Only Love

by Garrett Leigh

  A sudden flash of light hurt his eyes. He glanced at the window. Lightning. Outside, a storm raged. He watched the rain lash the windows and the trees whip back and forth. It took him back to the last real storm, took him back to rolling over and pulling Max inside him, letting Max consume him in a way no other ever had.

  Back then with Max, despite the heartache of saying good-bye to Paul, Jed had felt warm and loved. He’d felt safe. Now a brewing coil of anxiety took hold deep in the pit of his stomach, gnawing and biting until he was sure he could crawl out of his own skin.

  Jed slid from the bed, disconnecting the fresh IVs that had appeared a few minutes after Max left for the night. He ignored the jolt of discomfort that shot through his body. It was a typical pain, the type he lived with every day, and not enough to stop him limping over to the window. He stared out at the storm. The black sky and turbulent wind matched his mood. He thought of the cabin, exposed and isolated, and his stomach churned. Max had lived there for years by himself, but Jed didn’t like the thought of him out there alone in this weather.

  Dan muttered something in his sleep. Jed considered him. Dan was a creature of habit. If he’d been out drinking in Portland he’d have left his car at Carla’s place, and his keys in his right hand pocket.

  Jed debated creeping over, lifting the keys, and making a bid for freedom. Dan slept like the dead. He’d never hear him coming, and even if he did, there were ways of keeping him quiet….

  Whoa. Are you seriously considering thumping your best friend in his sleep? Dude, get a grip.

  Jed tried, but even with Paul’s voice ribbing him from beyond the grave, it was hard. Unease clawed at him like a creeping vine, slithering over his skin and invading the rational part of his brain. He wasn’t a nervous person, never had been. If bad shit was going to happen, it would happen whether he worried about it or not, but in that moment the rush of irrational fear sweeping over him was borderline hysterical.

  Damn it.

  Jed laid his head on the windowpane. The glass was cool and calming, a balm to the liquid tar of the black mood seeping into his bones. He closed his eyes and willed the knot in his chest to dissipate. For a while, it worked, until he felt a hand on his arm.

  “Jed?”

  Dr. Howarth. Great. Jed let out a silent sigh and opened his eyes. “Making the 2:00 a.m. rounds?”

  “Something like that. I like to check my patients are where they should be. Any chance of coercing you back to bed?”

  Jed wanted to be a prick and say no, but he’d been on his feet a while, and the idea of lying down was appealing. He left the turbulent entertainment of the window and returned to his bed.

  Dr. Howarth watched him with curious eyes. He didn’t seem to notice Dan snuffling like a pig in the chair. “How are you feeling tonight?”

  Jed reconnected his IV tubes to the needles and leaned back on the cabin-scented pillow Belle had brought him from home the day before. “Same as ever.”

  “Remind me,” Dr. Howarth countered. “Did you eat dinner?”

  “Some.”

  “That’s good. Any issues keeping it down?”

  “A bit, but that was my….” Jed frowned. He’d lost his words. What the fuck? “I ate too much.”

  “I see. Well, things seem to be coming together. I was talking with your partner yesterday. He was telling me about the produce you grow at home. It’s all good stuff, Jed. With a condition like yours, the little things count.”

  Jed said nothing. Couldn’t. He heard the words, but they made no sense.

  Dr. Howarth’s gaze flickered to the IV stand. “You seem a little tired. Do you want to try and sleep now?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Sleep,” Dr. Howarth repeated. “It’s late. I know nights can get a bit noisy in here, but you should take the opportunity to rest while you have nothing else to do. I know you’ll be out running up a storm as soon as I cut you loose.”

  It seemed like the doctor was talking in riddles, but one word resonated in Jed’s foggy brain: sleep. He retrieved Max’s hoodie from the bedside table and zipped it up.

  “Cold?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Are you cold?”

  Jed shook his head and lay back on the bed, waiting for Dr. Howarth to leave him alone so he could sleep off the bone-crushing headache that was growing worse by the minute.

  He expected Dr. Howarth to leave. He didn’t. He sat down in Max’s chair.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Charts,” Dr. Howarth said vaguely. “My office is being remodeled. Do you mind?”

