Bad For You: An Enemies to Lovers Romance

by Taylor Holloway

“It’s in God’s hands now,” Rosary said. “We just have to trust in Him.”

  I swallowed hard. I didn’t want to trust in God. God took my parents from me when I was a little girl. God took Brandon’s mom from him. In this situation, I preferred to trust in science and Brandon’s skill as a doctor. If Brandon had missed something, Martin would die. If he didn’t, Martin would probably live.

  We’d know in a few hours. I let myself be comforted by the fact that I knew Brandon had done everything in his power to save his dad. No one could have ever done a better job, because no one else had the same incentive.

  Brandon sat down next to me and I took his hand in mine. “Thank you,” I told him through the tears that were finally working their way down my face. My face felt swollen from all the stifled crying. “I know you did everything you could to save him. I know he’s going to be alright.”

  He kissed my forehead and wrapped his arms around me, and even in my stretched-thin and fragile state, I could feel Rosary, Eric, and Faith’s surprise. This would require some explaining… eventually. But in the moment, I could only think about Brandon’s worried face and unsure tone.

  “I hope you’re right, Aimee. I really do.”

  62

  Brandon

  The blink-blink of electronics and constant beeping in the dimly lit Intensive Care Unit, coupled with the hushed whispers of the staff, made the scene in my dad’s room more than a bit surreal. I’d been in a hundred rooms like this over the years, but never as a family member. The last time I’d been this close to losing a parent, I’d been eighteen years old. I felt no more prepared to deal with it now in my thirties. Aimee sat next to me, staring down at her feet.

  “Wake up,” I told my dad. His body looked small and frail in the hospital bed and he was covered in many layers of blankets and swaddled up like a baby. He looked much older and more delicate than I could ever remember seeing. To my emotional eyes, he looked like he was going to die. “You have to wake up.”

  Predictably, since he was unconscious, my dad didn’t reply. His eyelids twitched, which at least indicated that he had some brain activity, but they stayed closed. I wasn’t sure what I expected. People don’t just snap out of comatose states when you ask them to. This wasn’t a movie. It was real. Too real.

  He should have been awake hours ago. Something was wrong.

  “I know you didn’t kill her,” I told him after a few minutes. At my side, I felt the quality of Aimee’s silence shift and her body tensed, but she said nothing. “Mom, I mean. I know you didn’t want her to get sick and that you did whatever you could to make sure she got the best treatment that was available for her type of cancer. There just wasn’t much that could be done for her. I get that you didn’t know how to emotionally deal with her cancer. I understand that you didn’t know how to deal with me, either. And I was a huge pain in the ass. I was a terrible son, and it can’t have been easy to take care of me. I’m not going to say that I forgive you for any of that, because I’m not sure I ever will, but I’m not going to let you die without telling you that I’m not angry anymore.”

  I sighed heavily and shook my head in frustration. What was I doing? He probably couldn’t even hear me. I was just talking. But I couldn’t stop myself. I had to hope that on some level my dad could hear me because I needed him to know all this.

  “You don’t realize how much I love Aimee,” I continued. “I don’t think you have the slightest idea what she means to me or what’s between us. That’s okay though, because I didn’t realize it either until really recently. I thought I wanted to go back to the army, but for a lot of reasons, I think we both know that’s not good for me. I’m too old and too damaged to keep doing task force work. I’m not cut out for teaching. I need to make choices that are for the long-term now. You were right. We only get one chance at life. I’m going to choose what makes me happy.”

  Aimee was listening intently at my side, and I couldn’t bring myself to look at her, but I wasn’t talking to her, either. I was talking to my dad, although he couldn’t hear me. Mostly, I was probably just talking to myself. I needed to admit all this to myself and saying it aloud was helping.

