Perfect Rhythm

by Jae

  God, what wouldn’t she give for a translator. “I don’t understand.”

  The lines on his forehead deepened. He repeated the motion with his hand. “Two things. Mu…music. Women.”

  “You…?” Her breath caught. Was he pointing out the two things they had in common—music and women? She stared at him. Was she imagining things, or had he just cracked a joke about her sexual orientation—not a homophobic one, but a joke that hinted at acceptance?

  The corner of his mouth twitched.

  Unbelievable. He had been joking. Her strict, overbearing father had joked about her sexual orientation as something that might unite them instead of stand between them. Jesus Christ!

  Laughter bubbled up from deep inside of her. She pressed a hand to her mouth and realized what she was struggling to hold back wasn’t laughter—it was a sob that wanted to escape her chest.

  Don’t. This might be a beginning, but it was too fragile to burden it with tears.

  She fisted a handful of the sheet and took several calming breaths to get herself back under control.

  “Fine?” he asked, and for an instant, she saw the gentleness that he had sometimes shown her when she’d been a little girl and he had guided her hands over the strings of the violin.

  She inhaled and exhaled again. “Yeah. I’m fine. Are you really okay with me being a lesbian? With me being…everything I am?”

  “Not…don’t, um, like. Don’t…change.” He gave that half shrug again.

  She nodded her understanding—he didn’t particularly like it but accepted that he couldn’t change it. Guess it’s a start. It was certainly more than she had ever expected to hear from him.

  When she got up from the bed, she felt as if she could float out of the room. A decades-old weight was finally starting to lift off her chest. She stood next to his bed and peered down at him for several moments, wanting to say something but not knowing what. That must be what he felt when he struggled for words. Finally, she gave up and instead bent to kiss his cheek.

  He put on a gruff expression, but his gaze was soft. It followed her to the door, where she turned and looked back at him.

  They nodded at each other; then he pulled the sheet higher and closed his eyes.

  “Good night,” she said softly.

  Blowing out a shuddery breath, she picked up the baby-monitor receiver and tiptoed out. The first thing that went through her mind was that she wanted to call Holly and tell her everything.

  But things between them were over. Were they even still friends? Did she want to be, after she had opened herself up, only to get dumped?

  It was a moot point anyway. She didn’t have Holly’s number. Hell, how’s that possible? They had shared a lot of very intimate information but not their phone numbers?

  Instead of trudging upstairs and brooding over Holly and the unceremonious end of their relationship, she resolved to do something that she had avoided for the past month: unpacking her suitcase, even if it was only for another week.

  Chapter 15

  Birdsong and the pale light of dawn woke Leo.

  She had slept fitfully, tossing and turning with thoughts of Holly. Their argument at the creek played through her mind on a loop. Finally, she had fallen asleep about two hours ago.

  Unlike Leo, her father seemed to have slept peacefully. There hadn’t even been the slightest peep through the receiver of the baby monitor.

  Well, at least that part of her life had taken a turn for the better after she had gathered the courage to have a conversation with her father. Maybe she and Holly could do the same. She would leave in just another week, and she didn’t want their last few days together to end with them not talking. Truth be told, she didn’t want them to end at all. She wanted to get to know Holly better.

  Maybe she could surprise her with breakfast to make up for the picnic she had abandoned yesterday, and they could talk and clear the air between them. At the very least, she wanted to tell Holly that she’d been right about one of the two things she’d said at the creek—and dead wrong about the other.

  With that thought in mind, she climbed out of bed before sunrise.

  A rooster crowed somewhere in town as she made her way downstairs. She grinned at herself. Now she was getting up with the roosters. If she stayed here much longer, there was no telling what other local habits she would take up.

  The house was quiet, so her mother was probably still asleep. She really must have been exhausted.

  Leo opened her father’s bedroom door a few inches and peeked inside.

  He was still asleep too.

