d looked back…”
Lorelai had filled him in that Tim had called the ambulance himself from the jobsite. Grant had replayed their final moments together over and over again, trying to find new ways to punish himself for not noticing that his dad was having a heart attack.
“Eh, I lived.” Tim turned his palm up on the bed, and Grant took his hand. Tim squeezed weakly. “I’ve been really unfair to you. You were right—I’m not ready to let go. I’m not ready to be put out to pasture.” He looked down at his chest. “Might not have much of a choice after this.”
“Was it that bad?”
“I’m going to be recovering for a bit. Even if the doc doesn’t tell me to slow down, I do need to start scaling back.
I asked your mother if I could join her bowling team and she said no, so now I have to make my own team to beat hers.
” He grinned, then his face went soft. “I’ve got a lot to make up to the two of you. Are you going to come back to work?”
Grant hesitated. The guilt was a heavy blanket over his body, but he remembered how good it had felt to be unburdened.
“No. I’m not. I’m, uh, buying the movie theater, actually.”
Tim’s eyebrows shot up to his receding hairline. “The movie theater? Really?”
Grant wondered what kind of excellent pain medication they had his dad on and if they’d give him any, because he couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen the man so relaxed.
“Yeah, Mr. Donaldson and I are figuring out the details.”
Tim relaxed into his pillows. “Well, fuck. I’m going to have to teach Austin how to swing a hammer.”
There was a moment of silence while they both let that image play out in their heads.
“Does it have to be Austin?”
“It’s Underwood & Son. Not Underwood & Random Guy He Picked from a Pile of Applications,” Tim said.
“What about Piper? She’s got a knack for the work, and it keeps the business in the family,” Grant suggested. “It wouldn’t be hard to change the name to Underwood & Daughter.”
“But she’s going to school to be a teacher.”
Grant thought back to how miserable Piper had looked when she talked about school. “I don’t think it will be hard to get her to change her major. In the meantime, I’m happy to help out until you’re back on your feet, but my resignation stands.”
Tim frowned. “You’re not taking Tony, are you?”
“You can keep Tony,” Grant promised.
The Underwoods slept at Lorelai and Jodie’s house. Gemma thought it was the greatest thing in the world. She wiggled her way between Grace and Piper in the guest bed and refused to leave. Grant and Austin got the couches.
In the morning, the nurse called and said Tim was ready for visitors. Gemma brought him one of her stuffed animals so he wouldn’t feel lonely at night, and Lorelai set up a miniature Christmas tree in his window because they weren’t going to discharge him before the holiday.
“We need to go home, get the presents, and move them to Lorelai’s house,” Grace said to Grant.
“Why don’t we wait until after Dad’s home to celebrate Christmas?” he suggested, and his mom looked at him like they’d never met.
“Knock, knock!” Tony announced himself, coming into the room with someone Grant hadn’t been expecting to see.
“Brad? What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be in Boston.”
Brad tried to hide behind Tony, but it was like a giraffe trying to huddle behind a traffic cone. God, but that man really was tall.
“I missed Tony,” he explained nervously. “So, I gave away my trip and flew back.”
“Don’t you have to be back in Boston to go to Paris?” Grant asked.
“That’s the trip I gave away.”
Grant heard his dad ask, “Who’s the tall fella?” as he herded Tony and Brad out of the room.
“One or both of you needs to explain this to me really quick, because I’ve had a very long seventy-two hours at this point and I am so close to snapping.”
Tony and Brad exchanged a look.
“Well, we were talking,” Tony began, “and I said, what if instead of Paris, you came to Coeur-de-Lac. Same but different. Both have French names.”
“So I put my trip up for grabs and let the universe handle it,” Brad continued. “Surprise! Someone grabbed it.”
“What did Ivy have to say about you dropping out of the Paris trip?” The look of avoidant guilt on Brad’s face gave him the answer. “Are you fucking kidding me? You didn’t tell her?”
“It happened really quickly!” Brad protested.
“Is this why you had to leave work early and were pretending you were getting sick?” Grant asked Tony, who stepped behind Brad for protection. He looked up at Brad. “When were you going to tell her?”
