So Josh was alive, and Daisy was dying. That wasn’t irony; it was cruelty. Some sick, cruel joke the universe was playing on her.
“Oh, Tom. I’m so sorry. I’m on my way.”
She went down the stairs, saw Tyler was back and asleep, shivering and sweating on the couch. She wrote him a note, told him to hang in there, that she was pulling for him, and to call her with any news he’d learned.
Winston woofed at her quietly, almost a question, and she went to him, put her arms around him, and fought back tears.
“Oh, baby. I don’t know what to do.”
He nuzzled her and she let him, then stood and grabbed her keys.
She drove to the hospital in a trance.
How was she supposed to do this? What was she supposed to do? To think? To feel?
She was numb. This could have been some sort of joke. It really could. Right?
The hospital was so close she was there before she could wrap her mind around what was going on. The valet nodded in acknowledgment and took the car, and she went inside. The creepy corridors, the long hallways, the smell—it all was foreign again, strange, different. Her whole world was altered. The colors wound together in a blur, a kaleidoscope of images—Josh at the center.
God, she could hardly draw the details of his face into her mind. The dark hair, the blue eyes, yes, but the minute qualities, the little bits that she used to know better than the back of her hand, were gone.
His head thrown back in ecstasy as he got head from a strange woman.
The ICU was on the fifth floor. When she arrived, she was denied entry. She asked the nurse to let Tom know she was there, and she left to get him. They returned a few moments later, Tom looking haggard and drawn, his skin pale. He fell into Aubrey’s arms, and she hugged him automatically. He smelled of fear.
“What happened?”
“They think that one of the broken rib slivers poked a hole in her heart and they missed it. She’s been telling me all day something was wrong, and I just didn’t listen. They thought she needed a shrink, that it was in her head—” He broke off, sobbing, and Aubrey led him to the ugly gray chairs and sat him down. There was a box of tissues strategically placed nearby. Aubrey handed one to Tom.
When he had calmed a bit, she asked, “So what’s the next step?”
“They’re trying to get her stabilized and they’ll do surgery as soon as she can handle it. Pretty soon they’re going to have to go in whether she’s stable or not. They’re saying it’s fifty-fifty right now.”
“I’ll take those odds, Tom. Daisy is the most stubborn woman I know. She’s fighting in there.” The words sounded empty, flat. But they seemed to help Tom, because the tears began to slow, and he worked his way back to calm. She sat with him while he composed himself.
“The police came by to check on her. They’re going to charge her with DUI and vehicular assault, they want to set a court date. You have to tell them it wasn’t her fault, Aubrey. You have to let them know she didn’t mean any harm. We can’t let them charge her with assault.”
Well, we can. But she patted his arm. “Let’s cross that bridge when we get to it. You should probably talk to a lawyer before you do anything.”
“You’re right. Of course you’re right. I will.”
He went silent, pulling the tissue between his hands until it shredded.
“There’s something else. When I got down here, she was going in and out of consciousness. She said the strangest thing before she went under all the way.”
“What’s that?”
“She said she had sons. Two sons.”
“You must have just misheard her.”
“No. She was very clear. And I’ve been thinking about it since she said it. You know she was married before me, right?”
“Sure. To Ed Hardsten. Josh’s biological father.” He tensed, and she smoothed her hand over his arm. “Josh always felt you were his father, Tom. Always. You gave him his name. You gave him your love. And he loved you, very much.”
“Thank you, Aubrey. Though I guess it doesn’t matter now. No, Daisy was married briefly before Ed Hardsten. To a soldier who died while he was on assignment. Very top secret stuff. She never talked about him; she only mentioned him once, before we got married. She didn’t want to go into our wedding day with lies between us. But she wouldn’t tell me much about him.”
“Do you know his name?”
“No. It was years earlier, when she was just a kid. It pained her to speak of it, so I never pushed her.”
And that was why Daisy had married Tom in the first place. Security and love, no questions asked.
Tom continued, “But what if she had a child with him and didn’t tell me? Or had a miscarriage or something? She always held something of herself back from me. Could this be it?”
“Does she have any papers or anything from that time?”
“I’m sure she does. I don’t go into her desk.”