Living Out Loud (The Austen Series Book 3)

by Staci Hart

“You left her!” I screamed over everyone else, the cords of my neck taut and burning. “You fucking left her there, just like you left Sarah. They paid for your fucking pride. She could have died. Do you understand that? I told you I’d fucking end you if you hurt her. I fucking told you!”

  Will propped himself on his elbow, and when he looked up, I knew he’d heard every word.

  “You don’t deserve her—you never deserved either of them. After what you did, you have no right to be here. You’re lucky you’re not in jail. You’re lucky I don’t fucking show you just how sorry you should be.” I tried to shake off the hands that bound me, but they tightened, holding me back.

  It was for the best; I didn’t know if I’d be able to stop myself.

  He stood, making no motion to straighten his coat or wipe the spill of blood from his lip, meeting my eyes. His words were thick, slow, and slurring. “I’ve never been a good guy; we both know that. But I never meant for this to happen. I never meant for any of it to happen, not Sarah, not Annie, and now…now…” He sagged, but his eyes met mine, bright with pain. “I’m sorry—”

  “No!” I screamed, straining to get free. “I will not feel sorry for you, and nobody believes you’re sorry. Don’t ask for forgiveness because there is none to give. Not for this, not for anything.”

  His eyes hardened, but he nodded once. Two police officers ran into the room. Those bodiless hands disappeared from my arms and chest, and somehow, I didn’t reach for him again.

  With the stern authority that only cops could manage, a brief questioning took place, and the general details of what had happened were given. They asked Will if he wanted to press charges. He shook his head, thumbing his lip when he met my eyes.

  In fact, Will watched me until the police were gone—though they stayed near the elevators—and he looked at me with sincerity that I had no taste for.

  “Tell Annie I’m sorry,” he finally said.

  Before I could tell him to go to hell, he turned and walked away.

  My hands trembled as I turned to face Annie’s shocked family.

  “I…I’m sorry,” I stammered. “I shouldn’t have—”

  “Don’t be sorry,” her uncle said with dark eyes, his hand hooking my shoulder. “I only wish I’d taken the initiative to pull off a shot of my own.”

  We moved to sit again, each of us stunned silent—Meg with her wide eyes, curled into Susan’s lap, and Annie’s mother, her hand cupped over her lips and eyes locked on a spot on the wall.

  Elle rested her hand on my arm.

  But I looked back at my hands, now scuffed up and stinging, red and shaking.

  And I waited.

  An hour passed before the surgeon appeared, looking tired but smiling.

  The relief of that smile was instant and complete.

  He told us the details of the surgery. Her shunt that kept oxygenated blood flowing through her had collapsed, which caused the immediate danger, but rather than replace the shunt, they’d performed the surgery Annie had planned. They’d repaired the valve and closed the hole in her heart. She was stable, and we’d be able to see her soon.

  A few minutes afterward, a nurse came to take Elle and her mother to see Annie. And for another half hour, I waited some more.

  So much waiting, I almost lost my mind from it.

  When Elle returned, her face was swollen and red from crying. Meg began to cry at the sight of her.

  Elle took the seat next to her, pulling her youngest sister into her arms, gently rocking her, soothing her as best she could.

  “She’s okay,” Elle assured her. “She’s all right.”

  “I want to see her,” Meg pleaded.

  “Not tonight,” Elle answered with a shaky voice. “Susan, will you take her home?”

  “I don’t want to go!” Meg wailed.

  “I know, I know, but Annie’s still asleep, and she’ll be that way for a while. Tomorrow, you’ll come back first thing, all right? And then you can see her once she’s awake.”

  Meg sobbed miserably into Elle’s chest.

  Elle looked to her aunt for help, and Susan drew the little girl into her arms, speaking in a gentle, light cadence that made it feel like everything would be all right, listing off what they would do until the time when they came back.

  Everyone stood, and goodbyes were said, coats donned. And then they were gone.

  Elle collapsed into a chair, her composure gone the minute the elevator doors closed behind her sister.

