“Is that the maid you knocked up?”
“Ryan, pay attention. Bella James is a VP at JC and the mother of my children.”
“So, is she your girlfriend? Because you sure scored a nice piece of ass. Or wait? Does this mean she’s out of the way, and you get the kids now? Because Mom has a boarding school all picked out in Connecticut.”
“We are not sending five-year-olds to damned Connecticut, Ryan. I don’t want Bella out of the way, either. It’s contemptible of you to suggest that, although I’m not sure what I expected. Brotherly support and compassion, maybe. I’ve bailed your ass out of trouble often enough I thought I could count on a little civility.”
“Harvey, you’re such a fucking drama queen, I swear. I’m going to bed. Don’t call me unless she dies. And if she dies, don’t call me until you know the funeral arrangements. I’m sure Mom will insist we attend to keep up appearances for the Carlson heirs,” Ryan said, heaving a burdened sigh.
“Go to hell, Ryan. I’m deleting your number. The next time you’re in a Serbian holding cell and get one phone call, I suggest you try Mom because I won’t answer.”
Harvey shut off his phone in disgust. That his own brother would say something so vile as ‘call me if she dies.’ And the fact that she might. It was too much for Harvey. He looked at the screen, saw she was still in OR and the expectation was at least three hours more of surgery. He stormed out of the hospital and found the nearest bar.
Harvey started with Scotch, but it made him maudlin. He regretted all the time he and Bella had spent apart, all the milestones he’d missed with the twins. He switched to tequila and two shots in he was ready to beat Ryan’s smug face until he begged for mercy. Anger surged through his veins like life itself. He was powerless to save Bella. He was facing life without her.
So he raised his shot glass and drank it down, even knowing all along in some shadowed place in the back of his mind, that she’d hate what he was doing. If he were on an operating table, Bella would be sitting vigil on the edge of a plastic waiting room chair, her pretty face white with worry. She wouldn’t go get sloppy drunk in some dive a block from the trauma center. Because she was an adult and a parent, not some sad sack ex-boyfriend drinking away his sorrows.
He pushed the empty glass away, laid down cash for his tab and went down the street and ordered coffee. The
least he could do, he thought sadly, was be coherent when the news came about whether she’d survived. He didn’t want to lose her, and he didn’t want to dishonor her memory—if it came to that—by acting like the spoiled rich boy she’d run from all those years ago.
Harvey would be better, starting now, whether he had Bella by his side or only her children to live for. They deserved the best of him, and he was going to live up to that. He drank the bitter coffee with lots of sugar, forced down some kind of disgustingly sweet muffin, so he had food in his stomach with all that alcohol, and went back to the hospital, sick worry riding in his gut.
He resumed his seat in the nearly empty waiting room and saw that there was less than an hour left on Bella’s surgery. So she was still back there. So she was still alive. He messaged Maria that the display showed she was stable and still in the OR. Then he gripped the armrests of his chair and stared straight ahead, his brain clear and cold, painfully aware of what was at stake.
If she survived, he’d win her back.
He’d do anything she wanted.
Just as long as they could be together.
Be a family.
Chapter 17
There were no windows in the room. It was dark except for the greenish gleam of the monitors hooked to Bella. To say she was resting would be wrong. She made whimpering sounds from time to time, her blood pressure spiked from pain, and she’d moved her legs, and then whimper again. It gutted him to think of what she was suffering. But she had survived. Because ahead of her there was life, and being with her children and maybe being with him as well. She was going to live. And nothing was more beautiful than that.
He had called Maria who wept and praised God and said she would take care of the twins. Bella’s sister also helped. Harvey told Maria if she needed anything including a backup babysitter, to call Greta and she’d take care of it. He messaged Greta to give Maria anything she wanted, and to send a twenty-five thousand dollar bonus to her checking account before the end of business tomorrow. He also told her to have Chad, one of the executive VP’s, cover any emergencies and to cancel all his meetings for the next week at least.
After that, he shut off his phone. Time had no more meaning to him. There was no difference between night and day in the ICU, no alteration in light or sound, merely the continual footsteps of nurses, the beep of monitors, and the rush of cold air from the vents overhead. It might have been day or night, he would never have known. He slept on a chair.
Greta came to visit, and he gave her some time alone with Bella. When he came back, she was crying, grief-stricken with worry.
“She’s going to make it.”
“The thought of losing her just about kills me.”
“I love her too. I’m going to ask her to marry me when she wakes up and is well enough.”
“I always knew you two were meant for each other.”
“She and the kids are my world.”
“I haven’t met her kids yet. Just saw a few pictures.”
“They’re my kids too.”
“You’re adopting them?”