“Kids decided to remove him… from the… the life support,” my father stuttered into my shoulder.
I knew my uncle wasn’t improving and one by one his major organs were starting to fail. There was no bouncing back at this point but I didn’t know they’d be making the final decision of his treatment today. I tried to search for words of comfort. “I know it’s hard to take, Dad, but it’s for the best.”
His breath stuttered. “I know.”
I tried to speak through the burn and tears. “Uncle Cal would hate to be hooked up to all of those machines. You know he would.”
I felt his cheek brush my hair, nodding in acknowledgement. “I know,” he sputtered. “Your mom and I talked it over with the boys. Still, it’s not an easy decision. I can’t. I can’t go back in there. Your mother…”
I rubbed his back, trying to sooth him. “I know.”
Hearing my mom’s muted wails from the other side of the curtain as she said her final goodbyes tore my heart to pieces.
I gave my dad one last kiss on the cheek before letting him go.
My mother and cousin were huddled together near the long spans of window. The bleak and cloudy backdrop of Philadelphia seemed so aptly befitting.
My mom had her face mashed into Chris’s chest while hospital staff removed my uncle’s breathing tube from the ventilator. Chris stood tall and rubbed her back, crying his own silent tears as he somehow found the last ounce of bravery within him.
“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want,” the priest recited. “He maketh me to lie down in green pastures, He leadeth me beside the still waters, He restoreth my soul. He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for though art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies. Thou anointest my head with oil, my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”
Everything hit me at once, making me hyperaware of my surroundings, though it all seemed very irrationally unreal. The sight of my mother beyond distraught and falling apart crushed me. The anguish scorching my lungs was almost unbearable. My cousin Chris, who was just two years younger than me, suffering to keep a brave face clashed with my sudden anger. I knew both of my cousins had just made a very difficult decision, but my mother was too fragile to endure bearing witness to my uncle’s final moments. She didn’t need to be here like this, watching this. He needed to get her out of this room instead of facilitating it.
Uncle Cal’s attending, Doctor Paul Webber, passed in front of me, his face impassive. I presumed he was doing his best to ignore the drowning feeling that surrounds you when a patient is dying in front of you and you can’t do a damn thing to stop it. The nursing staff was working methodically, disconnecting my uncle from life support.
“Mom… come.” I tried to move her. “You don’t want this memory.”
“No!” She refused to budge.
I wrapped myself around her, hugging any part of her I could reach, doing my best to comfort her.
Within moments, the constant monotone of a heart monitor no longer keeping rhythms marked the final process.
Doctor Webber hushed his voice to announce the official time of death and made a notation on the chart in his hand. He handed it to one of the nurses and then came over to us. I wondered for a moment if this latest loss had caused another weary line to permanently crinkle this doctor’s face or take him one step closer to his own sad finality.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” he said as passively as possible, adding the sympathetic smile they taught us to use when delivering such news. It felt as though a sledgehammer hit me in the chest. A bit of anger welled at his spurious sympathy.
Sorry? You’re sorry? No, you’re not! You’re only saying that because you have to, you liar!
“Oh Erin.” My mom reached for me, pulling me out of my momentary swirl and into her arms, back into reality.
Oh God, is this the way other families feel when I tell them that their loved one has died?
She crammed her nose near my neck and I felt her body shake with each sob, finding my own lifeline and renewed sense of strength and purpose in this tragedy. “I’m so sorry, Mom. So sorry. You’ll be okay. Shhh. It’s okay.”
Father Connolly, the elderly Catholic priest who baptized every one of us, interrupted with his condolences.
I’d heard the familiar Bible passage he had read recited hundreds of times before inside this hospital, but tonight, surrounded by the people I love the most in the world, the psalm had torn through me like a knife through tissue paper.
I held my sobbing mother while my father’s arms encircled us both, and let the pain and tears have at me.
I’D NEVER LOST a family member before, well, not counting my grandpa on my dad’s side, but he had passed when I was young. The sorrow from losing someone you love was like a vortex of utter agony, pulling on my body so hard that it was difficult to walk back to the ER. My legs felt heavy, weighed down from the onslaught of emotional upheaval.
