Of course, any peace he might have been feeling crumpled at the first sight of his mother, curled up in Jean-Claude’s lap while the Frenchman softly stroked her hair. Jenn didn’t seem too disturbed by the scene, but then again she’d had more time to get used to it. She spent a lot more time with their mother than he did.
But then his sister wasn’t the one at risk of an aneurysm every time their mother opened her mouth.
“Any news?” he asked as he settled himself and Kara on the sofa next to Jenn, though it was little more than a glorified love seat and there wasn’t enough room for the three of them to sit comfortably.
Jenn shot him a strange look, but she scooted down as far as she could, which was a good thing, because he wasn’t moving and neither was Kara. The only other spots available in their little section of the waiting room were either next to Jean-Claude and his mom or across from them. And since the absolute last thing he wanted to spend the next hour doing was watching them make goo-goo eyes at each other, he’d taken the only safe spot in the place. Maybe it was immature, but he didn’t care. He was going with it.
“Nothing yet,” Jenn said. “I asked a few minutes ago and the nurse said she would go in and check again. See if the doctor could give us any news.”
He nodded, though her words did nothing to reassure him. In his experience, if things were going well, doctors were more than willing to provide updates. It was only when everything had gone to hell that they clammed up and made people wait for the most basic report.
He could feel Kara sitting stiffly beside him, knew she was thinking the exact same thing. He glanced at her in warning—the last thing he wanted was his mother to turn on the hysterics one second before she had to. Besides, he was still holding out hope that Lisa’s surgeon was just an asshole, so wrapped up in his work that he couldn’t care less about his patient’s family.
A few minutes passed as the group of them sat there, watching the clock and wondering when the nurse was going to come back. More than once his mother sniffled a little and Jean-Claude murmured soothing things to her in French, but other than that—and the sound of his own heart pounding in his ears—the room was absolutely silent.
Eventually, Kara got up and settled herself on the empty sofa with her feet up. He bit the bullet and moved with her, sitting on the arm of the couch as he opened her ginger ale and stroked her hair as she tried to choke down a few crackers.
No one said anything, but he could feel both his mother and Jenn staring at them. He knew what they were thinking but there was no way he was going to confirm Kara’s pregnancy in the middle of this dismal waiting room.
The second hand had worked its way around the clock thirty-two-and-a-half times before a nurse came into the room and walked straight toward them. He leaped to his feet and his family did the same. As he waited for her to speak, his eyes found her name tag, clung. Sandra. Her name was Sandra. He’d dated a Sandra in high school, and had fond memories of her and the name. He hoped that wasn’t about to change.
“Dr. Kovac wanted me to tell you that he’ll be out to speak to you soon. He’s got about forty more minutes of repairs to do and then he’ll close. Soon after he’ll come talk to you.”
“How is she?” his mother asked, her voice trembling. Lucas looked at her—really looked at her—for the first time since he’d arrived at the hospital. She looked like she’d aged fifteen years since he’d seen her last. Gone was his flighty, irresponsible, fun-loving mother. In her place was this frail, shaky woman who looked every one of her sixty-two years. He wondered what Jean-Claude thought about that, then hated himself for being churlish at a time like this. There’d be plenty of time to hate his mother’s lover after his sister was out of danger.
“There was a considerable amount of damage,” Sandra admitted. “But Dr. Kovac has gotten her stabilized. Please don’t worry. He’s the best. He’ll do everything he can for your daughter.”
No, he wasn’t the best. Kovac wasn’t close to the best thoracic surgeon in Atlanta, let alone the country. In Atlanta, he was maybe seventh or eighth. In Georgia, maybe fifteenth. In the country…he wouldn’t even make a list. Sure, he was nothing to sneeze at, but saying he was the best when he wasn’t didn’t exactly reassure him about the nurse’s honesty. And if she was lying about this, she could also be lying about how his sister was doing. He wasn’t a thoracic surgeon, but he’d been a doctor long enough to recognize the signs.
As if well aware of the direction his thoughts had taken—or maybe hers had taken the same turn, seeing as she was a doctor, too—Kara murmured softly to him. Soothing little phrases so low he could barely hear them, but when accompanied by the press of her shoulder against his own, calmed him as nothing else could have.
After the nurse left, he found he couldn’t sit back down, so he paced the waiting room, back and forth. Back and forth. As he did, he barely resisted the urge to tear his hair out.
How had this happened? How had they all ended up here? What had his sister been thinking—drinking like that and then getting behind the wheel? He might keep a tight hold on her truest friend—as his father intended he do until his sister was twenty-seven—but he provided her with more than enough money to take a cab if she needed to.
Or she could have called him to pick her up.
Or she could have used a credit card and he could have paid it off later.