  She started to withdraw, but something made her pause. Something was…off. Goose bumps rose on her arms, and the tiny hairs stood on end.

  It took her a moment to figure out what had triggered her sixth sense: Her father was breathing weirdly—deep, but much too fast for peaceful sleep. As she watched, his breathing slowed and became shallow…and then it just stopped.

  Panic flooded her. “Dad!” She rushed into the room.

  Before she reached him, he started breathing again.

  Her knees went weak with relief. “Jesus, don’t scare me like that.” She shook his shoulder to wake him.

  He didn’t move; just his chest continued to rise and fall in a slowing pattern.

  “Dad!” She shook him again. “Please, please, wake up!”

  Nothing.

  Phone. Call 911. She fumbled around on his bedside table but found only the baby monitor and his blood sugar kit. In a burst of speed, she took the stairs three at a time. “Mom,” she shouted at the top of her lungs. “Wake up! It’s Dad! We need an ambulance!”

  Not waiting to see if her mother would wake up, she snatched up her phone. Her hands shook so much that she could barely dial 911.

  As the phone rang, she raced back downstairs, to her father’s side.

  For a second, his chest seemed to have stopped moving, but then the fast, deep breaths started again.

  She gasped for breath along with him.

  “911. What’s your emergency?” the dispatcher said in a calm, practiced tone.

  “It’s my father. I…I can’t wake him, and he’s breathing weirdly. I need you to send someone—now!”

  “Calm down, ma’am.”

  Calm down? How could she calm down when her father was…? She swallowed and refused to even think it.

  “Can you confirm your location, ma’am?”

  She rattled off her parents’ address, hoping she wasn’t getting it wrong in her blind panic. “Hurry, please!”

  “Okay. Help is on the way,” the dispatcher said. “I’ll stay on the line with you until the ambulance arrives.”

  Her mother stumbled into the room in her nightgown. “Oh God, Gilbert!” She hurried to his side. “What happened?”

  “I-I don’t know. He was like this when I came in.”

  Every second ticked by painfully slow as they stared down at him, unable to help.

  Tires crunched over the gravel outside. The ambulance! She pressed the phone into her mother’s hand, rushed through the hall, and tore open the door.

  But it wasn’t an ambulance parked in the driveway—it was a red Jeep.

  Holly! Leo nearly sank to her knees. Holly was a nurse; she could help. The cold prickle of sweat along her back slowly receded. Holly was here. Everything would be okay.

  Holly parked her Jeep in the driveway and grabbed the paper bag with the scones. Now that she was here, she wasn’t so sure that showing up this early had been a good idea. Leo was probably still asleep, and even if she wasn’t, what was there to say?

  Nothing had changed after all. They still lived in different states and still had different expectations in a relationship.

  That doesn’t mean we can’t be friends. Even though she’d convinced herself it was better not to try a rel
ationship with her, she didn’t want to lose Leo entirely. It wasn’t that she didn’t have other friends—she did—and she loved spending time with them. But that couldn’t compare to what she had felt when she had climbed up onto the roof with Leo, dangled her feet in the creek with her, or snuck into the kitchen for a glass of milk and some middle-of-the-night conversation. She wanted more of this feeling, whatever it was…and she wanted to apologize.

  She had hurt Leo with her back-and-forth of emotions and actions, first kissing her and agreeing to date her and then telling her she’d changed her mind. The memory of the look on Leo’s face down at the creek had kept her up all night.

  With a lump in her throat, she got out of the Jeep and closed the driver’s side door. Before she took the first step toward the house, she realized that the front door stood open and someone was on the porch.

  Leo.

  Their gazes met across the car’s roof.

  A hesitant smile tugged on Holly’s lips. It spread across her face as Leo rushed toward her. Apparently, Leo wasn’t just willing to talk; she had obviously missed Holly too.

