by Peggy Jaeger
“One of the perks of owning your own company is the fact you can be late or take a day off and no one can call you on it. Let’s go the hospital, see what’s what. I can always head to the office later if I need to.”
Despite that, Cade never made it to the hospital. The moment we pulled into morning traffic his phone began blowing up with texts and calls from his assistants and a few clients.
“Apparently three banks I’ve been keeping an eye on for my clients decided to go public all on the same day. I’ve got to get to the office and man the helm on this. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. This is your life.”
“Kip can drop me at the office. It’s on the way to the hospital, then he can take you there.”
Nodding, I said, “I’ll have Murphy pick me up, so don’t worry about how I’ll make my way home.”
He gave instructions to his driver then tugged my hand into his. The privacy screen wasn’t up, so we weren’t alone like the last time we’d been in this back seat.
Cade flicked a quick glance up front, then pulled my hand to his lips.
“I’m so happy you decided to stay last night. I liked waking up and having you next to me. And I really liked sleeping next to you.”
“How would you know that since we didn’t sleep all that much?” I cocked my head and lowered my lashes at him in a very Flirty Rory like move.
His lids grew heavy and his lips took their time pulling into a grin while they skimmed across my knuckles. “No, we didn’t, did we.”
Tiny bursts of heat shot up my arm. Before I let this get out of hand I remembered where I was heading. And why.
Cade sensed my mood change, kissed my hand one last time and then held it in his lap for the rest of the drive.
We made plans for me to text him when I knew anything about Phil’s condition.
“I’ll come by your house this evening,” he said once we’d pulled curbside to his office building, “and we can get some dinner. Okay?”
When I told him it was, he bent in, kissed me goodbye, then was gone.
“We should be at the hospital in about fifteen minutes, Miss,” Kip told me.
It was closer to twenty with traffic.
Nick’s point that I wouldn’t be able to get any info on Phil because I wasn’t family was a valid one. But he didn’t know I had an entrée that bypassed the genetic factor.
I took the elevator to the eleventh floor then made my way to a bank of offices reserved for the hospital’s powers that be.
“Aurora Brightwell. You’re a sight for sore eyes,” Rose Patterson said when I came into the hospital administrator’s outer office. “How are you?”
We hugged and I told her I was fine.
“Does Dr. Livingston have a minute?”
“Even if he doesn’t, he’ll make one for you.” She tapped into her desk phone and announced me.
“You go right on in and please tell you beautiful mama I asked after her.”
“Will do. You take care.”
I knocked on the giant oak door, peeked in and said, “Dr. Livingston, I presume?” to the giant African American man coming out from behind his desk towards me.
“That line was lame forty years ago, young lady, and still is. Come here and let me have a look at you.”
He held me at arm’s length, his aged but knowing eyes drinking me in.
Judah Livingston had been the emergency room attending on duty when I’d been brought into the hospital. He was the one responsible for saving my life several times that night as my heart refused to work and the drugs began shutting down various organs. After I’d been admitted and spent the next four years in the neurology wing, he’d visited me often according to my mother and Maeve. When I’d finally woken up years after being transferred home, my mother’s first call had been to my private physician. The second had been to Livingston, who’d come out to see me that same day. In the interim years he’d been promoted to medical staff director and two years ago the hospital’s administrator. Although he no longer saved lives everyday, he was perfectly suited for the role of hospital head.
“Well? What’s the prognosis?” I kissed his cheek.
“A beautiful miracle, just like always.”
I smiled and said, “Someone else called me a miracle recently, too.”
“If the shoe fits…” He lifted his hands then pointed to the couch.
We spent a few minutes getting caught up. His oldest granddaughter was graduating from Harvard medical school next month. It was impossible to miss the pride and love in his voice. His youngest son was on tour in Canada with a folk band, and his wife was still nagging him daily about retiring.
“What would this place be like without you at the helm?” I asked. “You can’t leave.”
Nodding he said, “Which is what I tell her every morning before I come here. Now, tell me the reason you’re here, because I don’t think it was simply for a catch-up session with me. You’ve got a determined look in your eyes that matches your mother’s for intensity and focus.”
That’s the thing about brilliant people like Dr. Livingston: they can see clean through the bullshit.
I explained about Phillipa.
“Aurora, you more than anyone should know why HIPPA rules are in place. Your mother moved heaven and hell to make sure your privacy was protected when you were with us. I remember distinctly that she got two nurse’s aides fired because they talked to a tabloid reporter about you.”
“I don’t want to violate Phil’s privacy, I just want to know if she’s okay. I feel…responsible for her overdose.”
His wooly white eyebrows rose up to his shiny baldhead. “Did you give her the drugs?”
“No, of course not.”
“Then explain yourself.”
I did, unable to keep my tears contained.
Livingston reached into his desk, drew out a few tissues and passed them to me.
“You know you didn’t cause her to take the drugs, right?” he asked. “She did it of her own volition. This situation isn’t like yours at all.”
I pointed to my head and said, “Here, I do.” Moving my hand down to the area over my heart I added, “Here? Not so much.”
