by Shari Copell
Her day brightened considerably when Lindsay bounced into her room. “Hey, sis. How’re you doing today?”
“Better, now that you’re here. How do you feel?” Nicks asked.
Lindsay sat in the chair next to the bed. She had on a dark blue sweater and jeans, but Nicks kept seeing her half-naked, shivering against the block wall of the locker room. She thought that horrible visual would probably stay with her for a long time.
“Okay, I guess. We spent the night at Gram’s house. I had a nightmare, but she slept with me.” Lindsay picked up the cup of water on the stand next to the bed. “Would you like a drink?”
“Yes, please. I can’t do a damned thing for myself. Not even pee.”
Of all the humiliation Nicks had suffered, the catheter was right up there in the top five. But peeing required a bedpan, and a bedpan required rolling over and sitting up, and...Yeah, that hadn’t gone so well. “Is Mom coming? I really want to see T.J. and Stone. She said she’d make sure I got to see them.”
Lindsay held the straw up to Nicks’s lips. Her smile was gone. “Yeah. She’s making arrangements for them to take your I.V. out so you can walk down to the room. She thought sitting in a wheel chair would hurt your back, but the nurses are arguing with her right now. They don’t want you out of bed yet. God help them if Daddy gets involved.”
“I can probably walk. I just can’t lay on my back. I think I might be able to sit if I can lean forward.”
“You know they’re going to die, right? Once they shut off the machines?”
Nicks caught her breath. There it was. She’d spent her awake time praying the doctors were wrong. She’d convinced herself they were. She was sure Stone would be wide awake, anxious to see her when she walked into their room. T.J. would raise his arms for a hug.
“Are they sure about them being brain dead?” Nicks whispered. “Maybe the doctors are wrong.”
Lindsay shook her head and started to cry. “I don’t think so. That’s what Mom’s afraid of. She had them check again.”
So she truly would have to go on without Stone and T.J. She couldn’t do it... just couldn’t do it.
“Why? Why them?”
Lindsay suddenly seemed much older than thirteen. She put a hand on Nicks’s cheek. “I don’t know. I cried so hard for them before I went to sleep last night. T.J. was a pain in the ass sometimes, but I loved him. I didn’t know he was screaming downstairs because Marius was hurting him, or I would’ve gone down to help him.” Lindsay gulped. “And Stone was such a nice guy. He was perfect for you. I couldn’t do anything to help him either. I was handcuffed on the floor.”
For the first time, the enormity of what had happened slammed into her. She and Lindsay would have a boatload of shit to work through. How often would they replay what happened in that garage in their heads?
“I love you, Linds.” Nicks reached through the safety rail of the bed and took her sister’s hand. “Don’t cry. We aren’t responsible for what happened, and we couldn’t have done anything to stop it.”
The girl only cried harder. “I hated watching him hurt you. I wanted to get loose and get his knife and stab him so hard in the back. I wanted to kill him for hurting you!”
She squeezed Lindsay’s hand. “Well, you couldn’t get loose. And neither could I. We did damned good under the circumstances.”
Her mother’s appearance in the room with two nurses put an end to the conversation. “Are you ready, Nicks?”
I don’t have much of a choice, do I?
“As ready as I’ll ever be, I guess,” she finally said.
Nicks Sorenson was tough, but she wasn’t tough enough for this.
Her mother had tried to prepare her. The whole way down the hall she’d explained that Stone and T.J. were hooked up to all kinds of machines. To keep their organs functioning, she’d said. It wasn’t a pretty sight. She shouldn’t be shocked when she saw them.
Well, fuck that. The sight of them shattered her into a million wretched pieces.
T.J. looked like an infant, his face nearly obscured by the breathing tube down his throat. His skinny frame stretched out on the bed, covered by a sheet blanket. The only other thing she could see was the shock of blond hair on his head.
Stone...Jesus, they would’ve had to cut off all that beautiful dark hair to do surgery on his broken skull. His head was wrapped in white bandages. His eyes were purple and swollen. He didn’t even look like the man she loved.