  But Leo wasn’t smiling. Her eyes were wide with panic. “Holly! It’s my dad. He’s not waking up!” She grabbed her hand and pulled Holly after her into the house.

  Holly dropped the bag of scones onto the hall table, praying with all her might that this emergency wasn’t what she thought it was. She gently nudged Sharon aside and shook Gil’s shoulder.

  Nothing. Not even a moan from him.

  Oh God, Gil. For a moment, panic threatened to grip her, but then her training took over. “Have you called 911?”

  Leo nodded. “They’re on their way.” She took the phone from her mother and lifted it to her ear. “Holly’s here. My father’s nurse. Yeah, she’s already doing that.”

  While Leo and Sharon anxiously hovered next to her, Holly bent over him and checked his blood pressure, his heart rate, and his pupils. One of them was dilated, and his breathing pattern indicated Cheyne-Stokes respiration. Damn, damn, damn. That’s so not good.

  She reached for the blood glucose meter on the bedside table.

  “You think it’s low blood sugar?” Leo asked.

  Holly had a feeling it was something else, but she didn’t want to worry them unnecessarily. “It’s worth checking. Could you get me another pillow?” She wanted to raise his torso a little to make sure he didn’t aspirate on his own saliva. It would also give Leo something to do while they waited for the ambulance.

  Leo rushed off.

  Just as Holly was about to take his blood sugar, the sound of sirens grew louder and then stopped in the driveway.

  Sharon ran to let them in.

  Seconds later, she returned with the two EMTs. Leo trailed after them, pillow in hand.

  Holly blew out a breath. She knew them both. Gil would be in good hands.

  She gave them Gil’s vitals, then stepped out of the way and joined Leo and Sharon at the foot of the bed. Quietly, she slid her hand into Leo’s.

  Her fingers were damp, and she clutched Holly’s fingers tightly, as if holding on for dear life.

  “Looks like a stroke to me,” Holly said to the EMTs. “He’s had two already, one last year, the other three months ago.”

  With efficient movements, the EMTs repeated her checks. Vickie, the female EMT, attached EKG patches to Gil’s chest and hooked him up to a cardiac monitor, while her colleague clipped a pulse oximeter to his finger and measured his blood glucose. It was a little on the low side but not low enough to make him lose consciousness.

  “How long has he been like this?” Vickie asked.

  Holly looked at Leo.

  “I don’t know. He was like this when I tried to wake him a few minutes ago.” Leo glanced at her wrist, but she wasn’t wearing a watch. “He seemed just fine last night when I put him to bed around nine, and I didn’t hear anything from him all night.”

  Leo had put him to bed and kept an eye on the baby monitor? Holly stared at her for a moment. But it didn’t matter right now. More important was the fact that he hadn’t woken her once during the night. “He usually has to get up at least once during the night,” she said to the EMTs.

  They traded knowing gazes before lifting Gil onto a gurney and strapping him into place. Within seconds, they had wheeled him out and through the open doors of the waiting ambulance.

  Sharon, Leo, and Holly hurried after them.

  “Can one of us ride with him?” Leo called, still clutching Holly’s hand while wrapping her free arm around her mother.

  Vickie shook her head. “We’ll probably end up airlifting him to Saint Luke’s.”

  Saint Luke’s. The hospital had a first-class stroke unit. So they were thinking what Holly was thinking. If this was a massive stroke, as she suspected, the local hospital couldn’t do much for him, and the window of opportunity for a clot-busting drug was rapidly closing. They had to act fast, and taking a family member with them would only slow them down.

  She wrapped one arm around Leo’s waist and made eye contact with Vickie. “We’ll meet you there. You still have my number?”

  Vickie nodded.

  “Let me know where you are taking him as soon as you know.”

  “Will do.” Seconds later, the ambulance doors closed behind her, and the ambulance sped down the street, sirens blaring and lights flashing.

  Leo stood in the middle of the driveway and stared after them as if she still hadn’t grasped what had happened.

