I stand and lean in so I can whisper in his ear. His hair is bloody and his ear is all swollen and scraped up, but I ignore it and talk anyway.
“I love you so much, Daddy. You are my hero. I will watch over Mama. Don’t worry, okay?” I sniffle and kiss his cheek, resting my lips against his scratchy stubble for a second. He used to always tease me with his stubble, rubbing it against my neck, making me giggle. I brush my nose over it for a second. “I love you.”
I step away and wipe my nose on my sleeve and watch as my mom, rather than sit next to him, or lean in and whisper like I did, crawls on top of him, rests her head on his chest, wraps her arm around his waist, and just cries. It’s the saddest cry I’ve ever heard. So loud and long. She buries her face in his neck and holds on, crying for a long time.
When it seems like she might have fallen asleep, she kisses his cheek, his neck and then his lips. Tiff and I always make gross faces when they kiss and stuff but this time it just makes me cry harder. When she lays her head back on his shoulder, she whispers to him. I can’t hear all of the words, but I do hear love, forever, best time of my life.
Finally, when she’s all done, she stands and leans over him. She kisses his forehead and next to his lips and presses the red call button.
A few seconds later, the doctor comes back with a bunch of other people. She has Mom sign some papers, and then the team of people unplug all of the machines and take the wires off him. I don’t know what they mean or what they do.
They leave just the one that beeps with his heartbeat on and silently leave the room. Mom sits with him, murmuring to him, caressing his face.
“Love you so much, darling. You’re not alone. You don’t need to be afraid. Go see our girl. Go be with her now, and I’ll see you a little later.”
I’m crying silently. The beeps are getting farther and farther apart, until finally, there’s a beep and then… nothing.
No more beeps.
Just me and Mama, crying.
***
The house is quiet. It’s not quite dark yet. After Daddy was gone, we were escorted down to the morgue, which is nothing like Law and Order, to see Tiff. They would only let me see her face. They wouldn’t tell me, but I think her arms were really hurt because I wanted to hold her hand, but they wouldn’t let me.
My baby sister was really pale. Her eyes were closed like she was sleeping. But her hair was bloody like Daddy’s.
I wanted to wash her off. They should have cleaned her up. They should have put a pillow under her head. I tried to make them put the barrette I stole this morning in her hair, but they said they wouldn’t.
Mama said we would make sure someone puts it in her hair so she’s pretty when we bury her.
Mom and I stand in the living room, looking around with blind eyes. Why does it look the same?
Dad’s sneakers are by his rocking chair. Tiff’s backpack is on the kitchen table. It smells like them.
“I’m going to bed,” I whisper and trudge up the stairs to our bedroom and stop at the doorway. This is our room. Tiff’s and mine. We share a room, even though we could each have our own. Tiff’s bed is made. Her side of the room is always cleaner than mine.
“Meredith,” Mom says softly. I turn to look at her. She looks… tired. Her eyes are swollen. Her shoulders are saggy.
“I can’t sleep in there,” I say quietly. “She isn’t here to sleep with me.”
“Do you want to sleep in the spare room with me?” she asks and offers me a watery smile.
“You’re not going to sleep in your room?”
“Not tonight. Maybe tomorrow.” I nod and follow her down the hall, past her room to the guest room.
“It’s not even dark out yet,” I murmur. “And we didn’t have dinner.”
“Are you hungry?”
“No.”
“What do you want, baby?”
I shrug and bite my lip. I can’t look her in the eye. I’ll just cry again. “I guess we could just sleep.”
I don’t know where Mom got them from, but she pulls Daddy’s T-shirts over our heads and we slide under the covers together.
“Daddy will hug us tonight, baby girl,” she whispers brokenly. His shirts do smell like him, and it’s like having him right here with us.
“Wait!” I jump from the bed and hold my breath as I run into my room to grab something off Tiff’s bed, then run back in with Mom. Mom hugs me close, Tiff’s ratty old bear between us, and we both cry together, missing Daddy and Tiff already. We cry for a really long time, until we fall asleep.