Or she could have chosen not to drink so much to begin with.
The scenarios were, if not endless, then at least stacked pretty heavily against his beautiful, young and irresponsible sister. He wanted to rage at her for doing this, for being so careless that she’d played Russian roulette with not just her own life but other people’s lives, as well. At the same time, he wanted to pull her bruised, battered body into his arms and hold her there forever. He wanted to keep her safe. He was her big brother. That was his job.
“You let this happen.” His mother’s voice trembled but it still carried across the waiting room to him.
He turned to stare at her, guilt a rampaging monster inside of him.
She pushed herself off Jean-Claude and came to stand a few feet from him, her face white and lined with pain. “You’re cheap with her. Cheap with us. If you’d bought her a better car, she never would have been in that tin can. She would be safe. But you don’t care about things like that, don’t care about anything but that damn clinic. How can you care so much for strangers and yet treat your family so badly?”
Her words struck like poison-tipped arrows, played on his own thoughts and feelings of regret until he thought he’d go crazy. In his own head, his intentions had been good—there was only so much money to go around and it had to last. But had he been too controlling, not trusting his sisters and mother enough?
But they were sitting here, weren’t they? After his sister had carelessly injured herself and four other people? And hadn’t it been just last week that his mom had tried to throw away more than three months of his salary on a watch for a guy who would be gone as soon as he’d cleaned her out?
What was he supposed to do? What other options did he have?
Behind him he felt, more than heard, Kara move, knew that it was her hand that was resting comfortingly on his shoulder. He wanted to shrug it off—to go hide and lick his wounds in private. Kara knew about his family, had been around them off and on since college, but she’d never seen them like this. Never seen him like this. For the first time since he’d gotten the call that afternoo
n, he wished he’d left her at the clinic. He didn’t want her to see him like this.
Things were already so uncertain between them that the last thing he needed was for her to take one look at this mess and hightail it out the door. Away from him, just when he was beginning to understand that his feelings for her were a lot clearer than he’d given himself credit for. Not that he thought she’d actually run away—this was Kara he was talking about. Unlike his family, she was steady as a rock. He knew that she would be right beside him until she decided he didn’t need her anymore.
But that wasn’t the dynamic he wanted, wasn’t the relationship with her that he wanted. If he was honest, he’d admit he didn’t know what he wanted. But he knew he didn’t want this. He was supposed to be the strong one, the one who took care of everything. For his mom, for his sisters. For his lover. Bad enough that Kara was not the type to let him take care of her. But to think that she needed to take care of him, to protect him from his mother’s poisonous barbs and his sister’s irresponsible behavior when she was sicker and more fragile than he had ever seen her, was more than he could take.
“You’re not going to say anything?” his mother demanded. “You’re not going to defend yourself or apologize for anything?” Her voice rose a little more with each word until she was screaming at him in the middle of the waiting room. “You’re just going to stand there?”
“Come on, Mom,” Jenn said, crossing the room and putting an arm around their mother’s shoulders. “Being in this room is making everyone fidgety. Let’s go for a walk, get a cup of coffee or something.”
His mother shrugged her off. “I don’t want a cup of coffee. I want an apology from my son. If Lisa dies—” Her voice broke. “If Lisa dies, it’s going to be on your hands. Do you understand me? It’s going to be all your fault!”
She was shrieking now, sobbing, and he wanted to comfort her. Even as he bled from the wounds she’d inflicted, he wanted to wrap his arms around her and tell her everything was going to be all right. But he couldn’t do that, in part because it wasn’t going to be okay and in part because he knew he was the last person she would accept comfort from.
Before he could say anything in his own defense, Kovac walked in. His skin was pale, his eyes bloodshot and he looked like he’d been on a three-day bender himself. Or, barring that, like he’d worked himself into the ground trying to save Lucas’s sister.
His whole family grew quiet at the sight of the doctor, and—despite the accusations still ringing in his ears—Lucas stepped forward to shake Kovac’s hand. He felt like he had done a shitty job so far, but he was still the one these kinds of duties fell to. Unless— He glanced at his mom, who clearly thought he was one step up from the anti-Christ at the moment. Nope, she definitely didn’t look like she had it in her to take over.
“Hi, Aaron,” he said to the other doctor, whom he’d met numerous times through the years. “Thank you for taking care of my sister.”
“I’m sorry, Lucas. I didn’t realize Lisa was your sister—I guess I should have made the connection.” He glanced over at Kara, the look of concern on his face morphing into a smile before he seemed to stop himself. “Hey, Kara.”
“Hi, Aaron.”
