Chapter 47
Tad
Doctors and nurses move around me in a flurry, holding me back with a hand on my chest when I try to follow them toward the restricted area I saw them take Breezy into when we arrived.
They had her out of the ambulance before Randy could bring the truck to a stop, moving to the back too fast for me to catch up. Memories of being too late—of being the only one to survive—cascade like waves over my shoulders and sink me to my knees. I can’t do it again.
I can’t lose them. I can’t.
Tears fall unchecked as I put my face in my hands and roar into the empty hallway.
My chest implodes with the force of my yell, and I don’t let up until every last vestige of air has been wrung from my lungs.
A gentle hand falls on my shoulder and squeezes, and when I look up, it’s straight into the sage, sad eyes of Sheriff Pete Peeler.
He must have driven like a bat out of hell from the house, just like Randy did.
“Come on, son. Let’s find a place to sit down.”
I shake my head violently, unwilling to leave this spot until I’m forced. “I’m not leaving, Pete.”
“I don’t want you to leave, boy. I want you to sit. Shit, I think you got smoke clogging your ears.”
He guides me with a hand under my arm, effectively helping me up and over to the wall, where I slide down to the floor with my back against it immediately. He climbs down to the floor beside me, lumbering as his knees crack.
Randy comes to a skidding stop in front of us, having found a spot to abandon the truck and made it inside finally, and when I meet his gaze, it’s nearly as tortured as mine.
I don’t often have the fortitude to consider anyone’s pain but my own, but Randy’s been serving the penance of his demons just as long as I’ve been living with my own.
He knows I’ve never forgiven him for saving me, eternally punished for doing the right thing. It’s not right of me, but it’s not wrong either. It’s just…purgatory.
His back slides down as he sinks to his ass against the wall across the hall, mirroring my posture entirely, legs flat out in front of himself, body limp. “Fuck.”
He’s in rough shape, but I’m arguably rougher, choking on saliva, soot, and a pure adrenaline crash as I try to keep it together.
“Take deep breaths,” Pete commands easily, his hand finding my shoulder and gripping tightly. “Both of ya. Take some deep fucking breaths.”
“Breeze!” Bennett yells, moving down the hall at a run with Norah and Logan hot on his heels, his eyes wild and searching as he yanks open doors and looks inside up and down the wing to our right.
I try to talk—to call his name out in acknowledgment—but all I manage is a strangled cough before Pete takes over.
“Over here, Ben,” he says calmly, climbing to his feet next to me again.
“Where is she? Is she okay?” Bennett asks frantically, his demeanor aggressive in every sense of the word as he charges toward us at a jog.
Pete puts a hand to his chest, but his feet keep churning, essentially leaving him treading tile. “We don’t know anything yet, Ben. We haven’t seen her.”
“Haven’t seen her?” Logan yells from behind Norah, stepping forward with his chest out like he can force his way through our assumed stupidity with sheer ego. “Why the hell not?”
“They won’t let us back there, son,” Pete says, trying to hold on to what little reason is available in the tight air of a very tense hall.
“Bullshit, they won’t. I’m going,” Logan insists, slamming into a set of doors that won’t budge—the very same dead end that stopped me. Emotions are high, but evidently, security in hospitals is higher. “Fuck!”
“All of ya,” Pete insists then, his patience waning from wading through too many buckets of bullshit. “Sit your asses down, right now. Come on. Take a load off.”
Bennett and Norah hug each other tightly, and Logan slams down next to Randy. Without saying a word or lifting his gaze at all, Randy reaches out to put a hand on Logan’s shoulder, just like Pete did for me earlier. It’s an olive branch of humanity I don’t know that I’m capable of right now.
“Tad,” Norah whispers, surprising me entirely by being directly in front of my face. She’s squatted down, her ass at her heels, and when my eyes find their focus, I see a sheen of tears in her eyes and a messy smear of mascara beneath them.
“Where’s Autumn?” I ask, my voice hoarse.
“She’s outside with Clay, Josie, Sheila, and Marty. They all left the bar as soon as they heard.”
I nod. It’s all I can do.
“Tad, honey, we should get you seen by a doctor too,” Norah says, gently touching my arm. “You were in there a long time. Took in a lot of smoke, you know?”
I shake my head. I’m not leaving this spot until I hear about Breezy and the baby.
“Tad,” Bennett says then, shocking the shit out of me by using my real name. “Get checked out. I promise you, I’ll come find you as soon as—”
The door to the restricted area swings open with a thud, interrupting Bennett and bringing me to my feet so quickly I sway. Pete puts a hand under my armpit on one side, and Bennett grabs on to the other as the doctor asks, “Tad Hanson?”
“That’s me,” I rasp desperately. Shards of glass against a chalkboard would sound better than I do right now.
“Beatrice is asking for you.”
She’s asking for you. That means she’s speaking. That means she’s thinking.
That means she’s okay.
The weight of the world leaves my shoulders, and my balance suffers the consequences.
I collapse. Voices shout. Everything goes hazy.
And just like that…I’m officially ousted as the one making decisions for myself as my consciousness takes a road trip.
I guess, maybe, the time has come for me to get checked out.