“Of course.” I nudge him back. “Besides, I did it for them.”
I’ll go ahead and chalk it up to Dylan’s newfound willingness to give us a chance, but this practice feels all kinds of different from the last one. An air of ease and comfort makes the time pass even more quickly than it did last time. Catching on to mine and Dylan’s little streak of competitiveness, the boys challenge us to compete in a little homerun derby for the last ten minutes of practice. Even with his bum shoulder, I’m impressed with Dylan’s ability to easily lift the ball and send it skyrocketing out of the park. Watching him smile, hearing his laughter, seeing his kindness in action—my heart soars just as high at the ball he’s just hit.
When the bus pulls in to pick the boys up, they actually moan in protest. Dylan huddles them up for one last pep-talk. “Okay, now remember our last game of the season is on Wednesday. Are you guys excited?” Loud and raucous screams fill my ears as the boys show just how excited they are.
“You’ll be there, right, Coach Michelson?” Brett’s more than hopeful face shines brightly as he looks up at me.
“No chance I’d miss it.” I ruffle a hand through his hair and he falls in line with the rest of the boys to board the bus.
Five minutes later, we have the rest of the gear packed up and we’re pulling away from the field. Dylan’s hand moves from the steering wheel, reaches across the center console, and pulls mine from my lap. He rests our locked-together hands on my leg. It’s simple act—one I’m sure many people do rather subconsciously, holding the hand of the person they’re dating.
But with Dylan, I know it means more. It’s a chance he’s never been willing to take. I pull our joined hands up to my lips and plant a kiss there. “Thank you,” I say against his skin.
He pulls a confused face. “For?”
“Taking a chance on me.”
His face softens and the confused look morphs to one of deep-rooted emotion. “I’m the thankful one.”
We stop a deli on the way back to my apartment to grab lunch. It’s a nice causal afternoon, one that a few years ago, I would have thought was fairly mundane. But something about carrying a bag of sandwiches and chips into my home, to share a meal with a man who’s coming to mean a lot to me and my only remaining family, hits a chord.
As we walk through the door, something immediately strikes me as wrong. There’s an odd and cold silence in the space—there’s no music blasting or TV playing. There’s no life.
“Rach!” Her name echoes in the living room, but there’s no response. “Rach!” I call again, dropping the bag on the counter.
“Everything okay?” Dylan asks, closing the door behind us. “Maybe she just went out?” he suggests as I poke my head into the kitchen. “Did she have to go to the gym for anything?”
“No, the new guy, Peter, is working today. She’s been training him all week.” My keys skitter across the counter. “She said she’d be here all day.”
Crazy thoughts race through my head. Did Caleb find her? Should we have moved more than a few hundred miles away? By the time I make it to her room, I’ve worked myself up into a full-blown panic.
The door to her room bounces off the wall with the force of my arm shoving it open. My eyes dart all over her room—her closet, the vanity, and then her bed. When I look down at the floor next to her bed, the sight of her legs, bent at awkward angles makes my stomach sink.
I’m at her side in an instant, cradling her limp body in my arms. “Dylan! Call 9–1-1. Now!” My hands and eyes scan her body for any sign of attack and they can’t find anything. “What happened? Rachel, please wake up.” Her breathing is shallow and her eyes are black, wide in dilation.
Dylan races in with the phone pressed up against his ear. “Yes, she’s breathing.” He switches ears, reaching down for her wrist. “Pulse? Uh, yeah, but it’s weak.”
Gently, I rock her in my arms, comb my fingers through her hair, and offer up my silent prayers that she’ll be okay.
Within minutes, the ambulance is pulling up to a screeching stop in front of the building. Dylan sprints down to them, making sure they don’t waste a second of Rachel’s time. The medics rush the apartment. The loud clanking of the gurney is jarring and brings the harsh reality that something is really wrong to the foreground. They call out numbers and stats. Some of them make sense to me, while most are just a barrage of words that all mean one thing—she’s not doing well. Her blood pressure is low. She’s not reactive. Her pulse is weak and her staggered breathing is getting worse by the second. Watching them intubate her right here on her bedroom floor guts me in a way I hadn’t thought possible.
