Raising Connor

by Loree Lough

  “Well, the chips are okay.”

  “If you like eating them with a spoon. Can you believe every package was crushed that way?”

  He would have told her it didn’t matter. That she should calm down. But he hadn’t seen her this animated since that day at the theater, when something had riled her enough that he worried she’d destroy the door with that putty knife. Maybe if he got her going that way again, she’d forget to be sad.

  “Which one of your sisters-in-law has Connor today?”

  “Jill, I think. Why?”

  “Is she the one who lives just off Route 40?”

  “Mmm-hmm,” he said around a mouthful of sandwich.

  Deidre stood and gathered what was left of her portion of the meal and, after dumping it unceremoniously into the wastebasket, slung her purse straps over one shoulder. “I’m going straight home to get Felix, so he can drive me over there. He misses that kid almost as much as I do.” She stooped to kiss his forehead. “Would you be a dear and give Jill a heads-up that an old biddy is about to invade her space?”

  Hunter laughed quietly. “Sure. No problem.” He wondered what had happened between now and the time she’d left for the cafeteria to change her mood.

  “Ran into an old friend in the elevator,” she said, answering his unasked question. “Young fella who had a bit part in the dinner-theater production of Pirates of Penzance I directed a few years back. Guess acting put the fear of God into him, ’cause he’s a preacher now. A good one, too,” she said with a wink. “Snapped me out of my funk.”

  She stepped up to the bed and kissed her fingertips to her lips, then touched them to Brooke’s forehead. “I know you’re working hard to come back to us, sweetie. Keep it up, okay, because we miss you.”

  With that, she strode from the room like a woman on a mission. Hunter’s poor sister-in-law didn’t have a clue what she was in for. Now he felt doubly obliged to give her a heads-up.

  After the call, he sat back, opened the copy of Baltimore magazine that he’d bought in the gift shop. “Listen up, lazybones, because I’m about to read this thing from cover to cover. Out loud. Including the ads. Because why should you get off scot-free?”

  When he finished, Hunter stood and stretched. “Man,” he said, rubbing his Adam’s apple, “how do politicians do it? I’ve only talked for an hour, and I’m hoarse.”

  He bent over the bed’s side rail and kissed the corner of her mouth. “Back in a bit,” he said, then kissed the other corner. “Promise.”

  Outside he found an empty bench in the shade of a tree and sat down to call Sam.

  “Everything is ticking along like clockwork,” his foreman said. “Got the Smiths’ house and the Fletcher jobs wrapped up, and this morning when I grabbed the Stone Contracting signs from their front yards, I grabbed their final payments, too.”

  “Good work,” Hunter said. “And what’s happening at the Sheridan place?”

  “Those kids of Mitch’s had me fooled, I’ll tell ya. They’ve been nose-to-the-grindstone all day every day. They tell me they’re working for more of your biscuits and bacon, so congrats, Chef Stone, you made some impression on ’em.”

  Laughing, Hunter said, “Must be comforting to you, knowing you’ll have a career to fall back on when I fire your cantankerous butt.”

  “Fall back on…?”

  “Open-mike Friday nights?”

  “Ha ha. Very funny, boss. So tell me, how’s your fiancée doing? Any improvement at all?”

  So news of his phony proposal had made it that far, had it? “Doctors say things are going as expected. Another day or two, they’ll revive her, see if she can breathe on her own. Until then, we just keep hoping for the best.”

  “You know, this whole thing has made me reexamine my own life. Brought my wife flowers the other night just for the heck of it, and you would have thought I gave her tickets to a world cruise.”

  “Careful. She might think that’s next.”

  “On the pathetic salary you pay me? No way! And she knows it, too, since she’s the one who balances our skinny little checkbook.”

  “You’ll invite me to opening night, I hope.”

  “Opening ni—” Sam got the joke and laughed. “And a parking pass near the comedy club, too. But enough of this yee-hawing. I work for a tyrant. He’s mean as a snake and might fire my cantankerous butt.”

