Chase showing her pictures from his life, growing up with his family, his dad and mom and sister, happy and content. She watched him mature through the years.
Asking her questions, expecting answers to things she’d stopped thinking about, her life, her feelings, her dreams.
Encouraging her to disagree with him.
Chase Boden wasn’t her husband. He was his own person. He wanted her, damaged and broken as she was. And she wanted him.
But Josh . . .
Five long years later, she was on the edge of the truth. Could Josh actually still be alive?
God, she didn’t know. She doubted everything. Herself, her world. Her sanity. How could this happen? How could this be? All of the bits and pieces of the past week crashed together, and she realized that he could be.
Maybe Meghan was right. Josh had been waiting to be declared dead and had come back for the insurance money. He’d been hiding in plain sight this whole time.
And if he was alive? Would she discard Chase?
She said, “No,” aloud, making the dog jump, even while she thought about what would happen if Josh walked through the door at this very moment.
She was living in a fantasyland. Josh was dead. She knew he was dead. Whoever sent that picture was screwing with her. Trying to unhinge her mind.
Aubrey had a strong desire to stick a knife in the stranger from the hospital. She replayed his approach in the cafeteria, but this time, when he broke off the piece of chocolate, she gutted the bastard and left him gasping and bleeding on the cafeteria floor.
She was sick of being manipulated. Derek Allen was playing with her. He was dangerous.
It was time he learned she was as well.
CHAPTER 40
Daisy
Today
Aubrey had left, Tom was asleep, and Daisy wanted to weep. She wanted to gnash her teeth and wail and rend the scratchy, nasty sheet into ribbons. It wasn’t right. Her son couldn’t be dead. He couldn’t. She would have felt that. She would have been able to tell.
Wouldn’t she?
She wanted to go find him. They were keeping him from her. What had she ever done to deserve such hatred, such spite? She’d always been a dutiful wife, a good mother. And yet despite all of her giving, she was treated like pond scum by the very people who should love and appreciate her the most.
She should be treated with respect.
Instead, she was stuck lying in the bed, practically motionless, on a sheepskin that smelled of acrylic and must, forced to suffer these indignities.
She hurt. So very badly. Despite the fact she should be healing, despite her bones knitting and the swelling reducing, something was very wrong. She could tell. It was worse than what they told her, or they just didn’t know. But she felt the pieces of her life dripping away, slinking into the void. She wasn’t going to survive.
She had told Tom how she felt, and he scoffed.
“Of course you are, sweetie. You just hurt now. We can get more pain meds for you. But the doctors are very encouraged by your progress, and they think you’ll be out of here next week. You’re doing great. You’re just fine.”
He didn’t take her seriously. He’d never taken her seriously. Always faithful Tom trying to placate her, trying to remake the world in his own image.
Fuck that. She wasn’t going to sit back anymore.
She had sent Tom away and tried to explain to a nurse what she was feeling inside. Something open. A hole, a vastness in places that were supposed to be solid. The nurse told her it was just the morphine.
It wasn’t the drugs, or her imagination. She actually got upset enough the nurse called the chief resident on shift and asked him to come in and take a look.
Pass the buck. In case there was something wrong.
Daisy waited for the doctor to appear. Hospitals weren’t conducive to impatient people.
He finally arrived, all smiles and good cheer. He was handsome, a bit thin through the chin and jaw, but with lively hazel eyes. He pulled a chair up next to her and settled in like he had all the time in the world.
“So, Miss Daisy, tell me what’s going on.”
So she did. She told him all that had happened—her family insisting her son was dead, the hole inside her, the way she’d been treated, how much she hurt, and not just the physical part. He nodded and patted her hand. She felt so comfortable she even told him she’d been drinking too much, before the accident, but that was only because she was so very, very lonely.
The doctor—his name tag read T. Lowe—asked, “Have you ever talked to anyone about this before, Daisy?”
“No. I mean, yes, of course, but no one really listened.”
“I think I’d like to have a friend of mine come by and talk to you. Her name is Ann Frazier. She’s a great listener.”
“Is she a shrink?”
“Well, in a way. But she’s a specialist. She deals only with neurological injuries. With your severe head trauma, you are probably having some very strong emotive responses to things. That might be why you’re feeling like something is so very wrong. It might help to have someone who’s very trained in this exact situation in to have a chat. I promise, if you don’t like her, you don’t have to talk to her. Deal?”
He smiled, perfect teeth glistening, and she didn’t feel like she could do anything but agree. She didn’t want him to think she wasn’t a good sport.
“All right. If you think it’s best. But I don’t know that talking is going to fix what’s happening inside me. I swear something is wrong. I can feel it.”
“Your mind can be making that feeling strong, Daisy.”
“This is in my chest. I swear, Doctor. Something’s wrong in there.”
He stood and patted her on the hand again. “Okay, Daisy. You’ve convinced me. I’ll set you up for an echocardiogram first thing in the morning. But I’ll also schedule you some time with Dr. Frazier. You’ll like her. I went to medical school with her at Vandy, I’ve known her for years. She’s a good egg.”
