“How much longer?” Yeah, seemed Tack and I shared the same page. Until she was in our sights, we weren’t feeling assured by anything or anyone, not even Chase. Tack was done. He was done pacing, done waiting. He was pale, hadn’t eaten a thing, and was visibly crawling out of his skin at hour four after Chase’s case manager came down to let us know how things were progressing, sharing a whole lot of nothing and only adding to the stress. Tal was probably going to kick my ass, but Tack was joining Dodd’s intro to the ropes when this was all said and done. She wasn’t kidding when she said he had an intensity to rival his brother.

“Don’t worry, bud, he knows we’re not waiting. ICU my ass, what bed is she in?”

Mid-eye roll his focus broke toward a young woman jogging down the hall. “Dr. Colton, we need you back in recovery now, please.”

Leaving my question unanswered, his jaw tightened while he ripped off his sweat-drenched cap, locking his eyes with mine.

So much for good.

Whatever relief we experienced was gone and replaced with a new sickening foreboding. Something had to give. It was all too much. I clenched my teeth to stop from screaming. “Go.”

The only question left to ask reeled my mind. But there was no time. He was already halfway down the hall. I let the thick silence slowly suffocate me as I stood and did the only thing I could. Wait.


Shock

Sensation changes

T12

Incomplete injury

Motor strength

Altered reflexes

Sacral sparing

Weeks

Months

Permanent


Simple words, all with easily accepted definitions, yet when spoken as a stream of medical jargon they were fuzzy. In this moment they blended together and got lost. Not so much lost as buried somewhere deep. I wanted to bury them deeper. She didn’t need them. No one needed them. They needed to be eliminated from our vocabulary. I gripped my skull and cursed. Why? Why was this happening?

“Enough!” I growled. I heard or hadn’t heard enough. “I need to see her. Now.” My heart was jackhammering and I was fighting for air again. The knife in my chest was making it difficult to breathe. Chase said nothing more.

Behind a thin white sheet she lay flat on her back. Monitors beeped and chimed from all directions. People in varying colored scrubs, some with white coats, some not, busied themselves around us. The giant open room’s perimeter was lined with patient bed after patient bed. I leaned on one bed rail, Tack on the other. This time she didn’t lift her eyes and give us her beautiful smile. This time nothing sassy escaped her lips. This time her mouth was back to being covered by an oxygen mask. This time she lay comatose.

“I just gave her something for pain to make her comfortable and help with the anxiety, it will probably be awhile before she wakes up again.” A quiet voice spoke to my back.

“Pain?” Tack fired at her nurse. “Why was she in pain? Dr. Colton promised to keep her comfortable.” His choice of addressing Chase sliced straight through me. As much I felt it, Tack did too; it was the neurosurgeon who came to deliver the devastating blow. Chase was detached and factual, referencing literature and statistics. I got why—he was as gutted as me. But it didn’t mean I wasn’t waiting for my friend to surface.

“She was having some nerve pain, but mostly feeling anxious. It’s very common after this type of trauma. We’ve given her the proper medications to give her relief. You can touch her, hold her hand, we just don’t want her body jostled too much.”

Common. Nothing about any of this was common. My woman was not common. I white knuckled the rail and squeezed my eyes shut.

“I’m okay, baby. Come … here.” Her raspy weak voice was muffled by the mask, but it was the shot of adrenaline my lungs needed to keep breathing and to shut down the swirling tornado in my head. That sound, her sound … it could have been lost forever. She could have been lost forever if the night’s events ended differently. But they didn’t. And she was here.

Alive.

Thank fuck.

Her lids were barely open before they fluttered closed again. Tack reached for her hand that was struggling to free her face. “Let me help you. Relieved it’s over, Mom,” he sighed. “Love you.”

“I’m sleepy,” she mumbled.

“You rest. We’ll be right here when you wake up.”

She fought her eyes back open and whispered, “I need a minute with Asher, honey.”

Tack’s expression narrowed. He wanted to object, but instead he murmured, “I’m back in ten, Mom, I’m not leaving you.”

“Thanks, bud.”

Like before. It was just me and her. Exactly the same, yet completely different.

I found her lips. I needed to feel her breath mix with mine. “Hey, you, welcome back. God, I love you.”

“I … I … I’m scared.”