How would my cousins go on? Both of their parents—gone—just like that. No fair warning. No red flags. No months of mental preparation during a long-term illness. Thoughts of the day when my parents would depart this earth welled on top of the suffocating overload, making me miss them and fear the inevitable all at the same time.
I trudged past an exam room where a trauma team was tending to a patient. Fluids, chest compressions, orders being called out. Machines slowly beeped and hissed, while scrub-clad bodies rushed around me. The dread was turning into numbness. I felt internally abandoned.
I have to get out of here. I have to cancel meeting Tommy. Why can’t I stop crying?
“Erin,” the disembodied voice called out but it sounded muffled, distant, as though a figment of a possible delusion.
I was startled by the realization that there was a person blocking my way. My thoughts had to reroute themselves to realize that it was a woman, then they took a few extra beats to remember why this particular human with blonde hair irritated me so much. “I want you to know Randy and I are seeing each other now. I’m being up front with you so you don’t cause problems for us.”
“By the look of you, I guess you’ve heard,” Mandy said.
Confusion rippled. Was she upset that she wasn’t the first one to tell me that my uncle had just died?
“I figured you’d be disappointed but I didn’t think you’d be this much of an emotional mess. God, look at you. You know things like this aren’t within Randy’s control. You can’t blame him for what the board decides. I just hope you don’t make things, well, difficult for him.”
I felt dizzy, confused, caught in a cacophony of machine tones, alternating chimes, and a high-pitched ringing in both of my ears. “Wait. What?”
Mandy gapped at me as if I were stupid. For a moment, I was; at least I was oblivious to the point she was trying to make. Raw instinct was telling me to ignore her bullshit and just punch her. I’d dreamt about hitting her numerous times, even plotted when and how so I could get away with it, but no matter how many times I’d entertained the thoughts I just wasn’t the violent type.
“The fellowship?” she tossed back.
I wiped a tear from my face. Damn she was annoying. “What fellowship?”
Mandy rolled her eyes. “You know. The one that you and Randy have been fighting over? I presume that’s why you’re crying. You’ve probably heard that Doctor Lawson told Randy that the fellowship is his. I hope you’ll be an adult about this. He’s worked just as hard for it, Erin. You know he has.”
The meaning of her words hit me like a wrecking ball. “My fellowship?” The fellowship I’ve worked my entire career for? The singular goal I’ve had in my sights since I was sixteen years old?
Mandy narrowed her beady little brown eyes on me. “It’s not yo
ur fellowship. Not anymore. Just…,” she huffed. “Look, I don’t expect you to be pleasant. Just please try not to be a total bitch to him. That’s all I ask, okay?” Her lips twisted. She pointed at my eye. “You may want to put some ice on that. It looks pretty nasty.”
I felt gut-punched. Gutted to the core. Unable to breathe. Unable to think. My vision distorted.
As I watched her shadow walk away, everything I’ve ever wanted, including my sanity and direction in life, left with her.
I grabbed for the wall, for something, scraping my nails on the wood trim.
“Doctor Novak!” a nurse called out as she jogged toward me, passing the retreating soul-stealer. Blue smears blurred into the medicinal white walls. Florescent lights streaked through the images, casting an eerie shadow over everything.
Gone. Everything. He’s gone. It’s gone. Everything—Gone. Oh, God.
“Doctor Novak, why aren’t you answering your pager? What happened?” She urged me along. I think my legs moved though I wasn’t sure. “We have a pediatric trauma coming in via Lifeflight. A four-year-old was struck by a car. ETA is seven minutes.”
I LEANED BACK in my chair and dug into my front jeans pocket for my money. I had a hundred on me tonight, which, knowing my luck at playing Poker every other Friday night, I’d probably just end up handing over to the grinning prick sitting on my right, but that was a risk I was willing to take for the love of the game.