Nothing—no words, no breath, no thoughts. Just horror and hate and loss. She turned with a sob and collapsed into her father’s arms.
Tage wrapped his arms around her shoulders, taking care to avoid her injured back. “Do you want to go back to your room?”
“No! I need to see them.” She buried her face against his shoulder.
Grandpa Whitaker got up from the recliner. “C’mon, kids. Nicks needs to have private time right now.”
Her grandparents and siblings filed out of the room and closed the door behind them, only to have it reopened by a doctor in a white lab coat. He had a clipboard in his hand.
He spoke to her mother. “If you’ll sign the organ donation consent form for your son, Mrs. Sorenson, we’ll get that process started.”
A red mist of fury rolled over Nicks. Ghouls! Assholes! They couldn’t wait to cut T.J. and Stone up like they were biology projects and plop their organs into someone else.
“Get out of here and take your fucking clipboard with you. No one is cutting anyone up, at least as long as I’m here,” she said.
The doctor looked shocked. So did her mother. “Nicks, T.J. is brain dead. This will have to be done at some point.”
“No. No. Get out! I won’t let you kill them.” Nicks went to step around her father, but he stopped her. “Those are lives you’re signing away, Mom. I won’t let you do it!”
Chelsea patted the doctor on the arm. “We’ll talk about this later. You better go now.”
The doctor nodded and left.
“I know how you feel. But we have to face reality.” Her mother lost some of her color as she spoke.
“I don’t have to face shit,” Nicks hissed. She lowered the rail on T.J.’s bed, crawled in, and pulled him into her arms.
This is truly the single worst day of my life.
Chelsea sat in the dark, the only one who was still awake in the room. Tage had slumped over nearly an hour ago in the chair beside her, worn out from the emotions of the day.
Nicks had gone between Stone and T.J. all afternoon and into the evening, had gotten right into bed with both of them. She didn’t think she’d ever seen her daughter cry that hard. The girl had raged and seethed and swore at Marius and a heartless God who would allow this to happen.
And the worst part of it was there was nothing Chelsea could do about it. She and Tage had to let her go, to mourn in her own way. Most mothers were able to absorb some of their children’s pain in most situations. Not this one. This one would have to be felt and worked through by all of them.
Nicks had finally crawled into bed beside Stone and fallen asleep. Chelsea gave silent thanks for that. She didn’t think she could listen to one more minute of her daughter’s desperate grief.
God, I hate life right now.
The past two days had been hell, but it would’ve been much worse if they’d lost Lindsay and Nicks too. Why was it so hard to be grateful?
She began a whispered dialogue with the man who’d saved her daughters. It was silly, but if he was still with them, she wanted him to know.
“Thank you, Asher. From the bottom of my heart. I don’t know how it is where you are—wherever you are—but if you can... Well, you see how much she loves them. I know it’s probably hopeless, but you pulled off something pretty spectacular just by showing up in the car, right?” Tears stung her eyes as she stared at Nicks, lying beside the man she loved. “She’ll be devastated for as long as she lives if she has to go on without Stone and T.J. You saved her life. Please save her heart.”
She froze for a moment and listened. There was nothing but the hiss of the oxygen machines and Tage’s quiet snore. Asher had fulfilled his purpose and was now more than likely gone.
She settled back in the recliner, hoping she could get some sleep. She would need all of her strength to face tomorrow, when the hard decisions would have to be made and carried out.
Tage smacked Chelsea square in the side of the head with an open hand, pulling her from sleep in the most irritating way. She sat up and glared at him. “What’re you doing?”
Wearing the strangest expression she’d ever seen, Tage jabbed a hesitant finger toward Stone’s bed. Chelsea glanced where he was pointing.
“Holy shit!” she muttered under her breath.
A swirling blue light had enveloped Stone’s head and chest, and part of Nicks as well. The girl was curled up next to him, her head on his shoulder.
