Chapter 34
Chapter Thirty-Four
Grace
The night air was cool as I walked down to the beach and nestled myself in the sand.
The ocean roared as the waves crashed against the shore.
Silver sequin stars scattered across the sky, and the low waning moon shone brightly amongst them.
I was thankful for the blanket Jamieson brought me as I held it tightly around me.
As I sat there and listened to him rant about the incident at the hospital, a part of me wanted to scream at him to go away, but the other part of me realized that he cared enough to voice his opinion.
“Aren’t you going to say anything?” he yelled.
“I will once you calm yourself down,” I softly spoke. “Just sit down, shut up, and I’ll talk.”
He sat down in the sand next to me and brought his knees up to his chest.
“I’m listening,” he spoke.
“It was nine-thirty p.m., and we were on our way home from the Santa Monica Pier. That’s where I wanted to go for my birthday.
We spent a few hours there, walking around, riding the rides, and eating all kinds of junk food.
The minute we got in the car, it started to pour rain.
My mom told my dad to wait until it let up, but he said, ‘We’ll be fine.
We need to get our birthday princess home.
She had a long day.’ We were driving down a two-way road.
I remember sitting in the back seat, watching the windshield wipers go back and forth as fast as they could, trying to clear the rain from the window.
My mom was telling my dad to pull over because he was having trouble seeing the road, and she was scared.
So, he did. I told my parents that I wanted to go home, and my dad turned around, smiled, and said as soon as God was finished watering the land, we would.
My mom reached over to take off her seatbelt because she needed to get something from her purse that was on the floor.
It was hard enough for her to bend over as it was because she was eight months pregnant.
My father told her to stay buckled and that he would get it for her, so he took off his seatbelt, and when he reached down to get her purse, there was a crash from behind.
A force so hard that it flipped our car.
I screamed as we rolled and shut my eyes as tight as possible.
Then the car suddenly stopped as soon as we hit a tree.
I opened my eyes, and at first, everything was blurry.
But soon enough, I regained focus and realized the car was upside-down.
I looked in the front seat, the windshield was shattered, and my dad wasn’t there, but my mom was.
I called her name over and over again, but she wouldn’t answer.
I unbuckled my seat belt and carefully climbed out the shattered back window.
I ran over to my mom’s side and got down on the ground.
Her arm was hanging out the window, so I felt for a pulse, and she was still alive.
I tried to wake her. I begged her to wake up, and finally, she opened her eyes.
She looked at me weakly as blood was running down her face.
“‘Grace, where’s Daddy?’ she asked in a panicked tone.
“‘I don’t know. He’s not in the car,’ I cried.
“‘I need you to go find him and make sure he’s okay. Help will be here soon. Go, Grace. Go find Daddy. I’ll be okay.’
“‘No, Mom, I can’t leave you,’ I cried.
“‘I’m fine here. Your daddy might need help. Go, Grace. Go now. Everything’s going to be okay,’ she spoke as the tears flowed from her eyes.
“I stood up and looked around, and that’s when I saw him lying on the ground a few feet away from the car.
I ran over to him just as another car pulled over and a man got out asking if we were okay.
He said he called 911 and said that an ambulance was on its way.
I looked down at my dad lying unconscious with a gaping wound in his abdomen and blood pouring out of it.
I remembered the ABCs. Airway, Breathing, Circulatory/stop the bleeding.
He wasn’t breathing, so I did CPR, and he regained consciousness.
The man who called 911 ran over to me and asked if I was okay as he stared down at my dad.
I yelled at him to help my mom. I looked at my dad’s abdomen and knew I had to try and stop the bleeding.
I had a zip-up hoodie on over my shirt, so I took it off and applied pressure to the wound with it.
I knew if I moved, he would bleed out and die. ”
“How did you know to do that? You were only ten years old,” Jamieson asked.
“I remembered reading about it in one of my parents’ medical books.
Two ambulances pulled up, and the paramedics ran over to my dad and me and another one to my mom.
I told them I performed CPR and that he was bleeding out from his abdomen.
They told me to let go, and that they would take over, but I couldn’t.
I refused, and I screamed and cried until they listened.
So, one of the paramedics placed his hand over mine and kept it there all the way to Cedars-Sinai.
My dad kept telling me not to be afraid and that he was going to be okay.
But I knew he wouldn’t be. Don’t ask me how I knew.
I just did. He kept telling me how brave I was and how proud he was of me.
When we arrived at the hospital, Renata was there.
She was a fifth-year resident on call that night.
Not too long after my dad was taken inside, the other ambulance with my mom pulled up.
I stood in the hallway, my clothes and hands covered in blood, outside their trauma rooms as the doctors and nurses scurried to save them.
They called time of death on my mom first. My body went numb.
I looked over to where my dad was, and he had just coded.
I stood there and begged them not to let my dad die.
