me, rubbed my back, and rocked with the gentle wind, never mentioning that she was cold and shivering. Never complaining that my fingers were bruising her back. Never letting go until I had settled in an exhausted heap against her shoulder.
Then, she kissed my cheek, my temple, my forehead, my lips, and said, “You’re gonna go inside and see your brother. I’m gonna take your car and go home. Do you have your phone?” I could only nod in reply before she continued, “Okay. Call me when you want me to come get you. Okay?”
I nodded again and her lips touched my forehead once more. “Fight for him, Blake,” she whispered, and left me alone on the sidewalk.
Chapter Thirty-Two
JAKE HAD TAKEN Mickey and his backpack, filled with his Gremlins DVD, iPod, headphones, and stuffed dog—the necessities. Wearing his Mickey Mouse pajamas and a black coat, he’d walked two blocks away from my parents’ residential neighborhood before reaching a main road. Visibility was low and the roads hadn’t been plowed yet. They were slippery from the snow and ice, and by the time the driver saw him and the dog, she couldn’t stop fast enough.
She’d hit Mickey first, and according to her account of the accident, Jake hadn’t reacted. He’d probably been stunned, frozen, completely unsure of what to do, and she hit him with her Jeep.
The time of impact had been 12:22 in the morning.
The driver, a kind woman named Lacey, had escaped with not a scratch on her body, but a gaping gash across her heart. After calling 9-1-1 and the number on Mickey’s collar, Lacey had sat in the snowy road, cradling Jake’s bleeding head in her lap, until the ambulance arrived. My parents came shortly after, and that’s when Dad had called me.
Now, in a curtained area of the hospital’s Intensive Care Unit, I sat with my parents in a foggy silence, caught somewhere between being asleep and awake. I stared forward at my brother’s lifeless body, wrapped in bruises and bandages, and thought, that’s what I’d look like if I was dying. It was so fucked up and morbid, but fuck it. That was the truth. That’s exactly what I’d look like, and God, how I wished it really was me instead of him.
As angry as I’d been, the doctors really had done everything they could. They had repaired his lung, punctured by two fractured ribs. Had sewn up the cut across his forehead and stitched all the minor scratches on his face and hands. They’d also set and casted his broken leg and ankle, with a warning that he’d likely need further surgery if he pulled through.
If he pulled through …
It was the head injury that really had them worried. The swelling and bleeding on his brain had been alleviated as much as the doctors could, but to say they weren’t hopeful for his survival was an understatement. And even if he did make it through the morning, they’d said, there was no guaranteeing that he’d wake up. “If he does get very lucky—and I mean, very lucky,” the doctor had said, “there’s no telling how much damage has been done, especially given the condition of his brain before the accident. Something like this would likely be catastrophic.”
Considering that Jake’s luck hadn’t been all that great since the ripe old age of ten, I wasn’t so confident in his chances now, but I was hoping. I was hoping, and hoping, and if anybody was out there to hear me, I hoped it was paying off.
Dad glanced at me from his chair. “Why don’t you go home and try to sleep?”
Looking from Jake’s body to Dad’s face, I gestured toward the bed. “You’re kidding, right? I can’t sleep right now.”
“I know,” he replied, “but you should try. Call Audrey and have her pick you up. We’ll tell you if anything changes.”
As I looked back to Jake and heard again the whoosh of the machine pushing air in and out of his lungs, my throat tightened and my chest immediately felt like it’d burst. Fuck, I didn’t want to cry, not again, but how could I even think of sleeping in my comfortable bed while he was fighting for his life? That’s what I should’ve been doing, that was my job. But what the fuck could I do now?
“I don’t wanna leave him,” I admitted in a broken whisper.
Dad reached out and gripped my arm. “I know, and he knows that, too. But you’re no good to