by Finn, Emilia
Katrina has adopted a kind of coma-type escape. She sits in my lap like a small child, with her legs pulled up to her chin, her thumbnail between her teeth, and her eyes trained on the door a doctor will eventually come through to tell us our fate.
“Zeke isn’t here,” she murmurs softly. If I didn’t know better, I’d almost ask where her emotion is. Why her voice is so bland. Why she’s able to speak at all. But I do know better, and I know there’s not a single soul in this room who feels this as much as she. “His own father isn’t here.”
“Don’t worry about that for now.” I press a kiss to the top of her head. “It doesn’t matter what he’s doing. It only matters what Mac is doing.”
“I’ll never forgive him for this,” she whimpers. “I’ll never forgive Zeke for not being here.”
I could suggest that Zeke doesn’t know his son is dying. I could say she’s being harsh and should never have expected more from the deadbeat, but I was with her when she made the phone calls. When she left messages on his voicemail begging him to come. When she sent a barrage of texts that told him everything we know.
Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.
It’s a disease where the heart muscle becomes abnormally thick.
Vasoconstriction.
The ingredients found in common over-the-counter sinus and migraine medications can constrict blood vessels. Epinephrine for a sinus infection, mixed with sumatriptan for headaches, mixed with pain medication for his leg, has created a cocktail in his young body that slowly began killing his heart months ago.
Macallistar Blair needs a new heart—or he will die.
He’ll never fight again. He’ll never be world champion. He’ll never win his billions and realize his dream of supporting his mom as thanks for her hard work. But if he doesn’t get a heart, he won’t be anything.
He’ll be dead.
Ironically, my heart gives a heavy one-two thump that steals the oxygen from my lungs. We’ve been here for twelve hours already, but despite exhaustion and grief, no one has left. Coffee has filtered through the room; murmurs and tears have been constant. My ass is numb, and I can’t feel my legs anymore, but nothing could tempt me to ask Katrina to move.
So now we sit in this space of limbo. Mac is being kept alive by machines. He can’t breathe on his own. His heart can’t even beat on its own. He’s completely reliant on machines, while I hold his broken mother in my lap and don’t mention the astronomical waitlist for organs.
Sophia and Jay are here, and though Soph works on her laptop and probably tries to fabricate files that say Mac is next in line for a heart, there’s nothing anyone can do but wait.
For the universe to make a decision.
For a shooting star to pass over the sky.
For Mac to be given another shot at the life he was so ready to win.
“I won’t survive this,’ Katrina quietly cries against my chest. “I can’t live without him, Eric. I can’t walk out of here without him.”
“It’s gonna be okay.” I cast my eyes to the ceiling to hide my tears. “He’s strong; he’s going to be just fine.”
“He’s not going to be fine,” she whimpers. She hits the panic button on her watch rhythmically. Over and over again, she sends out the SOS for Spence to come save her, but he’s in this room, and there’s not a damn thing he can do but watch her crumble in my lap. “He’s just a baby. It’s not time for him to go. Moms should never live longer than their babies. It’s not the way it’s supposed to happen.”
“I know. I know, Katrina. I promise I know.”
Her soft cries turn to loud howling that makes Jessie and the fighter girls start again. “I don’t know how to live without him.”
“He’s still here.” I rub circles against her back and lie like my life depends on it. “He’s still showing a reading on those machines, so we don’t call it done until we absolutely have to.”
“I hate him.” Her nails dig into my shirt and leave marks on my chest. I know she doesn’t mean Mac. “I hate Zeke more than I’ve ever hated anybody in my whole life. I will never feel this much hate for anybody ever again. Why isn’t he here for his son?” she cries. “How can he not be here?”
I don’t know.
I truly don’t know how he could walk away from something so special. Something I would give my life for, if only I could.
Hours pass, and hospital personnel move through our waiting room. Day turns to night, and night turns to day. Loud shouts carry through the halls almost as rhythmically as Katrina’s pulse under my palm, loud enough that we hear the instructions yelled, loud enough that I hear a woman’s voice discuss compressions as though that’s the word of the day.
