Page 46 of Just One More Affair
Jared treated her to a warm smile. “Thank you.”
She nodded and walked off to take more orders.
Remy lowered himself into the now empty seat beside Jared. “Dad’s tough. He’s going to be okay.” He put a hand on Jared’s back.
“Also stubborn. Whatever this is, he’s going to have to start following doctor’s orders if he wants to see his grandchildren grow up,” Jared said.
Remy nodded. “Agreed. Maybe tonight will scare him enough to do just that.”
With a shrug, Jared said, “I had this argument with him a few nights ago and a few weeks before that. I feel guilty as hell about yelling at him, but he needed to hear it.”
“You did the right thing.”
“The Sterling family?” A doctor with salt-and-pepper hair asked as he stepped into the room.
Everyone turned and the man’s eyes widened. “Okay then. I’m Dr. Vitale, the cardiologist called in to see Mr. Sterling.”
“How is he?” Remy asked.
“Stable,” the doctor said.
There were audible gasps of relief. Brooke put an arm around her mother, and behind the doctor, Charlotte had walked into the room with a tray holding quite a few paper cups of coffee.
Jared strode over while the doctor spoke, took the tray from her and placed it on a table. Then he stood beside her.
“So due to those two blocked arteries, I’d like to operate and do bypass surgery on them, especially with one of the arteries being the main one. They’re clogged and we need to get them open and the blood flowing.”
Jared shuddered at the thought of his father having open-heart surgery.
“Can we see him before?” Fallon asked, her voice shaky.
The doctor nodded. “He’s being monitored overnight and we won’t operate until tomorrow. But two at a time, and please keep him calm.”
Once the doctor left, the family agreed on Fallon and Lizzie going in first. As long as Jared saw his father, he didn’t care what order he went in.
One thing he knew for certain, he wouldn’t have gotten through this ordeal as well as he had without Charlotte by his side.
Turning to face her, he braced his hands on her hips. No one in the room paid attention to them, everyone focused on Alex and their own feelings in the moment.
“You’ve been my rock,” he told her.
She smiled and stroked his cheek. “I’m glad I could be here for you.”
“No, you don’t get it. You’re the reason I haven’t crumbled under the pressure of waiting to hear if I was going to lose another parent. Not my siblings,you.”
She parted her lips but didn’t speak. That was okay. He had enough to say for both of them. “I never had anyone who cared enough to be there for me and I didn’t give enough of myself to do the same for someone else. You did that for me. You stood by my side, and I’d do the same for you.”
“I’ve never had that either.” Tears filled her eyes but they weren’t sad ones, he knew by the small trembling smile trying to break through.
Fallon and Lizzie returned to the room and everyone pivoted toward them. “He’s doing well,” Fallon said in a shaky voice. “Remy and Dex can go in next.”
Jared would go afterward as they’d agreed on chronological order except for Fallon and Lizzie. If Aiden had been here, he’d go in with Jared.
He’d left a message for his sibling and Jared hoped he’d call back soon.
Twenty minutes or so later, Jared’s turn came. He followed a nurse’s directions and strode down a hallway until he came to his father’s room.
He knocked once and walked in.