  That would never happen, and Sam knew it as well as Hunter did. Buoyed by the good news that his company wouldn’t sink while he was away from the helm, Hunter pocketed the phone and remained seated, enjoying a few more minutes of fresh air, then hurried back inside. The sun would set soon, and he knew from past experience that he could watch it from Brooke’s room. Maybe he’d get lucky, catch a glimpse of the elusive green flash.

  The thought spawned an idea, and he went back to the bench, connected his phone to the internet and typed green flash into the search bar. Link after link showed up, some with photographs of the phenomenon. He downloaded and saved a few. Normally, cell phone use inspired the stink-eye from hospital personnel, a policy that made little sense when doctors and nurses used them to communicate with one another, even in the ICU. But Hunter’s cooperative spirit had put him on a first-name basis with the staff…and earned him updates not given to most family members. Lucky for him, opening saved files on his phone didn’t require an internet connection, so he was confident that his “good visitor” status would remain intact.

  “Perfect timing,” Brooke’s nurse said when he returned. “She just had a bath, and I changed her sheets, too. So she’s fresh as a daisy.”

  Could have fooled him, because everything looked the same as when he left.

  Well, not exactly the same. The nurse had removed the bandages that held the intraventricular catheter in place, exposing the angry red skin surrounding the burr hole in her skull. She’d need a haircut when she got out of this place, because the surgery to relieve pressure on her brain had left a softball-sized bald spot right at the crown of her head.

  “Bet you’ll look really cute in short hair,” he said, finger-combing soft curls from her forehead. “Well, would you look at that,” he said. “Freckles there, too, not just on the bridge of your nose.”

  Hunter walked to the foot of the bed. “I don’t know about you,” he said, loosening the tightly tucked sheets, “but I hate not being able to move my feet. I know, I know,” he added, “you can’t move ’em now anyway. But trust me, I just did you a big favor. Those pink-painted toes of yours were bent over so far, they made my feet ache.”

  Her pillow was off-kilter by an inch or so. “You know what I’ve always wondered?” he asked, straightening it. “Do brand-new babies and people in comas get itchy? Must be torture to have an itch and not be able to scratch it.” Were the drugs that kept her immobile and protected her from the damaging effects of pain guarding her against that, too?

  Since he had no way of knowing the answer—and she couldn’t answer—Hunter proceeded to gently stroke her arms. It was the least he could do since it was largely his fault she was in here, helpless as a newborn. He tossed back the covers with the intention of rubbing from her knees to the soles of her feet. But one look at the thick hip-to-ankle cast on her left leg stopped him. Hunter swallowed. “Good thing you’re out like a light,” he told her. “Tiny as you are, you’d need a luggage cart to haul that thing around.”

  Making light of things did nothing to ease his guilty conscience. Why did it seem that he was just plain bad luck where the O’Tooles were concerned? If he really cared about her, about Connor and Deidre, he’d walk out that door and not look back, because what terrible thing might he bring into their lives next?

  He watched her, long lashes dusting freckled cheeks as she lay still and pale, one machine breathing for her while another drained fluid from around her brain. She’d always been so bright, so bold and brave. Would she still be that way when she came to? After the broken bones and torn muscles and surgical scars healed? The image of the
once-spunky Brooke doing everything in slow motion because her poor battered brain couldn’t remember another speed flashed in his mind. It was a terrifying sight, but not terrifying enough to scare him away. He’d stay, partly because he should have had the good sense to put a padlock on that front door…and keep the only key.

  Hunter rested both forearms on the bed rail. “I’m staying. Forever. Because I care about you. Have since that night in the O.R. waiting room when you called me everything but a human being.” Her tirade had been the reason he’d never found happiness with other women, not even the good ones like Stacy.

  He traced the third finger of her left hand and, realizing the symbolism, stopped and straightened.

  “So I guess you heard your doctor say that day after tomorrow, if you get good grades on all your tests, he’ll start weaning you off these confounded drugs.” He would not accept the doctor’s warning that sometimes patients don’t wake up from comas. If she came to, he’d continued, Brooke was facing weeks—months, possibly—of rehab. Physical, speech and occupational therapy. Healing from the inside out and the outside in would take time. Lots of it.