“Gunshot wound! One shot, through the temporal, exit occipital. Continuing compressions. Straight to the OR.”
Because Luc is our med guy, my eyes naturally stray to his. I await his reaction, or non-reaction, since he’s cuddled up beside his nurse girlfriend. All day, I’ve watched him as things are said in the hall, but until now, they were almost always met with his non-interest as he continues his silent vigil. But this time he frowns. He holds Kari under his arm and works hard not to jostle her from her pensive state, but he turns his head toward the hall as though what they say means something to him.
The voices pass within seconds, and nothing else is shouted, so he shakes it off. He turns back to face the rest of the room, but as though he feels my stare, his eyes meet mine. His frown remains, and a deep wrinkle between his brows shows his confusion. But when I lift a brow in question, he only shakes his head and goes back to playing with the bracelet tied around Kari’s wrist.
More hours pass. Hours and hours where my body allows me to put everything on hold. I don’t have to eat; I don’t have to sleep; I don’t have to use the bathroom. I just remain in my seat and provide Katrina with the only thing she needs: a set of arms that will hold her together when she so desperately wants to fall apart.
She says nothing more about Zeke. She says nothing more about anything once she processes what’s being said. It’s my fault! I gave him the majority of his medications. I nagged him to take them! She’s become mute and has reentered her coma-like state so she can cope as the doctors come in and out every few hours to explain Mac’s condition. There’s no surgery because we have no heart. There are no updates to give, except that the machines are doing their job, and he remains medically stable, though, of course, they omit the part where if they turned those machines off, he’d be gone.
The child I allowed myself to love again after tragedy is merely a broken power generator away from death.
I know hospitals have backups for their backups, so a blackout won’t hurt him, but it all feels that close. It feels like he’s been gone since his scared eyes met mine just seconds before he dropped, like he knew something bad was happening, and he looked to me because he knew I would be Katrina’s protector after he was gone.
She won’t survive his death, and I won’t survive losing either of them.
“Up!” Sophia’s laziness turns to alert when her computer dings with something the rest of us can’t know. Katrina jolts in my lap; she remains in her half-awake-half-asleep zone and slowly comes to when Sophia bounds to her feet. “Cap, get up!”
“What?” I turn my head as our crowd begins to stir. “What’s up?”
The door Katrina spent so long staring at whirs open. Finally, Katrina snaps to attention and sits up tall as a doctor in bloodied scrubs enters with his face mask lowered to hang around his neck. He tugs his fabric hat off and stares a moment too long at Jay when he stops by Soph’s side.
A moment of recognition flares in his eyes, but he’s pulled from his thoughts when Katrina trips forward and clutches at his hand. Her son’s blood is on that man’s shirt, on his arm, and just a little bit on his shoes, but she clutches the only living connection she has and begs, “Tell me, please tell me. He’s going to be okay, right? Please don’t tell me he… please don’t say he…” She stutters he
r words as her body rejects the very thing she’s failing to say.
But instead of confirmation her son has passed, the doctor’s lips kind of smile. It’s tiny and forced, and it doesn’t meet his eyes, but it’s not a grimace, and in this moment, I’ll take it.
“Miss Blair, I’ve come to inform you that we found a heart.” I jump forward when Katrina’s legs give out. “A thirty-two-year old Caucasian male was brought in seven hours ago. He was dead on arrival, but our responding medical team kept his heart beating until they arrived. It was a rescue mission from the moment dispatch sent out the buses. Not a rescue for the man, but for the heart.”
“Did you… did you do it?” Katrina’s voice cracks. “Did you operate on Mac? Did he get the heart?”
“Yes, ma’am. I held your son’s heart in my hands.” He holds his hands up in the space between us and doesn’t back away when Katrina grabs on and squeezes. “I held both of them, the old and the new, then I placed the new heart inside Mac’s chest and didn’t walk away until I watched it pump blood.” The surgeon’s dark eyes meet Katrina’s with a heated intensity. “I watched it pump with my own eyes.”
