by Lane Hart
While I’m in the midst of the crowd milling near the check-in desk, I drop the ID card I had pilfered, and then duck through the sliding doors that seem to be perpetually stuck open with all of the people crowding inside.
“You have any problems?” Sax asks me once we’re a safe distance away in the parking lot.
“No, thankfully they’re so busy that no one even glanced twice at me. God, that was nerve-wracking, though. I haven’t stolen anything since I was a teenager and nabbed a candy bar from the gas station. Now I remember why I never added ‘stealing’ to my bucket list. I never want to do that again!”
“I’m sorry I had to ask you to help with this,” Sax says as we reach his motorcycle. “I can’t tell you how much this means to me and to my crew. We might have put a lot of people in danger if Cooper had to be admitted. You’ve done something good here, even though I know it must not feel like it. I can’t believe how smooth you were in there; you were in and out in under thirty minutes.”
“Come on, Captain, point this ship towards the shore,” I quip as I get my helmet on and secure my bundle in his saddlebags. I’m more pleased by his compliment than I care to concede, and I can admit to myself that it feels good to be truly helping someone again. “We’ll see if this was worth it once Cooper starts to recover.”
Chapter Twenty
Isobel
My footsteps halt when I walk into the bedroom and find Cooper sitting up on the edge of the mattress. “Oh my God. You’re wide awake!” I say in surprise.
“What?” he shouts at me, obviously unable to hear the volume of his own voice. Reaching up slowly, like his arms are heavy, he scratches the back of his matted bed head and asks, “Who the hell are you?” Before I can try to answer, he drops his arm back to his side and says, “Actually, I don’t care. Just tell me where I can take a piss.”
Grabbing his elbow, I turn his arm over and sigh helplessly as I see where he has pulled out the IV I inserted last night. “Well, the good news is that you at least got all the fluids in your veins before you ripped everything out,” I tell him. He doesn’t respond, so I help him to his feet and guide him out of the room to the bathroom in the hallway.
As soon as he shuts himself inside, I yell, “Guys! Cooper’s awake!” even though some are probably still sleeping.
Half-naked bikers appear from every doorway within seconds, completely surrounding me before they filter into the room Cooper’s been sleeping in.
“Where is he?” Torin asks.
“Bathroom,” I reply with a nod of my head toward the only closed door.
“How’s his temperature today?” Sax asks.
“Don’t know. He was up and out of bed before I could check it. But I touched his arm, and he didn’t feel warm. The fact that he’s up is a good sign, and now may be the best time to get some pen and paper to tell him about his hearing.”
“Good idea,” Chase agrees. “Anyone have any paper or a pen?”
“I do,” I say, and then I hurry back into our room to fish my bucket list notebook and pen out of my bag. Flipping to a blank page when I return to the hallway, I ask the guys, “Should I start by telling him that there was an explosion and your eardrums blew so he may not be able to hear us?”
“That works,” Torin agrees. “Then we’ll go from there.”
The toilet flushes, sink comes on, and then a few minutes later the bathroom door opens. Cooper physically startles when he sees everyone gathered around because he didn’t hear us talking in the hallway.
“What are you all doing here?” he asks.
“Let’s get him back to bed before we get into the details,” I suggest.
“Huh?” Cooper shouts as War and Torin grab his elbows and steer him back into the room. “What’s going on?” he asks. “Why won’t anyone fucking answer me!” he shouts after he flops back down on the bed.
I offer him the notebook and then point to the words I wrote in it when we were in the hallway.
“Yeah, I remember the explosion,” he says. “Who did it?”
The guys shrug their shoulders in the universal gesture for no idea, so that doesn’t need to be written down.
“Shit, my eardrums are fucked. Is that why there’s whooshing and ringing in them?” Cooper asks.
I nod, and then take back the notebook to write down that we need to take him to an audiologist now that he’s feeling better before turning it around to show to him.
“Fine,” he mutters after reading it. “Anything to make this stop – Wait, Jenna?” he asks, his pale, bluish-silver eyes widening in panic as he looks around the room.
For this response, I hand the notebook to Torin, the guy in charge. I feel like this is something he should ‘hear’ from one of his brothers.
As soon as Torin hands him the book with the words he wrote down on the page, Cooper groans and shakes his head as the notebook falls from his hands. “No! No, God, no!” he exclaims as his palms scrub down his face. “She has a kid…what about her kid?”
“Oh fuck,” someone mutters since none of them apparently knew that bit of information.
“We need to get a name and address for her family,” Torin says aloud as he picks up the notebook to probably write the same thing.
“No one has had any luck, but we’ll keep trying,” Sax offers.
“When we find them, see what they need, how much money for the funeral and any other expenses. We’re gonna take care of her kid,” Torin says as he pulls Cooper’s hand from his face to show him the writing on the page. Instead of making him feel better, he falls apart and sobs. “It wasn’t your fault,” Torin says before he scribbles the sentence on the page and holds it up in front of his face. “It wasn’t, okay?”
