Especially not a buxom brunette with obviously fake titties crying over her son. A son in which she hadn’t come to see in two whole weeks while he’d been lying there.
“Goodbye, my love!” the woman cried out. “I’ll miss you so much!”
She said that so loud that I could hear it all the way from the doorway.
My body was frozen in the doorframe as I stared at the show she was putting on.
And that was when I noticed that all the machines were gone.
All of them. He didn’t have a single one around his bedside. Not even an IV pump.
My stomach plummeted as I whirled on my heels and started running toward the nurses’ station.
“Bradley!” I cried out, thankful to find him there. “Is he okay?”
Had he woken up? Was he able to breathe on his own now, and they took him off life support?
Bradley looked up at me and frowned.
He knew exactly who I was talking about. Apparently, I was starting to get an irrational attachment to a man in a coma.
Who knew?
“The family said he has a DNR, and the sister’s having the mother deliver the papers. Sister’s on strict bedrest and couldn’t make it down here herself. She also explained that we should prepare to be offended by the mother. She apparently is very eccentric. Doesn’t believe in hospitals, and actually would rather take him to a field outside her house and let the sun and moon heal him.”
My stomach sank.
He was off life support.
Off. Life. Support.
The only thing that had been helping him breathe the last two weeks.
Off.
Life.
Support.
Life saving measures were simple. If anything like CPR or the vent was needed to stay alive, then per the DNR—or do not resuscitate—order, they (the hospital staff) couldn’t perform them. That meant that this big man was shit out of luck. He’d die…and shortly.
No.
“They’re what?!” I screeched.
“They’re taking him off life support. Took him off life support. That happened about an hour ago.”
I blinked.
“They can’t!” I burst out.
Bradley smiled at me sadly. “They can.”
“But, Bradley,” I said, whispering this time. “They can’t.”
Bradley was one of my best friends. He was a brain surgeon. And one of the best people that I’ve ever met in my entire life.
“They did,” he repeated himself.
A commotion across the hall—heels on tile—had me turning to see what I was hearing, and that was when I saw the woman walking out.
She was wearing a halter top, a mini-skirt that wouldn’t even look good on a sixteen-year-old, let alone someone of her age, and hooker heels.
She looked like a ho. Fo’ sho’.
She didn’t look like the woman I remembered seeing in my favorite 90s porn.
Yes, I was a 90s porn fanatic. I first started my venture into porn when I was fifteen, when I first saw my sister’s porn collection in the garage. She’d been eighteen at the time, and she’d fished it out of a dumpster right outside of a Hasting’s video shop that had closed down only days before.
In that dumpster had been the motherload of porn, and in some of those porn movies, this woman was the star.
Now, though? Well, she didn’t look much like her old videos.
Now she looked like a used-up hooker that’d been ridden hard and put up wet.
She walked up to us, paused with a toe pointed outward for dramatic effect, and waved her hand in the air.
“The other men on his baseball team are supposed to be coming. Please allow them in to say their final goodbyes.”
Then, just like that, she left as if she hadn’t just said goodbye to her son for the final time.
But her words, they stuck with me.
Baseball team? Was this man a coach?
“What baseball team?” I found myself asking.
Bradley looked at me funny.
“You didn’t know?”
“Know what?”
His smile was grim.
“That the man that you’ve been talking to for the last two weeks has been the most famous, bad boy third baseman in baseball history. Rhys Rivera. The gangster with the wicked left-handed bat. The man that was in the Homerun Derby for the last four years in a row. He’s a fuckin’ god in the baseball world. A baseball world that has been crying rivers of tears since they found out that he was hurt in a motorcycle wreck two weeks ago.”
My brows rose. “Is that impressive?”
He snorted. “Go get your visit in. I’ll bet that the next time you try to come, he won’t be here any longer.”
With that, Bradley turned his back and dismissed me.
I flipped him off and walked across the hall toward Rhys’ room.
“So, you’re a badass baseball man, huh?” I asked him, taking a seat on the uncomfortable leather chair. “What are they gonna do without you?”
***
“You mind?”
I stood up so fast that I nearly hit my head on the bed.
I’d fallen asleep—just like I always did while I was visiting him after a shift—and while I was doing that, the room had filled with men.
“Uhh,” I said as I rubbed my head. “I’m sorry. I’ll go ahead and leave ya’ll to visit.”
The big bearded man shook his head. “Nah, stay. I’m glad you’re here.”
He was? “You are?”
He nodded.
“I’m glad that Rhys wasn’t lying when he told us he’d found someone. I’m just glad he hasn’t been alone.”
I didn’t even know what to say to that.
I blinked. “Where have y’all been?”
I found myself asking that instead of telling him that I wasn’t Rhys’ anything.
“Only family has been allowed in here until now,” he pointed out. “With you here visiting, and us not on the visitor’s list, nobody would allow us in.”
