by Keelan Storm
“Thanks,” Annie sighed, rolling her shoulders as Jet moved his ministrations to her neck. “But Tyler’s reaction isn’t what worries me the most.”
He gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze in comfort, his fingers still working at the muscles in her neck. He knew what she was talking about. Izzy looked like she was sleeping, but her expression wasn’t peaceful. It was almost like her unconscious self already knew to expect the worst.
“I don’t know if she can handle it, Jet,” Annie whispered sadly. “You saw how Tucker took it. Izzy will be worse.”
Jet grimaced at the memory of his friend collapsing to his hands and knees at his feet, tears flowing violently, his pained gasps for air spread too far out for anyone’s comfort. It had taken a long time for Tucker to reach a state of control, something Jet expected he was still only barely holding onto.
He glanced at the other side of the bed where Tucker sat holding Izzy’s limp, white hand. His head lay on the bed by her side. His eyes were closed, his breathing slow and steady.
“How long has he been asleep?”
“A couple of hours now. He should wake up soon. He never makes it past three at a time.”
“Has he left this room at all?”
There wasn’t a single time Jet had been in this room that Tucker hadn’t been by Izzy’s side. He wondered when the last time his friend had gone home for some real rest was, or when he last ate for that matter.
“No,” Annie replied, looking over at their friend. “Chuck and Jenna have both tried to get him to come home, but he won’t leave. He pulls out the eighteen card every time one of them tries to put their foot down, and he knows my mom has pull here. He’s driving her crazy.”
“Sounds like Tucker,” Jet couldn’t help but grin.
Tucker stirred a little in his chair, moving his head to rest on one of his hands. They stopped talking to watch if he was waking up, but he didn’t move again.
Annie lowered her voice, not wanting to wake him. “Unfortunately. I mean, I’m glad he’s here for Izzy, but I wish he’d take care of himself. You know he’s miserable, in more ways than one, and he’s not going to get any better if he doesn’t get some proper food and sleep.”
“He’ll be fine. He’s not hurt that bad.”
“Jet,” she said in aggravation, “he has hairline fractures in two of his ribs and a bruised spine. Not to mention the giant purple bruise that goes across his entire back. I’d say he’s hurt pretty badly. He should be resting in an actual bed, not slumped over my sister’s.”
Jet shook his head. He understood where Tucker was coming from. “He’ll take care of himself later, sweetheart. Right now, Izzy comes first. I’d be doing the same thing if it were you in that bed, and I was hurt.”
Annie rolled her eyes, not because she didn’t believe him, but because she found it irritating when Jet made things that annoyed her make sense.
“You don’t believe me?”
“No, I just find it annoying when you do that.”
“Do what?”
“Make me love even the things I find irritating about you.”
He smiled widely. “If it irritates you, I’ll have to do it more often. You look cute when you’re annoyed.”
“You’re both annoying right now,” Tucker grumbled into his hand.
Annie and Jet shared a look of humor. “Sorry, dude. We thought we were being quiet enough.”
Tucker lifted his head and rubbed his hands across his face. “What time is it?” he mumbled almost incoherently.
“A little after six,” Annie replied.
“Already?” He felt like he’d just dozed off.
“Yeah. You know, you might get a little more sleep if you were actually in a bed, Tucker.”
“Don’t start, Annie.” He was not in the mood to go through that conversation again. His sleeping problems weren’t going to be solved by a bed. He’d still have the same unsettling images running through his mind. Even if that weren’t the case, he’d still be here with Izzy.
“Anything happen while I was out?” he asked, standing up slowly to move his stiff muscles. He winced at the sharp twinge in his back when he straightened it, feeling as if sharp knives were jabbing at him. He couldn’t even breathe too deeply with the pain, or the stabbing would hit his ribs as well.
Annie rolled her eyes at Jet, trying to make her point about Tucker, but then answered. “She might wake up soon.”
