JAKE
She had beenT-boned pulling out onto the highway late last night, headed in to work her night shift. Her car was totaled, though somehow she’d survived.
My mind reeled while the doctor pelted words at me. Things like “she was lucky,” “weeks of physical therapy,” and “months off of work.” But the only phrase that meant anything to me was the doctor’s repeated assurance of, “she’ll be okay.”
I didn’t remember grabbing Shelby’s hand, but she was there, holding mine, as we opened the door to my mom’s hospital room. I held my breath as we entered, not sure what to expect while being terrified that the doctor had gotten it wrong. Maybe he’d mixed up the patients, and my mom wasn’t the one who should “make a full recovery.”
But there she was, lying in her hospital bed with her legs lifted up on what looked like a pulley contraption. Her dark hair was matted against her head and streaked with more gray than I remembered seeing before. A grid of tubes lined her arms and face, and she looked so incredibly frail lying there. She caught my eye and smiled sleepily.
I let go of Shelby’s hand in order to lean over and give my mom a big hug. Instead, I clung to her, trying to hold everything in but failing. Miserably.
We didn’t have time to talk much; she could hardly keep her eyes open. But she was okay. I relaxed the longer we sat there, half stunned at the turning of life. How, even though you can almost expect it, you’re never prepared for it. One day, everything was fine. The next day, your world gets rocked and completely upended.
But she was fine. That was all that mattered.
We’d get through this.
Shelby was holding my hand again.
I spentmost of the morning responding to texts and phone calls from concerned friends and neighbors who’d heard about the accident. After a while, I handed my phone to Shelby and let her type out responses. Now that my mom had been declared stable and was being moved to a different room, Kelsey was going to bring Sophie to the hospital to see her grandma and me. Shelby volunteered to take her back home afterward and stay with her overnight so she could sleep in her own bed.
There were so many emotions clamoring around inside of me when she volunteered for this that all I could do was give her a grateful smile before I had to look away. Before I lost it.
My mom was fine. I should be teasing her about her bad driving, but I wasn’t there yet. We had almost lost her. My brain couldn’t see past the pain in that scenario. The what-ifs. My inability to believe that we were actually spared from tragedy. I kept tabs on the monitors in her room, needing to see proof of her heartbeat.
Sophie came later that afternoon, along with Kelsey and Cade, with snacks for us and flowers for my mom. I gave them a hug and thanked them for everything but couldn’t bring myself to say much more than that. Instead, I listened as Sophie told me all about the newborn kitten Kelsey let her name at Cade’s house while Shelby chatted with our friends. After a while, Cade and Kelsey went home.
This time, I grabbed Shelby’s hand.
Sometime later, Shelby was getting ready to take Sophie home to make her dinner when a knock sounded in the room. I looked up to see the door open a crack before my mom’s nurse, Angie, entered the room.
“Hey, you have a visitor, and I was just checking to make sure your mom was awake.”
She had just drifted off again, and there wasn’t a chance I was going to wake her up. “She just fell back asleep. Who is it?”
Angie swung the door open wider, and a man stepped inside the room.
And here I had thought the day couldn’t get any worse.
It happened so casually. With no fanfare. One minute, he had abandoned us, and the next, he was stepping into my mom’s hospital room like he had a right to be there.
To the untrained eye, he looked unassuming. He wore cowboy boots and jeans and a gray polo shirt. His dark hair was slicked back and graying slightly, stopping just above his ears. He’d taken off his tan cowboy hat when he entered and held it in his hands as he took me in. From what I’d heard, he had quit riding and was now a full-time rodeo announcer for a TV station in Texas. I couldn’t be sure. I’d stopped watching professional rodeo years ago.
In another life, he could have been a sweet grandpa. In another life, Sophie could have run and jumped into his arms. But in this life, my daughter only glanced up at this stranger,unbothered, before going back to her coloring page. An untrained eye wouldn’t have known this man had once been cocky and self-absorbed enough to leave his wife and kid behind while he chased fame and a mediocre name.
I didn’t move, lead filling my gut. Sensing my inner turmoil, Shelby gripped my hand tight.
“Hey, Ang!” I called the nurse, who had just stepped back into the hallway. “He’s not family.”
Her head popped back in, her brow furrowed. “Oh? I thought he said he was?—“
“Not family.” I did my best to work up a smile, nonchalant, though my heart wasn’t in it. “If you’d kindly escort him out of here, that would be great.”
“Jake,” he said. “We need to talk.”
I scoffed and looked over at my mom, lying in a hospital bed with half of her body hooked to wires and tubes. “I’ve got nothing to say to you.”
“Can we please talk? I’m not leaving until we do, and I don’t want to wake your mother.”