I hadn’t been here the whole time. In fact, if they’d wanted to come in, they probably could have.
Someone had to have told them they couldn’t, though.
I frowned.
“Who told you that you couldn’t come in?” I asked in confusion.
The man’s face morphed into confusion.
“His mom…” He paused. “Said you were there with him, and that we couldn’t come since we weren’t family.”
I had no idea what he was talking about. None.
“I have had to work and had to leave at least six hours before visiting hours were over,” I told the man, eyeing the rest of them. They were all huge, built, and probably could squish me like a bug.
“Are you deaf?”
I stiffened.
The man that was talking to me slapped the man that asked on the back of the head.
“Jessup, swear to fucking God,” the slappy-hand man growled.
“I just think it’s sweet that he’s dating someone that’s deaf like his sister…didn’t you say that he—”
“It’s you!” another man butted in. “Knew you were something when he sent his bodyguard to drive four hours to pick up that thing for your ear.”
I touched the ‘thing for my ear’ as an epiphany dawned.
My neighbor.
Oh, holy shit.
“Is that how y’all met?”
“Maybe we should introduce ourselves,” slappy-hand said. He offered me said hand and said, “Name’s Hancock Peters.”
I shook his hand and dropped it. “Nice to meet you. I’m Henley Diane Cree.”
“My name is George Hoffman,” said the tallest guy I’d ever seen, and oh, God. The tattoos. Come to think of it, all of them had tattoos. Very nice ones, on very nice, muscular arms. Thick, muscular necks.
I shook George’s hand. “Nice to meet you.”
&nbs
p; He smiled sadly.
“My name is Jessup Steel,” the man who asked me if I was deaf pulled me into a short hug. “I’m sorry if I offended you. I didn’t mean to.”
I patted his hand. “It’s okay. It’s not the first time I’ve heard it.”
And wouldn’t be the last.
It sucked, but it was what it was.
Tomorrow I’d hear a child ask me why I sounded so weird, and I’d have to tell him that I was deaf and couldn’t hear the tone of my own voice sometimes. Then I’d have to explain that when I was younger, I’d not spoken at all until I was almost two.
“My name is Manuel.” A tall, Latino man with a shock of black hair, with one tiny piece in front that hung a little over his eyes.
“Nice to meet you,” I whispered.
“Gunner Penn.” The next one, a younger one than all the rest, nodded. He didn’t offer me his hand, though.
And so, it went. Man after man introduced himself, and I worried that I would never keep them straight.
Then I realized that it wouldn’t matter. I wouldn’t see them after today.
I looked over at the bed, watching the man I’d become almost reliant on for the last two weeks, knowing he wouldn’t be here for much longer.
They’d pulled him off life support.
I looked at my watch, realizing that he’d been breathing on his own for over two hours now.
It was labored, and the breaths rattled in his big, barrel chest, but he was breathing.
His face also looked a little more swollen than it had when I’d gone to sleep.
But overall, he appeared as if he was hanging in there.
God, if you can hear me, please help him. Please watch over him and let him live.
I didn’t know this man. I just realized only seconds before that he’d done me a kindness before I’d even known him, but somehow, I just knew he was a good man.
“I’m going to go,” I whispered, standing up. “Give y’all some time to—”
“Absolutely not,” the big, bearded bear named Hancock grunted. “You’ll stay.”
So that was how I stayed, and listened to stories, all centering on the man in the bed.
“They say how long he’d live?”
I swallowed and shook my head at Hancock’s question. “No.” I hesitated. “Without the machine to breathe for him, he could stop at any moment. If that happens, they won’t attempt any life-saving measures. He’ll slowly die.”
It sounded harsh. Really harsh.
I watched two of the men in my peripheral vision wince.
“You remember that time that Gentry hit that little shithead number twenty-six on the Cardinals last season?” Manuel asked. “And before that little asshole could storm the mound like he’d been intending, Rhys was just there, tripping him and making him fall on his face?”
“I remember when that little hothead got up, he went at Rhys like a man on meth, but Rhys picked his fist up, rammed it straight into the kid’s nose, and dropped him so fast he never saw it coming,” Hancock replied, grinning wildly. “Fuck.”
They all went silent, and I wondered if maybe it was time to leave.
But I didn’t move.
They didn’t either.
Not until four hours later Rhys stopped breathing and we were kicked out.
Chapter 7
I’m only 20% human. The other 80% is stress and anxiety.
-Rhys’s secret thoughts
Rhys
“You fight, neighbor. You fight hard, and I’ll thank you with a big ol’ hug when you get through.”
Fight?
Fight what?
Then I saw the light.
Chapter 8
I don’t want Netflix and Chill. I want Amazon Prime and Commitment.
-Henley’s secret thoughts
Henley
I showed up at the hospital, cuddled the babies, and tried not to think about the man that had once been upstairs.
