My head prickles, and my blood starts to run cold.
I feel the air in the room shift instantly. That fucking crap feeling I’ve had since this morning starts to turn my thoughts to shit.
“When?…Are they?…She’s…oh God, no…no.” Stuart’s voice comes out a whisper. He turns and locks eyes with me.
And I know. I just know.
Fuck, no.
“We’re coming now.” I watch the phone slide from Stuart’s ear in slow motion.
“Stuart, what’s wrong?” Denny comes from around his drum kit.
Stuart casts a glance to Denny, then comes straight back to me.
Stop looking at me.
“That was Josh.” His lip trembles. “He was just about to leave the hospital, when…” His voice breaks, and he clears his throat, then continues. “Three people were brought into the ER. A car accident. It’s Simone, Dave, and…Tru.”
Tru. Car. Accident.
No. God, no.
Denny clasps his hand over his mouth. “Simone, is she…?” Denny sounds afraid.
I’m afraid. Terrified.
I can’t breathe. My heart hurts against my ribs. Hurts real bad.
Tom and Smith have drawn closer to Stuart.
He looks at Denny again. “Josh said Simone is roughed up, but she’ll be okay. Dave too, but…” He brings his eyes back to mine. “Jake…” He steps toward me.
“No.” I step back and bump into the guitar.
I don’t want to hear this. I don’t want to know.
I shake my head. I try to move away again, to get away from Stuart, but there’s nowhere left for me to go.
“I’m so sorry.” I watch, numb, as he wipes a tear from his face. “The other car hit the passenger side. Tru took full impact. Josh said she’s in surgery now. We have to get to the hospital.”
I close my eyes.
“The baby?” The words fall from my mouth. I don’t feel like it’s me talking.
“I don’t know. I’m sorry. We need to go. Josh is waiting in the ER for us. He’ll take us to them.”
The room is closing in on me. There’s no air.
I feel like I’m underwater.
Drowning. I’m drowning.
I had her this morning, in my arms. I should have kept her there, held her tight, and never let her go.
I can’t lose her. I can’t.
Fuck, this hurts. So much. Too much.
“Jake…,” Stuart says.
I lift my head. “I can’t lose her.” I can’t breathe. I’m gasping for air. “Not her. Anyone but her.”
My eyes meet his.
“I know.” Another tear falls from his eye. He wipes it away.
Tears keep leaving his eyes.
I want to cry. I want to shout. Something. Anything to get this excruciating pain out of my chest. But nothing’s happening.
“Come on, let’s get to the hospital. We’ll know more once we’re there.” Stuart urges me to move, and that’s when my legs give out on me.
He grabs me, wrapping an arm around my back. “I got you,” his voice cracks. “I got you, Jake. It’s gonna be okay. They’ll both be fine.”
Fine. They’ll both be fine.
I’m in a car. My car, I think. Stuart’s driving.
Car.
Accident.
Tru.
I can’t breathe.
The pain in my chest is unbearable.
I don’t know what to do.
I should be doing something. I’m supposed to protect her, protect them both.
“I wasn’t there. I should have been there,” I choke out. I know it’s me speaking, but it doesn’t sound like my voice.
“It’s gonna be okay, man.” Tom’s hands come over the backseat, pressing down on my shoulders.
I feel like he’s holding me in place. Like he thinks I’m going to lose control any moment now.
I want to lose control. But I can’t seem to get this maddening, sickening feeling out of my chest. It’s trapped in there, burning every part of me.
“Tru’s gonna be fine,” Tom continues. “She’s a fighter. She’ll get through this.”
“And what about the baby…my baby?” I choke on the words.
Tom’s silence weighs heavy.
“They’re gonna be fine, Jake.” He squeezes my shoulder.
There it is again. That word—fine.
But that isn’t what I want to hear. I don’t want to hear any of this. I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be hearing fine.
I want to be home with Tru, holding her beautiful body in my arms. I want to feel her skin on mine. Her breath mixing with mine as she kisses me in that gentle way she does.
I want to hear her laugh. I want to see her smile.
I want to feel my baby kick.
I want…them.
I close my eyes again.
I’m in the hospital. I can hear Stuart talking. There are people everywhere.
And white. White walls. White coats.
Where’s Tru?
“Jake…”
I turn. It’s Josh. He looks sorry. Sympathetic.
I don’t want sympathy. I want Tru.
“Jake…,” he repeats. “I’m so very sorry…” I hear the break in his voice.
Stuart puts his hand on Josh’s arm. I see Josh’s eyes go to it.
He looks back at me, and then he sounds very businesslike. Like a doctor delivering bad news. “Tru’s in surgery. All they’re telling me right now is that she suffered a severe head injury as a result of the accident. Dr. Kimble, one of the surgeons, will be out to see you soon. If you’ll follow me this way…”
Severe. Head. Injury.