  She’d survived three major surgeries—the first to remove her damaged spleen and appendix, the second to repair the nick in her liver and punctured lung. Finally, steel pins had been inserted in her thigh. Hunter wasn’t sure if wiring her broken jaw shut had required surgery, or he’d have counted that, too.

  He forced a note of joviality into his voice. “Soon as you’re well enough to sit up to eat green Jell-O and Deidre-style meat loaf, I’m gonna celebrate with a shower and a shave.” He tucked a curl behind her ear. “Bet you’re relieved to hear that, huh?”

  She’d been here five days; five and a half days ago, he’d taken his last shower. How could he leave her side, even long enough to get cleaned up, when Brooke had no one—not a parent or a sibling—to ask questions on her behalf, to demand answers when the staff used ten-syllable terms? Deidre was sharp for a woman her age, but her uncharacteristically quiet, subdued behavior these past few days was proof that she couldn’t go to bat for Brooke. So Hunter had stayed close by, listening, asking questions, demanding answers, taking notes. And when the doctors and nurses left the room, he hopped on the internet to look things up and better understand everything they’d said. With each validation, his confidence in her team increased.

  “Remember that conversation we had a while back about the green flash?” Hunter sat on the chair beside Brooke’s bed and opened the file he’d downloaded earlier and, propping an ankle on his knee, summarized the details of the article.

  “Says here that in order to see it, you have to be in the right place, and the conditions have to be perfect, too. Humidity, temperature, time of day….” It sounded too familiar, and he couldn’t say whether it was because he’d read so much about it over the years, if he’d told her all of this, or if she’d told him. “When you get out of here, we’re going to start making memories. Good ones. Lots of them. You. And Connor. And me.” He got up, stood beside her bed again and this time kissed the tip of her nose. “What better way than by taking you to a place where you can see it for yourself?”

  Hunter chuckled, wondering what was going on inside that amazing mind of hers. Except for the few hours he’d spent dozing in the ugly pink chair, he’d chattered like a magpie. Held her hand. Stroked her pale, chafed cheeks. Kissed her knuckles and her forehead and now her nose. “Bet you’d slug me if you could, wouldn’t you?” he whispered, grinning.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw the monitor’s green line spike upward. It beeped slightly faster, too, telling him it hadn’t just been wishful thinking.

  “Leave it to you,” he said around a grateful sob, “to come out of this thing all on your own just so you can whack me one.”

  The monitor beeped again, providing all the confirmation he needed.

  He remembered comparing her to his niece’s porcelain figurine, fragile, delicate, easily broken. He smiled. “Tell you what, little ballerina, as soon as you can make a fist, this ugly whiskered chin is all yours.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  THE NURSE PRESSED the new code into Brooke’s infusion pump, its high pitch barely audible above the drone of the ventilator and the blips of Brooke’s monitor.

  “Only three more dose reductions,” she said, “and Sleeping Beauty here will be through with this medication. Hopefully for good.”

  Hopefully. Hunter was beginning to hate that word.

  “And then we wait.”

  “For what?” He needed to know.

  “For signs of awareness.” She scrawled some notes on Brooke’s chart and let it drop against the bed’s footboard with a hollow thump. “Doesn’t happen every time…just often enough that we want to be watchful when she comes off the meds.”

  Hunter’s heart pounded with fear. “What doesn’t happen every time?”

  She looked around to make sure they were alone, then spoke so quietly that Hunter had to lean forward to hear her.

  “Some patients fight the ventilator,” she explained. “If we’re Johnny-on-the-spot with the medication amount, we can prevent a panic attack. That’s important when someone has been on Propofol this long. But if we can’t prevent it…”

  “You’ll need to drug her into a stupor again.”

  “I wouldn’t put it quite that way, but, yeah. Basically.”

  The whole point of the medically induced coma was to decelerate her vitals in order to reduce swelling—particularly in her brain—and decrease pain levels so that Brooke’s body could begin to heal from the inside out. But too much longer on those powerful drugs and her heart might forget how to pump on its own, and her lungs might not remember how to breathe. She’d need someone here, someone who could keep her calm while the drugs wore off.