“What?!” he cried, and immediately regretted the outburst as the stabbing struck him again. He sat back down, breathing slowly while he waited for the pain to settle.
Annie waited for his expression to calm. “The doctor came in to check on her right after you fell asleep. He said she’ll probably wake up before tonight.”
“Why didn’t you wake me up?” he demanded.
“Because you needed sleep, Tucker. You look awful.”
“Whatever, Annie.”
“She’s just concerned about you, man. We all are,” Jet said in defense.
“I’m fine. It’s Izzy you should be worried about.”
“We are,” they replied.
“Why?” came the faint murmur from the pale lips up at the pillow.
* * *
Sounds were muffled at first. Even when she was able to distinguish her friends’ voices, their words blurred together in her ears.
Isabel was able to make out a steady beeping noise from somewhere close by and wondered what it was. It didn’t sound like anything in her bedroom, and why would the guys be up in her room when she was sleeping in the first place?
She worked to concentrate on their conversations, trying to turn the muffled noises into words she could understand. Did Annie just say something about a doctor? Why would she need a doctor? Unless it had something to do with her throbbing head. And why did it hurt to breathe? Her whole body seemed to ache now that she thought about it.
She focused on the conversation again, hoping they’d explain what was going on.
Tucker sounded annoyed. “About what?” she wondered, and then she heard him say they should be worried about her. That didn’t make sense. She was just sleeping, wasn’t she? This whole listening in thing was only making things more confusing. She wanted answers.
“Why?” Isabel asked, interrupting their conversation. She was surprised at how frail her voice sounded.
No one answered at first. She was beginning to wonder if they had even heard her when Tucker’s voice came from next to her.
“Isabel?” He sounded as though he wasn’t sure he had heard her, but she could detect relief in the question. It just made her more confused.
“Tuck?”
She felt him take her hand. It felt so warm on her fingers. “I’m right here, love.”
“Jet and I are here, too, sis,” Annie said from her other side. She felt her sister squeeze her leg gently.
“What’s going on? Why is everyone in our room, Annie? And what’s that beeping sound?”
“We’re not in our room, Izzy.”
“Not in our room?” What was Annie talking about? Where else would she sleep?
“No, you’re in the hospital,” Annie replied, sounding unsure, like she was afraid of how she would react.
Isabel didn’t like it. Something felt off.
“The hospital?” As she said this, she recognized the feel of tubes across her face and the hand Tucker held. What was going on? The explanations confused her even more than their muffled conversation. She tried to recall why she’d be in the hospital, but it was difficult to think with her head throbbing.
“Isabel?” Tucker said softly. She felt her heart flutter at the sound of her name coming from those lips.
“Hmmm?” she replied.
“Can you open your eyes, love?”
For him, she’d try, but it was like she had to drag them open. Taking a few seconds to adjust to the light, she looked around the room.
To he
r right, she saw a small table with a lamp. The light from it lit up her sister’s face in the chair next to her. Jet was standing behind her with a hand on her shoulder. They were both smiling down at her, but their expressions seemed sad. Her brow furrowed at the confliction, but she looked around some more.
Past Annie’s shoulder, she could see a built-in seat in front of a window, the blinds closed along with the door slightly off-center from her bed that she recognized would lead out of the room.
She glanced to her left, behind where Tucker sat, to see a door next to a sink and decided it had to be a bathroom. Near her head, there was a machine lit up with various numbers and lines. Still slightly dazed, she realized that this must be what was causing the beeping just as another one sounded in her ears.
Her gaze shifted to Tucker’s face, anxious to look into his eyes. She had saved the best for last, or so she had thought. He smiled down at her, but it wasn’t a true smile. It didn’t reach her favorite pair of brown eyes. All she saw there was pain and sadness.
She furrowed her brow again and lifted her hand from Tucker’s to place it against his cheek. The movement was harder than she expected it to be. She was so sore, but why?
“What’s the matter, Tuck?”
He ignored the question. “How are you feeling?”