With Rachel tightly secured to the gurney, the medical team races out of the apartment with even more speed and ferocity than they had when they entered it.
Dylan and I follow them down the stairs and out to the street. After they have her all loaded and I’m ready to jump in the back with her, a female EMT stops me. “She’s not stable enough. You’ll have to meet us there.” She slaps an arm across my chest, pushing me out of the way.
Rage boils over. “No!” I say definitively. “I’m going with her.” I point a hard finger at my sister’s limp body. The EMT looks over my shoulder and nods. Then she turns around and slams the door in my face.
“Let’s go.” Dylan grabs my arm, pulling me toward his car. The ride is nothing more than five minutes of frustrated and scared silence. I don’t dare voice my concerns and Dylan keeps his quiet as well. The car is barely stopped before I jump out and hurry into the emergency room. “I’m here for Rachel Michelson. She was just brought it.” No matter how hard I try to remain calm, even I can hear the panic in my voice.
Dylan hears it, too. He pulls my hand into his, alternating between tightening his grip and stroking his thumb over my wrist softly. All I can offer him is a sad, resigned look. The receptionist tells us to take a seat in the waiting room, letting us know she’ll send the doctor out as soon as she can.
My leg bounces in wild nervousness. Dylan’s calming hand on my knee helps me stop occasionally, but I feel like a caged animal. Resting my elbows on my legs, I hang my head in my hands. “She has to be okay,” I mumble over and over again.
His hand shifts from my leg to my back. The circles he rubs there do nothing to abate my worry. “She will, Con. She will.” Dylan sounds about as confident as I do.
“I don’t know what I’ll do. She’s all I have.” The thought of losing her constricts my throat, making breathing nearly impossible. My eyes burn, but I hold my tears in check. She was so strong for me when I needed her. I’ll be damned if I’ll be anything less for her.
“Conner Michelson?” A middle-aged man wearing scrubs calls from the trauma room doors. I shoot up out of my seat and Dylan follows at my side.
“What happened? How is she? Is she going to be okay?” All my questions fall from my mouth at the same time. The doctor moves us to a small room to the side of the triage station.
“I’m Dr. Young.” He extends a hand and we shake. He opens a file and pulls out some paperwork. “We ran some initial tests and we can’t find anything conclusive right this minute. She’s critical, but stable. Has she suffered any injuries lately? Or is there any medical history that we should be aware of?” He rambles off a list of yes or no questions, asking of possible diseases and past surgeries.
When he asks about headaches, a ball of fear settles in the pit of my stomach. “Yes, migraines. She has a bad history of migraines.” He scribbles down a few notes, slides a consent form in front of me. “We’re going to run some tests, a CT scan and MRI. As soon as I know anything, I’ll let you know.”
“Is she going to be okay?” My words bounce off his back as he rushes out of the room. Stopping and turning on his heel, he looks back at me with a look of uncertainty in his grey eyes.
“I’ll try my best to make sure she is,” he assures us and then leaves.
In the small confines of that room, I lose all sense of composure I thought I ha
d. My shoulders heave as sobs creep over my body. “This can’t be happening. After all we’ve been through, I can’t lose her.”
Dylan pulls me to his side, tucking me against his chest. “It’ll be okay,” he says it over and over again as if repeating himself will somehow make it true.
“Can I get you anything?” Dylan asks when I look at him.
I shake my head. “No. Just being here with me is enough.” He pulls me in closer to him and lets me calm down before we get up and walk back out to the waiting room.
Within fifteen minutes, a nurse calls my name from the main doors of the emergency room. Dylan and I stand before her, waiting on pins and needles. Since it’s a nurse and not Dr. Young, I feel somewhat confident that Rachel is still okay.
“You can come back and see her before we have to prep her for surgery and then I need you to fill out some paperwork.” Dylan falls in step behind me and the nurse spins around. “Sorry, immediate family only.”
Though I open my mouth to protest, nothing comes out. Dylan speaks when I can’t. “It’s okay. I’ll be out here for you when you’re done.”
