Chapter 28
Twenty-Eight
EZRA
My throat is tight as I sit in the waiting room.
“You want water too?” Julian asks, his voice hoarse.
I shake my head.
He studies me a second longer than he needs to, like he’s deciding whether to push, and then he doesn’t. He stands, presses his hand briefly to my shoulder, and walks toward the vending machines and the cafeteria at the end of the corridor, his shoes silent on the linoleum.
August sits across from me with his knees drawn up, his glasses pushed up onto his forehead, his palms pressed flat against his eyes. Cole stands by the window, arms crossed, staring out at the parking lot deep in thought.
Sometime near eleven, the automatic doors at the end of the hall slide open, and Mira comes through them at a near-run, her coat thrown on over pajamas. She sees us and sits across from me. “Any word from the doctors?”
“Nothing yet,” I say. It’s been hours since we brought in Liana, and I’ve been waiting just as eagerly for news.
Midnight comes.
The double doors open. A man in blue scrubs, mask pulled down around his neck, looks directly at me. I am on my feet before he even speaks.
“Family of Liana Marsh?”
“All of us,” I say. My voice comes out rougher than I intend.
“She’s out of surgery. She’s stable. But we had to induce a coma. The swelling in her brain was significant from the impact. It’s a protective measure to give the tissue time to recover without added pressure. We’ll be monitoring her closely.”
“A coma?” I ask in shock, my heart dropping.
“There’s something else,” the doctor says. He glances down at his chart, then back up. “She’s pregnant according to the blood test. Early pregnancy, very early. The baby appears unaffected so far, but given the trauma, we’ll be watching that closely too.”
Pregnant?!
I feel the floor tilt. We’ve been wanting her to be with child so badly, and now it happened; the news feels more heartbreaking since she’s in a coma.
“Pregnant?” says August with contained excitement. “Will the baby be okay?”
“Her blood test indicates that she’s in early pregnancy. We will not know until a few more weeks. Most likely the baby is fine.”
Cole has gone completely rigid by the window.
Mira is the one who speaks. Her voice, when it comes, is very small. “Will she live?”
The doctor doesn’t answer right away, and that hesitation says more than anything he could say after it.
“I can’t promise you that,” he says finally. “The head trauma, the surgery, the strain on her body. I’d put her chances at sixty percent over the next forty-eight hours.”
Mira’s face crumples. She presses both hands over her mouth and cries without sound, her shoulders shaking.
“I want to see her,” I say.
“One visitor at a time. She needs quiet.” He looks between the four of us.
My brothers all look at me at once. And they all nod at me to go. I follow the doctor down the hall. My heart is a fist against my ribs the entire way.
He stops outside a door with her room number stenciled on a small plastic placard. He turns to me before opening the door.
“Sanitize your hands at the door,” he says. “Keep your voice low if you speak to her. No pressure on her body. No leaning on the bed, nothing against her incision or her ribs. The nurses will be in every hour to check vitals.”
He opens the door.
I stop at the threshold.
The room is dim, lit only by the pale glow of monitors along the wall. It smells of antiseptic. There is the low, continuous beep of the heart monitor.
I use the sanitizer mounted by the door and quickly cross the room.
She is so small in that bed, swallowed by white sheets and machines.
Her hair has been swept to one side to clear the gauze bandage wrapped around her temple.
A small dark spot of old blood has soaked through the white.
Her face is pale, nearly gray, and her freckles stand out starkly against that paleness, scattered across her nose.
Her lips are parted around the tube taped at the corner of her mouth.
An IV runs into the back of her left hand.
Another line disappears into her right wrist. A small clip glows red on her index finger.
I stand there and look at her for a long time without moving.
Slowly, I sink into one of the hard plastic chairs.
Anger moves through me. If it weren’t for Silus, for his father before him, she would be home right now, laughing at something Pepper said, arguing with me about closing time. Then the anger drains out, and grief takes its place.
I take her right hand in mine, careful of the line. Her skin is cool. I turn her hand over and press my mouth to the inside of her wrist. I feel her pulse against my lips, and it’s comforting.