She thought about the throbbing in her head and how it hurt to move, hurt to breathe. “Like I’ve been hit by a truck.” She didn’t want to mention that something else felt very off. Partly because she wasn’t sure what it was, partly because a piece of her told her she didn’t want to know.
She heard Jet’s soft laughter in the background. Tucker just gave her a wry smile.
“Where’re Mom and Tyler?” she asked, slowly turning her head towards Annie. It wasn’t like her mother not to be here if she was hurt or sick.
“She took Tyler over to Chris’. He was here most of the afternoon but needed a break. Mom will be back in a bit. We didn’t think you’d be up just yet.”
“Up just yet?” Something in the words caught her attention. “How long have I been out?”
“A few days,” Jet answered.
“A few days?!” “Holy!” she thought as she paused. “What day is it?”
“Wednesday.”
She felt her eyes widen as she stared at Jet. “Wednesday?”
He nodded.
How could it be Wednesday? The last thing she could remember was being at the Homecoming game. Emma had won queen, right? The Sharks won the game...
“The doctors had to keep you sedated for a while, sis,” Annie explained. “You fractured your skull. They had to watch your brain for swelling.”
“I hit my head?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, that explains the major headache, but what about everything else?”
“That’s not all I hurt, though. What’s wrong with my ribs?” She tried to reach for her rib cage with the hand still lying on the bed and realized it was in a cast. “And my arm?” she added in alarm. “What else is wrong with me?”
“Calm down, Izzy. You’ll be okay,” Jet soothed. “Some of your ribs are bruised, but you broke your arm and an ankle.”
“Wow…” she said in shock, moving her hand to Tucker’s. He stroked her palm, avoiding the wires. “What happened to me?”
Jet and Annie looked to one another, not sure what to say.
“Tuck?” she asked.
“You don’t remember?” He sounded hopeful.
“No. The last thing I remember is the game.”
“Do you remember anything about after the game?” There was that hopeful tone again.
She shook her head, wincing as it sent the throbs pounding harder against her skull. Her brow pulled together in concentration. She wanted to remember. She didn’t like how Tucker was avoiding the answer to her question.
Slowly, things started to return. “I remember we were going to leave for the dance. No. We were going to go get some food first.”
She picked her brain some more, searching for any memory of the accident. “I remember talking to Megan in the stands…Wesley was there.”
She saw Tucker’s eyes drop to the bed and knew she was close. “He made Megan leave so we could talk…I argued with him.”
She was almost there. She could feel it. “I got so mad at him. And he kissed me,” she said, surprised and disgusted at the memory.
They were flooding back now, and she barreled forward. “I remember feeling so angry that I couldn’t defend myself. I was about to give up, and stop fighting, but then you came. You pushed him off of me.”
Tucker met her eyes again. Isabel couldn’t understand the expression he held. “You hit him and pulled me behind you, but Wesley got back up. He looked so angry.”
Her body ached as she shuttered at the memory of Wesley’s enraged eyes, the look that had frightened her so immensely. “I fell. Down all those stairs…”
Her voice trailed off. She could remember the look on Tucker’s face when she fell, and it chilled her to her very core. She looked around. Everyone was looking down now. What was she missing?
“What aren’t y’all telling me?”
No one looked up.
“Tell me,” she demanded. She was tired of this.
“You fell really far, love,” Tucker started, voice barely above a whisper.
“Yeah, I know. I was at the top of the stands.”
“You were really hurt.”
“Okay.”
Why was he only stating the obvious? And then it hit her. The obvious. She couldn’t believe she hadn’t thought of it before. She pulled her hand from Tucker’s and pressed it against her stomach. Where was the mound? Where was her baby?
She felt like she was going to be sick as she put it together. Her baby wasn’t there, wasn’t inside her anymore. She hadn’t felt her move at all since she’d woken up. How could she not have noticed? But she had. This was why she had felt so off.
