the last few days by ignoring her, but I plan to rectify that, here and now. My brows pull down into a frown and I come up short when I realize her car isn’t in the driveway.
Where the hell is she?
I rap my knuckles on the front door, waiting her out. Unlike last time, I don’t hear her footfalls on the other side of the wood. Just silence. Uncomfortable silence.
When five minutes of unanswered calls and knocks go on, I decide to call it a night, too frustrated to come up with theories as to where she could be. She’s obviously not home. She could be at work, but something tells me that’s not it either.
Hours later, my cell vibrates on the bedside table, jolting me awake. Through bleary eyes, I frown at the number on the brightly lit screen. It’s from an unknown number, but I can’t imagine anyone would be calling at this time, if it wasn’t important. Sliding my finger across the screen, I answer groggily, and the person’s voice on the other end of the line has me jolting upright, blinking away the sleep. The words that echo over the line wrap around my heart in a constricting noose, and it’s like losing my brother all over again.
One sentence composed of just a few words has the capacity to ruin me.
I fly out of bed, throwing on clothes, before I pound on Ryder’s door to wake him. He jerks upright, eyes wild. Whatever he sees on my face is enough to get him moving. He hops out of bed and throws on his shoes, not wasting any time with questions.
I speed the entire way to the hospital, and when I step into the waiting room and see her parents in tears, my heart shatters. My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth. Each time I try to open my mouth and ask the simple question, the words don’t come.
Is she alive?
Please, God, tell me she’s alive.
“C’mon, son.” Liv’s dad claps me on the back, pulling Ryder and me into the open seat next to her little brother.
“She’s gonna be fine,” Brandon insists, his eyes red-rimmed. “She has to be.”
We can only hope.
After hours of waiting with Olivia’s family, they’ve given me the breakdown of her condition. What happened and what led her here. Something I would’ve already known if I’d just put my pride aside and let her talk, but I was being stubborn. I was so focused on my rage that I let her down. She really can’t trust me. She obviously has every reason to hate me. Maybe if I had let her explain, I could’ve helped prevent this somehow.
At birth, Olivia was diagnosed with atrioventricular septal defect, which resulted in heart surgeries to repair a hole in the wall of her heart that works as a separator for the upper chambers. Only, her condition was a lot more severe than she led on. Because of the surgeries she’d undergone, the muscles in her heart became permanently inflamed, causing her to have cardiomyopathy.
There was never any promise that she’d always be okay. In fact, her parents told me it was quite the opposite. Because she was such a risk factor during surgeries, the other valve in her heart didn’t heal properly, which means, at any given moment, her heart can give out on her. That is why taking her medications, on time, every day, and seeing a doctor regularly is imperative.
It doesn’t matter how much medication she takes; it is just a matter of when her heart is ready to give out on her. That is her reality—a severe case of congestive heart failure.
Her parents tell me she was at work when she collapsed. They got the call yesterday afternoon and flew out, as soon as they could. They’ve been here ever since, waiting on word that she’s okay. That she’s going to make it out of this alive.
That would certainly explain why her car wasn’t there last night.
I can’t stop beating myself up over this. If we were talking, I could’ve been here sooner, but I’d been purposely avoiding her, and somehow, I can’t help but feel like the cause of this.
“Roman, walk with me to get some coffee?” Lisa, Olivia’s mom, asks, jolting me out of my thoughts. I nod, not really here. My mind elsewhere. I walk beside Lisa, stuck in my head, as we make our way toward the cafeteria for coffee.
“Stop blaming yourself. This isn’t your fault.”
I heave