“Did you know my son?” The words popped out of Daisy’s mouth before she could stop them. She didn’t want him to leave. He was kind and understanding, and she hadn’t felt that level of kindness for a very long time.
“I’m not sure. Was he a doctor here? I don’t get out much, as you can imagine.”
“He was in his fourth year of medical school when he . . . His name is Josh Hamilton.”
Saying his name aloud was like a dose of icy water. She tensed up as she said it, and Dr. Lowe did as well.
“Oh, my. Miss Daisy. I didn’t realize. Yes, I knew your son. He and I did a surgical rotation together. He was a fine man, a fine doctor. I’m so sorry for your loss.”
“He’s not gone, Dr. Lowe. He’s not dead. I just saw him. He’s alive.”
She started to cry, and Lowe comforted her the best way he knew how. He grabbed the nearest nurse and had her give Daisy something that made her feel like she was floating fifty feet up in the air. She liked the way that felt.
It seemed to take hours to come down to the bed again. She must have slept, because the sky was lightening outside and her mouth was incredibly dry.
Tom came, and the shrink. She was a nice woman, and talked to them both. She had some idea of what Daisy was feeling—she’d been in a bad car accident herself when she was a child, had a head injury. They didn’t think she would make it.
It’s why she wanted to be a doctor.
Frazier kicked Tom out of the room then, and she and Daisy had a long, soul-searching talk. A full fifteen minutes. That’s how long it took for Daisy to realize they all just thought she was crazy. They were humoring her. The bastards.
Daisy shut down and refused to speak anymore. Frazier promised to come back, and Daisy told her not to bother. When the shrink had left and Tom came back, Daisy explained th
at she was never to come again.
Tom tried to argue with her, but she was adamant.
The nurse came and gave her another shot, and Tom went away. Daisy slept. When she woke, it was to an unaccustomed level of silence. She looked around, trying to understand why things were so still. Her eyes swept to the right, and she saw a man standing in the doorway to her room. He was partially in shadow. Was it that nice young doctor?
He moved, and Daisy felt her heartbeat skip. It made her breath come short, and she gasped. It wasn’t Dr. Lowe. It was someone else. He frightened her.
“Who’s there?”
The man came closer. Once his face was out of the shadows, she drank him in. Dirty blond hair, deep brown eyes, high cheekbones.
“Oh, my God,” she whispered. Her chest hurt. The pain was immense, enormous. She didn’t know if she could handle it. Her shoulders felt like someone was holding them down. She needed to ring the buzzer for the nurse. Something was wrong. Something was terribly wrong.
The man came closer to her bed and looked down on her. She couldn’t get any air. She was starting to see spots.
Wrong. Wrong. Blackness. Dying. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be.
The man leaned closer, right into her face, so she could see him clearly. As her heart ceased to beat, in that space between the end of the pumping and the connection to her brain that told her she was done, she heard the words. Whispered, as if on a breeze.
“Hello, Mom.”
CHAPTER 41
Daisy came from blackness. She was crying. Inconsolable, hysterical. The nurse summoned Tom, who rolled in, bleary-eyed, and tried to make sense of Daisy’s ramblings.
Which pissed her off. She was making perfect sense in her head, but no one could understand her.
Josh is alive. Josh is here. He came to visit. He stood over my bed and stroked the hair back off of my face. Why can’t you understand me?
“Blum, gargh, ssssive.”
“What’s going on? Is she having a stroke?” Tom was shouting; he was so loud, so loud.
And that’s when everything inside broke.
She felt it, a tearing in her chest. Like something pulled away from its proper spot. She said, “Oh!”
“Daisy, my God, Daisy. What’s wrong?” She saw the panic in Tom’s eyes. The nurse was struggling to pull him away.
“Daisy, are you in pain?”
But Daisy couldn’t answer. The pain was too intense, too strong. Too . . . too . . .
The sirens were going off, clarion loud. A mechanical voice rang in her ears.
“Code Blue, Code Blue, room 566, Code Blue.”
The pressure hurt. She was smashed, run flat, the air leaking out of her.
She couldn’t see. It was fuzzy and dark.
Screaming. Her chest was on fire. No breath, couldn’t get any air.
Hands, everywhere.
“Intubate.”
“Charging to two hundred.”
“Clear! Everyone clear!”
Her body leaped into the air and landed back, hard.
“We got her back, we got her back.”
“Wait, wait, wait, wait, not yet, not yet. She’s still in V-tach. We’re going to have to shock her again.”
“Get the epi.”
“Shit, we’re losing her. Come on, hurry, hurry.”
The pain stopped.
Daisy drifted now, in and out. She felt so light, so free. She looked down on her body. There were eight people surrounding her, shocking and pumping and sticking needles into her veins, pumping air into her lungs. Frantically trying to save her life. She almost wanted to sneer, See? I told you something was wrong. But she didn’t feel any of it. Just floating, like she’d done earlier, when the nice doctor had listened, actually listened to her. He was the first person in ages who had. He’d known Josh, known he was a good boy. And now she could go to God, unburdened, free. She could go . . .
She couldn’t go yet.
