The SUV drops off the road shoulder faster than I expect and the world tilts hard and there's the sound of the undercarriage hitting the grade and the airbags deploying and I have a single, clear thought in the fraction of a second before the oak tree at the bottom of the ditch comes up to meet me, which is that I hope to God Levi and Dakota got clear of those cars, and that Ruby knows how much I love her, and that I should have told Molly a long time ago that she could date whoever the hell she wanted because life is short and it goes fast and the people you love should know it while you're still around to say so.
Then there's a sound of crashing that’s so loud it hurts my ears.
And then there's nothing at all.
I don't know how long the nothing lasts.
It could be seconds. It could be longer. The first thing that comes back to me is sound, which is the wrong order for things to come back in, and it arrives before anything else does — voices, the crackle of a radio, what might be my name being said somewhere above me. The second thing is pain, which starts general and then gets specific very quickly, settling in my chest and my left arm and the side of my face where something connected at some point, and I have been in law enforcement long enough to do a quick inventory of whether pain means something serious or just means I had a bad day, and this one is sitting right on the line between those two things in a way I’m not positive about yet.
The third thing that comes back is Levi's voice, and it's close, and it's doing the thing it does when he's scared but is managing it, the controlled urgency that tells me he's keeping himself together because he has to.
"Dad. Hey. Stay with me."
I try to say I'm with you, but what comes out is something less coherent than that, and the effort of it tells me everything about the state of my ribs. I don’t like any of it.
"Don't try to talk," he says. "EMS is two minutes out. Just stay still."
I'm not going anywhere, I think, and I'm not sure if I say it out loud or not, because the darkness is pulling again at the edges of everything,, softer this time, less like a crash and more like sleep, and the last thing I'm aware of before it takes me again is the warmth of my son's hand on my arm and the distant sound of more sirens coming down the road, and I think, distantly, that on Wednesday I'm going to tell that boy I'm proud of him, and I'm going to shake Dakota Keller's hand, and I'm going to let my daughter be happy.
The darkness closes in, and I let it.
Chapter 21
Molly
It's a quiet afternoon in the L&D which is nice after the past couple of shifts. I've checked on my patients, and I'm sitting down to check my phone when Macie has a seat beside me.
"It's nice huh?" She grins over at me. "Especially after the ER situation you had. You deserve a quiet shift or two."
"Yeah, but I don't want to say it out loud," I admit, shaking my head with a laugh, shushing her.
"I know, as soon as we do, there will be something."
Which is why I don't even want to admit it. I don't have a text from Dakota or Levi, so they must be busy today I'm scrolling through my Instagram feed when a post catches my eye. "Macie..."
"What?" She turns to me, her eyes glancing up from her screen.
"Is this you?" I flip my wrist to show her what I'm looking at. It's a picture of Macie dancing at The Lean To, which isn't unusual. We've all gone there and had a great time. I'm more surprised by who she's with.
I watch her face to see her reaction. Recognition washes over her, and she glances up at me. "I had no idea they were taking pictures that night."
I'm slightly amused, and a lot curious. "My biggest question is, do you know that the man you're looking up at with adoration in your eyes is my cousin?"
"Darren is your cousin? He looks nothing like your family."
That's not the first time someone has said that when I've talked about Darren. "If he tells you all this later, if you two have that kind of relationship, just let him tell you," I start, needing to let her know that I'm not trying to break a confidence. "He's adopted. My aunt and her husband adopted him and he's been a part of our family since. But, he doesn't look like any of us."
She grins. "I should've know that he would be related to your family. He's cocky as hell, and he walks with the same type of swagger that the men in your family have in spades."
I've heard this more times than I care to count. "Hey, us ladies have some swagger, too. Don't let Ruby or Karina Harrison hear you say that."
"Girl, I would never say that when either one of them were around. You know me better than that."
Crossing my arms over my chest, I give her a mock-glare. "So, what were you doing with my cousin? I think that's the question that you haven't answered yet."
"Mollyyyy," she drags the y in my name out. "I don't even know what to say about him."
"Well I mean try. He's been through the ringer for the past few years. Just came out of a bad divorce." There's a part of me that's enjoying giving her a hard time, but there's another part of me that wants to make sure she's in this for the right reasons. There's more than just Darren at stake in this. There's a little girl who has been hurt just as much as he has, if not more. Along with us as a family, as we've watched what Darren has had to go through.