The Friendship Pact

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  I was lying there against my steering wheel, vacillating between dramatic sobbing and dry-eyed calm, between pain and hopelessness, when my phone rang.

  I sat up at the steering wheel to see who was calling me. Danny or Bailey? And only then wondered why it had taken them so long.

  I didn’t recognize the number.

  “Hello?” I sounded stuffed up. Whoever it was would know I’d been crying.

  “Mrs. Brown?”

  “Yes?”

  “This is Sergeant Peters from the State Patrol, ma’am....”

  Had I been caught speeding? On some camera I’d missed? But...

  “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but there’s been an accident.”

  Oh, God. Mom? Or Daddy? Danny and Bailey were together and...

  “Your husband was the sole occupant of the car and is being transported to Mercy Memorial Hospital. You should get there as quickly as you can...,”

  My husband. They’d called me. His wife. And...

  “Danny’s been in an accident?” I didn’t feel good.

  “Yes, ma’am. He was driving too fast and hit a tree on...”

  He named a road. I heard him. It was the road I was on.

  “Do you need someone to come get you, ma’am? We can transport you in a squad car and get you to the hospital more quickly.”

  “Yes, sir.” I then proceeded to tell him in calm detail where he could find me. It was less than a mile from the site of the accident. I hadn’t heard any sirens. “Please, hurry...” My voice broke. I was shaking. Dizzy.

  And had to get to Danny.

  * * *

  As soon as she’d received the call, she put Mattie on the floor of his nursery, sat down with him, and tried to reach Kora.

  Her phone went immediately to voice mail. She was either on it or not taking Bailey’s call.

  She had to be on it. She’d definitely take Bailey’s call. What had happened...they’d get through it later. All that mattered right now was Danny.

  Jumping up, she paced around the room, watching while her son reached for the plastic doughnut rings she’d put down for him, and called Mama Di.

  “We’re on the way to the hospital now,” the older woman said, sounding more upset than Bailey had ever heard her. “I don’t know how bad it is yet,” she said, “but Kora asked us to meet her there.”

  “You’ve talked to her then?”

  “Yes, she called as soon as she hung up from the police. She wanted us to stay on the phone with her until they picked her up. I guess she was out there, too, not far from where the accident happened....”

  There was a question in Mama Di’s tone. Danny and Kora, on a mountain, separately, in the middle of a work day....

  “They had a misunderstanding,” Bailey said, choosing her words carefully. The details weren’t hers to share. Kora had to hear them first. And then it was up to her.

  Unless Danny had already had a chance to tell her. Maybe they’d been on the phone....

  “Do you know what it was about?”

  “Well,” Bailey improvised. “Things have been so rough for them lately. But they’ll get through it. You said the police picked her up. They called her?”

  “Yes. She said they told her he was in your car.”

  Shit. Of course that detail would come out. She hadn’t thought about it being so soon. Or involving people beyond her and Kora.

  Mattie threw an orange plastic ring and chose a yellow one instead.

  “He asked to borrow it.” God, this was a mess. She ran a hand through her hair, looking at one wall, turning, looking at another. Not sure what she should do.

  Kora had to be panicking. Bailey needed to talk to her. But Danny was still alive and they’d get through this, too. “The police said he was hurt pretty badly,” she said now. She’d missed some of it, when she’d dropped the phone, but she’d gotten the gist of what he’d had to say. She’d heard that her car was totaled and authorized them to have it towed. “Do you have any idea what that means? Are his injuries life threatening?”

  She was going crazy here.

  “We haven’t heard anything yet. He was unconscious when they pulled him out of the car, but his vitals indicated that he has a chance. That’s all I know.”

  She could hear Papa Bill saying something in the background. The colored rings were all over the room now. Bailey started to pick them up, one by one, to take back to her son, and then stopped. He was scooting on his stomach, heading toward the green one. When he was tired of scooting, he’d learn to crawl. As long as she didn’t make it too easy for him.

  “Kora just called her father,” Mama Di said. “She’s back in town, almost at the hospital. They’re going to take her straight to Danny.”

  Because he didn’t have much time? Or because she was his wife and it was understood that she’d want to be with him? To see him and assure herself that he was fine.

  She’d called her father. Not Bailey.

  “Papa Bill told her I was on the phone with you,” Kora’s mother said. “She told him not to bring you to the hospital.”

  She sank to the floor. “Because of Mattie,” she murmured. “She wouldn’t want him exposed to all of the germs in the waiting room.”

  But she could get a sitter. And borrow Danny’s car. She had a key to their house and knew where the extra car keys were stored. She could collect a few things for Kora, too, living so close....

  “She doesn’t want you there.” The words were hesitant. Soft. And maybe a bit accusatory?

  “What’s going on, Bailey?”

  “Nothing.” Slumped over her upraised knees, she stared at the carpet. She couldn’t lie to Mama Di. Couldn’t have them thinking what it sounded like they were thinking. “Danny came over to talk to me about Kora,” she said, relenting. “He was afraid he was going to lose her. She came over and saw him and me together. We weren’t doing anything!” she asserted as quickly as she could get the words out. “Even the idea is ludicrous. But it could have looked like we were getting ready to kiss or something...”