“It’s…” No longer able to stand on her own two feet, Katrina lets me take all of her weight and sways into my body. “He’s okay, right? He’s going to be okay?”
“I have every hope that your son will be just fine. He’s going to be asleep for a little while longer, but I predict you’ll be able to talk to him in the next twenty-four or so hours. Somebody is watching over your son, Miss Blair. The stars aligned, or the universe isn’t done with him yet. I’m not sure what it is, but he’s very much alive. I’m honored I got to be a part of this.”
Epilogue
“Mom! Stop.”
I slowly move behind Mac and shadow him along the front path of our new home. He bats at my hands, curses enough that his ass should be grounded for a year, then curses some more when I don’t bite at his bullshit. He wants to get into trouble, since it’s been so long. It’s like he craves me shouting at him, but he was so sick for so long, I forget what I was ever mad at him about.
It’s like looking into your newborn baby’s eyes and wondering how they could ever make you mad. It’s not possible, though when you’re thinking logically, you know it’s inevitable. For weeks now, I’ve watched my son’s every move. He screamed at me to stop babying him long ago, so I baby from afar. I watch him with an eagle eye, but I don’t trip over myself to fetch him a glass of water anymore.
His cardiologist said it would be good for him to get up and walk around. So he can get his own damn water. And when he gets back, I ask him to get me one too, if only because I know the gentle exercise is good for him.
But today is different. Today is special in the most horrible way.
Today, we’re going to face our demons head on.
“Mom!” He turns to me with an expression one could only describe as lovingly over it. “I can walk. I’m fine. I don’t need you to hold my hand. This isn’t my first day of kindergarten.”
“Kinda feels like it to me.” I sniffle and feel Eric’s warmth when he steps up behind me, when his hands take my hips and his breath bathes the back of my head.
“Let him walk to the car, babe. Save your mother hen thing for when he climbs into the ring.”
“Oh God.” I hold my chest and almost weep at the heavy thump thump. This time last year, my heart skipping a beat would be considered a poetic phrase of sorts, a silly cliché and not at all real. But now it means something else.
My heart is fine. They tested me; they tested Daddy. Even Eric took a spin with their tests, if only to convince us he was healthy and sticking around. Mac’s condition was isolated, and his heart irreparably damaged from a series of unfortunate fuck-ups. A sinus infection here, a headache there that he self-medicated with my migraine medicine. Add in extra training as he worked toward a fight, which meant extra pain pills to help with the ache in his leg. Individually, these things would be fine, but put together in a teenager’s vulnerable body, and my son had begun the ticking timebomb that exploded at the end of a fight five weeks ago.
While my son slept in the ICU and his body worked on accepting this new journey he would be on, the rest of us visited the cardiology wing and had ourselves tested.
Fortunately for us, that’s not how life will turn out for us. A shooting star as unique as my baby crossed the sky above our hospital the night he was being kept alive by machines, and though that star tragically had to die so my son could live, I’m not sorry for it.
Yeah, I know. I’m selfish, but I won’t ever say sorry for wanting my son to live.
Mac climbs into the back of Eric’s truck and buckles in, then he leans forward when I slide into the passenger side and takes my hand. He acts like he needs space from his overbearing mother, but he holds my hand and jams my shoulder back now just like he used to when he was a toddler. All alone in the back, he cried out for my hand, and wouldn’t let go again despite my arm falling asleep.
“You gonna be okay, Mom?”
I scoff. It’s forced and fake and ends on a pathetic squeak, but I nod anyway, because it’s my job to lie and not let him see my fear. “Yes, I’m ready. This’ll be great.”
“You guys ready to catch me if I drop again?”
“Macallistar!” I turn in my seat and smack his knee. “Don’t joke about that!”
