Chapter 22 - The Life That Mattered

Ronin

They admitted Madeline for the night, put three stitches in Anya’s head, and gave me an IV because I had low blood pressure and appeared to be dehydrated. I refused to be admitted for the night too, much to Evelyn’s sour-faced displeasure.

“I’m going to check in with my parents,” I whispered, leaving Evelyn, her dad, and Anya in Madeline’s room as she started to drift off to sleep.

Instead of calling my parents, I wheeled my portable IV to Lila’s room. Graham had to go back to Denver earlier that day, leaving Lila’s personal assistant to stay with her. I couldn’t imagine leaving my wife just a few days after a major accident, but I wasn’t the governor of Colorado. However, she was being transferred to a Denver hospital the following day. They wouldn’t attempt the transfer until they felt she was stable.

Fiona glanced up from her computer when I opened the glass door to Lila’s room. On a smile, she pushed her red-framed glasses up her nose before curling her dark blond hair behind her ears. “Hi,” she whispered, which made Lila turn her head and open her eyes.

“Can we have a few minutes?” I asked Fiona.

“Sure. I might go grab a bite to eat if you’ll be here for a bit.”

“Sure.” I wheeled my IV into the room and eased into the seat Fiona had occupied.

“You look like shit.” Lila attempted to grin with half of her face bandaged. “I thought you were the one who rescued me. Who rescued you? And I thought you went home this morning.”

I grunted, trying to at least match her half-ass smile. “Madeline had a seizure after dinner.”

“Oh my god! Is she okay?”

I flinched as Lila tried to sit up. She flinched too because it hurt to move.

“Relax. It’s fine. An expected complication of her condition. Unfortunately, she was rocking Anya to sleep when it happened. Anya fell from her lap and cut her head. But everyone is fine.”

“Oh baby Anya …” She closed her eyes for a brief moment. “You, Ronin … earlier Evelyn told me your heart stopped. Please tell me it wasn’t from the stress of trying to save me.”

“No.”

Truth.

It wasn’t the trying part. It was because I succeeded, and more specifically, because she went into cardiac arrest a second time at the hospital. And fuck my life because at the exact moment her heart stopped, so did mine. It was complicated, and yet a rather simple explanation that I’d come to expect—and accept.

As a child, I envied the superheroes in all the books I stashed under my bed. Even when I decided to go through the long and rigorous training to become a paramedic, the young boy in me couldn’t wait to be the person—the superhero—who saved lives.

“I hope you’re feeling better than me,” she murmured. “I’m so scared of getting addicted to pain medications. I’ve been making them give me the bare minimum and only toward the end of the day … just to sleep.”

While I appreciated her concern, which was a real one, I needed her to take a few more pain meds because they wouldn’t prescribe them to me for a heart condition that shouldn’t have caused me that much pain.

Yes. I needed her to take pain meds for me.

“Everything hurts …” She closed her eyes.

Her head.

“My head.”

Her right arm.

“My right arm.”

But her leg … it’s the worst.

“However … my leg is driving me crazy. I think amputating it would have been a better option. I can’t imagine ever using it to walk again.”

Was it selfish of me to want Lila to do whatever it took to take away the pain? Strong people pushed through and worked hard. They didn’t pop pills and wither away in the corner. The problem was … this wasn’t my battle. No matter how hard I worked or fought, it wouldn’t make a difference. It was like running marathons in my dreams. Eventually, I would wake to the grim reality that I didn’t move an inch. Dreams could be vivid and memorable, but that didn’t make them real. Not moving an inch made it hard to be strong. It made it incredibly easy to want to crawl in that corner and pop pills.

Still … I could do this. I would do this. Lila would recover, and I would recover.

“There are many ways to manage pain that don’t involve medication. Acupuncture. Acupressure. Herbs. Hypnosis.” I had tried all of them; they weren’t as effective for me because I didn’t own the source of the pain—the negative and blocked energy. But for Lila, they were worth trying.

“Okay.” She sighed.

Okay was good. Okay gave me hope.

“Graham won’t like the alternatives. He’ll encourage me to take the medications.”

Graham … I would handle Graham through his biggest weakness—Evelyn. I liked Graham. We were friends. And part of my fondness for him was in fact his loyalty to my wife and the wellness of her family. Beneath all the money and political power, I honestly felt Graham had his feet planted on a solid base of good morals and an instinct to do the right thing. However, he looked at Evelyn in a way that kept me aware. It was hard to explain. Evelyn said they tried and failed at being more than friends, but Graham had never said those actual words. That was what kept me aware.