  “Aimee’s taught me a few things over the past few months,” I was saying. Now that the seal was off, I was basically just babbling like an idiot. “She’s taught me that I’m capable of being happy and learning new things. She’s also taught me that I can change. I don’t have to keep holding onto the same old resentments forever.” I shook my head in disbelief. “I’ve been going to therapy and working out and getting healthier inside and out, but you didn’t realize any of it because I’ve been pushing you away so hard. That’s my fault. I didn’t let you see that I was different. You wanted to be in my life, but I was still holding you at arm’s length. So, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that when you found out about me and Aimee you thought that I wasn’t serious about her. Well, I am. You might be right that I don’t deserve her, too. I don’t know. But it doesn’t really matter because there’s nothing in the world that can make me give her up now.”

  My monologue was going totally off the rails at this point, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself from continuing to talk. I was never the biggest talker, but the words were just spilling out of me. For once, I could express myself the way I always wished I could. I couldn’t cry. For some reason the tears weren’t coming, but my words were doing the same work of cleansing my body of pent up emotion. It was cathartic.

  “If you die now,” I continued, “you’ll never get to see me and Aimee be happy together. I know you love Aimee a lot. As much as if she was your own daughter. I know you want her to be happy and healthy. I promise that I’ll make sure that she is. I’ll do my best. I promise. But please wake up. I don’t want our fight to be the last memory you have of me. I don’t want to carry that around for the rest of my life. So please, please, just wake up.”

  When I finished talking, my dad was just as lifeless and unconscious as ever. A sniffling to my right, however, snapped me out of my altered state. Aimee was sobbing at my side. She looked at me with huge, wet, loving eyes.

  “Do you really mean all that?” she asked me. Her voice was a tremulous whisper.

  I nodded at her. “Yeah, I do, Aimee.” I reached out to grab her hand. “I love you.”

  She smiled through her tears. “I love you too.”

  63

  Aimee

  Martin woke up after seven hours. He stared around himself, asked for a drink of water, and went back to sleep. Lucy showed up with a bag of hamburgers and demanded I eat them, somehow magically realizing that I hadn’t eaten all day. Martin slept for another fourteen hours.

  He was going to live. The MS made it harder for him to come out from anesthesia, and his body was much weaker than it should have been, but he was going to survive. His medical career, however, was over. His rehab would take a long time and there was a very high chance that he’d relapse now. Unfortunately, stress can be a trigger for RRMS. There’s basically no greater stress on the body than getting shot by a crazy person from four feet away.

  Rosary stayed by his side night and day once he woke up the first time. Faith and Eric had to make her eat and sleep and take care of herself. She was totally panicked despite the progress that he’d made.

  She’d missed his first small blip into consciousness and was terrified he wouldn’t wake again. But Brandon and I knew that if he could wake up once, he would most likely wake up again. All the specialists said he would slowly get better now. It felt like it took forever, but eventually, over the course of several days, his time awake started to exceed his time asleep and he grew more and more coherent. By three days in, he was able to have somewhat normal conversations and seemed to remember everything from before and after the accident.

  “How are you feeling?” I asked him, coming in from my morning rounds to see him sitting up in bed with Rosary by his bedside feeding him breakfast off a tray. They were smiling at each other sweetly.


  He blinked at me and I could see when recognition finally hit. “Aimee!”

  I nodded in relief. “Yep, it’s me. I’m glad you haven’t forgot.”

  He shook his head in dismay. “I’m so sorry I didn’t recognize you right away…”

  I grabbed his hand. “Don’t worry. You’ve been through a lot lately. It’s no surprise that you’re having a few memory blips.”

  He still looked irritated with himself.

  “How’s the hospital doing?” he asked me. “Is everything okay after all the… drama?”

  I perched on a stool next to him and considered giving him a full status report. No. There was no way he was up to the details. Cameron, the shooter, was alive and in police custody. There were no other emergencies to share. “The hospital is fine. I’ve got it all under control. Don’t worry about St. Vincent’s, worry about feeling better.”

  “I heard you did a press conference while I was out from the surgery,” he told me. “I’m proud of you.”