The doctor tried to bring him back for twenty minutes, but he couldn’t.
So, he called time of death. It was in that moment, that very moment, when both my parents passed away, I knew I wanted to be a trauma surgeon.
Renata took me to the bathroom and cleaned me up.
She told me that I was so brave for doing what I did for my dad and that I’d make a great doctor someday. ”
“My God, Grace.” Jamieson reached over and placed his hand on mine. “I can’t even imagine what you went through. You were just a child.”
“You had asked me once why I chose trauma. Now you know the reason why. I wanted to save lives. I didn’t want anyone else to feel what I felt that night.”
“That’s why you did what you did for that little girl’s father that day,” Jamieson spoke. “She reminded you of yourself. That’s why you fought so hard to save him.”
“Yes. All the memories of that night came flooding back, and I wasn’t about to let her lose two parents like I did.”
“And you calling out the time of death in your sleep. That wasn’t from all the times you called it on your patients. It was the memory of your parents and that night.”
“I hadn’t had that dream in many years until I came back to Los Angeles. I should have died with my parents that night, but I wasn’t even hurt. I didn’t have a scratch on me.”
He wrapped his arm around me, pulled me into him, and softly pressed his lips against the top of my head.
“When Mr. Samson came in with that gun, I wasn’t about to let him hurt anyone.”
“Why did you come back here, Grace?” he asked.
“It was time. Time to face it all and put it to rest. Sam gave me the reason to do it.”
“Did you truly and honestly love him?” he asked.
“My Aunt Cora said I didn’t, but I thought I did.
He was the only guy that stuck around with my hectic schedule.
He understood and never got mad when I had to cancel dates because I was either on call or in surgery.
Being a trauma surgeon in the ER isn’t flexible. He told me he’d always wait for me.”
“And you never suspected once he was married?”
“No. Because I was too wrapped up in the thought that he loved me enough to put up with my work. No other man could or would. He worked on Wall Street and had an apartment on the Upper West Side. He was there Monday through Friday, but on weekends, he would go to his Connecticut home, which he told me was where his mother, who had Alzheimer’s, lived and was being taken care of by a homecare nurse.
He would go there on the weekends and take care of her. Little did I know it was all a lie.”
“And he never took you to meet his mother?”
“No. He said she was so far gone and living in the past that she didn’t even know who he was, so there was no point for me to meet her.”
“How did you find out he was married?”
“He had spent the night at my place, and I had just gotten home from the hospital around two a.m. His coat was lying on the chair, and I heard his phone going off. So, I went into his pocket and took it out to see if it was an emergency. Except it wasn’t the phone that he used when he was with me.
It was a different phone. Someone named Rachel kept calling, and I just knew something wasn’t right, so I took the phone in the bedroom, woke him up, and told him that Rachel was calling him.
When he looked at me, all I could see was the fear in his eyes.
I wouldn’t give him the phone until he told me who Rachel was.
If he didn’t, I would answer it myself. He panicked and started yelling at me, saying if she was calling in the middle of the night, it had to be an emergency and to give him the phone.
So, I handed it to him, and he answered it.
He jumped out of bed and got dressed. He told me that Rachel was his wife, that his daughter was rushed to the hospital with severe stomach pains, that her appendix ruptured, and that he had to drive home to Connecticut.
Then he walked out and left me standing there in total shock.
A few days later, he came back, and I let him explain himself because I wanted to know how the fuck I was so stupid and didn’t know.
He begged and pleaded for me to forgive him and that he would tell his wife everything and divorce her.
He said he wasn’t in love with her anymore and only wanted me.
I knew he was lying, and I needed to get out of this situation and make a plan.
So, I told him to give me two months to process everything and think about it and us.
I told him that he would respect my wishes if he truly loved me.
I needed the time to prepare, and that’s what I did.
I called Renata, and she hired me on the spot.
I gave notice to my apartment, made living arrangements here, and little by little, packed everything up. ”
“Wow. What a total douchebag. I’m sorry he did that to you.”
“Me too. I was so angry at him for deceiving me the way he did. But you know what the worst part was?” I lifted my head from his shoulder.
“What?”
“I wished he was dead. I save people’s lives for a living, but I wished he was dead for what he did to me.”
“It’s understandable, Grace. The man lived a double life for over a year. He hurt you in a really bad way.” He placed his hand on my cheek. “But you need to put all that behind you. You’re a survivor, and you’re strong.”
My eyes stared into his as I took the blanket off me and wrapped it around the both of us.
I was swept up in the moment, swept up in his concern for me and his gentleness.
As much as I hated to admit it, I needed him.
I didn’t want to need him, but it was something I couldn’t control.
I placed my hand over his, which was still resting on my cheek, and tilted my head.
“Is it okay if I kiss you?” he whispered.
“Yes,” I replied.