Chuckling, Eric climbs into the driver’s seat and turns to us with pure adoration in his eyes. He wears this smile permanently attached to his face these days, even when Mac is tired and grumpy with his progress. He smiles, even when I start to freak out. He smiles, even when he has to go to work and leave us at home. He just… smiles. Because, according to him, anything is better than what could have happened that day we spent in a hospital waiting room.
He studies my face for a long minute, then Mac’s. Then, shaking his head and wearing that smile I love so much, he starts the engine and pulls out of the driveway of our new home. It’s everything I never dreamed of, not because of the beautiful garden I can’t wait to dig into come the spring, or the amazing kitchen that begs to be cooked in, not because of the clawfoot tub Eric was so eager to show me, or the bedroom my son now calls his own, but because it’s a home for a family. It’s not just an apartment or the best we could afford, but a home I want to live in for the rest of my days.
I sit back in my chair and twine my fingers with Mac’s, but my eyes are all for Eric. He’s wearing the exact outfit I remember from my first impression of him: white shirt with flannel over the top, dark blue jeans, heavy boots, and that stupid hat that covers his ears. I like to tease that he looks dumb, but I’m so in love with him, with us, with this family, that he sees straight through my bullshit and asks if I’d rather he fucked me while he wears it.
The answer is no.
But he can wear it during the day, because it’s pure Eric. And to me, Eric is the epitome of sexy and perfect.
It takes only minutes to drive across town toward the gym that hosted the fight day – the Rollin On Gym, of course. The parking lot is packed to capacity, but a spot at the front doors remains free, guarded only by a couple teenage fighter girls while they wait for our arrival.
I just know they kicked anyone’s ass who thought this spot was for them.
They back away as we pull into the space, then loiter by the gym doors as Eric cuts the engine and turns to give us a small smile. “You guys ready for this?”
My stomach lurches at the very thought of seeing my son in that boxing ring again. I know today is under control; I know I technically have nothing to worry about, but knowing and feeling are two different things. And I feel like the universe gets off on smacking us down just for fun.
“No.” I turn to Eric and answer truthfully. “I’m really not ready for this, guys. In fact, I’d be okay if we went home and watched movies for the next… eleven years.”
Chuckling behind me, Mac unsnaps his belt and leans forward, which makes me worr
y that he’ll strain his healing incision. He drops a lingering kiss on my forehead, then pulls back and meets my eyes. “I love you, Mom. More than you know.”
“I love you too, honey.”
“You need to relax.”
“No, I need to buy a bubble for you to live in.”
With an adoring smile, as though I were the child and he the adult, he shakes his head and opens his door. He slides out gingerly, slowly because, despite his speeches about being fine, he knows he has to take it easy. Steadying himself, he slams the door shut and flashes a cute grin through the tinted windows.
Before I can climb out after him, Eric grabs my chin and pulls me back. “I love you.” Despite Benny coming out to stand by the waiting girls, Eric leans forward and presses a gentle kiss to my lips. He’s brave, considering Ben’s threats of dismemberment. “I’m not going to lecture you on babying him. It wouldn’t make a lick of difference anyway, so I’m just going to tell you that I love you, and that I’m here when you start to freak out. I’m not going anywhere, so you’re kinda stuck with me now.”
“I don’t want to be unstuck,” I whisper. “I love you too, and…” I hesitate as a million thoughts race through my mind. I almost lived through what he has. I almost knew what he knows. And the only reason my son is with us is because he wouldn’t give up on us. “I want to thank you.”
He leans back and lets his eyes flicker between mine. “For what?”
“For helping him that day. I haven’t taken a single moment in five weeks to say thank you. If you didn’t do what you did, then he wouldn’t be here. If you didn’t do it so fast, he wouldn’t be here. If you weren’t there, and I was all alone, I wouldn’t have known what to do. My son is alive because you love us. I’ll never forget what you did.”
The corner of his lips quirk up just a little. It’s a shy smile, but a smile that tells me he’s thinking of Gemma and Callie. He couldn’t save them, but he was placed in my life for a reason. There was a higher calling, and the universe answered it that last time in this gym.