Shift Happens (Providence Family Ties 2)

“Take me to him,” I snapped as I walked past him toward the door that I’d seen him come out of.

“I’m not sure—”

Numb, I pointed at the door. “That’s my father in there. I’m so blessed to have two, but they’re both everything to me. If he’s as sick as you’ve just said, I need—” I broke off as my voice cracked and blinked against the tears that were blinding me. “I need to be there with him. He needs me.” I pointed at Sam. “He needs his husband.”

Checking his watch, he mulled it over and finally nodded. “I’ll let you in for an hour, but if his condition changes, we need you to leave without argument. If you can’t promise me that, then—”

“I’ll do whatever you need me to do if it saves him. Just please, let us go through to him,” I begged, meaning every word.

Walking over to us, he took my arm and directed us toward a different door—one that didn’t say ‘staff only.’

My dad’s bed was the first one in the unit. Once I saw him, I kind of wished it’d been the last one so I could have seen the other patients on my way to him and prepared myself for what I was about to see.

Machines, so many of them beeping and attached to him with a multitude of cables that made no sense to me. They’d had to amputate just below his elbow after the bullet had gone through the bone, the damage making it impossible to save.

He was so pale he almost matched the white sheets on the bed that came up to his chest, covering where I knew there’d be more bandages.

But what killed me was the tube in his mouth attached to a machine that I knew was breathing for him. I breathed without thinking about it, my body working on instinct and signals I didn’t even know were being sent around it, but his couldn’t do that.

Right now, he was so fragile and so far away from the dad I’d known my whole life, and I had a moment of irrational panic.

Panic that Fita could hire someone to come in and stop the machine breathing for him.

Panic that he’d get a blood clot and die.

Panic that his body was too weak to recover from the trauma it’d just sustained.

Pushing past Ryan, I dropped down onto my knees beside the bed and burst into tears. Big sobs that almost knocked me off balance burst out of me.

“Please, please wake up,” I tried to get out between each hitched breath in and each burst of it back out again. “I can’t do this. Please. I just can’t—” The force of the sob that hit me physically hurt. “If you’re not here.”

A hand landed on my head, and then I was surrounded by the scent of Sam’s cologne.

“Maybe we should let him sleep for a bit, honey. You’re crying too hard right now, and we don’t want you to—”

The slow beeps coming from the machine next to us sped up slightly and sounded louder.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” the doctor murmured, looking over at the nurse who was smiling at the screen.

The smile was lost on me, though. I was too far into the freaking out zone that something was wrong with him.

“What’s happening? What is it?” I jumped up, knocking my dad onto his back, and leaned over Ryan. “Dad? Daddy, please.”

“Miss Adams,” the doctor began, but I corrected him out of habit.

“Adams-DeWitt. They’re both my dads, and they’re both each other’s worlds, so they have each other’s names, too.” That was the answer we’d come up with when I was little when we’d discussed people and other kids asking questions. It was the one I’d given ever since, and the only one that explained it correctly.

“I apologize, Miss Adams-DeWitt.” He turned to look at the nurse. “Go into his file and double check his last name’s correct, please.”

The doctor didn’t look upset or confused by this, he just looked at the nurse expectantly to do what he’d just asked.

Turning back to us, the doctor squinted at the monitor and then smiled at us again.

“Anyway, there’s a phenomenon where unconscious or comatose patients respond to the voices of their loved ones. The study was based on patients who’d sustained traumatic brain injuries, but it’s also pertinent to medically induced patients like your father and husband.” He’d addressed both of us as he’d said the different titles, making it clear we were both equally important to my dad.

Frowning, he asked, “Is it okay with you if I refer to him by his first name? I find it helps the patient when they hear it, and it also creates a better link between us”—he motioned with his finger from himself to where we were standing—“so that you don’t think I only see him as a patient. Everyone I treat is a human being, a person with a life, and referring to them formally creates a bit of a divide between that.”