“Meredith?” The passenger side door opens and Luke is there, holding my face in his hands. “Jesus Christ you’re pale, Mer. Come on, we have to go inside.”
“Luke?” Sam is suddenly next to him. “What’s wrong with her?”
“I don’t know. She looks… hollow.”
“Should I get some help?”
“No,” I reply hoarsely.
Chapter Twenty One
“I’m okay,” I murmur and move to get out of the car, but Luke holds me still for a moment, examining me.
“You’re not okay.”
“I need to get to Mark.”
“Where were you, Mer? You were gone during that entire thirty minute drive.”
“I was in the past.” I firm my chin and do my best to not show him that I’m falling apart here. I don’t matter. I need to get to Mark.
Luke swears under his breath and steps back to let me out.
“Her dad and sister,” Sam murmurs.
“I know,” he replies.
“I’m right here. I can hear you.” I try to shake them off, but they flank me. Luke wraps his arm around my low back and Sam takes my hand, and we walk into the emergency room together.
“I’m glad you can hear me now because you couldn’t five minutes ago,” Luke says almost angrily. Why is he mad? Maybe he’s just scared. God knows I’m fucking terrified.
“What happened?” I ask. Jesus, I wasn’t even thinking clearly enough to ask what happened. “Is he dead?”
“I fucking hope not,” Luke replies. Now he is mad, and Luke never gets mad. He takes one look at my face and then takes a deep breath and swears softly. “I’m sorry. No, he’s not dead. I don’t know how bad his injuries are. Isaac is on the way here too. He was on the job site.”
“It happened on the job?” I ask incredulously. “How in the hell is there a car accident on the job?”
“Let’s see if we can see him and I’ll tell you what I know.”
Luke leads us to the reception desk and flashes the woman behind the counter his million-dollar smile. “Hello. My brother, Mark Williams, was just brought in. Can you buzz us back?”
She taps on her keyboard and frowns. “I don’t have record of him. When did you say he came in?”
“He should already be here.”
“Could be they’re still on the way. I do show that we’re holding a room for an ambulance.”
“We beat them here?” Sam asks disbelievingly.
“Check back with me in a while,” the receptionist says with a smile. Luke leads us to the waiting room and I plop in a chair, trying not to think about the germs that I’m sitting on.
“Jesus, I hate emergency rooms,” Sam mutters. “Do you know what kind of nastiness is on these chairs?”
“You and I are on the same page,” I say absently as I rub my eyes. “Okay, tell me.”
“All I know is a car hit him in front of the job site. Isaac called me and said they’d called the ambulance and to have us meet him here.”
“Are his legs broken? Does he have internal bleeding? Is he conscious?” I’m getting shrill now. I stop and swallow, trying with all my might to keep my panic at bay.
“I don’t know anything else,” Luke insists. “We have to wait to see him.”
“I’m sure he’s fine,” Sam says and risks coming in contact with the plague and sits next to me. “Honest. If it was horrible Isaac would have said something to prepare
us. He would have called the whole family.”
I nod my head. Right. She’s right. But if he’s fine, Mark would have called me himself. He wouldn’t have sent Luke.
“I mean,” she continues, “he works a really dangerous job. We’ve always known this. He’s always climbing on stuff and working with sharp, dangerous tools and equipment. He could fall, get electrocuted, cut off his hand with that really big saw. At least he’s not working on the fishing boats anymore.”
“Sam,” Luke says warningly.
“Fishing on those boats is the most dangerous job in the world! I swear, I still have stomach ulcers from waiting for days to hear that he was okay.”
“Samantha!” Luke shouts, cutting her off. “I don’t think you’re helping.”
Sam looks at me with wide eyes. The blood has drained from my head and my lips are trembling.
“Is that true? I never stopped to think that construction is so dangerous.”