She looked at Tucker, her eyes pleading and frantic, praying that he’d say Destiny was fine. That she was off in the NICU, where her mother had all the nurses watching her night and day. That she could see her as soon as she was better. Surely she wasn’t too little to save. But one look into Tucker’s distraught eyes told her what she had somehow already known.
Destiny was gone. Her baby was gone.
No. This couldn’t be right. She had to be wrong, mistaken. “No…” she said in a desperate panic, her eyes already spilling over with tears. “No, no, no, no, no, Tucker, no…”
The tears Tucker had been holding back for the past several days came rushing in. “I’m sorry,” he said just loud enough for her to hear over her own screams, his voice cracking. “Isabel, I’m so, so sorry.”
And that was that. She felt her world come crashing down around her as Tucker’s grief confirmed their personal tragedy without a doubt. She screamed for her baby, thrashing herself on the bed as she fought the weight that threatened to squash her heart, her very soul, from her body.
Her lungs screamed with pain with each jagged intake of breath she needed between shrieks. Her head pounded to the point of pure agony, but she continued. If she stopped, the pressure and overwhelming ache of her loss would surely crush her.
Tucker fumbled over her, knowing she needed to be still. She was still fragile, her injuries nowhere near healed. She’d hurt herself if she didn’t stop.
Jet rushed from the room, and moments later, nurses hurried in, pushing Tucker out of the way as they surrounded the bed. Two held Isabel down, and a third rushed to the now frantically beeping machine, grabbed one of the tubes connected to Isabel’s hand, and pressed a syringe into it.
Jet came back and put his arms around Annie, who was now standing tearful and wide-eyed near the window. She held on to Jet as they watched the nurses work over her hysterical sister, her heart breaking at what there was no way she could ever fix.
Tucker had dropped back into t
he chair that had been cast aside in the commotion. His tears flowed freely as he watched the love of his life cry out for their lost child, her pain so immense it killed him that he couldn’t stop it, that he had helped cause it.
Soon after the nurse emptied the syringe, Isabel’s struggles decreased, but her tears never stopped. When the nurses felt she was calm enough, they released her and stepped back out of the room.
Tucker went to her side and crawled into the bed next to her. He wrapped an arm around her, careful to avoid any major injuries. He wanted to comfort her, to tell her it would be okay, but he knew that would be a lie. Her heart was breaking as his had already done. So he just whispered he was sorry one last time and held her as they cried.
Annie hurried from the room and walked quickly down the hall to a deserted waiting area. She paced the small space back and forth only twice before Jet caught up to her. He pulled her into his arms, and she buried her face into his shoulder, her tears now full-powered sobs, his just starting to flow.
He knew they would have to go back eventually. Izzy would be out in no time, and Tucker would be in no shape to leave alone for any extended length of time, but right now, they were all where they needed to be: Tucker comforting Izzy, her pain so fresh and new, and he and Annie comforting each other. He tightened his embrace as her sobs strengthened.
Jet had held back the tears as long as he could, but what they had just witnessed was heartbreaking. It was a pain he knew no one should ever be subjected to, and he prayed with every fiber of his being that such hurt would never touch his sweet girlfriend, for he didn’t see how her sister would ever recover.
Annie’s heart was breaking, too, but she hadn’t left the room for the same reasons. No. Leaving that room pained her nearly as much as watching her sister’s tragic cries. It took every ounce of strength she had to step out. But she’d had to do it, had to support the new bond she’d realized existed only a few weeks ago.
It was a bond she knew Destiny had created between Izzy and Tucker. A type of bond she didn’t even share with Jet. A bond that she knew Izzy would need more than anything now. One that was irreversible and unbreakable, even in its creator’s death.
Isabel lay in Tucker’s arms, her tears still streaming but much less violent. She had fought hard. Her frenzied resistance was all she could do to keep the soul-crushing pressure at bay, but now, as the medicine worked its way further into her system and she slipped slowly back into unconsciousness, she felt her defeat. A piece of her heart was now lost…numb…dead.