He stared at me for a few beats, his expression contemplative. Then, he turned to his desktop computer.
“Name and date of birth?”
I gave them.
“I can tell you she’s been admitted and her condition is listed as serious and guarded.”
“What does that mean?”
“She’s in trouble, but there’s hope. Compare that to when you were first admitted. Your condition was critical and grave. You weren’t expected to make it out of the emergency room.”
The sigh of relief I let out bounced around the room.
“You can’t tell me what room she’s in, can you?”
“No. It’s against hospital policy to reveal that.”
I nodded. “I understa—”
“But,” he took his glasses off and aimed his cavernous brown eyes at me, “usually with cases like this patients are admitted to one of two floors. Either ICU if they’re critical or the fourth floor detox wing for observation and treatment if they’re not. Both areas are restricted and locked to everyone but staff and family.”
The gift he’d just given was huge and we both knew it.
He asked after my mother and Maeve, and as his admin had done, told me to remember him to them.
Five minutes later, after he gave me a hug a grizzly would have considered normal, I took the elevator down to the fourth floor.
The unit’s entrance doors were locked and I knew there was no way I could sneak through them. I wasn’t naïve enough to think I could just walk through, following the staff members who held up their identification cards to the scanner on the door. Hospital personnel were much more savvy these days about visitors and protecting privacy.
I plopped myself down in the row of chairs outside the doors, and texted my mother to tell her where I was and what
had happened to Phil.
The first response she sent back was do you want me to come down there and wait with you?
No rancorous words against my friend, no questioning why I felt I needed to be here despite Phil’s absence from my life. Just full and unquestioning support.
I typed back I was fine but that I would call Murphy when I was ready to leave.
A quick reminder to eat something healthy if I could while waiting ended the stream.
My empty stomach decided to make itself heard as I put my phone back into my purse. While I decided if it was worth leaving for a few minutes to fill it, the doors to the detox unit pushed open with an angry force that had them banging back flat against the wall.
I hadn’t laid eyes on Trey for years but I would have known him anywhere despite the passage of time.
At six foot one, James Bookman had always been lithe, with legs that stretched for yards and the physique of a runner, despite the fact he’d never run a city block in his life. In our youth he’d been blessed with an appetite that knew no bounds and no matter how much he ate, his weight stayed the same. The man stomping toward me with his head down and his hands fisting and unfisting at his side was dangerously thin, almost as if he hadn’t eaten for some time.
I rose from my chair and said his name. He stopped, mid stride, and I got a good look at his face for the first time in almost two decades. Exhausted was the first word to leap to my mind. Trey had been classically handsome back in the day with thick, midnight black hair, a jaw carved from marble and eyes so crystal blue you couldn’t look away from them when they were trained on you.
His cheeks were sunken now and a few days of dark stubble lined his gaunt jaw. Trey had been vain about his hair when we’d been younger, never going more than two weeks without seeing a stylist to make sure it looked perfect, healthy, and –using his own words – amazing. That once thick hair was cut boot camp short now, shadows of his scalp and skull visible under the stark hospital fluorescents.
He stared at me for a moment, squinted as if trying to recall who I was. Those once brilliant eyes were simply pale with fatigue now, lackluster, and with red streaks covering the whites as if he’d been crying.
“Rory?”
An old man’s voice, harsh and low, whispered from him.
I moved toward him, reaching my hand out to touch his arm, then was taken aback when he recoiled. His hands held a fine tremor as he shot them in front of himself, barring me from getting closer.
“What are you doing here?”
I swallowed, “I came to find out how Phil is. I…heard. About what happened.”
“What happened?” His brows slammed together and his mouth twisted down into a dark scowl.
Why I couldn’t say out loud that she’d overdosed, I have no clue. The words simply wouldn’t form in my mouth, so I nodded, instead.
“What happened is she tried to kill herself. To end her life. To leave me.” He voice rose with each statement, his face going beet red, his eyes bulging.
I put out my hand again. “Trey, don’t—”
He smacked it away with enough force to make me stumble.
“Don’t touch me. It’s because of you she did this. You’re the reason she’s lying in that bed. You’re why she almost died. You did this to her.”
“What?”
“You and your fucking questions,” he spat. “She told me you were hounding her, calling her, following her. Why couldn’t you just leave her the fuck alone?”
“I wasn’t hounding her. I saw Phil exactly two times in the past fifteen years, Trey.”
“Why did you have to see her at all? Why did you have to come back into her life? She was fine without you. She buried you a long time ago, Rory, forgot all about you and went on with her life with me. You should have done the same.”
Anger now shoved the shock and hurt away.
“You went on with your lives while I laid in hospital bed unable to speak, think, or do anything for myself, Trey, do your realize that? You and Phil were my best friends for most of our lives. Was it really so easy to just walk away from everything we shared growing up? Forget I ever existed in your world?”
“It had to be. It was the only way Phillipa could go on. You didn’t see her after what happened—”
“Because I was in a coma, you moron.” Now it was my voice rising.
He railed right over me.