I have been holding myself together for hours.
Something in my chest cracks open. Tears slowly run down my face as I look at her. She looks so helpless on the bed and should have been under my protection. I failed her. I failed her so fucking bad.
My face is pressed against the inside of her wrist where her pulse is.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper into her skin, again and again. “I should have been there sooner. I should have known. I wish it was me in this bed instead of you, so you could be home with your flowers, so you could be happy.” My voice breaks apart entirely on the last word.
I don’t know how long I sit like that before a nurse steps in quietly and tells me visiting hours have ended for the night. An hour has passed. I hadn’t felt a single minute of it go by.
I press one more kiss to her wrist before I stand.
“I’ll be here first thing in the morning,” I whisper. “I promise.”
Julian
The next morning, I’m sitting with Liana in the hospital room. I’ve claimed the morning shift today. Ezra had visited her all night.
I pull the chair closer. I take her hand carefully, the way the nurse showed us, thumb resting lightly against her knuckles, nothing that could tug the line taped into the back of it.
“Hey, honey,” I say. “It’s me.”
She doesn’t answer or move.
The monitor beeps steadily, and the ventilator hisses its slow mechanical breath.
“I miss you,” I tell her. “The penthouse is too quiet without you. Ezra hasn’t said more than ten words since we got here. Your best friend Mira cries every day. It’s not the same. None of it is the same without you, Lia.”
I stop. I look at her face. The bruise had gone a deeper yellow-purple overnight, the tube still taped at the corner of her mouth, her lashes still and dark against her cheekbones.
“Pepper’s been a mess too,” I say quietly.
“He’s been chewing on the yellow chrysanthemums August keeps in the library.
All morning. Just sitting there, methodically destroying every single yellow flower in that room, and when I tried to stop him, he bit me.
” I press my mouth to the back of her hand.
“He misses you. We all miss you. It’s only been two days, and it feels like a year. ”
Liana’s still. Too still.
My chest caves in around a breath I can’t finish, and my shoulders start shaking, and I bow my head down over her hand and just let the tears happen.
“I’m sorry,” I choke out. “I’m so sorry. You didn’t deserve any of this. Not one second of it.”
When the tears finally stop, I wipe my face with the back of my wrist, and I lean in and slide one arm loosely around her shoulders, barely any weight at all, just enough to feel her against my chest, and I press my lips to the curve of her ear.
“I love you,” I whisper. “I know you probably think I say that too easily. But I mean this. I have never in my life felt this broken. Not once. Come back to us, Lia. Come back to me.”
She doesn’t move. Her soft breaths are warm against my neck.
I ease back down into the chair without letting go of her hand. I sit there and watch her chest rise and fall with the machine’s help.
I don’t say anything else for a long time. I just hold her hand and watch her breathe, and somewhere down the hall I can hear Cole’s low voice still on the phone, and somewhere beyond that, the ordinary sounds of a hospital continuing on around us like the whole world hasn’t stopped.
August
It’s been three days now.
Liana’s face hasn’t changed. The bruise at her temple has gone a duller yellow-green, less alarming than it was, but she hasn’t moved.
Not a flutter of her eyelids. Not a twitch of her fingers.
The doctor says that’s normal, that the coma is doing exactly what it’s meant to do, that we should expect this stillness and not read anything into it.
I pull my chair as close to the bed as it will go and take her hand, and I press my lips against her knuckles, soft, careful, the way we’ve all learned to touch her now, like she’s made of something that might come apart if we’re not gentle enough.
“I brought a book,” I tell her, and I hold it up even though she can’t see it- the worn spine, the pages gone soft at the corners from handling. It’s not one of mine. It’s from the little stack on her own nightstand at the shop apartment.
I brought it here thinking she might want it.
“You do not have to be good,” I read, my voice low, pitched just for her, just for this room. “You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.”
My throat closes around the next line. I have to stop and breathe before I can keep going.
“Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on.”
I close the book.
I can’t finish it. I set it on the little rolling table beside her bed, next to the plastic pitcher of water nobody’s touched, and I put my face against the back of her hand instead.
