Chapter 7 Mitch #2
Mitch had sat beside Grady's bed for hours, holding his son's still-warm hand, unable to process that he was really gone. Unable to accept that his bright, funny, adventurous boy was just... gone.
He couldn't do that again. Couldn't sit beside another hospital bed and hold another son's hand and face another future that didn't include him.
"We're almost there," Lori said, and Mitch realized she'd been talking to him the whole time, her voice a steady anchor keeping him from spiraling completely. "I can see the diner up ahead. On the right. There. Do you see it?"
Mitch did see it. The old Route 6 Diner with its peeling paint and flickering neon sign. There was an old pickup truck parked at an angle near the entrance, its tailgate down. And there were people moving around outside—two figures, one of them wearing what looked like a white coat.
Mitch slammed on the brakes and brought his truck to a screeching halt in the parking lot, not even bothering to put it in park properly before he was out the door and running.
"Ryan!" he shouted, his voice cracking. "Ryan!"
Jackie looked up from where she was kneeling beside the pickup truck's bed, and the expression on her face made Mitch's blood run cold. She was covered in blood. Her hands, her arms, her blouse all stained dark red. And lying in the truck bed behind her was Ryan.
Mitch's son was unconscious, his face pale as death, his right side soaked through with blood that had pooled beneath him and was dripping steadily onto the parking lot asphalt.
"Oh, please no," Mitch breathed, stumbling to a halt beside the truck. "Ryan."
"He reopened his surgical wound," Jackie said quickly, her hands pressing down on Ryan's side with a blood-soaked towel. "The stitches tore during our escape. He's lost a lot of blood, Mitch. We need to get him to a hospital now."
"Where's Tessa?" Lori asked, appearing at Mitch's side.
Jackie jerked her head toward the diner. "Inside. She hit her head when she fainted. There's a gash that needs stitches, but she's conscious. The owner's wife is with her."
"I'll get her," Lori said, already moving toward the diner entrance.
Mitch forced himself to breathe, forced his training to kick in past the terror threatening to drown him. "Help me get him into my truck," he told Jackie. "The back seat. We can lay him flat."
"No ambulance?" Jackie asked.
"No time," Mitch said grimly. "It'll take twenty minutes for them to get out here and another twenty to get back to the hospital. We can be there in fifteen if I drive fast enough."
Together, they carefully lifted Ryan from the pickup bed—Jackie supporting his head and shoulders, Mitch taking his legs, and carried him to Mitch's truck. Misty had jumped out and was pacing anxiously nearby, whining low in her throat as they maneuvered Ryan into the back seat.
"I'll sit with him," Jackie said, climbing in beside Ryan and immediately resuming pressure on his wound. "Drive, Mitch. Fast."
Lori emerged from the diner with Tessa leaning heavily against her. Tessa's face was sheet-white, and there was indeed a nasty gash on her forehead that was still bleeding sluggishly. She looked dazed, unfocused, and Mitch realized she might have a concussion on top of everything else.
"Get in," Mitch told them, holding open the passenger door. "Both of you. Now."
They didn't argue. Tessa climbed into the front seat with Lori right behind her, pulling the door shut as Mitch ran around to the driver's side. Misty jumped into the front footwell, curling up at Tessa's feet.
Mitch didn't remember much about the drive to Nantucket Hospital.
Just fragments. Lori's voice beside him, calm and steady, telling him where to turn.
Jackie's urgent instructions from the back seat, "He's still breathing, but it's shallow.
I need you to go faster, Mitch." The sound of Tessa crying quietly.
Misty's anxious whining. The speedometer hitting ninety, then one hundred on the straightaways.
And Ryan. His son was lying pale and still in the back seat, his life bleeding out with every second that passed.
When they screeched to a halt at the hospital emergency entrance, Mitch was out of the truck as soon as it had fully stopped. "I need help!" he shouted at the nurses stationed at the door. "I need help now!"
They moved fast. So fast it was almost a blur.
A gurney appeared. Hands reached in to lift Ryan out of the truck.
Jackie rattled off medical information in rapid-fire doctor-speak: "Thirty-two-year-old male, surgical wound dehiscence, estimated blood loss two liters, tachycardic, hypotensive, needs O-negative blood and an OR now. "
Then Ryan was being wheeled away at a run, Jackie keeping pace beside the gurney with her hands still pressing down on his wound, and Mitch tried to follow but someone stopped him.
"Sir, you need to let them work," a nurse said gently but firmly, her hand on his arm. "You can't go back there."
"That's my son," Mitch said, and his voice broke on the word. "That's my son."
"I know," the nurse said. "And they're going to do everything they can for him. But you need to let them work. Come with me. Let's get you to the waiting area."
"Tessa needs to be seen," Lori said, appearing at Mitch's other side with Tessa still leaning heavily against her. "She's got a head wound and possibly a concussion."
“Yes, Dr. Simons told me.” The nurse's eyes sharpened as she looked at Tessa. "Can you tell me your name, honey?"
"Tessa," Tessa mumbled. "Tessa Ryder. I'm fine. I want to know if Ryan's going to—"
She swayed suddenly, and Lori had to grab her to keep her upright.
