Those kids would have no mother. They’d miss her so much, and Caden especially would be so scared. Would they live with him? How could he help them through losing their mom?
Oh, Bella. I love you so damn much.
How could he live without Bella? Her blue eyes and her sarcasm and her know-it-all eye roll. Her compassion and her competence and her fierce love for the twins. The hitch in her breath when he kissed her neck. Her voice and her hands in his hair and every second they’d missed out on because he was too damned proud to admit that he wanted her back.
He could lose her. They all could.
Harvey dropped his head into his hands. For the first time he could remember since the day his dad died, he prayed. He begged.
I can’t lose her. Those babies need her. I need her. I know I haven’t done a damn thing to deserve such a gift—and I’m sorry I just said damn—but please let her live. Please. Please.
He choked back a sob. The woman at the front desk called to him. “Hey, are you the guy who was looking for the James woman?”
Harvey composed himself and got to his feet, “Yes?”
“They’ve got her back in Trauma. She was brought here. The doctor is with her now. They’ll run some tests and know more in a little bit.”
“Can I go be with her? Can I talk to the doctors?”
“No. Family only in most cases, and no visitors at all when it’s something like this.”
“What do you mean?”
“Bad car wreck,” she shrugged, “You can sit down or you can leave me your cell number, and I’ll call you when you can see her.”
“I’ll stay here. I’ll wait. If there’s any news, please let me know.”
Harvey sat in the crowded waiting room listening to people have loud cell phone conversations about their illness, injuries, and bad boyfriends/girlfriends. The television droned on. He just stared, unseeing, at all of it. Every time he breathed, he thought ‘please’ with every fiber of his being. Please.
After an hour, he thought to text Maria, who had already apparently messaged him six times for news. “The doctor’s with her in Trauma. I’ll know more soon,” he texted her, wishing he could tell her something more encouraging or detailed. He had a lot of emails backed up in his inbox, but he couldn’t imagine tackling them or trying to read anything or do business.
Jason Smith, he thought. This is how Jason Smith feels about the JS acquisition. Like, my wife could die so fuck this shit. He shook his head. He’d been such an asshole about the merger, had wanted to go forward with it and thought they were stalling because someone had a sick wife.
Now he got it. Way too late.
It was like a punch to the chest, and he couldn’t catch his breath. That was how it felt to know you might lose the woman you loved. Right now, all of JS and all of the other Carlson family holdings could go down in flames, and he wouldn’t even look up to
see the headline. He wouldn’t care at all. Because the only thing that mattered to him in the entire world was strapped to a gurney right now fighting for her life.
He’d spent years conquering the business world, amassing fortunes, and helming companies, going restlessly from one challenge to the next. He’d traveled all over the world, spent a summer on Lake Como in Italy, skied the Swiss Alps, gone climbing in New Zealand. Nothing he had ever seen in all his travels had compared to the joy on her face when she looked at the twins, their twins. Or her expression when he’d brought the hot air balloon for their date—their last date—back in Arizona. That had been a magical rendezvous, spoiled, he realized now, by his mother and brother and his own arrogant bullshit. If he’d never said anything stupid about having her under control, she never would have run away and taken those babies with her. He’d never even told her he was sorry he’d said that, sorry he’d frightened her so much and made her doubt him. And she was right. His mother would’ve taken the babies away from Bella without a doubt. He knew he probably would’ve caved under the pressure from his mother. But not now…not ever again. He would never let his mother control him like that ever again. Now it wrenched him that he might never get the chance to apologize to her.
She meant more to him than work or anything else.
It seemed like forever. At last, the clerk called his name. “She’s about to go down for a CT. If you want to see her, I can buzz you back. She’s in number nine.”
Harvey waited to be buzzed in, and then strode into the wide corridor of the emergency care center. Curtained-off cubicles lined either side of the hall. He heard the beep of machines, the hum of urgent whispers, and he heard whimpering and weeping and cries of pain. His steps slowed, his breath grew heavier.
He unclenched his fists by force of will. He wanted to run, to grab Bella and take her away from the antiseptic stink of this terrible place where people were in pain and people were dying. She didn’t belong here, hooked up to machines and surrounded by strangers in this dimly-lit, icy cold holding pen for the sick and injured. He thought he could smell blood and the indefinite but recognizable stink of sickness and decay. He counted the curtains until he came to the ninth one and he slid the curtain aside, the rattle of the hooks as they slid along the rail in the ceiling seeming deafeningly loud in the hush.
There she was, impossibly small on a narrow, high gurney, the rails up on either side of her to stop her from falling. Her left cheek was swollen, and there was blood crusted up by her left eye where no one had bothered to clean her up. They were attending to injuries and assessing the damage, he knew, not trying to make her look pretty. The line of her jaw, her cheekbones were obscured, puffy and slightly discolored. And her mouth, her beautiful mouth, was open and pulled down in one corner by the tubing, the tape used to fasten the ventilator to her face. The sight of all that tape stuck to her skin made him wince. That tube went all the way down her throat, he knew. And it meant she wasn’t breathing on her own. She was covered with a sheet and her clothes were gone. EMS probably had to cut them off of her. He shuddered at the thought of strangers’ hands scissoring through her pants, her shirt, peeling back her clothes to get to her wounds. A technician came in to check the machines, and he turned to her.
“Could I talk to the doctor?” he said, and his voice was raspy as if he’d been screaming.
The woman nodded and soon another woman, older and larger than the tech, came into the cubicle. “Are you family?”
“Yes,” a woman said. “He’s her fiancé.”
Harvey looked at her and recognized her from pictures. It was Bella’s sister.