Lucas looked back and forth between the two of them, a little startled by the warmth in Kovac’s gaze as he watched Kara. But before he could make any connections between them, the other doctor cleared his throat. “Your sister was gravely injured in the crash. She wasn’t wearing her seat belt, so the airbags did some damage internally, as did the momentum from the crash. Her spleen was ruptured—we ended up having to remove it. A number of her ribs were broken on the left side, and they punctured her left lung in two places. I’ve got that repaired, along with a tear to her left kidney, but she’s going to be in for a long recovery period. She had deep cuts in numerous places—a few of them all the way down to the bone. We stitched them up, but infection could be a problem. I’ve got her on a course of IV antibiotics, of course, so we’ll have to wait and see.”
Lucas could tell there was more, could see it in the depths of the other doctor’s eyes and in the stiffness of his shoulders. He was about to ask what was up, when Aaron sighed, and looked him directly in the eye. “There were some head and facial injuries. We’ve done an MRI and it looks like nothing more than a severe concussion, but the neurologist wants another one done in the morning. There is a little bit of swelling and—”
“Who is her neurologist?” Kara asked, before he could.
“Jean Bradshaw,” he said, naming a good friend of Lucas’s from med school. He relaxed a little. She
really was one of the best.
“Good,” he said. “What does she think?”
“She was in the O.R. with me for quite a while, and she’s optimistic, actually. There are no major indicators of brain damage, which is obviously a very good thing. But again, we’re going to have to wait and see. I’m going to keep her under for the next twenty-four hours at a minimum, give her body time to begin healing before she has to deal with—” He paused, looked truly uncomfortable for the first time. “Before she has to deal with everything else going on.”
“You mentioned facial injuries.” Candy spoke up for the first time.
“Yes, ma’am, I did. A couple of those deep slices were on her face. One on her left cheek and one on her right temple. Again, we’ve stitched them up—”
“You stitched them up?” she asked, obviously aghast.
“Mom. Give him a chance to talk.”
Aaron nodded his thanks. “Actually, the plastic surgeon on duty stitched her up—Maxwell Kingston,” he said to Lucas and Kara in anticipation of their next question. “He got called into another surgery, but he asked that I tell you he’ll speak to you when he’s back out. Or tomorrow morning, if you’d like to go home and get some rest before she comes around.”
“Can you tell us anything about how the plastic surgery went?” Candy asked, her hand fluttering at her throat in the only nervous gesture she ever allowed herself.
Though he reminded himself that her concern was legitimate, Lucas couldn’t help seething a little. Lisa’s
surgeon had just spoken about massive internal damage, possible brain damage and all his mother seemed concerned about was whether or not her face was going to scar. He couldn’t decide if it was because she really was that superficial, or because she simply couldn’t face the rest and was therefore focusing on the most benign, least dangerous of the injuries.
He really wanted to believe that it was the latter, but a part of him knew better. His mother was superficial even at heart, and though he loved her, it didn’t surprise him in the least that she was more concerned with Lisa scarring than she was with everything else his sister had to face—including an arrest on what promised to be heavy-duty charges.
He could tell Kovac thought the same thing, though the other doctor maintained a face of bland professionalism the entire time. They spoke for a few more minutes as Kovac outlined what they were planning here, then, after reiterating that he was going to keep her under for at least twenty-four hours, he recommended that they all go home and get some rest.
“Can I see her?” he asked as Kovac turned to leave.
The other doctor nodded. “Sure, Lucas. You can each go in for a couple of minutes, but let’s leave it at that for now. ICU visiting hours are almost over, anyway, so we’ll look at her tomorrow morning, reevaluate where we stand. Okay?”
“Absolutely.”
&nbs
p; After the doctor left, he turned to his mother. “Do you want to go first?”
“Of course I do. She’s my daughter. I want her to know someone who cares about her is here for her.”
Meaning, obviously, that he didn’t care. For a second, anger ripped through him and he contemplated punching the nearest wall—or barring that, Jean-Claude. But that wouldn’t accomplish anything except to freak Kara and Jenn out and make him look like a total ass. So he kept it together. Barely.
When it was his turn to go in and see his sister, he dragged Kara along with him. He knew it was against the rules, but after what his mother had said to him, he didn’t think he would be able to face his sister alone, even if she was sleeping. Kara didn’t say a word, even when he knew he squeezed her hand much too tightly. She just stood there and gave him the comfort and support he so desperately needed.
They left the hospital around eight-thirty, and Kara insisted on driving. He expected her to head back to the clinic to pick up her car, so he leaned his head against the headrest and just closed his eyes. It was a long drive across town and he just didn’t have the energy to talk right then.
He didn’t sleep, but he didn’t open his eyes again until Kara had stopped the car and turned off the engine—much more quickly than he had anticipated. He glanced around, realizing she had brought him home. “I thought we were going to get your car?” he asked, confused.