I’m sorry I didn’t get Tru to stay home with me that morning. Sorry I didn’t protect her like I promised I would. Sorry I brought her to LA.
If I had never talked Tru into moving to LA, this never would have happened.
We should have moved to the UK. If we had, she wouldn’t be in that hospital bed fighting for her life.
Fighting. For. Her. Life.
I want to fight. I want to fight this fucking pain out of me.
I want to beat the shit out of the motherfucker who got drunk, and then climbed into his car and ran that red light, changing our lives irrevocably. I hate that he’s dead, because I want to kill him myself. I want to kill that bastard over and over again for what he’s done to my girl.
I feel like I haven’t breathed since I saw her. All those tubes were coming out of her body, with the sound of the ventilator’s pumping giving me the only sign she’s still alive.
I miss her so fucking much.
I miss her voice. Her smile. Her beautiful brown eyes gazing at me in that special way.
If she dies…if I lose her…I don’t think I’ll be able to go on.
How do you live when your life dies?
The light in the elevator bank signals an imminent stop.
My mouth dries and my hands start to shake. I flex my fingers in and out.
The door slides open. I see Eva first.
I hadn’t realized until this moment just how much Tru looks like her mom.
Seeing Eva, her eyes wide with fear and heartbreak, looking like Tru, twists a knife in my heart.
Her eyes meet mine and I see them fill with tears. “Oh, Jake.” Her voice breaks. She rushes toward me, throwing her arms around me, and cries into my T-shirt.
I try to hold it together, but then Billy is there. He puts one arm around Eva, the other around me, and I break down.
After a moment, I wipe my face dry on my sleeve. Needing to regain some space and composure, I take a step back from them both. “Shall I take you to Tru?” I ask, my voice hoarse.
Dabbing her eyes dry with a tissue, Eva replies, “Yes,” at the same time as Billy.
As we walk to Tru’s room, I’m relieved for the space to piece myself back together.
Listening to Billy and Eva cry for Tru was like feeling their heartbreak coupled in with my own.
I know heartbreak. I felt it when Tru left me when I fucked up with the drugs.
But this—it’s like my heart is slowly dying, gasping for the fuel it needs to go on. Tru. I know, unequivocally, if I lose her, everything that is me will go with her.
As we approach Tru’s room, Dave stands.
He’s the only one here at the moment. I sent everyone to the hotel across the street.
I needed them all out of here.
I told them Billy and Eva would need space with Tru. But honestly, I just couldn’t cope with Simone’s constant crying. Stuart’s worrying eyes on me. Even Tom was driving me insane. He kept looking at me like he was expecting me to fall over the edge. I know what he was thinking.
What they’re all thinking.
Worrying I’ll do what I always do when things get hard—run straight to the ready hands of a dealer.
I’m not doing that this time.
Things are bad enough without me being the coward I know I am and erasing the pain with coke.
I knew it was only going to get so much harder when Billy and Eva arrived.
I just didn’t realize how much harder.
“Mr. and Mrs. Bennett, I’m so very sorry about Tru.” I notice that Dave can’t meet their eyes.
I watch Eva’s eyes rake over Dave’s injuries, then come back to his face. “Dave, you were with Tru…in the accident?”
He nods solemnly, his eyes going to the floor. “Yes. I was driving the car.”
“Was she…awake after the accident?”
Fear clings to my skin. I hadn’t asked this question, because I was afraid of the answer. I can’t bear to think of Tru in pain. The thought alone tears me to pieces.
Dave looks up, first at me, then Eva. “No.” He shakes his head. “She didn’t wake up.”
I hear a rush of breath come from Billy, mirroring my own. As I glance at him, I see how very bad he looks.
Unshaven, crumpled, quiet. Not the Billy I know.
She’s his little girl. This is killing him.
We need to get this over with. They need to see Tru.
I take the lead, heading for the door, and they both follow.
From the instant they see her, their reaction is no different than mine was.
It hurts so fucking much to hear their pain. Watch them sob over her bedside.
It’s crippling.
I feel like I’m drowning again. Fighting against the tide with no way of surfacing. Suffocating under the pressure of the emotions in the room. I know I have to get out of here.
Slipping out of the room quietly, I leave them alone.
Fogged up, my head aching, I take the seat beside Dave.
We sit in mutual silence for a long moment.
“I don’t blame you,” I finally say. I take a deep breath, then turn and look at him. “I know you will have done everything you could to protect her. I know what kind of man you are.”
Dave turns, briefly meeting my eyes. He gives a slow nod, then quickly looks away. I don’t miss the tears misting up his eyes.
The door to Tru’s room opens soon after, and Billy and Eva emerge.
“Can we see him?” Billy asks.
“Of course.” I get up and lead the way to my son’s—their grandson’s—room.
I push the door open. The nurse is sitting in a chair by his incubator, reading.