It appeared misty, glowing from within, like a will o’ the wisp. There was nothing in the room that would create a light like that. It made no noise, and as it swirled, she thought she could see things moving in it. She squinted and sat forward on the chair, but she couldn’t quite put a name to what she saw. Not faces, not bodies. What then?
“What is that?” whispered Tage.
“I don’t know. But I had a little talk with Asher while you were asleep. I wonder if this is him at work again.”
“You’re kidding me!”
“Shh! Do you have another explanation for that?” She gestured toward the light.
“What should we do?”
“Nada. We’re going to let it do its thing. Let’s face it, Sorenson, we’re out of options.”
“What if it doesn’t work?”
She shrugged. “Then we’re no worse off than we are right now. I say, sit back and enjoy the show.”
The blue light spent the better part of a half-hour moving over Stone’s body. It then gathered itself up into a smaller ball and floated over to T.J.
Chelsea was a realist, pragmatic to a fault sometimes. She dealt exclusively in the “here-and-now”, with both feet planted firmly on the ground. Belief in a hereafter had always seemed silly and highly illogical to her.
It would be highly illogical not to believe in it now. Not after everything she’d seen and heard. She was reluctant to assign any particular spiritual flavor to it. The various “brands” out there all thought they were exclusively correct, and she wanted no part of that “my way or the highway” thinking.
Who could say what happened to you when you left this life? Maybe everyone who sat in a pew on Sunday, went to temple or whatever, got it wrong. Or maybe they didn’t. She didn’t know and wasn’t going to make assumptions.
What was perfectly clear was that something otherworldly was going on here. Something very special. Had Asher heard her plea? Had he put in a good word for them?
The blue mist skimmed up and down her son’s little body. It seemed to spend more time on T.J., maybe because he was the most seriously hurt. It finally dimmed and flickered out as they watched.
“Now what?” whispered Tage.
“I don’t know. I guess we have to wait and see.”
“I love you, Nicole Ashley Sorenson.”
She snuggled against him, a solid presence in the surreal mist surrounding them. “I love you too, Asher. Thank you.”
“It wasn’t your time. Or Lindsay’s. I made sure of it.”
“What about Stone and T.J.? I don’t want to lose them either.”
“I’m working on it. You have things to do yet.”
“I do?”
“Yes. And I’ll always be with you, watching over you.”
“I’m glad. I wish...”
Asher put two fingers to her lips to hush her. “There’s no point in wishing for things that will never be. Tage loves you. He’s done a fine job as your father.”
She nodded. “I know. I’m just sad that I don’t know you.”
“You do know me, Nicks. As well as you know yourself.”
She sighed. That would have to be enough. She opened her mouth to thank him again when a booming sound, a distant explosion, made the mist swirl around them. “What is that?”
He turned to look, then faced her with an expression of urgency. “I have to go now.” Setting her free from his embrace, he stepped around her.
“But why? Where are you going? Will I see you in my dreams again?”
He put both hands on her shoulders and gave her one last kiss. “Go make me proud, Nicks.” Then he disappeared into the mist.
The boom sounded again as she turned and fled toward wakefulness. She didn’t want whatever was making that horrible noise to catch her.
Unpleasant things assaulted her senses as she tried to wake up. Something was jostling her head and hissing beside her. It took Nicks a few disorienting moments to realize she was in bed beside Stone.
And it was Stone who was causing the chaos.
“Mom.” She put her hand on Stone’s chest and pushed herself upright. He was thrashing around on the bed, making pathetic choking noises as he tried to talk around the breathing tube. Eyes half-open, he calmed somewhat when he saw her. He put both hands on her shoulders, his eyes silently pleading for an explanation.
“Mom. Dad,” she called again with more insistence. “Something’s happening here.” She scrambled out of the bed. “Stone? Can you hear me?”
Stone nodded and grabbed for Nicks’s hand.
“Get a doctor in here now!” her mother shouted behind her.
The edge of her vision went gray as she stared into Stone’s eyes. He was there, he was back. He saw her!
