by Sierra Dean
After some difficulty with speaking when she got to the main desk, an orderly directed her to a different floor. Alice had begun to believe they were going to send her on a wild-goose chase through the hospital, and at the end she’d discover her family wasn’t there at all.
On the sixth floor she spoke with a nurse who guided her down the hall to a room. As they entered, Alice placed a hand on the nurse’s arm. “How are they really?”
“They’re st—”
“I said really. How are they really?”
“Your brother got the worst of it. Cops on the scene think he shielded her. Your daughter looks worse than she is, so don’t panic when you see her. It’s a lot of superficial stuff. We’re going to move her into the children’s wing tomorrow. We just want to observe them both overnight. But they’re fine. She has some bruising, a few cuts from the glass, but it could have been a lot more serious. Your brother has a broken arm and a broken leg. The arm is from the impact of the air bag on your daughter’s side.”
“Do you know what happened?” She wanted to get into the room to see them, but she had to know, had to understand what had caused this.
“Police said your brother was driving in the wrong lane,” the nurse said, her tone apologetic, like she didn’t want to tell Alice this had been Kevin’s fault. “They think he must have fallen asleep at the wheel. He overcorrected and drove off the road. Hit a tree.”
Alice imagined the whole scenario in her mind, like watching one of those awful videos in a driver’s training class. She remembered all the nights she’d cleaned up Kevin’s empty beer bottles. He would never…he wouldn’t do something so careless as drink and drive.
But even as her brain said he wouldn’t, she asked, “Was he drunk?”
The nurse must have thought the question was inevitable because she was quick to reply, “No. But there were high amounts of prescription medication in his system.”
He’d taken the wrong pills.
It had happened before, where he mixed his antidepressants and his sleep aids improperly, but in the past it meant she’d found him asleep in the backyard when he was supposed to be cutting the grass. He’d never had an incident in the car, though.
And he’d never put Olivia at risk.
She thanked the nurse and went into the room. Kevin was the first person she saw, the bed just inside the door with the curtain open. She began to cry harder when she laid eyes on him. All the angry feelings she had, knowing he could have killed Olivia, were shelved when she saw how damaged he was.
His arm lay in a sling across his chest, and his leg was wrapped in a cast up to his groin, propped up on a sad little hospital pillow. The left side of his face was a balloon of purple bruises, one eye swollen shut, the other rimmed with black. One cheek was puffy, and his split lip had a crust of dried blood on it.
A half-dozen machines were connected to him, monitoring his heart rate and feeding him a steady flow of painkillers. She wanted to stop, to fawn over him as their mother might have once, but she was a mother, and her child was mere feet away. Passing Kevin, she went to the bed beside his, the spaces divided by a flimsy curtain.
Her heart stopped.
She tried to remember what the nurse had told her, that the wounds were superficial and Olivia had come through relatively unscathed. But logic didn’t play a factor at all when Alice saw her baby—all skinny arms and legs—covered in bruises and bandages, lying like a pale, broken doll amongst the dingy hospital sheets.
“Oh God,” she said, moving to the bed and standing next to her child. “Oh, Liv. Livvy. Baby, it’s momma. Baby.” She took her daughter’s hand, squeezing so hard she feared she might break it, and kissed the girl’s tiny fingers, avoiding the place on the back where tubes were connected.
Alice smoothed the hair off Olivia’s clammy forehead, feeling for a temperature. But this wasn’t a cold or flu. She couldn’t make Liv better with fresh sheets or a damp facecloth. Her child was in the hospital, and there was no way to rationalize that into being an okay thing.
People could say she was fine, but it didn’t make the situation any less awful. It was one of the most terrible things she could imagine, and she was here dealing with it alone.
You have to call Matt.
Not only did he have a right to know, as Liv’s father, but the logical, pragmatic part of Alice’s brain knew there was no way in hell she could afford the hospital bill, even with the insurance she got from the league.