I’m moving. In an elevator. Upward.
The doors open with a ping. Then it’s like I wake up. I realise where I am. Why I’m here.
Tru. Car. Accident.
Fuck, no.
No. No. No. No. No. No.
No!
I run out of the elevator, sprinting down the hall. I’m not sure where I’m going.
I just need to find her.
Surgery. Josh said surgery.
I can hear voices calling out behind me, but I can’t stop.
Tru.
I need to find her.
Where are you, baby?
I’m stopping. Why am I stopping?
Arms around me, stopping me, holding me.
I don’t want them touching me. I want Tru. I just want Tru.
“Wait, take it easy, Jake. You’re here. We need to go in here.” Stuart, with Tom’s help, steers me through a door into a room.
A white room.
Fucking white everywhere.
Then I’m sitting in a chair.
I don’t want to be sitting.
I stand up.
Everyone stands with me.
Stuart. Tom. Smith. Josh.
“Where’s Denny?” Is that me speaking?
“He’s downstairs in the ER with Simone and Dave,” Stuart answers. “Why don’t you sit down, Jake?”
I shake my head.
I can’t sit while Tru’s…what? While she’s in surgery? While she’s…dying?
Dying.
Is she going to die?
Is my baby dying too?
Am I going to lose them both? Are they both going to die like Jonny did?
Why is this happening?
It hurts. It hurts so fucking much. I feel like my rib cage is being cracked wide open and my life is being drawn out of me, slowly.
The door opens. A man in a white coat approaches me.
White.
Sympathy.
No.
I don’t want sympathy. I don’t want to be here. I need to get out of here. I need to find Tru.
I just want to touch her. Hold her. Never let her go.
“Mr. Wethers, I’m Dr. Kimble.”
My insides start to shake through to the bone.
“Tru…where is she?”
The doctor puts his hands together in front of him, in an almost prayerlike manner, pointing them in my direction.
I don’t like it. I want to knock his fucking hands away.
“Trudy is still in surgery.” He sounds like Josh did—businesslike. “She sustained a very severe head injury…”
There are those words again. But he said “very.” Josh never said “very.”
That’s worse. Very is worse.
God, no.
“…excessive bleeding within the skull…pressure on her brain…swelling…baby…delivery…”
Baby.
I meet the doctor’s eyes. “What?” There’s my voice again, but it still doesn’t sound like me.
Dr. Kimble shifts on his feet. “We had to make a decision, Mr. Wethers. There was no time to waste. The baby was in severe distress. Its heart rate was dropping exponentially. We had no other choice but to perform an emergency caesarean section.”
I grip my hand to my chest, digging my fingers into my sternum, trying to relieve the agonising, burning pain inside of me.
“But she was only twenty-nine weeks…” I can’t breathe.
“The baby’s fine.” He nods, slowly. “He’s having a little difficulty breathing on his own because of respiratory distress syndrome, which is very common in premature babies, but we’re helping him with that, and he’s responding well.”
“Him?” A tear rolls down my cheek.
“Yes, you have a son.”
A son.
We have a son, and Tru doesn’t know. She needs to know. I need to see her, to tell her.
“Where is he?”
“They’ll be moving him to the NICU shortly.”
“And Tru…will she…is she…?”
He wraps his arms over his chest. “She’s with some of the best surgeons in the world right now, and they’re doing everything they can for her.”
“Is she”—I take a staggered breath—“Is she going to…make it?”
I see the look in his eyes, the one he thinks he’s hiding, but I see it clearly.
“The doctors are doing everything they can to help her pull through, Mr. Wethers.”
And this is the exact moment that my worst fear is realised.
She might die.
I could lose Tru, with no way back to her.
Lose her. Forever.
Oh God, no.
No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No.
I press my fist into my forehead. “You don’t think she’s going to make it.”
He shifts again, not meeting my eyes. “It’s too early to make an appropriate diagnosis of—”
“DON’T FOB ME OFF! JUST TELL ME THE FUCKIN’ TRUTH! IS SHE GOING TO DIE?”
“Jake…” Tom’s hand touches my shoulder, but I shrug him off.
My chest is heaving, fear driving everything inside me.
I stare into the doctor’s face, searching.
I have to know. I have to know if I’m going to lose everything. Lose the only person who has ever mattered to me.
And right now, he is the only one who can tell me.
He exhales, his voice softening. “Right now, Trudy’s chances of survival are fifty-fifty at best. When she wakes from the surgery…” He catches himself, and his expression communicates compassion. “If and when she wakes…”
If.
“We have no idea as to the extent of the damage to her brain.”
“No…”
I don’t remember falling. I just know I’m on the floor. Tom’s holding me.