Brigette doesn’t seem to want to answer James and he’s not offering up any information. I’m so confused and tired. I just want everyone to leave.
“What are you doing here?” I ask her. I wish I could remember her name, but for the life of me I can’t. Jimmy never talks about her and I don’t ask. We have exes for a reason.
“I’m here because of Jimmy.”
“He doesn’t want you here,” I put forth.
She scoffs and throws her hair over her shoulder. “Yes he does.”
I shake my head. “He doesn’t.”
“She’s right, Chelsea,” Harrison adds.
Chelsea – that’s right – either he or Liam said it before when she showed up. Chelsea. The rag mags never did say why they broke up, not that it matters anymore.
“You’re pregnant?” she asks. I want to say no shit, but I nod. It’s clear that I am. “Who’s the father?”
“Oh, for crying out loud, Chelsea. Jimmy is the father, you silly girl.” Brigette throws her hands up in the air. “Why did you bring her here James?”
“What makes you think she came with me? Jimmy’s the one who knocked her up.”
My mouth drops. Liam stands and Harrison yells out, “Bullshit.”
“Excuse me?” James says.
This is a back and forth tennis match, all taking place while my husband’s in a coma. It’s a stupid soap opera.
“Jenna, look at me.”
I do as Harrison commands.
“JD did not knock her up. She’s trying to pin it on Jimmy, but he thinks his dad is the father of her baby.”
“How does he know?” I ask, quietly lacking the confidence that I need to assert myself here.
“Because when he was home, she moved into JD’s apartment, but he told her that he didn’t want her and that he didn’t think the baby was his. He saw Chelsea and his father at a café have a tête-à-tête right before he left.” Harrison looks at James. “He saw his father kiss his ex-fiancé and place his hands on her stomach.”
“How do you know about this, Harrison?” Brigette asks.
“He came and told me. He was freaking out a bit because he had left Jenna alone and was in LA dealing with Chelsea when he should’ve been in Beaumont.”
“I damn well knew it, James. My God, what kind of lowlife man are you to sleep with your son’s ex? I mean, seriously. And you, you’re a disgusting piece of work. After everything you did to Jimmy. No wonder he calls you a leech.”
“Wow,” I say.
“This is why JD didn’t want you to know his dad,” Liam adds.
“Hey now –”
“No, James you don’t get to make excuses for your behaviour. I wish I could say I regret sending him to you, but he met the boys and his wife so it must’ve been for the best.”
“I’m happy you’re here, Brigette.”
“Me too. I just wish we didn’t meet like this. I’m worried I’m going to outlast my welcome and you won’t want me around when the baby is born.”
“Nonsense,” I say, pulling her into my arms. She’s been a comfort to have here. My mom wanted to come, but I told her it was okay to stay home. I kept her updated daily and told her if I needed her, I’d call, but with Liam, Harrison and Brigette here twenty-four seven the room is crowded. “Jimmy will be happy that you’re here.”
Brigette moves my hair off my shoulder. “Don’t give him a hard time about Chelsea when he fully wakes. He was in love with her once, a long time ago. He thought she was the one for him, but she put him through hell and back. First with her family and then she cheated on him. I’d never seen him so broken.”
“Is that why he started sowing his wild oats?”
She laughs, but I really don’t want to call my husband a man-whore even though that is what he was.
“I guess you could say that. He very much did play the field, until he met you. I knew the day that you two…well, you know, because when he rang me, he was different. He was happy and talking about moving to Beaumont to be closer to Liam and Harrison. Before, he was adamant that he would stay in LA because he needed to be a free spirit.”
“I’m usually not that type of girl.”
“I know you’re not.”
“What type of girl?” We both turn to Jimmy coming back into the room. His breathing tube has been removed and he’s smiling. Once his bed is in place, I rush over and place my lips on his. He pulls away too quickly for my liking.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
“I haven’t brushed my teeth in a month, Sweet Lips. I would really like to before you start kissing me again.”