He worshipped my wife, and I had a feeling he did so as much if not more than his own wife. It didn’t make me happy, but I needed to use the leverage that Evelyn unknowingly had over him to make the upcoming weeks—maybe months—more manageable. Lila might not stand up to Graham, but Evelyn had no issue with putting him in his place, no matter how much money he had in the bank or what title came before his name.

My wife was pretty fucking awesome like that.

“Your pain meds for the night are kicking in; I’ll let you get some sleep.” I eased out of the chair, using my IV pole for support.

“How do you know that? Did I yawn?”

“No. It’s just a feeling.”

“Well … you’re very empathetic. I am feeling drowsy and a little numb in all the right places.”

Me too.

It was time to go. “Sleep well, Lila.”

Anya was asleep by the time I returned to Madeline’s room.

“Ready to go home?” I whispered to not disturb either Madeline or Anya.

Evelyn nodded, rubbing Anya’s back. “Dad’s staying here.”

I grinned, glancing over at Corey wedged into the hospital bed with his wife. “I figured.” That would have been my dad too had it been my mom in the hospital. It was what made me sad for Lila. Governor of Colorado or not … Graham should have been there with her. Nothing would have taken me away from my wife in that same scenario. Nothing.

“Where’s your IV?” Evelyn asked.

“I removed it.”

“I’m not sure patients are supposed to remove their own IVs.”

“Probably not.” I shrugged.

“Can you carry Anya?”

I could barely carry my head on my shoulders. The adrenaline had worn off. The pain subsided, but I felt so groggy. “Of course.” Lifting my pint-sized pixie from Evelyn’s arms, I hugged her to me. She felt like a two-hundred-pound bag of dead weight. Evelyn kissed her mom and dad goodnight and followed me to the elevators. By the time we made it to the Jeep, I was drenched in sweat despite the thirty-degree temperature outside.

After easing Anya into her car seat, I closed my eyes and took a few slow breaths before my hands found the energy to fasten the straps.

“Roe …” Evelyn stopped me after I shut the back door, resting her hand on my chest. “You’re sweating like you just ran a race.”

I did … in my dreams or more like my nightmares.

Swallowing, I wiped my brow. She didn’t need this, not with everything else crowded onto her shrinking plate. “I’m fine.”

Evelyn shook her head slowly, eyes narrowed into a palpable concern as she held up the keys and opened the passenger door. “Get in. You’re not fine.”

I didn’t argue. In fact, I didn’t say a single word because as soon as I climbed into the Jeep and fastened my seatbelt, I fell asleep. When we got home, Evelyn nudged my arm. The inside of my eyelids felt like sandpaper rubbing over my eyeballs as I forced them open. She climbed out and carried Anya inside. It took that superhuman strength I so desperately wanted just to drag my own ass inside the house. My parents were asleep on the Murphy bed, so we kept the lights off and made our way to the bedroom, depositing Anya in her bed on our way.

My wife looked the way I felt. We moved through an abbreviated bedtime routine in slow motion.

No showers.

Ten seconds of running toothbrushes over our teeth.

I managed to peel off my shirt and jeans. Evelyn pulled off her leggings and climbed into bed in her panties and a long-sleeved tee. There wasn’t much strength left in my body. It took what little strength I had left to step up after Madeline’s seizure. Still … this woman—who gave me two beautiful children, who was the ultimate game changer in my life, who personified the truest meaning of life—needed my arms. She didn’t have to say it. I felt it.

Amid my superhuman curse, the incurable pain of another human’s physical suffering, and the anguish of explaining it to my wife, I could still feel her, like somewhere along the way she’d woven a piece of her heart—a fragment of her soul—into me. I knew from those two perfect children on the other side of the wall that Evelyn and I were destined to come together in this life and make something beautiful that would let our love live on forever.

As weak and pain-ridden as I felt, nothing could have kept me from reaching for my lifeline and pulling her into my arms. Her body shook as I buried my face in her hair, kissing her neck.

“I…” her voice cracked “…had to…” more silent sobs “…tell myself we’d be okay without you.”

That cut so fucking deep I feared my heart would stop just from the pain of reality. I was supposed to be the rock, the one person she could count on no matter what. I promised to carry her.

Her breathing slowed as the sobs subsided. “Roe … I don’t want to be okay without you.”

“Then don’t. Be okay with me.”

She turned in my arms to face me. After gazing up at me for several silent seconds, she sat up and shrugged off her shirt. I didn’t know how to tell her that I honestly wasn’t sure if I could make love to her. Everything hurt and my level of exhaustion was not like anything I had ever felt. Before I could say anything, she wrapped her body around mine, wearing nothing but a pair of white panties—her bare chest pressed to mine.

“My heart wants to beat with yours,” she whispered in a sleepy voice.