  She was making matters worse. She could feel it.

  “Kora caught the two of you in a compromising position, reacted impulsively and Danny was going after her.” Mama Di summed up the incriminating facts expertly.

  “Yeah. What looked like a compromising position,” she added.

  “And you swear to me that nothing was going on?” Not like they thought. But nothing? She glanced at Mattie.

  “I have never, even for a second, looked at Danny Brown in a sexual way, nor has he ever come on to me..” Her words were unequivocal. And the truth of them sounded loud and clear.

  At least to her ears.

  “Okay. I believe you,” Mama Di said. “I can’t speak for Kora, though. And I have to abide by my daughter’s wishes on this one. For now, she doesn’t want to hear from you.”

  “I understand.”

  “I’m sure she’s just upset, beside herself. She lost the baby, then Danny’s injury and now this. Give her a few days to calm down. Once she knows Danny’s going to be okay...”

  “Yeah.” Every part of her body hurt.

  “I’ll stay in touch, dear. Keep you posted.”

  “Okay, thank-you.”

  Bailey must have said goodbye. Whether or not the traditional “love you” was attached at the end of that conversation, she didn’t know. Couldn’t remember.

  She’d been through a lot in her life. Handled a lot. But never had she been as ripped apart as she was in that moment, sitting there alone with her son, severed from Kora.

  A song came to her mind. Something about a heart breaking without making any sound.

  She understood it now.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  I
would get through this. I didn’t know what the next five minutes would bring. Tomorrow was forever away. I couldn’t worry about it. I was busy getting through the second before me.

  An hour after I’d received the devastating phone call, I was sitting, flanked by my parents, in a private consultation room with an attending emergency room physician. Danny’s mom was there, too, having recently moved back to town. His father was flying in from Chicago later that night.

  “He has severe swelling of his brain, Mrs. Brown,” the middle-aged, dark-haired woman explained to me, her manner forthright.

  “When the swelling goes down, is he going to be okay?” my mother-in-law asked.

  The doctor turned to her. “It’s too soon to tell. It could be days before we know more. Our staff neurologist is on his way to have a look at him, but my recommendation is that if you have anyone in particular you’d like to use, go ahead and call him. Or her.”

  A neurologist. “Are you saying there’s brain damage?” Daddy asked.

  My head turned toward him, then back to the doctor. “Again, it’s too soon to tell,” she said. “Until the swelling goes down, he’s not likely to regain consciousness and there’s only so much we can know for sure....”

  “You can do tests,” I said. “To measure brain waves and things, right?”

  “Yes. If we need to.”

  “And you said he’s breathing on his own, so that’s good, right?” Danny’s mom piped in again. She looked like she’d aged ten years in the past year. She’d let her hair go gray, was keeping it cut short and wasn’t wearing any makeup. Danny had been the one constant in her life as she’d married and divorced three times.

  “Of course.”

  “It means there’s brain function,” Mom said, but I wasn’t sure if she was reassuring me or asking the doctor a question.

  “There is definite brain function,” the doctor—I hadn’t caught her name—said. “For the moment, though, we’re focusing on the immediate issues. Other than the broken collarbone and multiple lacerations, he appears to be okay, which makes him, overall, a very lucky man.”

  And made me a lucky woman, too.

  In this second, Danny was lucky. His lungs were working. His heart was pumping. This was the second I was dealing with, the only one that counted. Right now.

  “We’re going to be moving him up to a room in the critical care unit. He’ll need to be watched constantly for the next twenty-four hours.”

  I’d already been told preliminary tests indicated that Danny had no internal bleeding. Which meant no brain bleeds. But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t start to hemorrhage.

  If it happened, that would be a different second. Sometime in the future. And nothing for me to worry about now.

  “What room number?” I asked the crucial question for this second.

  “I’m not sure yet. But if you want to go to the ninth floor and let them know you’re there, someone will inform you as soon as he’s brought up.”

  We stood. We thanked her. We left.

  And that was the end of that second.

  * * *

  As though he could somehow sense that his mother was incapable of standing, Mattie played contentedly on his nursery floor for twice as long as usual that Friday afternoon. When Bailey’s pain had subsided enough for her to be able to function, she rose slowly, made a stop in the bathroom and headed straight back to her son.

  The nursery was a happy place. A room she and Kora had built together, piece by piece. Mattie didn’t care where in the house they were. He could eat his cracker as easily there as anywhere else.

  And if she brought in his car seat, he could eat dinner there, too. If she wasn’t ready to leave the room, ready to face the emptiness in the rest of the house.

  She changed Mattie again, although he didn’t really need it. Wiped his hands as he finished his cracker. Brought out more toys for him, spreading them around the room so he could challenge himself to get them. She sat down with him. Leaned against the wall. And reached for her phone.

  She’d hoped to know more, to have something to report, but she couldn’t just sit there letting her mind torment her.