  I sat next to her and pulled her into me, rocked her as she cried into my shoulder, her hands clutching my shirtfront over the spot where my aching heart hammered my ribs. And I was somehow certain that she hadn’t let herself go all the way, not until that moment.

  It was a little while before she caught her breath and pulled away, blotting at her nose with a tissue balled in the shape of her fist, swiping her tears away with her fingers. And then she reached for my hand, meeting my eyes with weight that scared me more deeply than anything I’d seen that day.

  “Greg, I need you to prepare yourself.”

  “Tell me,” I croaked, my mouth dry as ash.

  “She’s okay. I want you to know that. Like the doctor said, the surgery was successful, and she should be fine. But it’s not going to be easy. And what you’re going to see is hard, harder than I can explain or you can imagine.”

  I listened mutely as she told me of Annie’s physical state, what I would find down the hall and in the ICU room. But she was right in that there was no way to prepare myself, not even after living with my mother’s lupus.

  The room was dim but not dark, the bed in the center of the room so big and Annie so small. The low light made the dozens of tubes look sinister, like a beast behind her bed had slipped its tentacles around to feed. A white tube was taped to her chin and cheeks, disappearing into her partly open mouth, and a thick line wound around from a machine and into the artery in her neck. The entry point was exposed, the bulge the needle made in her neck disturbing and shocking, the tube into it the deepest shade of crimson.

  Blood, I realized distantly.

  There were tubes running into her chest, into both wrists. So many tubes, so many wires, even more beyond what I could see, carrying things into her and out of her.

  Soft stays rested on either side of her, nestling her in the center, holding her there like an embrace. It was the only thing in the room that seemed to be there as much for her comfort as her safety.

  My throat caught fire and burned, squeezing until tears pricked my eyes and fell. I wanted to touch her, wanted to feel her warm fingers in mine, but I didn’t move, afraid I would somehow hurt her, that the moment I touched her, alarms would sound, her heart would stop, that all the things I feared would come true.

  And so I stood just inside her room, out of the way of the nurses next to Elle, who took my hand and cried with me.

  Nurses came in and out with businesslike purpose, talking to each other in soft voices as they prepared the room for her to wake, which should be at any time, they told us.

  I saw the moment it happened, though no one else did. It was the rise and fall of her chest that changed, picked up speed. I took a step without thinking, then another, and I was at her side, her mother and sister next to me. Her hand lay delicately by her thigh, and I took it in my own.

  She squeezed, just a flicker of pressure.

  A laugh that was a sob passed my lips and her sister’s and mother’s. The nurses were on the other side of the bed, one of them watching the heart monitor, smiling.

  “Hi, Annie,” she said with that light nurse’s tone. “Welcome back. Can you open your eyes for me?”

  It took a second, but her lids opened for a brief, shining moment before disappearing again.

  “Good job.”

  She stirred.

  “Try to stay still, okay? We’re going to take the breathing tube out in a few minutes, but until then, just try to be still.”

  She nodded almost imperceptibl
y, her eyes opening, then closing again.

  “It’s all right,” I whispered.

  Her eyes snapped open, the beeping of her heart monitor ticking up. She met my eyes; a tear fell from the corner and down her temple.

  I leaned over, brushed it away, kissed her forehead.

  “I’m here,” I whispered again.

  Another slight nod.

  I let her go, moved out of the way to exchange places with Elle. Her mother watched on with longing, unable to stand or get close enough with her chair for the wires coming from every direction.

  It was probably fifteen minutes of her awake and speechless, still and barely conscious before they removed her breathing tube. I’d been prepared for a gruesome exit from her throat, but it was out so fast, I’d almost missed it. She coughed, her face bent in pain, the nurse on one side of her applying pressure to a pillow she’d been instructed to hold against her split chest.

  “Can you tell me your name?” one of the nurses asked.

  Her pale, dry lips parted to speak, but no sound came out. Her eyes were hardly open.

  “I know it’s hard, but I need you to say your name and make a sound.”