Once we’re behind the doors, the sounds and smells of the hospital serve as some kind of cruel time machine. My own head injuries landed me in rehab, and even long after I was healed, the sounds haunted my dreams. The nurse brings me into a room not unlike the one I was just in out front with Dr. Young. He’s already sitting at a small table, filling out more papers.
“The CT scan revealed a small blockage at the base of her skull. Is that where she would complain of her migraine pain?” His pen is poised in the air, waiting for my response.
“Uh, I think so.” Suddenly, I’m incapable of remembering what she would complain about. I just knew enough to take care of her, shut the lights, keep everything quiet, make her coffee in the morning, and only ask questions that needed a one or two finger response.
“That’s fine if you don’t remember.” He pulls what looks like an x-ray out of a folder; though instead of it being a broken bone, it’s my sister’s brain. Dr. Young points out a few things, most importantly, the small but unmistakable blockage. “You’re lucky you found her when you did. The possibility that she had a small stroke at some point today is still there, but with this surgery, we should be able to shrink or even possibly remove the blockage.”
Over the next ten minutes, he goes over the procedure—most of which I can’t even stomach. “There’s a family waiting room right outside of surgery. You can call anyone else you might need to.”
Shaking my head, I say, “It’s just me.” He nods and taps his stack of papers on the table.
Scanning my more-than-concerned face, Dr. Young clicks his pen closed and slides it into his pocket. “She’s young and in very good health. Those things, and the fact that you found her in what seems like minutes after it happened, are all on her side.” He shakes my hand once again, and directs Shannon, the nurse, to take me to see Rachel.
Rachel is in a pre-operating room, hooked up to more monitors than any one person should ever be attached to. Her face looks swollen and she looks so tiny on the gurney. There’s a stool at her side where I sit and lose all ability to speak.
Holding her small hand in mine makes my hand look more like a paw than anything else. A low chuckle rises in my chest thinking about how she’s said the same thing to me more than a few times before. “Mom, Dad,” I close my eyes, trying desperately to picture them once again, “I know you’re up there. You helped me once before by not letting me give up. Please, do the same for Rach now. Please help her; tell her she needs to stay here with me.”
As the last word tumbles from my mouth, a team of nurses enter the room. With bags of fluid and other medical equipment in hand, they scurry about the room, making sure they have everything in line. The nurse who brought me in places her hand on my slumped shoulder. “She’s in good hands, I promise.”
After kissing her forehead, I tell Rachel I love her and that I’ll be right outside waiting for her to wake up. In my darkest days, when I wasn’t sure if I could ever walk again, I never thought I’d have to walk away from my little sister and not know whether I would ever see her again.
When I go back out to the main waiting room, I see Dylan at the opposite end with his phone pressed up to his ear. As I walk closer to him, I catch bits of his conversation.
“Definitely not Monday, and probably the rest of the week, too.” A few more “uh huhs” and “yeahs” follow.
“Thanks, Reid. We appreciate it. Yeah, talk to you later.” I step to Dylan’s side as he slips his phone into his back pocket. “Hey, what’s going on?” Dylan asks. Despite being filled with anxiety-laden concern, Dylan’s voice washes over me and soothes my wracked nerves.
Collapsing into a flimsy chair, I’m surprised I don’t crush it. Going back over everything the doctor told me, I fill Dylan in on what’s happening with Rachel. Through the whole explanation, he remains focused and strong. A rock at my side. “She’s going to make it,” he says with a calm, sureness I wish I felt.
A few minutes later, another nurse comes in and escorts us to the private waiting room. Every second ticking away on the clock is a loud ricochet bouncing around in the small room. Seconds build into minutes, into an hour, a slow avalanche catching more and more speed—threatening to bury me alive.
One hour and seventeen minutes after we enter the room, the door cracks open and I feel vomit rise in my mouth. When Reid’s face and not Dr. Young’s appears, I’m able to breathe some oxygen into my lungs. A pretty blonde follows in behind him.
“Hey,” Dylan greets him as he walks across to him, and gives him a half-hug, half-backslap. “Where’s Braden?”