She forced herself back into her body, to feel the sticks and thumping and pain.
It was an agreement she had with herself. A deal. A deal she’d made with the devil. She couldn’t go without telling the truth. To someone. To anyone. Whether they believed her or not.
“Son,” she croaked.
“What’s she saying?”
“She’s asking for her son.”
She couldn’t shake her head. The damnable device was screwed into her skull so she couldn’t. She tried again.
“Sonssssss.”
“Sons? Are you saying you want to see your sons?”
She managed to get her eyes open, blinked twice, for yes. Tom was hovering nearby, his face coated in tears.
“She’s only got the one. Had the one, I mean,” he said.
Daisy blinked fast, hard. Tom edged closer. “Daisy, what are you saying?”
“Sons. I. Have. Two. Sons.” She grunted out the words, hard and fast, with no doubt left as to what she was saying.
And then, her truth told, her conscience clear, she let herself slide away, into the black. It wouldn’t matter now. It wouldn’t ever matter again.
Dear Josh,
I am back on my feet.
I may have worried you in the past few months of letters, and for that, I am truly sorry. I wasn’t really as serious about it as everyone thought. And last week was an accident, really. I slipped. I had too much to drink, and too many pills, and not enough to eat. I have gotten rather skinny; all the running has shaved off most of my body fat. No more curves. But if you come back, I promise I will put on weight.
I really thought I’d gotten past this. But I feel you everywhere, and see you everywhere. You lurk on the street corners, wait for me as I leave school, haunt my runs. And the tree, I see you in the tree. I know you’re out there somewhere. I know it.
I just want to be with you. That’s all I was trying to do.
Always,
Aubrey
CHAPTER 42
Aubrey
Today
Aubrey was attempting to pull herself together when her cell phone rang. She recognized Tom’s number and answered, trying to keep the terrible knowledge she’d learned from her voice.
But Tom was crying, too. “Aubrey, you need to come. Daisy’s in a coma. She had a massive cardiac arrest. I don’t know if she’s going to make it. We’re back in the intensive care unit.”
So Josh was alive, and Daisy was dying. That wasn’t irony; it was cruelty. Some sick, cruel joke the universe was playing on her.
“Oh, Tom. I’m so sorry. I’m on my way.”
She went down the stairs, saw Tyler was back and asleep, shivering and sweating on the couch. She wrote him a note, told him to hang in there, that she was pulling for him, and to call her with any news he’d learned.
Winston woofed at her quietly, almost a question, and she went to him, put her arms around him, and fought back tears.
“Oh, baby. I don’t know what to do.”
He nuzzled her and she let him, then stood and grabbed her keys.
She drove to the hospital in a trance.
How was she supposed to do this? What was she supposed to do? To think? To feel?
She was numb. This could have been some sort of joke. It really could. Right?
The hospital was so close she was there before she could wrap her mind around what was going on. The valet nodded in acknowledgment and took the car, and she went inside. The creepy corridors, the long hallways, the smell—it all was foreign again, strange, different. Her whole world was altered. The colors wound together in a blur, a kaleidoscope of images—Josh at the center.
God, she could hardly draw the details of his face into her mind. The dark hair, the blue eyes, yes, but the minute qualities, the little bits that she used to know better than the bac
k of her hand, were gone.
His head thrown back in ecstasy as he got head from a strange woman.
The ICU was on the fifth floor. When she arrived, she was denied entry. She asked the nurse to let Tom know she was there, and she left to get him. They returned a few moments later, Tom looking haggard and drawn, his skin pale. He fell into Aubrey’s arms, and she hugged him automatically. He smelled of fear.
“What happened?”
“They think that one of the broken rib slivers poked a hole in her heart and they missed it. She’s been telling me all day something was wrong, and I just didn’t listen. They thought she needed a shrink, that it was in her head—” He broke off, sobbing, and Aubrey led him to the ugly gray chairs and sat him down. There was a box of tissues strategically placed nearby. Aubrey handed one to Tom.
When he had calmed a bit, she asked, “So what’s the next step?”
“They’re trying to get her stabilized and they’ll do surgery as soon as she can handle it. Pretty soon they’re going to have to go in whether she’s stable or not. They’re saying it’s fifty-fifty right now.”
“I’ll take those odds, Tom. Daisy is the most stubborn woman I know. She’s fighting in there.” The words sounded empty, flat. But they seemed to help Tom, because the tears began to slow, and he worked his way back to calm. She sat with him while he composed himself.
“The police came by to check on her. They’re going to charge her with DUI and vehicular assault, they want to set a court date. You have to tell them it wasn’t her fault, Aubrey. You have to let them know she didn’t mean any harm. We can’t let them charge her with assault.”
Well, we can. But she patted his arm. “Let’s cross that bridge when we get to it. You should probably talk to a lawyer before you do anything.”
“You’re right. Of course you’re right. I will.”
He went silent, pulling the tissue between his hands until it shredded.
“There’s something else. When I got down here, she was going in and out of consciousness. She said the strangest thing before she went under all the way.”
“What’s that?”
No One Knows Page 20