“Let’s give him some time to process all of this on his own,” I suggest. “Maybe someone can locate an audiologist in the area and call to get him an appointment ASAP since I’m not allowed to have a phone.”
“I’ll do it,” War offers.
“Thanks, man,” Torin says. “I’ll stay here with him if you all want to give us some time…”
“We’ll need to check his temperature soon and change his bandages,” I tell him. “Let me know when you think he’s ready.”
“Thanks, Iz,” Torin says, using my abbreviated nickname like he’s finally accepting me into the group.
That’s when it hits me that I only agreed to stay until Cooper was up and around, which is…today.
Sax
“Did you find out anything about her family?” Isobel asks when she joins me outside in the backyard after I made a few phone calls.
“No,” I answer with a sigh. “Jade spoke to a few of the dancers, but none of them knew if her family is local or not. No one mentioned a kid, so she must have kept that to herself. Reece didn’t have any luck either. There were no other Higgins in Durham where she’s originally from. I just called the coroner’s office, and they said no one has been in to claim her body, so either she has no family, or they don’t know yet.”
“Jesus,” Isobel says. “Either way it’s awful, especially since she has a child.”
“We’ll keep trying to track them down,” he says. “Do you by chance have a laptop I could borrow?”
“Yeah, there’s one in my bag, I just haven’t used it for fear it would be confiscated too.”
“I’ll try to get your phone back,” I tell her. “Torin’s eased up and trusts you more now that you robbed a hospital to help Coop and he’s back on his feet.”
“Physically, maybe,” she says. “He’s still going to have to deal with the hearing issue and emotional turmoil. He’s hurting bad, Sax.”
“He blames himself for whatever reason. Jenna was his employee, and now he feels guilty that he couldn’t save her.”
“He shouldn’t,” Isobel says. “There was nothing he could’ve done to stop a bomb that someone else planted.”
“Maybe not, but I get it,” I tell her.
“Right, you wrongly blamed yourself when A
pril died,” she responds.
“Yeah, I got pissed at her for partying, getting high and seeing other guys. I should’ve done more to get her help, been around more. But I was pissed and pushed her away after I found out she slept with someone else.”
“It wasn’t your fault, Sax. Sometimes people do stupid things that they know they shouldn’t, and any consequences fall solely on them.”
I give a nod of agreement but don’t have anything to say to that. April’s death was partially my fault, and that’s always how I’ll see it. Isobel could never understand.
“I didn’t exactly quit being a nurse,” she tells me.
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“I got fired for showing up drunk or hungover from staying out at bars and clubs too late,” she starts. “Danny knew, and he gave me more chances than I deserved. Honestly, I took advantage of the fact that we were friends and I was certain that he wouldn’t fire me,” she explains before she pushes her still brown hair behind her ear. “But then one day a parent smelled the alcohol on my breath and reported me and Danny to the medical board. I told them he didn’t know anything about my drinking, so they took my license but let him keep his.”
“Damn, Iz. That’s awful,” I say. I had no idea that’s why she left nursing.
“I think deep down I wanted them to take my license all along, which is why I kept drinking to excess. I wanted to finally be free to do whatever I wanted.”
“Why would you want to throw away the years it took to get your nursing degree and all if you didn’t actually want it?” I ask her.
“When I was younger, I thought a career in nursing was what I wanted, to be able to help people like my mother. And then I got the results back from the genetic testing I did on a whim and learned the truth.”
“The truth? About what?”
“My mother never had cancer like my father told me,” Isobel says. “She had Huntington’s disease, and he kept it from me.”
“What’s Huntington’s again? I know I’ve heard of it before, but I don’t remember the details,” I tell her.
“It’s a, ah, rare genetic condition that breaks down the nerves in a person’s brain, which is why it’s always fatal, eventually.”
“Jesus.”
“Children of Huntington’s patients have a fifty percent chance of inheriting it,” Isobel explains. “I have it.”
“Hold on. You have Huntington’s disease, like, right now?” I ask in disbelief, and she nods. She looks and seems so healthy! “Are you okay? What exactly does that mean?”
“I’m okay now, but I’ve already started showing symptoms – the occasionally twitching of fingers, hands and feet, the frequent clumsiness and dropping things, all of which means that over the next ten to fifteen years the nerves in my brain will deteriorate a little more each day until I’m no longer capable of caring for myself and the disease finally kills me.”
“You can’t be serious,” I say. “You’re perfectly healthy. There must be some sort of mistake…”
“There’s no mistake, Sax! I only have maybe ten good years left. After that, I’ll be bedridden until I can no longer speak or eat, and then I’ll die.”
“No. There has to be something doctors can do before it gets that bad.”
“There are medicines to help with the symptoms, but there is no cure,” she says with a shake of her head.
“Not yet, but maybe one day. You can’t just give up hope, Iz.”
“Sax, it’s a rare disease. Not enough people have it to waste billions of dollars on research finding a cure. The only way to stop it is for those who have it to stop procreating.”