  She seemed to summon the power, taking a shallow breath, whispering, “Annie.”

  The nurse smiled. “Perfect. Okay, in fifteen minutes, we’ll get you some ice chips, and if you keep that down, we’ll get you something solid.”

  She nodded, but the nurse had already busied herself with another task.

  Annie turned her head, her eyes glassy and struggling to stay open. Her lips moved, but no sound came. She swallowed and took a more purposeful breath. “Greg…”

  My heart skipped a beat, and I stepped to her side. Her hand lifted. I took it.

  With my other hand, I cupped her cheek, now free of tape but still tethered by an oxygen line. “Hey, Annie.”

  She smiled, just the smallest curve of her lips. “You…found…me…” The laborious words were almost inaudible, a shallow breath needed to power each one.

  “I found you,” I echoed.

  “Don’t…go.”

  To that, I smiled, my eyes teeming with tears. “Don’t worry—I’m not going anywhere.”

  24

  Yours

  Annie

  “That’s disgusting,” Meg whispered in wonder two days later, hunched over the photos of my exposed heart during surgery. “There’s your superior vena cava,” she said, pointing at a thick blue vein, “and that’s your aorta. I can’t believe they cut through your sternum, Annie. Do you know how much power it takes to crack that bone?”

  I flinched against the visual and the following wave of nausea. “No”—I took a breath to power the rest of the sentence—“and I’d rather not know.”

  Mama laughed. “Come on, let’s put these away.”

  Elle swept the photos into a stack, separating them from the little instant photos I’d taken over the last couple of days, and put them back in the folder I hoped never to see open again. Meg watched them disappear before lighting up again.

  “Please, can we watch the video of your surgery? Pleeease?” she whined.

  I laughed, the sound quiet and rough, my throat still shredded from being intubated. “Never in a million years.”

  “Can I see your scar again?” The hope on her face was almost comical.

  I waved her over, and she climbed up the bed, mindful of the tubes. I pulled the neck of my robe down and lifted away the top of the taped bandage, already loose from showing her twice that morning.

  “Cool,” she breathed, eyes wide. “There are actual staples in you. You’re a badass, Annie.”

  “Meg!” Mama scolded, shocked.

  But the rest of us laughed, and after a second, Mama was laughing too.

  The last two days had been a blur of pain and commotion. I’d been moved out of ICU and into a regular recovery room where I got no rest, in part because nurses made their rounds about one REM cycle apart and otherwise because the crushing pain was so immense, it was impossible to ignore, pain meds aside.

  The first day was the hardest. I barely remember waking, only flashes of fuzzy memories like a disjointed dream. I drifted in and out once I finished with all the doing; I had to stand, move around, speak, prove that I wasn’t in distress, regardless of the fact that the movements themselves put me in their own form of distress.

  The pain was indescribable, white-hot and blinding, requiring all thought, all energy to endure. And when it was through and I was left to rest, I slipped away into a dreamless sleep.

  When I woke, it was to tears.

  I’d thought it couldn’t hurt any worse, but it did. People joked about feeling like they’d been hit by a bus, but that was honestly the closest I could come to explaining it. It was like I’d been crushed, shattered, and sewn back together, my bones stinging and burning and rubbing against each other like sandpaper. I couldn’t breathe past the most shallow of breaths, my throat a wasteland, dry and lined with glass. I wanted to drink, but the water hurt, the force of my muscles working my throat hurt. Everything hurt. So I lay there, parched and obsessively considering each pain, wondering how I could possibly survive this, wondering how long it would be until I felt better, if I would ever feel better.

  Somehow I’d made it through that night. And the next morning, it was better. Not very much better, but enough to give me the first glimmer of hope.

  And this morning, I’d woken to improvement, leaps and bounds ahead of where I’d been.

  It felt like nothing short of a miracle.

  Greg had been there through it all. I remembered flashes of moments—lying in his arms in the park as I’d said goodbye, the vision of his face in the ambulance with the humid oxygen mask on my face, wondering if I was going to die, holding his hand when I’d woken, knowing he’d been there all along, knowing he’d stay.