  “Thanks,” I said dryly. “It was horrible.”

  He nodded. “It always is. At least you made it through. I know it can’t have been easy for you to have to run the hospital while I was, er, indisposed.”

  I laughed. Indisposed? That’s one way of putting it. “I’m just glad you’re doing better,” I told him. “You gave us all a good scare.”

  “Hey,” he teased. “I’m an old man with MS who got shot in the abdomen at point blank range. I think I’m doing pretty well all things considered.”

  I grinned at him. “Well, when you put it that way, it does sound pretty impressive.”

  “Damn right.”

  “Do you need anything?” I asked him, looking around the hospital room. I was sure he was getting the best care our hospital had to offer, I’d personally seen to it, but I still wanted him to be comfortable. “How’s the food?”

  “Aimee, it’s horrible,” Martin said seriously. “I mean, I knew that we didn’t have the best food, but holy hell. You need to work on this food.”

  “I’ll get right on that.” We’d known for a long time that the hospital’s food was bad and overpriced. All hospital food is bad and expensive. But ours was especially bad and expensive.

  “Eat this,” he said, pointing at his breakfast sandwich. I shook my head. “No seriously, eat it.”

  I took a tiny bite. “It’s, um, salty.” It was terrible.

  “Disgusting is the word you’re looking for, Aimee. It’s revolting.” Martin shook his head. “I can’t believe I’ve been defending this drivel all these years.”

  “Well, we’ve been thinking about changing our contractors,” I reminded him.

  “Good, that’s very good. The sooner the better.” He looked at his sandwich in obvious, abject disgust. “We shouldn’t be serving this to animals, let alone patients.”

  “Anything else I can help you with?” I asked. Getting a new food contractor was going to be pricey. I wasn’t sure we could afford it. Now that I was in charge, I understood why Martin had always stuck with the bad cafeteria contractor. On the other hand, now that he wasn’t in charge, he wanted rid of them right away. It was a strange role reversal. To say the least.

  “Brandon came to talk to me,” Martin said to me. I froze and my heart panged against my ribs. Rosary looked between us and slipped outside. “We had a good talk yesterday evening.”

  “Oh,” I stuttered. I didn’t have a clue how to have this conversation with Martin.

  Martin and I had never talked about my romantic relationships before. Ever. Although he was my mentor and surrogate father, we’d just never hit this subject. I felt uncomfortable talking about it now.

  “Oh?” Martin asked, his humor returning. “That’s it?” He was looking at me curiously. “Oh?”

  “I don’t know what to say,” I replied carefully. “What did you two talk about?”

  Martin smirked at me mischievously. “Mostly we talked about you, Aimee. What do you think we were discussing? The recent Astro’s game?”

  I’d heard everything that Brandon said to Martin while he was unconscious. I knew that Brandon loved me and that I loved him. I even knew that Brandon was currently in the process of resigning his commission and getting out of the military so he could stay here in Austin with me. I knew our lives were changing.

  Brandon would also be taking over the ER department. The previous head of the ER, a distinguished fellow who liked things just so, decided the last few weeks had been a little bit too exciting for his tastes. He’d retired and moved to Florida faster than anyone I’d ever seen. A number of the ER staff had also taken permanent and temporary leaves of absence. We had a lot of rebuilding to do.

  “I love him,” I told Martin eventually. My voice was small and hopeful. “I really do.”

  Brandon and I had barely had time to talk over the past few days. With me trying to keep the hospital operating halfway normally and Brandon having to re-staff half his new department right off the bat, we’d both been pulled in a thousand directions at once. He was exhausted, but I knew that behind the anxiety and tiredness, he was excited. This was something new for Brandon. It would involve some teaching, which he didn’t like, but mostly it would allow him to be in charge, which he did like. He decided he was up for the challenge and I was proud of him for jumping right into the thick of it.

