The Last Hour (Thompson Sisters), Sheehan-Miles, Charles [reading an ebook .txt] 📗

like this before. So Dylan and Crank took the lead and pushed their way through the reporters to make room for Dad and me. As we headed for the front door, I heard Julia stop and say in a loud voice, “We’re not going to make any statements or answer any questions. This is a family tragedy, a personal tragedy, and you need to leave us all alone to deal with it.”

A bunch of reporters called questions to her, but she ignored them, coming in the door with our mom on her arm right behind the rest of us.

The reporters didn’t follow us past the police officer posted at the entrance, and as we walked to the elevator, I couldn’t help but think how much Julia reminded me of Ray and how he could take command of a situation without thinking. I closed my eyes on the elevator, imagining his strong features, his eyes, his arms around me, and I think my heart broke just a little bit more.

You’re awake (Ray)

I wish I could sleep.

Not because I was tired. I wasn’t, at least not physically. I was tired emotionally, spiritually. It felt as if my soul had been dragged through a wood chipper, and it didn’t help that every once in a while I would glance down and see that I was still fading.

I felt ... tenuous. My body lay a couple of doors down, and I didn’t think there was much life force left in there.

But I still had hope. Not much for me, but Sarah ... for the last hour, she’d been stirring. Groaning every once in a while. Sweat beaded on her forehead and upper lip. According to the monitors, her pulse was high, her temperature was 103 degrees, and the doctors had increased her antibiotics and painkillers two hours before.

Daniel and I spent the first part of the night hanging out in the PICU. His mother slept in the chair next to his bed, the body on the bed looked tiny, frighteningly delicate next to the spirit Daniel that walked and talked and goofed off near me.

My heart broke a little seeing his parents. His dad was crashed across three chairs in the PICU waiting room, because the nurses would only let one visitor stay in the room at a time. The thought of that kind of utterly helpless feeling, knowing your child was in mortal danger, was something I couldn’t even contemplate. They must have had him when they were young: Daniel’s mom didn’t look much older than Carrie and me, maybe in her early thirties. Even asleep, she had a look of utter exhaustion and stress. The same look I’d seen on Carrie’s face all too many times in the last few months.

At midnight Daniel’s dad showed up at the door to the room. His gaze was like Afghanistan. Haunted, empty. Unshaven, exhausted, his clothes still dirty from the accident, he looked in the room, his eyes taking in his wife and child with a helplessness that gripped my throat.

She stirred and looked up at him, then whispered, “Is it midnight?”

He nodded, silently.

Daniel’s mother stood and walked over to her husband. She put up her hands in front of her, lightly touched his chest, and started to shake uncontrollably. A fierce expression on his face, he pulled her to him, and wrapped his arms around her.

“He’s going to be okay,” he whispered, his voice rough with unshed tears. “We’ll get through this. All of us.”

And then Daniel jumped to his feet, his insubstantial self running to his parents and trying to throw his arms around their legs. “I’m sorry!” he wailed. “I’ll wear my seatbelt from now on, I’m sorry I took it off! I want to go home!” And then his wailing turned to a howl when he couldn’t touch them, couldn’t feel them.

His mother’s knees sagged, and I realized that even though she didn’t know it and he didn’t know it, whatever he was transmitting was hurting her, so I stood quickly and snatched him up in my arms. “Come on, kid,” I said, trying to control my own tears as I yanked him out of the room.

Daniel struggled, trying to hit me on the arms and back, then slamming his little fists into the side of my head. I just said, “You’re gonna be okay,” over and over again, an echo of the same lies I’d spoken to Dylan Paris in an ice and snowbound valley a lifetime ago. In Dylan’s case, it worked out. But I didn’t have any reason to believe it would for Daniel.

Down the hall, twenty yards, then fifty, and Daniel finally started to calm, transforming his attacking arms into a vice around my shoulders and back. He was still shaking and crying, but the tears had evened out, no longer violent, and I crooned in his ears like he was a baby.

He hiccoughed and said, “You can let me down now.”

“You sure?” he asked.

“Yes.”

I eased the kid down the ground, and he looked up at me. “Thanks for staying with me, Ray.”

“Sure, kid,” I said.

Hours later, both of us sitting in Sarah’s room, I looked up at the clock. It was almost 6 a.m. The sun was up, and I’d stood for a little while, looking out the window. Sunday morning, and there was little traffic as of yet. It hadn’t even been twenty-four hours since the accident. But in that time, less than a day, less than an eye-blink really, everything had changed.

I turned back to Sarah as she let out another groan. Jesus, she was going to be in a lot of pain when she woke up. But it was clear she was recovering. It was clear she was there.

If you can feel pain, that means you’re still alive.

I’d spent the last couple of hours here, occasionally pacing, occasionally sitting, watching over Sarah. Willing her to live. Occasionally putting my hands on her face, and pouring all the warmth and love I could