The bile rose so fast I almost couldn’t choke it back down. Only other time she uttered those words was New Year’s Eve when I asked her to take a chance on me. She hadn’t told me the truth yet, so understandably she was nervous, not scared. This was different. Tal didn’t do this kind of scared. She was a rock. Tack’s rock. My rock. And now she was crumbling. And there was absolutely nothing I could do to stop this landslide.

“I can’t move … I’m … scared … my legs. I’m paralyzed.”

Time stood still.

The pain was indescribable.

I had felt heartache before, a cracking and splintering. This was a full shatter.

Into millions of tiny fragments.

For her.

“Hey, hey. Look at me.” Her eyes were clenched but not tight enough to stop the tears from falling. I frantically tried to kiss them away. I wanted to kiss it all away. I wanted to promise her everything was going to be okay. I wanted to go back in time and tackle Roy Wayne to the ground before he fired that first bullet in the air. Screw the second, he deserved it. Hell, I wanted to switch places with her. “Shh … shh. I’m here. I’m right here with you. We’ll get through this together. I promise.” She sniffled, barely moving her head to nod. “Teeps, please look at me. We don’t know anything yet. We’ll wait, take it day by day, and do whatever we have to do. It’s me and you. You can do this, okay?”

Her eyes finally crept open and her fear hit me square in the chest. I had never seen fear in her eyes before and it was crushing. She lived most of her life tormented by a mistake, but she overcame the odds as a single parent. She faced the hand she was dealt and rose to the challenge. She proved she was stronger. She was Tal.

“Okay,” she mouthed before losing all ability to stay awake. She sighed one last time, allowing the medications to lull her to sleep. A sleep that would give me time. Time to process. Time to research. Time to figure out exactly how our lives were going to change. Time to figure out my next move.

I had nothing but time. All the time in the world to wait.


It was just before sunrise and she was settled into the ICU before originally expected. A perk of being on staff. We had more privacy here. It was quieter. Tal had a private nurse. And she was still comfortably sleeping. I stood from the chair and walked to the window. Practically on the top floor, the view of Boston Harbor was amazing. I was sure there was some type of bullshit survey that stated that the sicker you were, the better the view you should have. Ironic how they rubbed that beauty, that freedom in your face. I turned back around and scanned the sterile room. Only beauty here was my woman. The quiet rise and fall of her chest and the tiny spike of her heartbeat splayed across the monitor gave me the confirmation I needed to know she was full of life. But somehow the last image of her eyes was burned in my brain. That fear of the unknown, the angst wrapped in that one flicker was haunting. What would it take for me to erase it and show her alive again?

“You get any sleep? I can sit with her.”

“Not going anywhere.” He should have known better than anyone, they’d have to drug me to get me to move.

The unit had a strict policy on visiting hours. But it didn’t apply to me. Or Tack, for that matter. His long legs were stretched and crossed at the ankles, while his head rested against the back of the wannabe recliner. He was finally dozing. His chair was parked next to the window and hadn’t budged, and mine was soldered to her bed rail. I’d yet to blink.

“Yeah. Figured, just thought I’d offer.” Chase sat at the bed past her feet.

The last time we were together in a room like this, his everything was lying there and fighting for her life. And his ass didn’t move for three days straight. I would know. I had the window seat. Watching him spiral into a black hole while we waited for Lil to wake up—there wasn’t a worse feeling. Until now.

“Man, I did everything I could. The surgery … there was a lot of bleeding, swelling, but it was clean. It went … as it should have, what I expected.”

Damn, he left the neurosurgeon and brought my friend. This wasn’t his fault. I knew that. He knew that. Yet he didn’t know I knew that. There wasn’t a solitary thing about all this that didn’t suck.

I peeled my eyes from Tal’s and met his penetrating gaze. “I know.” Simple as that.

“I should have told you, warned you. Any spine trauma there’s a possibility, a slim chance of impairment. She’s a doctor—she knew the deal. But I should have told you. I just wanted to fix her. Ah fuck, Asher, I’m so sorry, man, so sorry.” He grabbed his head and gripped his hair, palming his eyes. He was sick, so was I, but I would never blame him. Slowly, he stood up and pulled in a deep breath. “The nurse will call me … when she wakes I want to do another extensive neuro exam.”