  Martin patted my hand with his own. I could only imagine he was reading my face and body language to see that I was in love. “I just want you both to be happy,” he told me. “I’m not going to say I saw this coming, because I definitely didn’t, but if you two are happy, I’ll be happy.”

  I bit my lip. “Okay.” I wished I could be more articulate, but in that moment all my words seemed to evaporate. Brandon was better at talking about his feelings than I was these days. Considering that he was, well, Brandon, I clearly needed to work on my skills. “I’m glad you are okay with our relationship.”

  Martin laughed again. “You don’t need my approval, Aimee,” Martin told me between chuckles. “But it’s clear to me that you want it, which is more than I can say about that son of mine.” He shook his head and looked at me affectionately. Martin was wrong, of course. Brandon did want his dad’s approval, even if he wouldn’t admit it when his dad was awake. “I love you both,” he continued. “It’s clear you love each other. Why on earth wouldn’t I approve?”

  I smiled at him hesitantly. Butterflies swam in my stomach, feeling like they might escape out my mouth if I tried to talk. “Okay,” I managed nervously. I could barely believe that this was happening.

  He approved! He thought we would be good together! I don’t know why I wanted his validation so much, but I did. He was right. I would always doubt myself if I didn’t feel like he supported my relationship with Brandon. It wouldn’t stop me from being with Brandon if Martin didn’t approve, but having his support meant a lot to me. I needed his approval for my own peace of mind, and now that I had it, I could finally admit to myself that Brandon and I were for real. We had a real future together. A real shot at something that was lasting.

  I took the first clean breath I’d had in four days. I felt better already. Everything was going to be okay now. There was still a long road ahead. Martin needed to get better, and it would take a long time. He might never be at one hundred percent again. I worried that his MS would flare up and disable him.

  Meanwhile, Brandon needed to formally get free of the military. There were, apparently, a lot of steps involved with separating from the military. It was basically a divorce. But he was committed to making it happen.

  Finally, I needed to figure out how to keep my new job as Chief Medical Officer from completely eating my entire life and reducing me to a malnourished, overworked wraith. This was a job that could eat someone up from the inside out. I needed to figure out how to set better work-life boundaries if I was going to keep my sanity and health intact. Brandon had seen firsthand what having a parent do this job could do to a relationship. We’d alrea
dy promised each other that we wouldn’t let that happen to us.

  But the most important thing was that my family was comfortable with my life choices and that I was sure I was making the right ones. Lucy had told me that I didn’t need anyone’s approval to be happy, but it definitely helped. Things are easier when you don’t have to do them alone.

  I knew if I had support everything else would work out. I didn’t have much family. Just my mom, genetically speaking. But I had a community of interested parties and people who cared. I had everyone in this hospital, Brandon, Martin, Rosary, Faith, Eric, Lucy, Daniel, and many other people who cared about me and wanted me to be happy and successful. I even had Mark and Lara, Brandon’s friends. They’d been bringing us food and reminding Brandon to take breaks. We weren’t alone. We had love. Brandon and I would figure things out with a little help from our friends and extended family. It might be a bumpy ride, but with him to hold my hand, I was pretty sure it would be a fun one, too.

  The big, scary crisis was over at last. It had been a terrible few days for our whole city, but especially for the hospital, and even more especially for me and Brandon, personally. Lives were lost and hard lessons were learned. But the bad guys were dead, the good guys survived, and now, finally, we could get to the hard work of living happily ever after. I was beyond ready.

  “Okay,” Martin echoed, drawing me back to the present conversation. He was looking at me like I was somehow amusing. “Now please go work on the whole food issue. If I’m going to be here for two more weeks I’m going to die of starvation if you keep feeding me this crap.”

  “I’ll get right on that,” I promised him.

  Epilogue

  Aimee

  “I think we should have a baby,” I said to Brandon, watching Faith and Eric’s baby lolling around on the ground and generally being adorable. “What do you say?”