6 Mountain Brothers for Christmas

“Kyra, what’s happened?” I asked.

“Just please hurry, okay? The doctor wants to see all of us in half an hour.”

“I promise I’ll be there. Do you hear me? I’m coming, Kyra.”

I nodded my thanks to the clerk as I hung up the phone call and raced out of there. I zoomed down the road, driving through a place and picking up doughnuts as well as a shareable container of coffee. I stuck it all into the holding compartment on the back of my bike before I raced back to the hospital, took the elevator up to the floor and ran back into the waiting room.

I ran in and dropped everything down with two minutes to spare and everyone started digging into the doughnuts. The coffee was flowing and the sugar was permeating the air, but I realized Kyra wasn’t eating anything. She was simply sitting in a chair and staring at the wall, so I went and sat down beside her.

Without saying a word, she reached over and took my hand and I could feel her trembling with fear.

“It’s gonna be okay,” I said as I leaned toward her. “Your father’s gonna be just fine.”

I placed a kiss on her forehead and I could’ve sworn I heard her sigh with relief just a bit.

“Mark Lancaster?” the doctor asked.

We all hopped up as he entered the room.

“Good, you’re all here,” the doctor said.

“What’s going on with my father?” Kyra asked. “Why did you call all of us here?”

I couldn’t help but look around the room and notice that Landon was nowhere in sight and I honestly wasn’t sure what that meant anymore.

“The good news is, your father will recover,” the doctor said. “But he’ll have some impairments with his speech and his movements for a while. Sometimes, it’s only weeks, sometimes, it's months and, sometimes, it’s permanent. But he’s going to live.”

Even though that was wonderful news, I could see the tears welling in Kyra’s eyes. I knew her mind was whirling faster than she could process things and we all stared at her and waited for her reaction.

I held her hand tightly while she slowly processed what the doctor had said.

“Will he ever take care of himself again?” she finally asked.

“It depends on how well he recovers but, in the beginning, he’ll need help, and a lot of it.”

That was when Kyra’s legs bottomed out. She dropped to the floor and I wrapped my arms around her, holding her close to my body while she sobbed. I pulled her close to me, feeling her tears soaking my shirt and my lips migrated to the shell of her ear while my brothers tried to hold themselves back.

“It’s gonna be all right,” I said into her ear. “We’re gonna get through this and I’m gonna be here. From start to finish. Okay?”

I felt her nod into me and I planted a small, delicate kiss to the top of her head.

“Kyra?” the doctor asked.

“Yeah?”

“We’ll be keeping your father for monitoring over the next few days. You should go home and get some rest.”

“I can’t do that,” she said, shaking her head. “I can’t leave him here.”

“It’ll take us hours to prepare him a room on one of the regular floors and he’ll most likely be unconscious until then. You need to get yourself some sleep, especially if your plan is to take care of your father.”

“Of course, that’s the plan,” she said. “Why the hell wouldn’t that be the plan?”

“Kyra, the doctor just wants you to take care of yourself,” I said. “You can’t take care of someone else if you’re too tired to do it.”

“I’m not leaving him here,” she said.

“One of us will stay behind,” Chance said. “If that’s what you want.”