“Don’t worry, I’m coming,” Sully moaned. “Goddamn it, help them. We have to get them out of there!”
“What? Hey, you’re okay. Try and lean back a little. Don’t worry. I’ll clean this up. Just rest a moment. Come on, that’s it.” I didn’t think about what I was doing. I just did it. I slowly brushed my fingers through his hair, shhhing him, trying to make him feel better. “It’s okay, just breathe, Sully, just breathe. I got you. I got you.”
“It’s too hot. The tanks are gonna blow. We have to get them out of there, Crowe. They’re all gonna die.”
“It’s okay, Sully. Shhh, it’s all over now. You got to them. You pulled them all out of the water, do you remember?”
“Water?”
“Yes. You jumped into the ocean to pull them out. It was stupid and dangerous, but you managed to save three people’s lives.”
“Three? Only three? Oh. Yeah. That’s right.”
“Those three men are alive because of you, Sully. I swear, if you hadn’t done what you did, they would have drowned like everyone else.”
He was shaking his head. Shaking it so violently that his teeth were rattling together inside his head. “No. No, you’re wrong. They’re trapped inside the truck. They’ll burn if we don’t get them out there, Crowe.”
“Sully! Calm down!” He was flailing, arms everywhere, trying to push me away from him. I lost my balance, fell back and landed on my ass, and Sully managed to sit himself upright.
“Fuck you, Crowe,” he spat. “If you don’t want to go, then that’s on you. I won’t live the rest of my life knowing I could have helped and I didn’t. I’d rather burn to death along with those poor bastards.” He shot to his feet, about to take off, about to do something, to act, to help whoever he imagined was trapped inside a truck somewhere, but he didn’t make it more than three feet toward the front door before his knees buckled out from underneath him and that was it. He was out cold.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Taking Liberties
I stayed the night. I had no other option available to me, unless I was okay with leaving Sully passed out on his living room floor in a pool of his own vomit, which I wasn’t. So I stayed. Thankfully Rose was having a grand old time taking care of the children, so that wasn’t an issue.
It was an issue that Sully kept dipping in and out of consciousness every fifteen or twenty minutes, and he thought I was Magda more often than not. Strangely, he didn’t seem all that happy that I (she) was taking care of him.
“You made your choice, Mags. I told you. I don’t want to see you. I don’t want to hear from you. I…just leave me the fuck alone, goddamnit!”
His fever broke at four in the morning. He was running with sweat, his t-shirt soaked, so I ran upstairs to find him something clean to change into, and found myself having a surreal, how-can-this-be-happening? moment standing in his bedroom at the foot of his bed. He didn’t have much by way of furniture in his room: a simple twin bed, covers rumpled and turned back (he hadn’t been up here since he woke to see the disturbance down by the beach the night of the storm), a chest of drawers, a three tier bookshelf that was overflowing with books, and a huge black, plastic packing box with Captn. S. Fletcher stenciled on the side of it in gray paint.
It smelled of him up here. Ronan had smelled of Armani Code, Old Spice deodorant, and laundry detergent. Sully smelled like wood shavings and whiskey, and something I could only hope to describe as specifically Sully. There was a pair of socks balled up on top of the chest of drawers, and a book, open and face down on the floorboards beside his bed. “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.” He was halfway through.
I found his clean t-shirts folded and stacked methodically by color in the second drawer of his chest of drawers. Grabbing one, I then went on the hunt for a clean pair of shorts for him as well.
Downstairs, Sully was shivering silently on the couch, blanket up around his chin. He glanced up at me standing at the foot of his spiral staircase, blinking with all the solemnity of a pissed off owl. “So you’re still here huh, Lang?” His voice was croaky, no doubt from shouting so angrily at Crowe (me) for hours.
“Looks like it, doesn’t it?”
Sully glanced around his living room, flinching. “Man. I take it I trashed the place and not you?”
“You were delirious. You refused to keep your ass sitting down, let alone lying down. I think you messed up your ribs pretty good.”
“Yeah.” Wincing. Pressing fingertips gingerly against his chest over the covers. “I think you’re right.”
“Are you thirsty? Do you want some water?”
He looked at me uncertainly. “Yeah. If you wouldn’t mind, that would be great.” His tone was soft and almost…almost repentant? Could it possibly be? I never thought I’d see the day when Sully Fletcher might show a little remorse. Or gratitude for that matter.