She hadn’t seen any signs forbidding cell phone use in the ward, so she sat down next to Liv’s bed and pulled out her mobile. Matt’s number was programmed in, though she typically went through his lawyers when she needed something. They tended to be more reliable.
At least they took her calls.
It took five rings before she got a terse, “This better be good.”
Her blood boiled at the sound of Matt’s annoyance. What right did he have to treat her like she was a problem? Once—and sure, it had been a long time ago—he had acted like she was the sun of his life. He’d been so sweet and charming. Now he behaved like she was the bane of his existence.
Amazing what happened when you give birth to a guy’s kid.
“No, Matt, it’s not good.”
He sighed. “What’s up, Alice? I don’t have a lot of time. Heading into BP.”
Like batting practice was more important than this. “Olivia is in the hospital,” Alice replied flatly, giving him the same hard version of the truth the nurse who’d called her had.
“What?” Now she had his attention.
“There was an accident. Liv is in the hospital.” She wished her words were fists. She wanted to beat him to a bloody pulp with each ragged syllable. Wanted him to bleed from the force of her vowels.
“Is…is she okay?” He almost sounded like he cared. His voice went soft, and the former cruelty of his tone vanished. Yet she didn’t feel any kinder towards him.
“No, she’s not okay.” Her grip tightened on the phone, and tears bloomed in her eyes again, trailing down her cheeks. She should have waited until she was calmer before calling him. Matt tended to set her off in the worst possible way. She choked back a sob.
“My God, Alice. How bad is it?” He was beginning to sound frantic, and she felt guilty for leading him to believe Liv was worse off than she really was. It wasn’t fair, but Alice wanted him to suffer. She wanted him to feel even half of what she’d gone through that afternoon.
“She’s stable.” The words she never wanted another person to say to her slipped easily from her lips.
Matt paused, and in his silence she was briefly reminded of her call with Alex the previous night. How strange that the distance of each conversation had been the same, but with Alex she wanted to fill the silences whereas she hoped the quiet was making Matt’s skin crawl.
“What do you need from me?”
What did she need from him? God, the list was endless. She needed more of his time, patience, consideration and, sadly, his money. She needed him to be there for Olivia more than once or twice a year.
And mostly she needed him to be there when Liv woke up.
“I need you to come.”
“Alice…I don’t know if I—”
“Don’t give me any of your bullshit excuses, Matt,” she seethed. “Did I say anything when you blew her off during training? No. You were in the same goddamn state, and you couldn’t make time for her. Fine. I didn’t call you, didn’t bitch at you about it. This isn’t the same deal, not by a fucking long shot. Your daughter is in the hospital, and I need you here. Do you get that? She needs you.”
He didn’t immediately say no again, making her believe he was at least taking her words to heart.
“Okay, look. I can’t leave now, it’s too close to game time. And it’s not easy, I mean management doesn’t know I have a kid.”
“Well, whose fault is that?” She refused to empathize with him because he’d lied to his bosses—and almost everyone else in hi
s life—about having a child. “I don’t care what you have to do. You asked what I needed, and I need you to be here.”
“Okay, I’ll see what I can do.”
“Fine.” She hung up before he said anything else to make her angry, which was inevitable with Matt.
She stared at the phone, looking at Alex’s number in the call log. For a solid minute she debated making the call, but one glance at Olivia convinced her not to.
This wasn’t his mess.
Chapter Eighteen
Sometime in the middle of the night Matt woke Alice up with a soft hand on her back. She jerked awake at his touch. He looked exhausted and cranky, which was a fine match for Alice’s own demeanor. She’d fallen asleep next to Olivia’s bed, her neck at an awkward angle from leaning.
“Hey,” he whispered, his voice low and familiar.
Alice rubbed the dregs of sleep from her eyes and stared at him like he was a figure from a dream. He wore a wrinkled white polo and a pair of khakis, the pale colors making his dark caramel skin stand out in contrast.
“What time is it?”