“We dropped him at Momma’s. She sends her love and prayers.” The girl with the sweet voice wraps her arms around Dylan’s neck and squeezes him so hard I’m surprised his face doesn’t turn blue.
Reid steps across to me, holds out his hand. “Conner, I’m so sorry. How are you holding up?” The best response I can come up with is a lame “okay” along with a weak shrug. Pulling the girl to his side, he confirms what I had already pieced together. “This is my wife, Maddy.”
Without a pause, Maddy opens her arms and gives me a big hug. “It’s so nice to finally meet you, though I really wish it were under different circumstances.” She breaks the hug and steps back to Reid’s side.
“Here you go.” Reid hands Dylan a bag. “I just grabbed whatever I could. Hope it’s okay.” Dylan nods and drops the bag to the side of a chair.
“Do you guys need anything? Have you eaten or do you want any coffee?” Maddy offers, eager to help in any way she can.
“No, I’m fine. Just wish the doctor would get here already.” We all sit in a row of chairs, facing the door waiting for it to open.
When another hour passes with no news, dread begins to consume me. Teetering on the edge of the unknown, where a life without my sister is a black nothingness on the other side, I reign in my fears, not wanting to lash out just yet.
If I had anything to offer to the God who’d already taken my career, my parents, my hopes and dreams and crushed them, I would give Him anything He wanted just so I could still have Rachel in my life.
As if in slow motion, the door creaks open and we all stand. Out of a combination of instinct and necessity, I reach for Dylan’s hand when Dr. Young walks into the room. Maddy and Reid do the same and we all stand before him, a wall of fear and concern.
“Everything went extremely well,” his words are muffled, but unmistakable even from behind his sea-foam green surgical mask. “Please sit.” He pulls a freestanding chair up to the row of chairs where we were just sitting.
“We’ll be right outside,” Dylan explains, pulling Maddy and Reid with him to give me the privacy he thinks I need.
“No,” I shake my head, “stay, please.” Dylan looks at me with such tenderness; it almost makes the gravity of the situation seem a little bit less. As they’re about to leave, I add, “Y
ou guys should stay, too. You’ve been here waiting the whole time.”
With Dylan sitting right next to me, Dr. Young goes over the progress of the surgery offering what he’s sure will be a very good prognosis.
“Can I see her?” My voice wobbles in relief and immeasurable gratitude.
“I’m afraid she won’t be ready for visitors for a few hours. She’s in recovery now and then we have to make sure she’s stable before we move her. You could come back–”
Knowing what he’s going to suggest, I cut him off. “No, I’ll wait. Please come get me when I can see her.” Dr. Young stands and nods, agreeing to take me to her no matter what time it is.
After he leaves, Maddy and Reid stand, making sure there’s nothing else they can do for us before they leave to pick up Braden. “Thank you, both, so much for coming.” They let us know they’re never more than a phone call away, if we need anything and then they’re gone.
When it’s just me and Dylan in the room, I collapse into a chair, letting the weight of the last twelve hours fall away. Tears of relief burn in my eyes as I hang my head in my hands. “Come here.” Dylan pulls me into a tight hug, his arms banding around me, taking away some of the pain that had built up in my heart throughout the day.
When the tears turn into a full-blown cry, his hand combs back my hair. With a calming touch and soft words, I relax into him, so thankful that I have him with me. “Thank you for being here,” I mutter against his tear-stained shirt.
With his lips pressed to the top of my head, he says, “Nowhere I’d rather be.”
We stay like that for a long time, both of us eventually dozing. When a nurse comes in to get me a few hours later, she lets me know that I can finally go and see Rachel. Like the pillar of support he’s been all day, Dylan tells me he’ll be right here waiting for me when I get back.
“Now, I don’t want you to be too shocked,” the nurse whose nametag reads Diane, tells me as we stop outside of Rachel’s ICU room. “She’s heavily sedated and very swollen. I know it doesn’t look like she’s doing well, but even in the short amount of time she’s been up here, she’s improved. Take five minutes, hun, but then let her get some rest.” Diane offers a sincere smile and opens the door for me.
The Love Series Complete Box Set Page 135