  He crossed both arms over his chest. “I’ll be here 24/7.”

  “Commendable,” she said, “but dumb. Go home. Eat something healthy. Take a hot shower. Shave that handsome face of yours. And get a good night’s sleep.” She glanced at Brooke. “Because when she comes around, you’ll need every bit of energy you can spare, and then some.”

  “But what if—”

  “The whole point of the low nurse-patient ratio and these wall-to-wall ceiling-to-floor cubicles is so that we can keep a close eye on things. You’ve already been here 24/7, so you know it’s true.”

  Hunter nodded. “Yeah, but—”

  “No buts. She’s in good hands. So go home. Take care of yourself so that when the time comes, you can do the same for her.”

  He stared at the monitors, at the infusion pumps and the leads and tubes and wires that connected Brooke to each machine. It appeared that nothing had changed since the nurse decreased the dosage. Yet.

  “Maybe you’re right.”

  “Maybe?” Grinning, she walked toward the door. “Hunter, you’ve been here so long you’re starting to sound like a doctor, second-guessing nurses’ decisions. Get out. Get out now,” she said, feigning fury, “before it’s too late!”

  Then she sat behind the desk and, facing Brooke’s room, placed her fingers on the computer’s keyboard and started typing as if he’d already left.

  He’d grown tired of vending-machine food. And it would feel great to shower and shave. It wasn’t likely he’d sleep, but stretching out on his own bed sure would be nice.

  “I won’t be gone long,” he said, kissing her forehead. “Promise. Keep fighting, kiddo. Please?”

  Standing at the elevator, he thought, I can’t wait to get a reaction when I do that.

  Laughing to himself, he stepped into the empty car, and when the doors closed, he said, “Hopefully.”

  *

  HUNTER SHOWERED AND SHAVED, changed into jogging pants and a T-shirt and made himself a snack. After settling into his favorite chair, he grabbed the phone and dialed Deidre’s number to find out why she’d left half a dozen “Call me—it’s important!” messages on his answering machine.


  “Hey there,” he said when she answered. “What’s up?”

  “I’m at my wits’ end,” she said. “By mistake, I opened a letter addressed to Brooke.”

  Mistake? Deidre? Not likely, but he concentrated as she read the letter from a Mrs. Damian.

  “‘I have been more than fair and patient in the matter regarding your nephew, but I would be negligent in my duties if I allowed this situation to continue. Charlotte Matthews, of Child Protective Services, has informed me that you have in your possession documentation that will substantiate your sister’s wishes with regard to the above-referenced minor child.’”

  Deidre huffed. “Minor child, she called him. She has the power to dictate his future, but doesn’t have the decency to refer to Connor by name? What an evil, callous—”

  “Go on,” he interrupted. Deidre’s voice had gone all shrill and shaky. If she kept up this way, she could end up in the cardiac ICU. “What else does the letter say?”

  On the heels of a trembly sigh, she continued. “‘I regret to inform you that if you fail to reply to this correspondence, as you have failed to respond to my numerous phone calls and emails, and if I am not in receipt of the aforementioned verification by the end of business this Friday, I will have no recourse but to place said child in a foster home until suitable adoptive parents can be found.’”

  He heard paper crinkling as Deidre said, “Hunter, what are we going to do? Brooke could be in the hospital for weeks yet. And then she’s facing months of physical therapy. If this power-hungry old bat gets wind of all that—and the accident and how badly Brooke was injured—she’ll judge Brooke incompetent and incapable of ever being able to take care of Connor. And she seems the type who, just out of spite, would take Connor so far away we might never see him again….”

  “Only a judge has the power and authority to do that,” he said. And first chance he got he’d call Harry to make sure it was true. “Deidre, put the letter in a safe place and quit worrying.” He pictured the unlabeled DVD, hidden in his underwear drawer. “I think I know how to stop Cruella de Vil in her hard-hearted tracks.”