  Seriously? The dude was going to sit in the corner and watch two grown men sleep? Whatever. Jed pulled his hood over his face, too tired to argue. Two more days. That was it. He could cope with two more days, right?

  THE NOISE in Jed’s head was deafening, like a pneumatic drill, driving into his skull. Someone shook him, called his name, and pulled on the hood covering his face.

  “Jed? Can you wake up for me a moment? Jed?”

  Dr. Howarth.

  “Jed? Come on, wake up for me.”

  Jed opened his eyes. White hot bolts of pain shot through his head. He tried to sit up, but his arms failed him.

  Dr. Howarth eased him upright. “You’ve spiked a fever. You might’ve picked up a virus, but I’m running some antibiotics through you to be safe.”

  “Antibiotics? What for?”

  “You might have an infection.” Dr. Howarth grasped his wrist and took his pulse the old fashioned way. “Can you take your sweat jacket off?”

  It took Jed a moment to comprehend the request and even longer to decide he was too fucking cold to be taking his clothes off. “I’m fine.”

  “I know you are. I need to examine you. You can have it back when I’m done.”

  Dr. Howarth won the stare-down, because Jed forgot his objections. He took off Max’s hoodie and sat back while Dr. Howarth listened to his chest and palpated his strangely pain-free abdomen.

  “I’m going to hook you up to the monitors,” Dr. Howarth said. “I want to check out your heart rate for a moment. You can rest if you want.”

  Jed kept his eyes open, but the crazy beeping of the monitors made him jump.

  The commotion roused Dan from his uncomfortable slumber on the chair. “Jed? What’s going on?”

  Jed couldn’t answer. Dan moved, his body a blur across the room. He reached Jed’s side as Dr. Howarth draped the long neglected oxygen tubes back on Jed’s face. “What’s happening?”

  “Maybe an infection. We’ve given him antibiotics and something to bring the fever down.”

  “What’s up with his head? Why is he holding it like that?”

  I’m not holding my head.

  “We’ve given him something for the pain. Keep him talking for a moment, will you?”

  The door opened and closed a few times. New hands touched Jed, but none of them the right ones. A shiver passed through him. He was cold. He longed for Max’s hoodie… no, he wanted Max. Max. Max. Max….

  Jed jerked his head up. “I don’t want you to drive in the rain.”

  “Huh?” Dan grasped Jed’s shoulders. His grip was light, but his big hands felt like spiked metal clamps. “Dude, I’m right here.”

  “What?”

  Dan stared at him. “Don’t worry about it. Whatever it is, it’s gonna be fine, okay?”

  Dr. Howarth reappeared before Jed could formulate an answer. He shot something into the IV in Jed’s hand, then moved to the window and closed the blinds. He said something. Dan shut off the lights.

  The impact was instant. Jed slumped, like he’d had a bucket load of the morphine he hated so much. His head collided with something warm and solid. Dan. Someone groaned. Huge arms came around him. Yeah, definitely Dan.

  “Jed? Look at me, come on, man. Talk to me.”

  Jed opened his eyes. The room was dark and unfamiliar. Something scratched at the back of his hand. An IV. Really? Another damn fucking IV?

 
Dan nudged him back into awareness. “You okay?”

  Jed shook his head. He was used to pain, but this? This hurts.

  “I know, dude, but they’re gonna fix it, okay? Whatever it is, they’re gonna fix it. Max is coming. Stay with me until he gets here.”

  The words went over Jed’s head. All but three.

  Max is coming.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  “MAX, YOU need to get here. Something’s really fucking wrong.”

  Max threw Jed’s truck into a space. In his dubious peripheral vision, he saw Dan’s hulking frame pacing outside the hospital’s main entrance, and his heart dropped. He’d driven to the city like a man possessed, but the sickening sensation in his stomach told him he was already too late.

  He dashed across the parking lot. “Dan? What happened?”

  Dan shook his head, his face drawn. “I don’t know. He puked a couple of times last night, but I didn’t think anything of it. I passed out in the chair, and when I woke up….” He shook his head. “Man, he didn’t even know I was there.”