  And so, I was in good spirits, good enough to let Meg pull out those gruesome photos of my open chest and bleeding heart, which, in hindsight, I regretted. What little food I’d been able to keep down churned in my guts, even after they were packed away.

  Meg chattered on, relaying medical facts about the heart, and I looked over my family—my mother in her wheelchair laughing, the sun shining in her blonde hair; my elder sister smiling, her cheeks rosy and high and happy; and my youngest sister with shining eyes, everything about her vibrant and alive. And my heart beat a sweet, solid rhythm for the first time in my life. My hands were warm and full of color. My body, as broken as it was, was already healing, and my heart itself had already healed.

  The hole was gone, all patched up, and not a bit of happiness would be lost again.

  A knock sounded on the door, and Meg bounded off my bed to open it, my heart picking up pace when I saw Greg standing in the threshold with a bouquet in his hand.

  Meg jumped into his arms, and he made his way around the room, saying hellos. But he saved his most brilliant smile for me.

  As he sat on the edge of my bed, I took the flowers, bringing them to my nose. The bouquet was made of cream roses touched with the gentlest shade of pink and miniature lilies, dotted with sprigs of lavender, and the smell was incredible. Meg hadn’t stopped talking, and Greg kept her going with attentiveness, though his hand found mine, his thumb shifting against my skin all the while.

  “Well,” Mama said the second Meg finally took a breath, “I am starving. Elle, Meg, you must be hungry too. Annie had her lunch an hour ago.”

  Meg frowned. “I’m not hungry.”

  “Yes, you are. Come push my chair.”

  She groaned but did as she’d been asked. And without much more than a clandestine wink from Elle, they left Greg and me alone for the very first time since I’d been admitted.

  “Oh, thank God,” I breathed, reaching for him.

  He laughed and cupped my cheek. He kissed me with tenderness and longing, too gentle, as if I were fragile, as if he might break me. I wanted to wind my arms around his neck, but with the tubes and my crac
ked breastbone, I had to settle for my hands on his chest, slipped in the warm space between his shirt and jacket.

  I was breathless too soon; with my deepest disappointment, he noticed and broke away.

  “Well, hello,” he said, smiling. “God, you look good.”

  I chuckled. “It’s my new hospital gown, isn’t it?” I took a breath. “This color of green complements my eyes, I thought.”

  “That must be it.” He smirked. “How much better are you feeling?”

  “About a million times. I even ate pudding today and didn’t immediately want to ralph. Next stop, Ironman.”

  “You look brand-new. Must be the pudding.”

  I snorted a laugh. “Brand-new. That’s funny, Greg.”

  He took my hand, toying with my fingers, a smile on his glorious lips. “I’m sorry it took me so long to get here.”

  “Don’t be sorry. How was work?”

  “Fine. I was anxious to get out of there, and they knew it. But they wanted me to bring you this.”

  He reached for his backpack and rummaged around, coming back with a card printed on cream paper.

  Watercolor flowers framed the words, Obstinate, headstrong girl. —Jane Austen. Inside, it said, We would wish you to get well, but a girl like you needs no wishes, for she eats wishes for breakfast and dreams for lunch. Come back to us soon. And everyone in the bookstore had signed it.

  Grateful tears nipped at the corners of my eyes. When I looked up at Greg, he was smiling at me.

  He reached for my face, thumbing my cheek. “Your skin is pink, your eyes brighter…you really do look so good.”

  “Upsides to a working heart,” I joked.

  But he didn’t laugh.

  “I mean it. I can’t imagine how hard this has really been for you, but watching it has been the most terrifying, life-altering event I’ve ever experienced. But you’re going to be able to live now, Annie, in a way you never could before. You can run. Ride roller coasters. Go skydiving.”

  I laughed. “Maybe let’s start a little smaller. Like getting me home.”

  “Soon. Soon, you’ll be well, and all of this will be a distant memory.”