“Late. Close to three, I think. I came on the first flight I could get after the game.”
She broke down then because she hadn’t realized until that moment she hadn’t believed he would show up. He knelt beside her, and instead of trading nasty barbs or being cruel to each other, he wrapped her in his arms, offering her a tight, comforting hug, something she’d needed desperately but hadn’t known how to ask for.
“How’s she doing?” he whispered into her ear.
“She’s okay. But she hasn’t woken up yet.”
Matt pulled up a chair and sat beside her, leaning over the bed to take Olivia’s hand. Seeing the two of them side by side made her wonder how it was possible no one knew Olivia was his. The girl was practically his clone.
He was just as handsome now as the day she’d met him ten years earlier. His jaw was angular and his nose perfectly aquiline. He looked like the kind of man ancient Greek sculptors would want to base their masterpieces on.
“What happened?”
Alice relayed—in brief, and excluding Kevin’s addled state—the details of the accident. Matt had no real place in her family affairs, and it didn’t make sense to give him any ammunition to use against her. He might not want Olivia now, but if a time came he did, there was no way she’d personally load the gun he would use to shoot her in the foot.
“But the doctors think she’ll be okay?”
“Yeah, it’s all superficial stuff. They say we only have to worry if she doesn’t…if she doesn’t wake…” Alice’s voice faltered, and a renewed spring of tears surged forth. Stupid tears. Was there no end to them?
Again, Matt pulled her close, hugging her awkwardly from the chair. This man, the one in the room with her, was the closest she’d had to the old Matt Hernandez in a very long time, and having him there was like rediscovering an old friend.
It wouldn’t last. These flashes of kindness from him were always short-lived, but for the time being it was exactly what she needed.
“It’s going to be okay,” he assured her, giving her the comfort she hadn’t known she needed so badly. “She’s a tough girl. She’ll be fine.”
But what did he know about Liv’s toughness? What did he know about her at all? Alice’s frustration over Matt’s absentee parenting melded together with her exhaustion over the whole present situation. She couldn’t yell at any of the people she wanted to—not Kevin, not Matt—and since she couldn’t yell, she kept crying.
When was this promised okay going to come through? How long did she have to wait before everything was, in fact, okay? Because it felt like she’d been holding her breath her entire adult life, waiting for that time to arrive, and there was still no sign of it.
Right now she’d settle for not falling apart.
Since she couldn’t tell him how much he was screwing up her life, she simply said, “I’m glad you came.” She didn’t ask how long he planned to stay because she knew the answer would only set her off again.
For bereavement, players got a scant few days off. Olivia wasn’t dead, she was just in the hospital. For a key player like Matt, it didn’t matter if it was his kid. Unless Liv was in seriously bad shape, they’d expect him back by the weekend.
Not to mention no one but his lawyers knew he had a kid.
“I’m an asshole,” he said quietly. “But I’m not a fucking asshole.”
When he smiled, Alice laughed for the first time in what felt like centuries. The lightness of the moment was completely incongruous to the situation they were in, but it didn’t matter. So what if people weren’t supposed to laugh in hospitals. Who made that rule? If there was anywhere in the world that needed laughter the most, it had to be hospitals.
His hand looked huge with Liv’s small one in it. Matt rubbed Alice’s back with his free hand. “Try to get some sleep. I’ll stay up with her a bit. If anything changes, I’ll wake you.”
He wrapped his arm around her and pulled her chair flush against his, holding her close to his side so her head rested on his shoulder. He must have been slumped low in the chair for that to work, because Matt was pushing six five.
Alice didn’t fight him. There was nothing romantic about the gesture, and nothing sexual she wanted from him. It had been a long time since she’d been able to visualize Matt as the object of her desire. Right now he was just an anchor keeping her from drifting away entirely.
With her forehead against his chin, within minutes she had drifted off to sleep.