“Wow,” I say, still in a state of shock, unable to formulate any other words. So that’s why she had her tubes tied, to make damn sure she doesn’t pass the disease on to her kids.
“How ironic, right?” she asks. “I wanted to work with children, and then I find out that I can’t even have any of my own,” Isobel says sadly. “That’s another reason that deep down I wanted to get out of pediatrics.”
“You could…you could still have kids if you want them. There’s a chance they wouldn’t get it.”
“I’m not willing to take that chance and condemn some poor kid to die in his or her forties!”
“What about adoption then?” I offer.
“No,” she says without hesitation. “Any kids I have, my own or someone else’s, will be destined to the same hell – to take care of me, to watch me fall apart.”
“That’s why you…this is why you have a bucket list,” I say in understanding.
“The clock is ticking,” Isobel replies. “Each day I get closer to the end when I won’t be able to walk or talk or do the things I want to do.”
“And your father knows this?” I ask in horror. “He knows that you have Huntington’s and that your life will be cut short?”
“Of course,” she answers. “He was the first person I told. I confronted him after I received my results and started digging into my mother’s history. Do you know what he did?” she grits out.
I shake my head, unable to speak because I was trying to do what her father wanted, to keep her grounded, to stop her from living her life to the fullest, which is the least she deserves.
“My father printed my mother’s obituary in the paper when I was ten to convince me and everyone else that she was gone. We had a memorial service for her!”
“She wasn’t dead?” I ask.
“No! She didn’t die until almost five years later! He hid her from me and the world in a nursing home because he said he didn’t want me to see her like that – to see what I was going to have to endure in just a few decades! They had tested me when I was a kid and knew what would happen. He didn’t want me to know that my life would end before I hit fifty.”
“God, Isobel. I’m so…I’m so fucking sorry,” I tell her honestly.
“You have nothing to apologize for,” she replies with a small smile. “These last few days with you have been some of the best of my life. I hadn’t realized just how isolated and alone I was before you came along. But now you know why I can’t let myself get too close to you or anyone else.”
I have to clear the emotion from my throat before I can ask, “And why exactly is that?”
“Because no one wants to be the man who has to feed and bathe his sick wife for years before losing her. Not even my own father, who I thought loved my mother, could do it. He tossed her into a home so someone else could care for her while he pretended she was dead and went on with his life.”
Panic. All I feel inside me is a growing, suffocating panic as I feel her slipping away from me for good.
“I may have only known you for a few days, Iz, but I would do anything to spend every day of the rest of my life with you,” I tell her honestly.
“Sax…” she starts.
“I’m serious,” I say when I grab her hand. “Stay with me. Or let me go with you. I just don’t want this to end yet.”
“You don’t know what you’re saying. Ten years, Sax, that would be the most you get with me before I’ll need around-the-clock care.”
“Then let me have ten years with you. We’ll make them count. They’ll be amazing, I promise,” I tell her.
When tears start to trickle down her cheeks, I pull her close to me, and she tilts her head up to kiss me. Her lips crush into mine, fierce and passionate, but I break away before she can distract me further.
“Is that a yes?” I ask her with a small smile.
Instead of answering, she launches herself at me, tangling her hands in my hair. “Take me to bed,” she demands, her lips pressed directly to my ear.
As she grinds herself against me, I realize this is the only answer I’m going to get for now, and honestly, it’s one that I’m happy to accept. She hasn’t refused me, and her body is telling me everything that I need to know.
Well, everything that I need to know for the next hour.
Chapter Twenty-One
&nb
sp; Isobel
Sax and I are still tangled up in bed when a cell phone beeps yet again, snapping him out of a light doze. Torin gave me my phone back, finally, but I know by the tone that it’s Sax’s.
“Ugh, sorry, but I better grab that, baby,” he mumbles, so I slide off of his chest.
“Anything important?” I ask, “Or can we stay here a bit longer?”
“It’s Gabe,” Sax says. “Him and Abe went out and got him a new kit. I mean his needle guns and inks, all that stuff. He says they’re on their way back to the safehouse, and he’d be glad to do your tattoo, if you’re still up for it. What do you say, want to hang out a little longer and get some ink?” Sax asks, excitement and hope lightening his tone. “I’d want you to stay a bit while it heals, make sure it doesn’t need touching up or anything.”
“Tell him I’d love that,” I confirm with a smile. While I do want the tattoo to remember him, what we’ve had together, I know I still need to temper Sax’s expectations. “It will be a beautiful way to remember the time we’ve had together. You really are the best, Sax. These last few days have been…well, they have been some of the best of my life.”
“But you still won’t stay, will you?” he asks, his voice tinged with disappointment and bitterness.
“I know how hard it is to understand,” I tell him as I get up and begin dressing. “I want you to believe this, Sax. If there was any man that I would consider having near me while this disease progresses, any man that I would trust to care for me like a child, an invalid child…it would be you. But I promised myself a long time ago that I would never put anyone through that. No one. Ever.”