CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Hope
* * * * * *
“DID YOU SEE? Jacob Wild is here.”
I froze, the magazine I’d been mindlessly flicking through forgotten on my lap. For three hours, Jacob and I had waited in the ER. He wasn’t considered a top priority, and we’d sat side by side, butts aching in hard chairs, stony silence wrapping us in our own painful little world.
Fifty minutes ago, his name had been called on a crackly intercom, and he’d left on stiff legs and stiffer spine, not saying a word to me.
No ‘goodbye.’ No ‘I’ll see you soon.’ No ‘You can come with me, if you want.’
Nothing but his back and the awful feeling I’d done something unforgivable.
What was I supposed to do?
I’d headed to his house this morning, hoping to find him either in the fields or at least not too sore from his accident the day before. I’d planned on tagging along while he worked or asking for another forced day of hanging out together.
But that was before I’d knocked, peered through the glass sliders, and seen him sprawled unconscious on the kitchen floor.
I didn’t really remember much after that.
I’d shut down my terror and focused on doing whatever I could to help. I’d tried calling his mother. Only, his phone had a screen lock, and I didn’t know Della’s number. I’d contemplated calling an ambulance but knew the trouble I’d be in when he woke.
My only option was to stay with Jacob and try to wake him up or leave him alone and rush back to Della’s, all the while hoping she and Cassie were still around and not on some new errand or chore.
In the end, he’d opened his eyes, drenching me in residual jitters and a rush of adrenaline. I needed him better. And if that meant I was stroppy with him, then so be it. No one ordered him around these days, and that was part of the problem. They let him get away with too much. They walked on eggshells.
To be fair, his attitude made me want to do the same.
But the fear of pissing him off was mysteriously absent under the anger I now harboured. Anger because he didn’t look after himself, and I vowed I’d do it for him if he wouldn’t.
But there was also pity.
So much pity because the terror and grief in his eyes before marching into the hospital shattered my stupid heart. I’d pushed him without thinking. I’d been cruel and bossy.
“I know. It must be pretty serious for him to enter a hospital. After what happened with his father and all.”
I stiffened, eavesdropping when I shouldn’t.
“Yeah, I remember what happened after the funeral. You?”
Every inch of me wanted to spin in my orange plastic seat and stare at the gossipers who spoke about Jacob as if he were nothing more than town prattle and not a living, breathing, hurting…friend.
“Didn’t he ride his horse to the hospital a week or so after? Tied the thing up right outside by the ambulance bay.”
“You’re right. He marched in with hay trailing after him and demanded to see his father.”
“His dead father.”
“Such a sad day,” the older woman murmured. “My friend who works as a receptionist here said he wouldn’t leave. He was adamant his dad was still alive and the hospital was hiding him.”
Oh, God.
My heart squeezed and dropped lifelessly into my stomach.
Jacob had come here as a ten-year-old on Binky looking for his dad?
Tears sprang to my eyes at the thought.
“Took three staff to get him home.”
“So terrible. Least he didn’t do that again. But the coughing thing, Gladys.”
Gladys made an agreeing noise. “I know. So tragic.”
The younger woman tutted under her breath. “I was in line at the supermarket one day, a year or so after his father’s death. Jacob and his mother were in front of us, and Jacob had a total breakdown when my husband coughed. Wasn’t Neville’s fault. He had the flu, but the Wild boy turned catatonic.”
“Yep. He needed therapy then, and he probably needs therapy now.”
Their gossiping lowered to a whisper, “Well, he must’ve had some. Otherwise, no way he’d be here. Guess that’ll make the girls happy, seeing as he’s the richest unmarried boy in this town. If he’s not crazy anymore, that’ll give them all a fighting chance to be the next Mrs Wild.”
A long pause followed by a shuffle of person and squeak of plastic as the two ladies committed deeper to their tattling. “Do you think he’s crazy from his daddy dying or from the rumour that his parents were brother and sister?”
“Ah, Lorraine, that Mclary court case cleared up there was no incest. You don’t still believe they were siblings, do you?”
“It would explain a lot, though, wouldn’t it?”
Another pause while my temper steadily rose.
How dare these women discuss Jacob as if he were some outcast of society? As if any of his behaviour was his fault? He’d been a boy who didn’t know how to deal with his grief, and they’d laughed at him instead of given sympathy. No wonder Jacob iced everyone out. I’d do the same if such rumours circulated about me.