Wobbling, swaying, totally stunned, she felt her father’s arms go around her as she sank toward the floor.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Nicks came to in her hospital bed down the hall. Her mother sat on the bed next to her.
“Mom, was I dreaming? It was a dream, wasn’t it?” She gripped her mother’s hands in hers and sat up. “Please tell me it wasn’t a dream.”
“It was the best kind of dream, Nicks. T.J. woke up shortly after Stone.”
“What? Both of them?”
“Uh huh. Both of them.” Her mother gave her a diamond-bright smile.
“Where are they? Stone and T.J.? I want to see them.”
“They took them downstairs for tests and CAT scans. Daddy went along because T.J. was scared. He woke up confused and started to cry when he saw you hanging limp in your father’s arms.”
“That little shit.” She felt happy for the first time in several days. “Do they seem okay? God, I hate that I passed out, but I just couldn’t deal.”
“We didn’t get to talk much. They removed the breathing tubes and rushed them right out of the room. You shouldn’t get your hopes up, Nicks.”
“Oh, my hopes are up and they’re staying there!” She clapped her hands, threw her head back, and laughed. “I was having a dream about Asher when Stone started to move. It was sort of what woke me up.”
“Yeah.” Her mother looked away with a slight smile. “Asher.”
“Did he do this? I mean, how could he? He couldn’t. Right?”
“He used to get away with the most outrageous shit in life. Who knows what that asshole is capable of now that he’s dead? I don’t know, and I’m not prepared to say. I just know I’m never taking anything for granted again.”
“Me either.” She gave her mother a hug and bounced up and down on the bed, squealing with joy.
Her father stuck his head in the door. The deep lines on his face were gone. He looked like the old Tage.
“They’re settled back in their rooms with a bit of breakfast if you want to see them. And you better hurry up about it. Stone isn’t being the most patient man right now.” Tage drummed his fingers against the door. “I like him, Nicks. You were all he could talk about while they were running tests on him. I tried to tell him what happened, but he just kept saying he didn’t care, he wanted to see you. Any man wh
o loves my daughter that much is okay in my book.”
“What did the doctors say?” asked Chelsea.
“They’re still down there shaking their heads. They can’t explain it. One of them was chalk white and kept muttering about how this couldn’t happen. Ha! Guess they don’t have friends in high places like we do,” Tage said.
“So they’re okay?” Chelsea pressed him.
“They aren’t out of the woods yet. They’re going to keep them a couple of days, maybe longer, to make sure their injuries are healing. But they show normal brain activity. Hurry up, Nicks, or Stone will be tearing the room apart to get to you.”
“Oh, Daddy! I love you so much!” Nicks slid out of bed and grabbed the flimsy gray hospital robe from the chair beside it. “Can you help me on with this, Mom? I feel like I’m going to explode!”
Stone’s head was still swathed in bandages, but those beautiful eyes were lively and smiling when Nicks walked into the room.
He was sitting up in bed with a tray of food in front of him. Yesterday he was dying, not able to breathe on his own. This morning...hot damn, he was eating!
“Nicks!” T.J.’s enthusiastic greeting pulled her focus from Stone. The boy’s hair was a tangled mess on top of his head, but his blue eyes sparkled like a summer sky. His smile was as mischievous as it’d ever been. “I was so worried about you.”
Nicks looked at Stone. “Do you mind...?” She gestured toward T.J.
“Not at all,” Stone replied. “Go see your brother. I can wait. When I get my arms around you, baby doll, I’m not letting you go.”
His voice was strong. He was okay. T.J. was okay. They’d both been given back to her. There were no words to describe how thankful she was.
She held T.J. against her and let the tears fall. “I am so happy to see you, little guy.”
“You fell asleep in Daddy’s arms,” he mumbled against her chest. “Are you sick?”
She sat back and tried to tame that shock of yellow hair with both hands. “No, I’m not sick. Not anymore. God, I love you, T.J.”