“He’s careful,” she insists, backpedaling. “Honest, Mer, he’s really careful. He’s never been hurt before.”
“But it’s possible.”
“Hell, you could get hit by a bus crossing the street, Mer. Anything’s possible.”
I shake my head and stand to pace the room, which isn’t easy with all of the people sitting in the cramped space. A couple people are sleeping. One man is holding his face. He obviously has a toothache. A baby is crying in his mom’s arms.
Luke comes up behind me and rests his big hands on my shoulders. His hands are so much like Mark’s.
“I can’t lose him,” I whisper.
“Meredith, I think you’re overreacting, sweetheart. He’s probably just scraped up.”
I twirl and stare up into his clear blue eyes. “You don’t get it, Luke. The people I love die. This isn’t the first time I’ve been rushed to a hospital because of an accident.”
“Not all of the people you love die,” he says softly.
“The ones that matter the most.”
“Mark isn’t dead, Meredith.” He grips my shoulders tightly. “He’s not dead.”
I nod again. I feel like that’s all I’ve been doing, nodding like an imbecile. But then the image of my father in that hospital bed enters my head. My mom lying on him, keening in pain and agony and I shake my head in denial.
I don’t know if I’m strong enough for this.
“He’s here,” Sam says as she rushes over to us. “The chick with the computer—”
“Is that her name?” Luke asks sarcastically.
“—said that the ambulance just got here. He’s going to be examined and stuff before we can go back.” She cups my face in her hands, not gently, and says, “He’s not dead.”
He’s not dead.
“How long until I can see him?”
“She didn’t know.”
It’s the longest fucking two hours of my life.
“I’m sorry,” computer chick says with sympathetic eyes. “They’ve taken him back for some tests. As soon as he’s ready you’ll be the first to know.”
“If you just tell him I’m here, he’ll want me back there with him,” I beg.
“You can’t be in the area where the tests are being done. I promise, I’ll call you back as soon as I get the okay from his nurse.”
“His nurse and I are going to have some words,” Sam says with a snarl. We both turn away just as Isaac comes running through the door.
“I couldn’t get here sooner. I had to talk to cops and calm the crew down and…” He sees me and immediately hugs me close. “How are you holding up, sugar?”
“Not great,” I reply honestly. “They won’t let us back to see him. So you need to tell me if he’s okay.”
“I think so,” he replies. “I don’t think he passed out, but I didn’t want to take any chances.”
“How in the fucking hell does a person get hit by a car on a construction site?” I ask him angrily.
“Fucking looky-loo. Too damn busy checking out the house rather than watching what’s happening in front of her damn car and going too fast. Mark was looking at his phone and just walking around his Jeep, he wasn’t even walking across the street, and she hit him, full on. Sent him flying. Scariest fucking thing I’ve ever seen.”
“Ms. Summers? You can go back with him now.”
“Go ahead,” Luke says. “Sam and I will wait here for our parents.”
I nod and follow Computer Chick into the bowels of the ER. Someone is crying. She leads me to a room with a curtain drawn around the bed. I swallow hard and for a millisecond I consider running away, but instead I take a deep breath and walk right in and around the curtain.
And there is my man, in a hospital gown, his hair a little bloody, his face and arms scraped, and a big, fat smile on his arrogant face.
“Hey, M,” he says.
I immediately burst into tears. I sit in the chair next to his bed and sink my head and arms onto his lap, crying big, gulping sobs.
“Shh…” He’s rubbing my head now, my shoulders and back. “Hey, it’s okay. I’m okay, baby.”
“You could have died!” I cry into his lap.
“I am fine.” He grips my shoulders and makes me sit up to look at him. “Look at me. Meredith.”
I can’t open my eyes. I feel so foolish. I know he thinks I’m overreacting. Everyone does, but they haven’t been in my shoes. They don’t understand.