  “Hello?” He answered on the second ring.

  “Jake? You at work?”

  “Yeah. I’m in D.C. Just out of a meeting and getting ready to go into another.” He sounded reticent at best.

  She remembered Jenna’s admonition, the way she’d answered her husband’s phone. And guessed that Jake had been right there at the time.

  “Look, I’m not...this isn’t a personal call...but...” It was. She started to cry. And hung up.

  Her phone rang again almost immediately. She watched as his ID came up on her screen. Let it ring once. Twice.

  “Hello.” She was an adult. A successful attorney. She could act like one.

  “Bail? What’s up? What’s wrong?” His tone was totally different now. Soft. Personal.

  And she started to cry again. “I c-can’t...”

  “Don’t hang up.”

  “I w-won’t.” She sniffed. Drew in a long breath. She wasn’t a crier. Usually couldn’t cry even when she needed to. “Look, I had to call. I didn’t want you to hear it from one of the guys.”

  “What?”

  She could hear noise in the background. Figured he was in some kind of hotel conference area. Or maybe a college auditorium or convention center.

  “Danny was in a car accident,” she said. “He’s alive, but the accident was bad, Jake. He totaled the car.” She was going to have to deal with that, too. At the moment, even if Kora wanted her at the hospital, she had no way to get there.

  It didn’t sound like she’d be welcome to just walk over and get Danny’s car. More like she’d be arrested if she tried.

  “What about Kora?”

  “He was alone,” she said. “Kora and her folks are at the hospital now. I’m waiting to hear.”

  She needed to tell him that Kora had disowned her. Needed him to tell her, like Mama Di had, that Kora was just in shock. That all would be well. But he couldn’t know that.

  “What happened?”

  “He was on McClellan,” she said, naming a back road they used to take up the small mountain outside town. “Took a turn too fast and hit a tree.”

  “What was he doing, going up there on a workday afternoon?”

  “Looking for Kora. She was upset.” That explanation would probably suffice. Kora and Danny had had a hideous year.

  Mattie had a little plastic car in his hand. He saw her looking at him and swung both arms, bouncing up and down.

  She felt a smile start to form someplace inside her. It brought on more tears.

  “I was due to stay overnight and take the train back in the morning, but I’ll leave this afternoon,” Jake said now. “Do you know what hospital they took him to?”

  She told him.

  “Great, I’ll go straight there.” Lucky him. “Thanks for calling, Bailey.”

  “You’re welcome.” She could tell him what Kora had seen. But she couldn’t tell him why she’d seen it. She should warn him that Kora had banned her, and that he might hear Bailey and Danny had been having an affair. But no words came.

  “Take care,” he said, impersonal again.

  “Yeah, you, too.”

  She ended the call and pulled her knees up to her chest.

  * * *

  I didn’t know until later how everyone found out about the accident. How Bailey had called Jake and he’d called everyone else. I didn’t even wonder about it as one by one, our friends, Danny’s buddies, work associates and even a neighbor either showed up or got in touch by phone or text messaging. As overwhelmed as I was by the outpouring, as badly as I needed it, I couldn’t cope with the number of people needing answers I didn
’t have.

  Every time someone asked how Danny was doing, I had to face, all over again, the fact that we just didn’t know and my fear fed on others’ fearful reactions.

  I leaned on my parents for the first while, but then their constant hovering made me feel claustrophobic. The more people were there for me, the more frightened I got. It was like they all knew I was going to have to deal with something I wouldn’t be able to handle.

  Which made me determined to handle everything just fine.

  Or, at least, to make them think I was.

  Visiting hours were over. My folks had been the last to leave, but only after I’d eaten half the pasta salad they’d brought up for me from the cafeteria. I wasn’t going anywhere. They’d moved a recliner chair into Danny’s private room and I would be camping out on that for the foreseeable future.

  Mom had already run back to my place and brought me a change of clothes and my toothbrush. Other than for Danny to be well, I didn’t think I needed anything else.

  Until Jake appeared in Danny’s doorway shortly before nine. “I told them I was his brother and that I’d just heard,” he said as he came in, staring at the bed. Danny’s head was encased in gauze due to the multiple cuts they’d stitched. His face was swollen and bruised. His upper body was wrapped as well, supporting his broken collarbone.

  He had tubes and wires hooked up to him. But not a ventilator.

  “He’s breathing on his own,” I said, unfolding my legs from the chair and joining him at the side of the bed. “That’s the most critical thing,” I added. “It means his brain is still functioning.”

  “Still?” Jake’s brown eyes gazed at me in horror. “He’s...I thought he was going to be fine...”

  “He is,” I assured him quickly. “They just...There’s a lot of swelling, which they say is normal considering the amount of trauma his head sustained. They told me his head took the brunt of the impact. He wasn’t wearing his seat belt.”

  I swallowed, and backed up a step.

  And told Jake what I hadn’t been able to say to anyone else. “This was my fault.” The people who loved him would need answers. Would need to understand how Danny could have done something so utterly reckless and foolish. So unlike him.