“Before check-in.” Brad winced, because he clearly heard how bad it sounded when he said it out loud.
“She’s going to be alone on Christmas!” Grant yelled. “What the fucking fuck, Brad!”
The door to his dad’s room popped open and his mom glared at him. “Grant Timothy, lower your voice and watch your language. This is a hospital.”
“Ivy’s going to be alone on Christmas!” Grant shouted, not giving a single damn that he was in a hospital. “And Dad had a heart attack so I can’t do anything about it.”
“Yes, you can,” Tim shouted from inside the room. “Go to France.”
Grace rolled her eyes. “He’s high.”
“Not that high! Go to France!”
Grant walked quickly into the room so he could assess his dad’s mental state for himself. “Dad, do you really want me to go to France?”
“Of course I do. You’ve loved her for such a long time. Go do something fucking romantic.”
“Dad!”
“Tim!”
“Fuck!” Gemma joined in, delighted.
Lorelai groaned. “The one time she really hits that K sound.”
Grant plucked his coat from the pile on the chair, stuffing his arms into the sleeves as he went back into the hall. “When was your flight from Boston?”
“Six,” Brad said.
“You two are taking me to the airport,” Grant said, starting to search flights on his phone as he walked toward the elevators. “We’re going to need to stop in Coeur-de-Lac for my passport.”
“And to pack,” Tony reminded him, half jogging to keep up.
“I don’t need to pack. They have clothes in France.” He pushed the down button repeatedly, like it would make the elevator come any sooner. “Brad, you need to call Ivy.”
“On it,” he said, his phone already in his palm, then against his ear.
He was quiet for a moment. “Hello, darling. I’ve got some good news and some bad news.
Bad news, I gave away our trip.” The elevator doors opened, and Grant could faintly hear Ivy cursing Brad out.
“Good news, I’m sending you a surprise to make up for it…
It’s not a surprise if I tell you. I’m getting into an elevator and I’ll probably lose you.
I love you. Bye.” He hung up quickly. “Oh, she is big mad at me.”
“No shit.” He showed Brad a possible itinerary. “Can I make that?”
Brad studied it for a moment. “It’ll be tight, but if everything goes perfectly, yeah, you can.” He sighed as they stepped off the elevator for the parking garage. “This is romantic.”
“This is unhinged,” Tony countered. “What airport are you even flying out of?”
“Chicago. I’ll go from Chicago to Boston, get on Ivy’s flight, and go to Paris with her.”
“How much is that going to cost?”
“Irrelevant.”
If Grant didn’t already believe in miracles, he would have after their drive to O’Hare. The roads were clear and dry, the traffic was light, and they opened another checkpoint right as he was about to get in the security line.
What happened next reminded him that things could be too good to be true.
“Folks in the boarding area for flight 867 to Boston, we have some bad news. This flight is going to be delayed for a minor maintenance issue. We know there are some of you with tight connections. We are monitoring those.”
Grant’s stomach dropped. Brad had warned him that with his connection time, he was going to have to do what he called the Logan International Fun Run. He couldn’t make it to Boston only to miss Ivy’s flight.
“Passenger last name Underwood, please see an agent. Underwood.”
Grant popped up from his seat and weaved through his fellow travelers to get to the podium.
“Here. Underwood. Here,” he said quickly.
“Mr. Underwood, with the projected time of our delay, you’re not going to make your connection in Boston.”
“But I have to be on that flight. The love of my life is on that flight.”
The agent looked unimpressed. “That’s nice, but love doesn’t change the physics of air travel or make maintenance work any faster. I do have some options for you, if you’re interested.”
Grant wanted to argue, but he knew it wouldn’t make a difference. He sighed, defeated. “What are my options?”
“Well, if you want to wait for this flight and the love of your life is willing to stay in Boston, I can rebook you for tomorrow to Paris.”
“She’s working the flight.”
That earned him an eyebrow quirk. The agent did some typing. “I have a few available seats going direct from Chicago to Paris. You’ll get in a few hours later than scheduled, but Paris is forever.”
“Yes. Do it. Book it.”
“Excellent.” There was more typing, the sound of a very old printer, and then a toasty boarding pass was placed in his hand. “Happy holidays.”