“Meredith. Breathe. Breathe with me, baby.” He scoots down in the bed and leans his forehead on mine. “Come on. You’re having a panic attack. Breathe deep and slow, Meredith.”
He calms me. My heart slowly returns to normal and my tears stop until I look up into his gorgeous blue eyes and I lose it again.
“Baby, I’m okay.”
“I know. But I didn’t know before, and it reminded me of Dad and Tiff, and oh my God, Mark, I can’t do that ever again.”
“Stop.” His voice is brisk now. “Stop it before I call the nurse in here for you.”
“Are you going to be okay?” I whisper.
“Yes. I’m scraped up, and I have a knot on my head, but I’m fine. They wanted to do a CAT scan to make sure I don’t have internal injuries.”
“Do you?” My heart stops again.
“No. I’m fine. I’ll be sore as hell tomorrow, but I’ll walk out of here as soon as Nurse Ratchet brings me my fucking papers and more pain meds.”
“Why didn’t you call me?”
He reaches for a rolling table at this bedside and holds up his phone. The screen is shattered.
I close my eyes in relief and I’m suddenly being lifted into Mark’s lap.
“What are you doing?”
“Calming you the fuck down.” He cradles me against him and rocks us back and forth. I wrap my arms around his neck and bury my face in my place in his neck, holding on tightly. God, I love him. He’s everything to me. I can’t lose him the way my mom lost Dad. I don’t think I’d survive it.
And I will eventually lose him. Because I lose everyone I love.
As we sit here silently, I cling to him as I realize what I have to do.
I have to give him up.
I cup his face gently in my hands and kiss him softly. My lips linger on his for a moment as I breathe him in and my hands trace the strong muscles in his arms.
Finally, I pull away and climb off his lap.
“I love you more than I can ever tell you, Mark. But, I can’t bear the thought of losing you the way I lost my family.” I swallow hard as he frowns in confusion. “I just can’t do this.”
“Can’t do what, exactly?”
“I can’t be with you.”
“You are with me, Meredith.”
I shake my head and rub my forehead with my fingertips. Jesus, how do I find the words for this?
“I don’t think I can be in a relationship with you.” The last few words are said on a sob. His jaw drops just as the nurse bustles in.
“Okay, Mr. Williams…”
I lea
ve as she’s giving him his instructions and rush out of the ER, through the waiting room and outside.
Fuck me, I don’t have my car.
“Meredith!”
Natalie runs out after me, catching up to me when I get to the parking lot and realize I don’t have a ride home. He’s going to come marching out here any second.
“I need to leave, Natalie.”
“Is he okay?”
“Yes, he’s just scraped up. He’ll be fine.” This time.
But what about the next time?
“Oh, good.” She breathes a sigh of relief and then sobers when she sees the look on my face. “Where are you going, Mer?”
“I’m leaving. I just broke it off with Mark.”
“Wow, talk about kicking a man when he’s down.”
“Fuck you, Natalie. You don’t know me or what I’ve been through.” It’s not her fault, but I can’t stop myself from going after her verbally, and I hate myself even more for it. “You haven’t had to bury your parents and your sister and watch everyone around you that you love the most die!”
“Yes I have.”
“And you haven’t…” I stop, stunned. “What?”
“My parents both died when I was in college,” she replies calmly. “I’m an only child.”
I blink twice and feel about three inches tall.
“Scared you, didn’t it?”
“I’m fucking terrified.”
Nat nods and pushes her hair out of her face as the wind kicks up. “He won’t let you just break it off, you know.”
“He doesn’t have a choice.”
She narrows her eyes and watches me for a moment. My eyes fill with tears again, pissing me off even more.
“Why would you do this? Even a blind woman can see that you’re completely in love with each other.”
“I would rather give him up voluntarily,” I begin and have to swallow hard against the bile rising in my throat. “Than have to lose him the way I did my sister and my dad. I watched my mom lay on my dad’s chest and say goodbye to him, Natalie. I can’t do that.”
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