“He’ll be in recovery for the next hour. Once they get him set up in the ICU, he can have visitors. Fifteen minutes only, no more than two people at a time.”
“When will he be off the ventilator?” I asked.
“That all depends on him. Could be days. Could be weeks. Weeks is the more likely scenario.”
Dr. Campbell handed us off to the orthopedic surgeon, who went over the next steps to deal with Brandon’s broken bones. Another surgeon told us about the repairs to the laceration to his liver. Then a plastic surgeon talked to us about the skin grafts he would need to cover the extensive road rash on his left arm.
By the time the doctors were done with us, Sloan was wiped. I put her back in her chair and called Josh.
The phone was still ringing when I heard it behind me. I spun and there he was.
The second I saw him, my emotional disconnect from the situation clicked off. My coping mechanism snapped away from me like a rubber band shot across a room, and the weight of what happened hit me. Sloan’s grief, Brandon’s condition—Josh’s trauma. I dove into his arms, instantly withered.
I’d never trusted anyone else to be the one in control, and my manic mind gave it to him immediately and without reservation and retreated back into itself.
He clutched me, and I held him tighter than I’d ever held anyone in my life. I wasn’t sure if I was comforting him, or if I was letting him comfort me. All I knew was something subconscious in me told me I didn’t have to hold the world up anymore now that he was here.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” I whispered, breathing him in as my body turned back on from being in suspended animation. The sound to the movie around me turned all the way up. My heart began to pound, I gasped into his neck, and tears instantly flooded my eyes.
He put his forehead to mine. He looked like shit. He’d looked bad this morning at the station—I knew he hadn’t slept. But now his eyes were red like he’d been crying. “Any updates?” His voice was raspy.
I couldn’t even comprehend how hard it must have been for him to see what he saw and stay at work, going on calls. I wanted to cover him like a blanket. I wanted to cover them both, Josh and Sloan, and shield them from this.
I put a hand to his cheek, and he turned into it and closed his eyes.
“He just got out of surgery,” I said. Then I told him everything, my hands on his chest like they anchored me. He stood with his arms around my waist, nodding and looking at me like he was worried I was the one who wasn’t okay.
It didn’t escape me that we were holding each other and I didn’t care what it meant or what wrong signals it might send to him at the moment. I just knew that I needed to touch him. I needed this momentary surrender.
For both of us.
THIRTY-THREE
Josh
It was several hours before I got to see Brandon. The limit was strict on visitors in the ICU, and Sloan and Brandon’s immediate family took first run.
It was night already. I had somehow managed to live through the worst day of my life. I checked my watch: 11:18 p.m. I sat in the waiting room with Kristen and Sloan and a fluctuating, thinning crowd of Brandon’s relatives.
Kristen held my hand.
She hadn’t stopped touching me since I got here. I was grateful. I needed her. Just being there with her soothed me. I’d been spinning at work, the images of Brandon running on a continuous loop through my head. The smell of blood, the crack of his ribs under my palms, every injury, replaying itself again and again, and me, questioning whether I’d done the right thing with each one. If I’d done enough to save his life.
But Kristen’s fingers laced through mine quieted it all. I couldn’t picture going through this without her. I didn’t know how I’d be coping if it wasn’t for her.
Sloan was a fucking mess. Kristen seemed to orbit around her in a constant stream of awareness, even when Kristen put her head on my shoulder and drifted off. Sloan got up to use the bathroom, and Kristen opened her eyes like she could detect the sound of Sloan moving, even