  Holly gently chafed Leo’s hand between both of hers. Now that the ambulance with Gil had left, she slowly shifted out of nurse mode. Her knees started to tremble.

  Leo turned to face her. The numb expression on her face gave way to fear. “He seemed fine last night. I swear he… Oh God, what if he…?”

  “He’ll be fine,” Sharon whispered like a mantra. “He’ll be fine.” Then she burst into tears.

  The three of them came together for a desperate group hug in the middle of the driveway. Leo’s trim body, which normally exuded such confidence, now trembled and felt fragile against her. With one hand, Holly rubbed circles over her back until she felt the tense muscles relax a little.

  “Come on,” she finally said. “Let’s get you two inside.”

  Still holding on to each other, with Leo in the middle, they made their way to the house.

  Chapter 16

  In Leo’s experience, hospital waiting rooms were the same all over the western world, and the one in Saint Luke’s emergency room was no different—same hard plastic chairs, same smell of disinfectant and cleaner, same sense of fear and sorrow.

  Leo peered over at Holly, who sat next to her, still holding her hand. Had she been sitting in a waiting room like this after her father’s accident too? Did this remind her of that horrible day?

  But if Holly was thinking of the past, she gave no indication of it. Her attention was firmly on Leo. “Want me to get you a coffee or something from the vending machine?” She looked from Leo to her mother.

  Both shook their heads.

  “No, thanks.” The last thing Leo needed was for the caffeine to make her even more jittery. She could barely sit still as it was. For the fifth time in as many minutes, she glanced up to the large wall clock, whose hands seemed to barely move. Why was no one coming to let them know what was happening? A CT scan shouldn’t take this long, should it?

  She wished someone would turn off the television mounted in the corner. Some soap opera played with the sound off, ignored by the handful of people in the waiting room.

  Her mother’s shoes squeaked on the linoleum as she paced back and forth.

  Leo leaned forward and put her elbows on her thighs without letting go of Holly’s hand. It was her lifeline in all this chaos. “I’m sorry about…about before.” She wasn’t sure why she was thinking about it now, but the words bubbled
out of her. “I don’t want you to think I’m a person who throws things if she doesn’t get what she wants. That’s not who I am.”

  “I know.” Holly caressed her fingers with her thumb. Her forearm rested on Leo’s thigh next to her arm. “I was just as much to blame. But it’s not important right now. Let’s focus on your father, okay?”

  For a moment, Leo wanted to lift her hand to her mouth and press a kiss to her palm. She was so insanely grateful to Holly that there were no words for it.

  “I didn’t hear him,” she whispered. “Last night. I never heard him. What if he called for me or screamed out and I just…I slept through it?”

  “Look at me.” Holly tugged on her hand until Leo raised her gaze to her eyes. “You did nothing wrong. It could have happened on any other night when your mother or I kept an eye on him, and we wouldn’t have heard a thing either. None of this is your fault. None. Do you hear me?”

  Leo nodded, but a few what-ifs still clung to her mind like stubborn cobwebs. It would take some time until she could shake off the last remainder of doubt.

  A scrub-clad doctor pushed through the set of swinging doors. His gaze swept over the people in the waiting room. “Mrs. Blake?”

  Her mother stopped pacing—even seemed to stop breathing. “That’s me. How is he?”

  Leo shot to her feet.

  Holly jumped up with her, their fingers still linked.

  The doctor cleared his throat. “As you probably guessed, your husband suffered another stroke.”

  “But he’ll be fine, right?” Leo’s mother asked. “He’s survived two strokes already. He’ll make it through this one too…right?”

  “Mrs. Blake… This one was much worse than the others. There’s substantial swelling in his brain, and it’s putting pressure on the brain stem—the part of the brain that regulates important life functions such as his breathing and heart rate.” He cut himself off as if realizing they were too overwhelmed to grasp all the details. “We don’t expect him to recover from that.”