"Let's get her to a bed," the nurse said, already signaling for help. Another nurse appeared with a wheelchair, and they eased Tessa into it despite her weak protests.
"I don't need—I'm fine—I just want to know about Ryan…"
"We'll let you know as soon as we have news," the first nurse promised. "But right now, we need to make sure you're okay, too."
They wheeled Tessa toward the examination rooms, Lori walking alongside the wheelchair, her hand on Tessa's shoulder. Mitch stood alone in the emergency department entrance, covered in his son's blood, watching everyone disappear into different corridors.
He didn't know how long he stood there. It could have been seconds or minutes. Time had stopped meaning anything.
Then he felt a hand slip into his. Warm and steady and real.
Lori had come back.
"Come on," she said softly. "Let's go to the waiting room. I’ve got Misty. They said she can sit in the waiting room with us. There's nothing we can do standing here."
Mitch let her lead him through the hospital corridors. Past the emergency department, past the elevators, to the surgical waiting area with its uncomfortable chairs, outdated magazines, and fluorescent lights that hummed too loudly.
They sat. Lori kept hold of his hand.
"Jackie went back with them," Lori told him quietly. "She cleaned up quickly, borrowed a lab coat from one of the nurses, and insisted on being part of the team working on Ryan. She said she wouldn't trust anyone else."
Mitch nodded numbly. That sounded like Jackie. Capable, confident, taking charge even in a crisis. Even when she'd just escaped from a kidnapping herself.
"Tessa's being seen by a doctor Jackie trusts," Lori continued.
"A Dr. Matthews who specializes in head trauma. Jackie made sure of it before she went to the OR. Tessa didn't want to be looked at. She kept saying she was fine, that she just wanted to know about Ryan. But the nurse was firm with her, and it’s the first time I’ve seen Tessa not argue with anyone. "
"Good," Mitch managed to say. His voice sounded strange to his own ears. Distant. It felt like it belonged to someone else.
Time passed. Mitch couldn't have said how much. Nurses walked by. Doctors walked by. Other families sat in the waiting room, their faces drawn with worry, fear, and exhaustion. A TV played quietly in the corner, showing some morning talk show that Mitch couldn't process.
At some point, Tessa appeared. She had a bandage on her forehead and a hospital bracelet around her wrist, and she was walking under her own power, though she still looked shaky. She made her way over to where Mitch and Lori were sitting and dropped into the chair on Lori's other side.
"I have a mild concussion," Tessa said quietly, answering the question before either of them could ask. "And ten stitches in my forehead. They wanted to keep me for observation, but I refused." She paused, then added in a smaller voice, "Any word on Ryan?"
Mitch shook his head, not trusting himself to speak.
Tessa's hand reached for Lori's free hand, and she held on tight. Then, slowly, she leaned her head against Lori's shoulder.
And there they sat. The three of them connected. Lori was in the middle, holding Mitch's right hand and Tessa's left. A human chain of fear and hope and desperate prayers with Misty curled up at their feet.
That's when it hit Mitch with the force of a freight train: he was head over heels in love with Lori Carlton.
Not just attracted to her, not just fond of her, not just grateful for her presence. He loved her. Deeply, completely, irrevocably.
He loved the way she'd become his strength when he was crumbling.
The way she'd seen him starting to spiral when they'd first arrived at the hospital. When he’d seen the memories of Grady's accident rising up to drown him, another time and another son, and how terribly that had ended.
And Lori had simply been there. Steady and solid and refusing to let him fall apart.
She was there for Tessa too, holding her together with the same quiet strength.
And now she sat between them, letting them both lean on her, absorbing their fear and grief and channeling it into something they could all three bear together.
Mitch didn't know how long they waited. Hours, probably.
The TV show changed to the news, then to another talk show, then to a soap opera.
People came and went from the waiting room.
A woman with a crying baby. An elderly couple holding hands.
A man was pacing back and forth while talking urgently on his phone.
But Mitch, Lori, and Tessa just sat. And waited. And held on to each other.
Finally, the surgical waiting room door opened, and Jackie appeared.
She was still wearing the borrowed lab coat, now with fresh blood stains mixing with the old ones. She looked utterly exhausted. But she was smiling.
Mitch was on his feet before he consciously decided to move. "Jackie?"
"He's weak," Jackie said, her voice rough with emotion and fatigue. "But he's going to pull through."
The words hit Mitch like a physical blow. His knees buckled, and suddenly he was sitting again, and then Lori's arms were around him, and he was crying.
Great, heaving sobs that he couldn't control, couldn't stop, couldn't even be embarrassed about. He buried his face in Lori's shoulder and cried like he hadn't cried since the day they'd buried Grady and Charlotte, and Lori just held him through it.
"It's okay," Lori whispered against his hair, her arms tight around him. "He's okay. Ryan's okay. It's going to be okay."
Tessa was crying too. Mitch could hear her muffled sobs somewhere nearby. But all he could focus on was the feeling of Lori's arms around him, solid and real and keeping him from flying apart into a million pieces.
His son was alive. Ryan was alive. He was going to pull through.
Mitch held onto Lori and let himself cry, let himself feel the overwhelming relief, gratitude, and love that threatened to tear him in half.
And he knew, with absolute certainty, that he never wanted to let Lori go.