Closing her book, she stands at our entrance. “I’ll give y’all a moment,” she says, exiting the room.
The room is so silent. The only sound is the blipping of the machine.
I walk over and stare down at my sleeping boy. I get a heavy combination of love and heartbreak every time I look at him.
Turning back, I see Billy and Eva still standing near the door.
“He’s sleeping,” I say quietly.
Billy is first to move. He walks over to the incubator and stands beside me.
I hear his breath catch. Lifting his gaze back to Eva, he says to her, “He looks just like Tru.”
I bite my quivering lip, hard, to stop the flow of emotion I feel coming, and I get a sharp taste of blood in my mouth.
Eva comes over, so I stand back to give them space.
I know why they were hesitant to see him once they were in here. They fear he might be all they’ll have left of Tru.
I know this because it’s what I’m so very fucking terrified of myself.
Resting her hand lightly on the top of the incubator, Eva turns to me. “Do you have a name for him?”
“No.” I shake my head. “We couldn’t agree on one.”
Tru and I had so many disagreements over baby names. But now it all just seems so irrelevant. I would give anything for her to be here with me, naming our son.
“I don’t want to name him until Tru wakes up.” I clear my throat. “I want her to choose his name.”
Eva nods. “I think she’ll like that, Jake.” She looks back down at my boy. “For now, my little darling,” she says, smiling, “until your mummy wakes up, you’re Baby Wethers-Bennett.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Okay, so in the world of music”—I start flicking through the music magazine that Dave brought me—“there is absolutely nothing worth telling.”
Closing the magazine, I toss it to the floor beside my chair, and it hits with a loud slap.
Leaning back, I stretch out my aching legs and push my fingers into my hair. “What else is happening? Right, so Vicky’s going home today. She’s stayed as long as she could, sweetheart, but she has to get back to the magazine, keep it running so you’ve got a job to go back to. Not that you need to work, but I know how much you love your job. Oh, and don’t worry about the book launch. The publishers said it can happen whenever we want, so there’s no worry on that score…” Taking a deep breath, I trail off and stare at Tru.
Her eyes are closed like they have been for the past four days.
As the swelling on her brain started to reduce, her eyes closed naturally, and now it just looks like she’s sleeping. My beautiful sleeping girl.
The good news is she’s breathing alone. Kish monitored her breathing and how much was assisted and unassisted for the first few days. Her unassisted breathing increased hourly, and when she reached 90 percent unassisted, Kish removed her ventilator.
He assured me this was very positive for her recovery.
I want to get my hopes up. But I’m afraid to.
So for those four days, like the three before them, I have sat here waiting for her to open her eyes and tell me to stop boring the fuck out of her with the shit I spout.
Because that’s all I do, sit here and talk to Tru, waiting for her to wake.
Aside from the regular visits to my son, I never leave her. My son, who is still waiting for his mom to wake up and name him.
Leaning forward, I reach over and take hold of her soft, warm hand. Her unresponsive hand.
“Our boy is still waiting for his name, Tru, so you need to hurry and open those beautiful eyes of yours so you can choose it. It can even be one of those god-awful ones you were suggesting when we were trying to decide on names—you remember, sweetheart? What was that one you suggested? Skip? Fuckin’ Skip Wethers!” Shaking my head, I let out a laugh.
It echoes around the room and hits me back painfully in the chest.
Closing my eyes, I let my head hang back and I release a long sigh to the ceiling.
The ceiling that I close my eyes to every night.
I haven’t stepped foot out of this hospital since the day of the accident.
When I do manage to sleep, it’s beside Tru on a bed I had brought in for me. The times I do eat, it’s in here with her.
I fear wandering too far from this room in case she wakes. I have to be here when she opens her eyes. I have to be the first thing she sees.
I need her to know that I’m here for her, that I will always be here for her.
So here I wait. In a hospital, surrounded by medication.
Drugs.
Do I want a hit?
Yes. So very fucking badly.
I want the fear and pain that’s consuming me to disappear.
I fucking hate that I want drugs.
I hate that while my girl is lying in that bed, trying to fight her way back, I’m sitting here thinking about getting high.
I’m a shitty excuse for a human being.
How can I think of drugs at a time like this?
Because I’m a motherfucking bastard.
And I hate that.
But for me, it’s life. The addict will always live inside of me.
The only resolve I have is that Tru doesn’t know just how much the addict still lives in me. And she’ll never know.
I couldn’t bear it if she did.
Currently I’m still clean, and I want to keep it that way…but I can feel my resolve slipping.
Only two things are stopping me from taking a hit.
One—my son.
And it’s not because I’m father of the fucking year. I wish I were.
No, it’s because I’m all he has right now. I know better than anyone what it feels like to be let down by your deadbeat drug addict of a father. I won’t be him.