Dad put his hand on Mum’s shoulder and squeezed. She stopped talking.
“There’s something you need to know,” he said. “But right now isn’t the time.”
“How’s our baby doing?” Jake’s question interrupts my memory.
“She’s fine.” My voice is croaky. I clear my throat. “She’s better than fine.”
“I’ll be back later,” Jared says in a low voice with a heavy sigh.
My hospital room door opens and shuts and silence returns. It’s painful. I feel like I don’t know how to be myself anymore. Everything has changed.
“Talk to me, Princess. Please.”
There’s nothing to talk about. The adrenaline that fuelled my anger over him leaving is gone. Now there’s so much pain, and I don’t like it. It feels irreparable. My eyes prickle. I squeeze them closed more tightly but a tear breaks free. It drops to my pillow with a plop. Jake doesn’t see because my face is turned away from him. “Please go,” I whisper.
“Can I get you a drink?”
Goddamn dogged bastard. I turn back his way. Leaning up on one elbow, I reach for the plastic cup of water from my hospital side table and crunch it in my hand. Then I toss it at the wall. It makes a minimal impact before dropping to the linoleum with a pathetic crackle. “No. I don’t want a fucking drink.”
I slouch back down on the bed and face the other way. That was uncalled for. I’m being a bitch but toning it down feels impossible right now. “Why don’t you just leave like you tried to do before.”
“You don’t want me to go. You came after me.”
“Only so I could rip your head off for leaving and throw it to the sharks in Sydney Harbour,” I mutter bitterly.
Jake huffs with slight amusement. It’s a relieved sound.
I turn my head. “That makes you happy?”
“To hear you sounding more like yourself? Yes. I’d rather you mad at me than feel nothing at all.”
But I’m more mad at myself. And I don’t know how to get him to leave. “I’m tired.”
“Sleep, then,” he replies. “I’ll be here.”
My lips pinch.
“I’m not going anywhere, Princess. Not ever again.”
I ignore the burgeoning sense of peace his words bring me and turn my head to look at the stubborn man. “Fine. Then I’m hungry.”
“Lunch will be served soon.”
“I don’t want to wait,” I retort. “I’m hungry now.”
“Mac—”
I bring out my ace in the hole. “It’s not good for the baby if I don’t eat.”
Jake swipes at the side of his face that isn’t swollen, uncertainty in his expression. “Okay,” he says slowly. “How about I go and get you something from the cafeteria?”
“Perfect.” I force my lips to curve slightly. It feels off, but he takes it in and nods his head.
He rises to his feet and moves his hand from my belly, leaving coldness in its wake. “I’ll be back, okay?”
Jake leans down and presses a warm kiss to my lips. Flutters fill my stomach, and I find myself responding. He draws back and runs his hand over my hair in an affectionate parting gesture before he walks to the door. He opens it with a backward glance before leaving. The door closes with a soft click.
Finally.
I’m alone.
I grab for the buzzer by the side of my bed. My thumb hits the button incessantly. I don’t stop until the door flings open, and my worst nightmare enters the room.
Oh fuck.
Houlihan strides in. Soundless nursing shoes somehow manage to slap against the linoleum floor. Her eyebrows are drawn on extra squiggly today, indicating a harried and annoyed appearance. She’s having a bad day, and she’s clearly prepared for me to make it worse.
I don’t disappoint. “I need a wheelchair. STAT.”
“You think I’m your errand girl?” Her voice is gravel like a pack a day chain smoker. Houlihan moves to the front end of my bed, where my chart rests in a plastic pocket fixed on the wall. She picks it up in her meaty hands and examines it with pinched lips. She returns the chart to its little slot and her eyes narrow on mine. “You’re not going anywhere.”
My nostrils flare wide. Bitch. “I have a brother in a coma. On fucking life support. You can bet your ass I’m going to get a wheelchair so I can see him or I’ll pitch a tantrum so big and loud you’ll hear it from the International Space Station.”
Her lips pinch harder, but I see her brain ticking over. “Mitchell Valentine?”
My hand snaps out and grabs her wrist, a reflexive action that halts her in place. “You know him?”
After a pause where Houlihan looks at my hand (it’s digging into her skin, but I can’t seem to let go) and then looks at me, she speaks. “He’s on level nine, ward six B, room nine oh two.”
My eyes literally tear up with gratitude. For Houlihan no less. I blame it on baby hormones. I clear my throat and peel my hand from her wrist, finger by finger. “Thank you.”
She leaves and moments later returns with a wheelchair. My eyes round with surprise. “Threaten me again and I’ll tear you a new one,” she says in her crotchety voice, belying the kindness of her actions. There’s no time to respond. Jake will return at any moment. At least with Houlihan seemingly in my corner I now have a fighting chance.
After parking the contraption by the side of my bed, she helps me out. I hiss when I put pressure on my right thigh where the wound is stitched and healing. That sonofabitch Ross. Poor Jake is busy worrying about my soul for shooting him. I’m just trying to work out how I can get my hands on his cold, lifeless corpse so I can shoot him all over again. Sorry, Jake, but my soul is doing cartwheels over the death of that asshole.
“Don’t put pressure on it,” Houlihan snaps.
“I’m not,” I bark back at her and reach across for my phone.
We bicker the entire trip from my room up to level nine. I’m almost grateful. Almost. Because it distracts me from what I have to do. She wheels me through ward six B and toward room nine oh two. My hands white-knuckle the arm rests. I’m pushed through the door and toward Mitch’s bed.
Houlihan sets the brake. “I’ll find someone else to bring you back down. Some of us have real work to do.”
I ignore her parting jibe as I stare at my eldest brother. His skin blends in with the white bed sheets he lies in, and thick bandages wrap around his neck, extending to underneath his right armpit. Deep, dark bruises rest under his eyes, and a ventilator helps him breathe. He’s deathly still, not even a twitch to provide the slightest hope.
My eyes prickle and I bring a hand to my mouth, emotion hitting me hard enough to steal my breath. Mitch has always been there for me. Always.
I reach across and take his hand. It feels so lifeless in mine. I close my eyes and see him glaring across the dinner table at me. “You can’t wear that dress. Ever.”
He was the one who orchestrated my return from Melbourne, his eyes burning with the wrath of a thousand suns after I ran away. “I’m going to fucking kill you.”