A handful of restless hours later, Alice woke to the filtered light of sunrise coming through the cracked blinds. The room looked especially cold in the purple-gray glow. She rubbed her eyes and rolled her stiff neck on her shoulders, glancing over to Matt’s seat.
His empty chair greeted her.
Had his arrival been nothing more than a dream? Did she want so badly for him to be there she’d imagined him?
Then she spotted the leather weekend bag sitting on the floor at the end of the bed and relaxed. In the cot, Olivia was still sleeping, her heart rate monitor beeping in a quiet, steady rhythm that seemed to suggest a normal pulse.
Alice sat next to her daughter, brushing the girl’s curly hair with her fingers, trying to smooth it into some semblance of order. The darkness of the ringlets made her sallow skin look sickly. The bruises on Liv’s face had gotten darker overnight, and each one broke Alice’s heart a little more.
It wasn’t like it was the first time Liv had gotten hurt. She was a kid, after all. But a broken wrist from falling off her bike didn’t hold a candle to this. Children didn’t die from broken wrists, but she’d almost lost her daughter yesterday.
A sob caught in her throat like a hiccup. She had to get her shit together and stop crying. The sooner she calmed down, the better she’d be able to figure the situation out.
“She up?” Matt’s voice made her jump.
“No, not yet.”
He handed her a Styrofoam cup of coffee and took the seat she’d previously occupied. “She didn’t move at all during the night. Figured it was safe to go get us a drink.”
Alice nodded. “Thanks.”
“It could use a little Irish, but I made do with the powdered creamer stuff.”
The coffee was terrible, but Alice would take anything at that point. In spite of sleeping, she felt like a zombie, and even awful cafeteria coffee still had caffeine in it.
“Look, Alice…” He had a we need to talk tone, the one that could make anyone’s guts bottom out just to hear it. “I talked to the doctors. Everything is taken care of. For Liv and Kevin. I gave them my accountant’s info, and told Barry to get you anything you need. Okay?”
She wanted to be relieved, to feel grateful she hadn’t needed to ask, but all she felt was foolish. She hated that he knew she needed money, and hated even more that his money was the only thing he could offer their child.
The youth charities he contribute
d to probably got more time and money from him than his own daughter. And he was willing to be photographed with those kids.
“Thanks,” she said again, refusing to look at him. She was tired and angry, and she was sick to death of crying, so it seemed safest to keep her eyes focused elsewhere.
“It’s the least I could do,” he replied.
“Yeah. It is.” Alice couldn’t bite her tongue in time to keep the comment from slipping out.
“Are we really going to do this right now?” Matt sounded as tired and frustrated as she felt, which didn’t seem fair because he was just a tourist in their tragedy.
“When would you rather do it? Or do you want to ignore me awhile longer until you can pass it off to your lawyers again? How are Andrew and David these days anyway?”
Matt’s nails dug into the foamy exterior of his cup. “Why do you have to make everything so difficult?”
“Me? You’ve got to be kidding. You’re never around, you avoid us, you don’t care about her unless something happens—”
“Mom?” The voice was quiet and raspy, like it hadn’t been used in years, but it was unmistakably Olivia’s.
All the animosity between Alice and Matt vanished with one syllable. He shot up from the chair. “Livvy?”
“Daddy?” One of Olivia’s eyes wouldn’t open all the way, and her mouth appeared tight when she tried to form words. She didn’t seem to be in too much pain, but the doped-out slurring to her words suggested the morphine was doing its job.
“Hi, baby girl,” Matt cooed, brushing her cheek softly. This was the charming guy who had lured Alice to bed, but now all his charm was for their child. It was better this way, since his sweet nothings were just that to Alice. Nothing.
“You came?”
“Of course I did, sweetheart.” Matt kissed each of her cheeks and grasped her hand. Alice stayed in her place on the end of the bed, one hand clamped down on her baby’s leg. She was afraid to let go, worried one wrong move would make the girl slip away again.
“What…happened?”
“There was an accident, baby,” Alice whispered. “But you’re okay.”