  “But he was fine when I left him.” Max pushed through the revolving hospital doors and made for the stairs. “Fine” was a relative term. Jed had been grouchy, but he hadn’t seemed any sicker than usual.

  Dan caught Max’s arm. “Max, he’s not on the ward. They moved him to ICU.”

  Max stopped dead in the corridor. “ICU? What the fuck for?”

  Dan pulled him toward the elevator, pressed the call button and yanked him inside. “They said something about an infection, but they weren’t sure. I couldn’t get any sense out of anyone, and Jed was rambling some shit about driving in the rain.”

  Max swallowed hard. Driving in the rain. How did he know?

  The elevator shuddered as it heaved its way up the hospital building to the fifth floor. Max didn’t go in elevators much. Flo hated them. Shit. Flo. In his haste to get to Jed, or perhaps knowing she’d object to him driving Jed’s truck, he’d left her at the cabin. He needed to call Kim to go fetch her, or Carla, maybe. Maybe Dan had already called Carla.

  “Max?”

  “Huh?”

  Dan tugged him out of the elevator and leaned him against the wall. “Still with me?”

  Max willed his delinquent brain to get a grip. He felt nervous without Flo, but he couldn’t drop now, dammit. Jed needed him. “I’m fine. Where is he?”

  “Down the hall, but they won’t let us into the room yet. Max, listen to me. Jed’s in trouble, okay? They had to sedate him and put a tube in his throat. They don’t know when he’ll wake up from that.”

  “Just tell me where he is.”

  Dan relented. A blur of blank corridors and faceless nurses passed Max by, and a few moments later he found himself staring at the stuff of his worst nightmares.

  Max clamped his hand over his mouth, sure he was still at home asleep—asleep and alone. He took an uncertain inventory of the monitors stacked up around the bed. Some he recognized from his own time in an ICU on the other side of the world, but others he’d never seen before. His eyes fell on the tube forcing air into Jed’s lungs.

  Life support. Fuck. He was talking to me a few hours ago. How did this happen so fast?

  Dr. Howarth touched his arm. “You can come in, Max. It’s okay.”

  Max drifted forward, and the closer he got the less prominent the plethora of equipment became, and then all he could see was Jed lying lifeless and unmoving in the bed.

  “Talk to him,” Dr. Howarth urged. “And you can touch him. It’s okay. He’s sedated, but there’s every chance he can hear you.”

  Max had heard of that before, and he knew it was true. He’d spent three days in a coma after his parents were killed, but he’d woken up knowing for sure that Kim was there with him.

  He took Jed’s hand and touched his face. Jed’s skin blazed, and his cheeks were stained pink with an unnatural flush. “Why’s he so hot?”

  “Fever. They’re trying to bring it down.” Dr. Howarth pushed a hard plastic chair close to the bed. “Sit.”

  Max sat. “They?”

  “This isn’t my department. The ICU team is caring for Jed right now. Dr. Greene will be by in a moment.”

  “Is he nice?”

  Dr. Howarth’s lips twitched, though Max could see he was stressed. “He’s chief of the ICU, the best we have. Max, do you understand what’s happening?”

  “Dan said he had an infection.”

  “We believe so, yes. Even without his blood work back, he’s deteriorated too fast for it to be anything else.”

  “Where did he get it?”

  “I’m not sure. The endoscopy or the IVs are the most likely culprits, but we can’t say for sure. We can’t even be sure how long he’s had it. The early symptoms of infection are very similar to the symptoms we expected from Jed’s underlying condition. We might have missed something.”

  The door opened before Max could respond. Another doctor, Dr. Greene, entered the room and took his place at the other side of the bed. He introduced himself, looked Jed over, and made some notes, but he didn’t have much more to add. “We’ll know more tomorrow,” he promised. “For now, we need to concentrate on getting him through the next twenty-four hours.”

  Max stared at the tube jammed into Jed’s throat. He’d hate that. Even the teeny-tiny nasal oxygen bugged the hell out of him. “Will he wake up?”

  “No. Not for a while, at least. He’s in a coma right now.”