Tried not to think about how my life had changed two nights ago when that man had stopped breathing and had taken one final breath before he’d passed away.
But even the cute little babies with their tiny little hands and soft little bellies, couldn’t make me forget.
“You done already?”
I looked up to find Sessie, the charge nurse for the NICU, staring at me with a smile on her face.
“Yeah,” I sighed. “I’m tired.”
She grinned. “I don’t know how you do this after working all night. I had to work last night for an extra two hours, and I thought I was going to pass out. You do this three days a week after a shift and still manage to function and look pretty the next day.”
I started to chuckle, but my heart wasn’t into it.
“I straighten my hair every day to get rid of the frizz and because it makes me feel like my head is skinnier,” I told her honestly. “As for functioning, I’m not so sure about that. My days off I do nothing but sit on my ass all day.”
Sessie grinned.
“Have a good day, Hen.”
I waved goodbye and swiped my visitor’s pass to get out of the NICU, waving at a few other nurses as I passed.
When I got to the elevators, I got in, not realizing that the one I was on was the one going up, and not down, until I was already on the floor that I’d studiously been avoiding.
Somehow, I couldn’t quite make my feet stay in place to wait for the doors to close, and I found myself walking toward the room that’d been the man’s home for over two weeks.
I stood outside the door and stared at the impeccably made bed, waiting for its next resident.
My heart felt heavy.
God, that poor sister of Rhys’. She was probably devastated right now.
“Henley?”
I turned to find Tatiana standing behind me, watching me with a worried expression.
“Yeah?”
“You okay?” she asked, eyeing me with a practiced eye of a nurse.
I smiled tiredly. “Yeah, I just wanted to come…make sure.”
Her brows furrowed.
“Make sure of what?”
“Make sure that no miracles happened.”
She frowned. Then shrugged.
“Did you know that the power went out in the hospital for an entire hour two nights ago?”
I frowned.
“No,” I hesitated. “What happened?”
She shook her head.
“We don’t know. Power failure is what the power company is calling it. They had to run the generators that whole time.” She paused. “When the power came back up, nothing in that entire room worked. No lights. No outlets. No nothing.”
My brows rose.
“Wow.” I turned to look at the room. It was dark. I hadn’t realized it until now.
“Anyway, Rhys Rivera has been moved to the end of the hall.”
My entire body jolted.
“What?”
She pointed to a closed door. “Down there. For privacy.”
I found myself walking toward the door she was pointing at without even realizing it.
The moment I got there, I pushed open the door, and nearly fainted.
Chapter 9
How do you feel when there’s no coffee?
-Depresso
Rhys
Everything felt disconnected from my body.
My eyes were open, but I couldn’t move.
Couldn’t make my hand lift.
Couldn’t do much of anything but stare at the white wall and try to figure out what the hell was going on.
My goddamn mouth would open, but I couldn’t get a freakin’ thing to come out.
I was essentially alive, yet I couldn’t move a single solitary part of my body.
It was the single most awful thing to ever happen to me, and I’d been through a hell of a lot.
I had no idea how long I waited there, screaming in my head f
or someone to come in and see that I was awake, but couldn’t move.
If there was a torture device that would scare the absolute shit out of someone, this was it.
I’d have to recommend it to my sister.
I wanted to yell. To scream. To do anything to get someone to come inside.
But still, nothing moved.
I’d just about given up hope when I heard something.
A scuff of a shoe? Was someone outside my door?
When the door to my room opened, and a woman appeared, I couldn’t do a damn thing but watch her with my eyes.
She looked familiar.
At first, her eyes didn’t meet mine, so I could do nothing to relay what was going on.
Instead, I studied her face.
I knew instantly who she was.
It was hard to forget that face.
The day that Colder had broken her transmitter, I’d not only gotten my sister to work her magic, but I’d also got a friend to work his.
I wanted to know who my neighbor was, and within the hour, I did.
I’d studied her picture for hours that night after everyone had left after the party.
Henley Diane Cree.
Age: twenty-nine.
Ethnicity: half white, half Native American.
Religion: non-denominational.
Interests: Volunteering, pottery, reading, and gardening.
Graduated from Texas Tech in art. She dropped out of nursing school with passing grades. She worked at the United States Postal Office as a mail sorter, and a mail carrier when or if they needed her.
She was five-foot-three inches, a hundred and twenty-seven pounds, and she had a speech impediment from her hearing loss that she’d suffered from since infancy.
All of these thoughts flashed through my head at a million miles an hour as I watched her enter.
God, she was beautiful.
My hands itched to touch her. To feel that soft skin against my mouth.
She’d probably freak the hell out if she knew the real me, though.
Still, that didn’t stop me from trying to speak to her.
I failed, though.
Nothing worked. Still. Dammit.
Then time stood still as her eyes met mine.
Her mouth fell open, her eyes went wide, and she screamed.
“Holy shit! You’re awake!”
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