“She fell apart. Couldn’t talk, wouldn’t eat. She was terrified to go see you, terrified of what you’d look like.”
“Why?”
“She just was,” he exploded. His eyes were practically popping from his head now. It dawned on me in that moment that Phil wasn’t the only one who might be taking drugs. Trey’s hotheaded, erratic behavior proved he was on something, too. And I don’t think it was a recently acquired behavior. His gaunt, anorectic body, and volatile emotional state hinted these were the long-term effects of use.
Like a junkie aching for a fix, Trey’s body was in constant motion, his hands moving in a spastic dance, his eyes unable to settle for more than a moment.
It answered my question of why Phil had acted so strangely. If her husband was using, it stood to reason maybe she was, too. And I was convinced Trey was.
He dragged in a huge gulp of air, ran his hands across his head as if looking for his hair to latch on to, then cupped them behind his neck.
Tears brimmed in his crazed eyes as he gaped at me.
“The only way she got through it,” he said after another deep inhale, “was by just forgetting you completely. Erasing you from her mind and our lives. It worked too, until you showed up again. And now…this.” He flung his hand behind him to indicate the detox wing, then pointed an accusatory finger at me. “This is your fault. She’s in there because of you.”
“No, Trey, I’m not to blame for what Phil’s going through. All I did was ask a few questions to find out if she remembered anything about the night of my party that could help me figure out what happened. I didn’t hound her, I didn’t harass her. I didn’t make her do anything.”
He stared at me, anger warring with grief on his face.
“But something did.”
His eyes narrowed, his gaze shifting back and forth before zeroing in on me again. “What do you mean?”
A tiny bead of sweat rolled down my back when he took a step toward me, that wild look in his eyes turning focused and… shrewd. His hands were still in fists, this time dropped from his chest to his thighs. The old Trey would never have considered striking a woman. But I didn’t know this new Trey and because I didn’t I braced myself, shifting my weight to the balls of my feet just in case I needed to protect against a hit.
Instead of answering his question, I asked one of my own. “Why was Phil scared, Trey?”
“She wasn’t scared.”
“Yes, she was. The first time she spotted me on the street last week she was prepared to bolt rather than stop and talk to me. I noticed then she seemed like she was afraid of something.”
“Yeah, of you,” he spat. “She told me it was like seeing a ghost come back to life. You scared the shit out of her.”
I nodded. “Maybe. But yesterday, when I saw her and asked what she remembered, what she knew, about the night of my party, fear ricocheted through her. She was shaking with it. Uncontrollably. And that makes me wonder why, Trey? Why was she so afraid of answering my questions? She knows about what happened that night, doesn’t she? Something that she’s afraid to tell. That’s why she tried to kill herself, isn’t it?”
For the first time since coming through the detox unit doors, Trey’s entire body stilled.
His paroxysmal, disjointed movements had been disconcerting and a little creepy, but motionless he was terrifying.
That ball of sweat grew as it sluiced down my spine.
“You listen to me, and you listen good.” He took a few threatening steps toward me.
I mustered every Brightwell gene I possessed to hold my ground.
His lips pulled back in a snarl that showed me his teeth. Nostrils flaring, the corners of his eyes tightened and they narrowed even more. This time I smacked his hand away when he reached out to try and take my arm.
“Don’t you dare touch me.”
Shock stilled him, and for the first time I saw a resemblance to the boy I’d known when shame sprang into his eyes.
In the next moment the anger returned.
I don’t know what he would have said or done if the detox doors hadn’t flown open and one of the staff called for him in an urgent voice.
Trey sprinted through the doors, but before he went through, turned back to me and said, “Stay away from my wife.”
Adrenaline drained from me when he’d gone and my body began to tremble then quake so hard I had to reach out a hand to the wall to keep from stumbling to my knees.
Where had all that hatred come from? Because as sure as sure can be, hatred is what Trey felt for me.
Why?
What had I ever done to deserve that?
Chapter Twenty-One
“I have to admit,” I said hours later, “I thought for a minute he was going to hit me.”
“I wish I had been there with you,” Cade said, taking me hand. It didn’t escape my notice that both Maeve’s and my mother’s gazes flew to our joined hands.
“Aurora could have taken care of herself if he had,” Nick said easily from his chair across from me at the dining room table.
“Of course she could have.” My mother flapped a hand in the air. “She’s a Brightwell.
“That I am,” I said, shaking my head. I tried to pull my hand from Cade’s but before he let it go, he squeezed it.
It took me a long time to calm down after Trey’s tirade. I didn’t want to take a chance he’d come barreling out of the detox unit and rail at me again, so I left the hospital and decided to walk for a while to clear my head and quell my nerves.
His conduct certainly solidified in my mind that Phil knew something. He’d gone from being irrational to sly the moment I mentioned it. But what could it be? And did it concern her, or Trey, or someone else close to them?
There was no way Phil would have slipped something into my drink. I would only believe she had if the confession came from her own lips. Same for Trey. Neither of them would have harmed me, so it made sense that they knew the person who had. Or at least suspected.