“We can have a nurse come in and give you a sponge bath, Mr. Davis.”
I see red when the doctor suggests that. His mom and I have been the ones bathing him while he was in the coma. I’ll be dead before some nurse comes in to wash him now that he’s awake.
“I’ll do it.”
Jimmy smiles although it doesn’t reach his eyes. He’s tired. I can see it in his face. He’s trying to stay awake to please us. I brush his hair away from his face. He leans into my hand. I hope that I’m bringing him a bit of comfort.
“I’ll repeat what I told you after I read your x-ray. You’ll need to wear the oxygen mask until your levels rise, but can take it off to answer questions. You’re going to feel tired for a while and even though it seems like you’ve been asleep, your body doesn’t realize that. So be patient with your recovery.”
“Thank you,” he says. His voice is hoarse and scratchy. It sounds like he’s been yelling for days on end.
“I’ll leave you to take your bath,” Brigette says, winking at Jimmy as she leaves behind the doctor. I close all the blinds and fill the bucket with warm water.
“You have a couple of scars,” I say, when I come back. I roll down his blankets. I untie the top of his hospital issued nightgown and let it fall open. “They can do plastic surgery if you want them removed, but they’re healing nice.”
Jimmy looks down at his chest and stifles a cry. I gingerly kiss his chest, away from his sutures.
“I look like Frankenstein.”
“You look like my husband.” I set the warm sponge onto his skin. He shivers and as much as I’d love to say it’s because I’m touching him, I know it’s from the cold air. “They had to go in and stop the bleeding. If they hadn’t, we would’ve lost you.” I clean around the cut they made and make my way to the first bullet hole. “He shot you here, Jimmy, while I was watching you perform, while Liam was singing Little One’s song. I saw him in the crowd, but the security guard couldn’t understand what I was saying until he saw the gun. I tried to get to you, but Liam stopped me. He saw you fall to the ground. Harrison carried me away from you.
“The bullet exited here,” I say, as I move to the other side. “Liam held you until the medics arrived. He put his knee on one side and his hand here to stop the bleeding. Days later the medics stopped by and told him if he hadn’t done that they would’ve lost you on the way here. He saved my family.”
I make my way down his body. He looks at me when I drip water over his semi-erect penis.
“I shouldn’t be turned on, but I am.”
I laugh and shake my head.
“The doctor said we can’t have sex for a while.”
“You asked?”
“Yeah, I haven’t been able to please my wifey for a month. I have a lot of catching up to do.”
“I’m not going anywhere, Jimmy.”
“Can I tell you about Chelsea?”
“You don’t have to, Harrison filled me in.”
“I want to.”
“Okay,” I say, sitting down in the hard plastic chair next to his bed. I pick his hand up, careful of the IV and place it to my lips. This is going to be hard for him and the last thing I want is for him to think I’m angry. I’m not. I almost lost my husband. It’s going to take a lot to piss me off these days.
“When I went back to LA, I found out that she had moved into my flat an
d was spouting all this crap about being pregnant. We had slept together a few days before you and I got married so I thought for one fucked up moment that I had ruined everything with you.
“I was so stupid, Jenna. I had a bad feeling about it straight away, but didn’t leave. I saw Chelsea and my dad together, but couldn’t for the life of me understand why my dad would do that to me. I went and saw him and thought that after I told him about you and Little One, he’d own up but he didn’t.
“I wanted to tell you, but I didn’t want you to think that I cheated on you because I didn’t. From the moment I asked you to marry me, I’ve been yours.”
Tears drip down my face as he tries to pull me closer. I don’t let on that he’s not at full strength yet and move to where he needs me. “I just want to hold you, Jenna.”
He doesn’t know what those words mean to me. It’s not that he wants to hold me, but opening up about his dad and ex means the world to me.
I adjust so I can lie with him easily. I’ve been doing this for a month. I’m a pro now. I rest my head in the crook of his neck and play with the stubble on his chin. It doesn’t escape me that this is what I’ve been waiting for. I’ve needed this moment since the night of the concert and he knows it.