“I wish you were home,” I whisper. “I keep thinking about that afternoon on the rug, the light coming through the shelves, how you laughed at something I said even though it wasn’t that funny.
” My voice is already breaking, and I’ve barely started.
“We didn’t have enough time together, Lia.
Just the two of us. And I want more than that. I want so much more than that.”
I press my forehead against her hand and let myself cry.
“I’m going to take you on real dates,” I tell her when I can talk again, my voice thick and raw.
“Not just flowers and libraries. I’m going to take you to terrible movies and hold your popcorn and let you make fun of my taste.
I’m going to walk with you in the park until you’re sick of walking and sick of me.
I want to know what you’re like when you’re tired and cranky and don’t want to talk to anybody.
I’ve only ever seen you sweet. I want the whole person.
Please come back so I can have the whole person. ”
I lean down, pressing my lips to hers, softly, so softly, careful of the tube still taped at the corner of her mouth, careful of everything, my hand cupping her jaw with no more pressure than a breath.
And her hand moves.
It’s small. It might be nothing. It might be some reflex the doctor warned us about, some involuntary twitch that means absolutely nothing about what’s happening behind her closed eyes.
But her fingers curl, just slightly, against my palm where I’m still holding her hand, a small pressure, there and then gone.
My heart leaps with shock.
“Lia?” I say, too loud, too fast, pulling back to stare at her face. Nothing changes there. Her eyes stay closed. Her chest keeps rising and falling with the machine’s help, steady, unbothered.
But I felt it. I know I felt it.
Cole
It’s day four at the hospital.
My brothers are all here today, scattered around the room like they can’t decide whether standing or sitting makes the waiting hurt less.
Ezra’s by the window with his arms crossed, jaw tight.
Julian’s slumped in the corner chair, elbows on his knees.
August sits cross-legged on the floor near the foot of the bed.
I’ve got the chair closest to her, and I’ve got her hand in mine, thumb moving slowly over her knuckles, the way I’ve done every day this week.
She hasn’t moved since August felt that flicker yesterday. The doctor says it could mean nothing, or it could mean something. Nobody in scrubs wants to commit to either.
Her eyes move sometimes, under the lids, quick and small, and I wonder what she’s seeing back there. I wonder if it’s flowers, or if she’s having nightmares of her past.
I’d take the nightmares from her if I could.
“You still in there?” I ask her, quietly, just for the two of us, though I know my brothers can hear every word in a room this small. “Squeeze my hand if you can hear me.”
I wait.
Nothing happens. Her fingers stay slack in mine, cool, still. The monitor keeps its same patient rhythm. The ventilator keeps its same mechanical hiss.
“Lia,” I say softly. “All I want you to know is that I love you.” My voice comes out rougher than I mean it to. “I want more time with you. That’s it. That’s the whole ask. More time. So don’t you dare give up on me now.”
I press her hand between both of mine, careful of the line, and I keep going because stopping feels like I’m losing my connection with her at this moment.
“I never took you anywhere,” I say. I shake my head, a short, hard motion.
“I want to take you somewhere with tablecloths and a wine list you make fun of because you think it’s pretentious.
I want to sit next to you in a dark theater and watch you fall asleep halfway through some movie you didn’t even want to see.
I want to walk you through the park in the fall when the leaves are down, just the two of us, nothing else going on. ”
I stop. My jaw works.
“You’re going to make it,” I tell her, and my voice comes out steadier than I feel, because that’s the only kind of voice I know how to give her.
“You’ve survived worse than this. You survived three years in that cabin.
You survived running. You survived building something of your own out of nothing, one flower at a time, in a city that didn’t know you yet. ”
I lean forward slowly, carefully, my hand cupping the uninjured side of her face, my thumb brushing just under her eye where a fresh yellow bruise fades into her cheekbone.
I press my lips to her forehead.
“I love you,” I say again, against her skin. “Come back to us.”
I sit back down. I don’t let go of her hand.
Behind me, nobody speaks for a long time. Ezra’s still at the window, jaw locked tight; Julian’s got his face in his hands; August has gone back to staring at the book in his lap without reading a single word of it.