  And he might not wake up at all.

  Dr. Greene didn’t say it, but Max heard it all the same.

  “Your sister is outside. She said you have epilepsy. Is there anything you need? Medication you didn’t bring with you? You can’t have your alert dog in the ICU, but we want to help you in any way we can.”

  Max thought as hard as Jed’s limp hand in his would allow. He had some meds at Carla’s place, but he needed someone to go back to the cabin to fetch Flo and feed the chickens. “Who else is here?”

  Dr. Howarth walked to the door and peered through the tiny window. “Your sister and Ms. Valesco’s mom and brother.”

  “Can Anna come in? I need to talk to my sister.”

  Anna slipped through the door a few minutes later. Her eyes filled with tears as she took in Jed’s prone form. She touched his scarred shoulder with shaking hands, and Max realized that she’d probably never seen it before… maybe hadn’t known it existed. “Oh, sweetie, you’re not well at all, are you?”

  There was no response, but Anna didn’t seem to expect one. “Go on, honey,” she said to Max. “Carla has gone to the cabin to set up the feeders for the chickens, and Jed will be okay with me for as long as you need.”

  Max felt numb as he set Jed’s hand back on the bed and left the claustrophobic room. He spotted Kim and Dan sitting close together in a corner of a secluded waiting area.

  Kim scrambled to meet him. “Oh, God, Max. What happened? I thought he was getting better—”

  “I need you to go to the cabin and take Flo home.”

  “Carla already went. She’ll set up the timed feeder for the chickens and take Flo and the kids to Hector.”

  Max closed his eyes to the image of gentle Hector Valesco trying to manage Tess. “You should go home. They said he won’t get better for a few days. There’s nothing you can do here.”

  He didn’t have to look to see the hurt in her eyes. Kim had come to love Jed, and despite her faults, she’d always been there for Max. “I want to stay with you,”

  “No.” Max took her hands from him. “I need you to fetch the spare medication I have at your house. They can give me some here, but it will be better if I have my own.”

  Kim left, and Max breathed a halfhearted sigh of relief. He felt bad for manipulating her and sending her on a phantom errand, but she didn’t like hospitals. It was half the reason she’d kept Tess at home the whole time Jed had been sick.

  Dan stood and clapped him on the back. “Is Jed awake?”

  Max shook his he
ad, remembering with a start that the doctors probably hadn’t told Dan anything at all. “No. He’s in a coma.”

  THE REST of the day passed without event. Nurses came and went every few minutes, and Dr. Greene every half hour or so. Nothing changed. No one said Jed was getting any worse, but they didn’t say he was getting better either.

  Max listened to medical jargon shoot back and forth as he kept vigil over Jed. The monitors around him beeped and hissed, but Max paid them no heed. Instead, he took stock with his fingertips, tracing the strange pale purple blotches that appeared on Jed’s overheated bare skin and losing count of the racing pulse in his wrist.

  Jed’s heart was beating too fast. The stampeding tattoo reminded Max of Flo when she was a pup. She used to sleep on his chest like a newborn baby, and all he could do was worry that her tiny heart would beat right out of her body.

  “Have you eaten today?”

  Max glanced at Carla. From time to time, the ICU staff relaxed the rules and let someone else in. It was strange watching the Valescos keep watch over Jed, bittersweet in the worst possible way. They loved Jed like he was their own, and their pain at seeing him so sick tore at Max’s already aching heart.

  “Max.”

  “Hmm?”

  “You should eat. He’ll be pissed if you make yourself sick.”

  If only. Max longed for Jed to wake up and grumble at him for using every pan in the kitchen to cook pasta. It wasn’t going to happen anytime soon, but Carla was right. He needed to eat, and he needed to sleep. If he didn’t, it wouldn’t be long before he was no good to anyone. “Can you get me something?”

  “Kim already did. She’s right outside.”

  Max sighed. He should’ve known Kim wouldn’t stay away for long. He left Jed in Carla’s capable hands and made his way to the waiting area. There he found not only Kim, but Nick too.

  Max stopped in his tracks. “What’s he doing here?”