Page 124 of Before You Can Blink
“Uh.” Mac cleared his throat roughly. “Yeah, maybe, but I’m coming along for the ride.” To Tucker, he said, “Can you do me a favor and get Aspen there?”
“Yeah, anything you need,” his best friend replied.
Dread settled like a rock in my gut.
It was almost as if . . . as if they didn’t think she was gonna make it.
I stood there numb while they loaded my wife onto the gurney, following when they worked as a team to carry it down the stairs and out the frontdoor. Thank goodness they’d tucked a blanket around her before strapping her onto the rolling bed because it was fucking freezing out there.
“Jett!” Tucker yelled from behind me right as I was about to climb into the rig with Mac. I spun around to find him holding out my wool-lined jacket. “You’ll be no good to her if you catch your death of cold.”
“Right.” I accepted the outerwear and punched my arms through the sleeves.
“We’ll be right behind you,” he promised as the doors at the back of the ambulance were being pulled shut, and the sirens began to blare before we sped off the ranch.
Throughout the entire drive, I prayed over and over for God to take me instead.
“Sullivan? I’m looking for the family of Daisy Sullivan?” a voice called out in the crowded waiting room.
I rose to my feet in a flash, and my kids and their significant others seated around me followed suit. But when I opened my mouth to confirm that was us, nothing came out, so Aspen laid a reassuring hand on my arm, her voice loud and clear as she replied, “That’s us.”
The doctor in blue scrubs with a white lab coat overtop walked in our direction, and when he stopped before us, Tripp was quick to ask, “Is she . . . ?”
“She’s stable,” he announced.
All the air rushed out of my lungs. Thank fucking God.
“Can we see her?” Aspen asked.
“We’ve moved her upstairs, but if you want to follow me, I can take you to her room, where we can discuss her condition in private.”
I finally found my voice. “Condition? You just said she was stable.”
“She is,” the doctor confirmed.
Mac jumped in to explain. “All that means is she’s not getting any worse, but it doesn’t necessarily mean she’s better, Jett.”
Agitated, I muttered something under my breath about the stupidity of using medical terms when you could just shoot a man straight. I mean, was it really so hard to say she’s not any better or any worse? Better than giving me false hope that Daisy had recovered from whatever ailed her.
“Now if you’ll follow me,” the physician prompted.
During our trek to Daisy’s hospital room, it struck me that, for the first time, I was the odd man out. Aspen had Mac to lean on, and Tripp had Penny, while my anchor, my pillar of strength, was lying in a bed somewhere deep inside this building, fighting for her life as far as I knew.
The first thing I noticed when we stepped into the sterile room was the tubes going into Daisy’s arm, attached to a machine.
Why were they red?
Then it struck me. “Is that blood?”
The doctor who accompanied us cleared his throat. “Mr. Sullivan, your wife has been diagnosed with acute renal failure.”
With my patience completely depleted, I snapped, “Speak fucking English!”
“Dad.” Tripp placed a hand on my arm.
I shrugged my son off, glaring at the man in the white lab coat. “My wife is the smart one, and right now she’s incapacitated, so I suggest you break it down into simpler terms or find me a doctor who can.”
“Very well.” He nodded. “What that means is your wife’s kidneys are no longer working.”