I’M experiencing one of the most erotic moments in my life and there isn’t jack shit I can do about it. I’m too weak physically and because of that I can’t even begin to please my wife. I can only remember what she feels like wrapped around my dick and how she sounds when she’s moaning my name. Fuck, right now I can’t even breathe without the aid of some godforsaken machine. I want to get out of this bed, but I can’t. I can’t even have a piss by myself. I have to take a leak into a bucket. Thank fuck the plastic tube sticking out of my dick has gone. I hate thinking about everything my wife has seen this past month. I hate that she’s seeing the absolute worst from me.
For better or for worse, in sickness and health – those are the vows we said to each other, and look at me taking advantage of those words to the max. I’m going to throw myself my own fucking pity party and ask her to buy me a bloody cake so I can celebrate. Her fucking nutter of an ex shot me like the bastard coward he is. He can’t fight like a man. No, he hits women and when that doesn’t do it for him, he shoots people.
If I ever…
I close my eyes as the sponge moves over my body. Her touch is gentle and soothing. I can tell without even asking her, that she’s been doing this the entire time I’ve been here. I’m glad it’s her. Not that I want her to stare at my fucked up body, but she has the most reason to take care of me. With my luck I would probably have got my own personal Sam and she’d cut my crown jewels off or something equally as messed up.
I have my wife – one that loves me – no matter what and if this doesn’t prove that we’re going to make it through anything, I don’t know what will.
I listen intently as she recounts what happened. Her voice – it does something to me, even though it shouldn’t. I shouldn’t be turned on right now, but I am. My arm, the one without all the wires, tries to move, but it’s slow and unsteady. It’s unbelievable how one month of no movement renders it useless. My fingers finally get close enough to touch her hair when she smiles at me. She leans forward and rests her head in the crook of my neck. My limp arm falls on her. Romantic, right?
“I just want to hold you, Jenna.” I can’t even begin to think how she’s felt this past month. If I do, I’ll go crazy. If she was in this bed and our roles were reversed, I don’t know what I would’ve done.
Having her lie beside me isn’t enough, but I know that’s all I’m going to get at the moment. She’s not going to let me get away with anything.
“You should put your oxygen mask on.”
I scoff and roll my eyes. “I’m trying to love you right now.” I’m almost out of breath and can’t even think about how different my life is going to be now. “I need to hold you.”
“I told you, I’m not going anywhere.”
She sits up, already breaking her promise.
“You just left me.”
She shakes her head and giggles. “I’m covering you up. You don’t want to catch a cold and you don’t want your mom to see you like this.”
“I think my mum knows we have sex, Sweet Lips.” I say, pointing to her belly.
“Incorrigible, that’s what you are. We can’t have sex, Jimmy. You need to heal.”
“But my sexy wifey, you can straddle me and hang onto the rails. I’ll do all the work, I promise.”
She’s not buying it, clearly. She re-ties my ridiculous excuse for a hospital gown and covers me back up. Tucking me in like I’m a baby. I like being pampered, but this is going to get old fast.
“Jenna?”
“Yeah, Jimmy?”
“I love you.”
I’m rewarded with a smile that puts all the others to shame. “I love you too.”
I smile weakly. “I’m tired.”
“I know you are. You should rest. I won’t go anywhere.” I don’t know where the fatigue came from, but suddenly I’m exhausted. Jenna slips my oxygen mask over my nose and mouth and I instantly hate it. I can’t kiss her now. It’s a sad realisation that I can’t do any of the things I want to do with my wife right now, except look at her.
She sits down next to me and holds my hand. Is this what she did while I was in a coma? Part of me wishes I knew, but the other part doesn’t want to know. I don’t want to know if she cried, although I know she did. I don’t want to know that she didn’t take care of herself. I can see it in her eyes. She’s tired. She should’ve been taking care of herself and Little One, not sitting by my side day in, day out.
But I’m happy that she did. It warms me to know that she never left my side, that when things got rough she anchored down and held us afloat.
She’s the last thing I see when I close my eyes. Her head rests on my bed next to me. I want to pull her into bed with me and hold her while I sleep, but I know it’s not possible. I heard everything the doctor said, I just don’t want to believe it. No sex now and it’ll be questionable later and because of the damage to my lungs. I’m not breathing at ‘full capacity’ whatever the fuck that means. I’ll need physical therapy to help me rebuild my stamina. But the worst thing? I’ll be carrying around an oxygen tank with me for a while until I can breathe on my own at ninety percent. Fucking great.
When I wake up my blinds are closed and it’s dark. There’s a small light coming from the corner, but that’s the only light I can see. I reach for Jenna, but find her spot is empty. She’s not here. She said she’d never leave me. My heart rate increases causing the machine to start beeping like wildfire.
“Hey, what’s the matter?”
My mum comes into view. Her fingers work their way through my hair. She did this when I was little to soothe me. I close my eyes and let her work her magic as I try and calm down. I’m afraid to remove my mask. I can feel my lungs struggling to get air. Tears sting my eyes. I refuse to let the water drip down my face. I will not cry, not now. Who knew bullet holes would cause so much damage?
“Are you okay?”
I nod, even though I’m not. I want my wife to be sitting next to me so I know she’s okay. “Jenna,” I mumble into my mask. My mum smiles and I don’t know if she’s doing so because I’m awake or if she actually understood what I said.
“Your wife is lovely, Jimmy. I’ve watched her take care of you for a month. She loves you so much and is very happy that you’re having a baby together. I never thought, after Chelsea, that you’d fall in love again. I had hoped, but also realised that you were young, hurt and going to do whatever you needed to mend your heart.
“The day you called and told me that you got married, my first thought was that you were doing something stupid and reckless like I read about in the papers. When you said that she was pregnant and you were the father, my words were ‘You don’t need to marry her because of the baby, you can work something out, maybe live together a
nd raise the baby’, and do you remember what you said to me?”
I shake my head.
“You said, “Mum, Jenna is the one woman that I can see myself falling in love with. I didn’t marry her because she’s having my bub, I married her because she makes me feel whole.
“I’ve watched her, Jimmy. I’ve watched her to see how she was around you and do you know what I saw?”
I shake my head again.
“I saw a woman who loves her husband with every bone in her body. You both make me believe that it doesn’t matter how you got together, but what you do once you have each other is what counts. Maybe that’s the secret. Maybe everyone should marry someone they don’t know well and let life lead them wherever it takes them. Whatever journey you, Jenna and Little One are on, it’s the right one. I can see nothing but happiness for you.
“I do wish I had met her under different circumstances, but I give my daughter-in-law all the credit in the world. You were her priority and she made sure you had the best care possible. But I do think bath time was her favourite.”
I smile and move my mask up. “Mine too.”
WE are leaving Chicago today after being here for six-weeks. Jimmy can’t walk without assistance yet and it’s driving him batty. Physically, he can walk, but his oxygen levels are still too low to maintain his normal habits. This also means no performing until he’s given the okay by his doctor.
I’m not even going to sugarcoat it — I’m ready to go back to Beaumont. I’m tired of hospital life. I’d like to say I’ll never be back, but Little One’s due date is fast approaching. I’m just thankful that Jimmy will be there to help bring her into the world because if he missed this, I don’t think he’d forgive himself.
Jimmy’s most recent set of x-rays show his lungs have healed, but there’s scar tissue that could be bothersome later in life. He has to work with a physical therapist three days a week until he’s cleared. Liam thought it was a good idea for the band to get into shape, so he hired a guy named Alexander Knight to see to the bands’ needs. He’ll be doing Jimmy’s training as well. Liam wants to keep it all in the family. If I didn’t know better I’d think that Liam is developing a mob mentality. Not that you’re going to hear me complain.
Finding My Forever Page 21