“Hey, Adam, good to see ya. Oh, and congrats. Heard you got the Medal of Valor,” Jack Gillis said, patting me on the shoulder. “Good job, dude.”
Officer Jack Gillis was one of the good guys, funny as shit, too, but looked scruffy and unkempt like a street punk I’d normally haul away in cuffs. His look came with the job. He was undercover narcotics, part of Philly DEA, just like my oldest brother, Michael, though Mike was smart enough to move to south Florida and away from the harsh winter weather of the north to wage his personal war on drugs.
“Thanks, man.” I peeled a twenty off the folded stack and tossed it across the table at my partner, Marcus. “My ante.”
“Sucks you had to get stabbed to get a fucking award but hey, that’s just part of the job,” Jack continued.
I nodded and bit another hunk off my slice of pizza, washing it down with a swig of iced tea. Sometimes the smell of beer was tempting; sometimes it turned my stomach. Tonight, even the beads of condensation dripping down the brown bottles setting all around Marcus’s poker table were enticing.
I took another long swig of my tea, catching a chip of ice between my teeth, doing my best to tamp down the dry burn that was rolling up my throat.
I’d been clean for almost ten months, something that the men surrounding me at this table were well aware of; still I couldn’t be a pansy asshole and ask them not to enjoy themselves just because I had a hard time stopping at one or two. That was all on me to manage.
We’d given up rotating houses; Marcus had recently refurbished his basement and bought a beautiful poker table inlaid with green felt. It was the shit, though the familiar surroundings and faces did little to ease my mind tonight.
The smell of homemade cookies wafting through the air was also making me slightly insane. Chocolate chip with extra chocolate—my favorite. But then again, Marcus’s wife, Cherise, knew that. She also knew that I was in a funk the moment I stepped foot inside her kitchen and seeing as I didn’t drink anymore, offered to drown my sorrows with her special cookies. Sometimes I wondered if the woman knew me better than I knew myself.
Well, maybe that’s not completely accurate. I knew exactly why I was in a shitty-ass mood. Had been that way for the last week, ever since I left Erin standing alone in her living room, looking at me with confusion, as if she’d been the one to do something wrong.
Visions of her lovely face, of those amazing blue eyes that held me captive like a prisoner in my own mind, haunted my every waking moment. I kept doubting my reactions and intentions around her, knowing that all it would take would be one taste of her mouth and I’d drink her in and drown my sorrows. That alone made her hazardous to my health, but categorizing a treasure like that was totally unfair.
I stared at the cards in my hand, seeing a Jack of spades with its one eye glaring at me, telling me what an asshole I was being.
Erin deserved an explanation. No, she deserved the truth as to why I reacted the way I did, but no matter how many times I reached for my cell or thought about contacting her to explain things, I couldn’t make myself do it. What would I say? Yeah, about your dead family member… well you see, my team caused that. We fucked up and well, shit happens. Sorry. Hope you can get over it.
Some stand-up guy I was being. I couldn’t even man-up enough to be honest with her. Instead I skipped out on her like a big freaking coward and worked on her house while she was sleeping. Avoiding her seemed to be the easiest option.
Marcus studied his cards as if they were a tech manual, while his friend, a guy we secretly called Booger, dug his hand into the chip bowl. Todd Shifley was a pretty decent dude, our age, and on one of the local fire departments, but after seeing him pick at his nose and then spend time swirling his hand in the chip bowl, avoiding the unhealthy snack Booger touched became an easy fete. Fellow ATTF officers Nate Westfield and Mark “The Gribs” Gribble were sitting on either side of him, both just as disgusted. Some people had no class.
Who am I to judge? I have no class. I left a classy woman like Erin high and dry.
I’m a classless train wreck.
“’Bout time you bring us some cookies, woman.”
My head popped up.
Cherise had a tray in one hand, her other hand now on her hip, and a death scowl pointing directly at her husband. “You’ll be lucky to get a crumb with that kind of attitude.”
Marcus glared back, questioning her sass. “That so?”
She waved him off like only a black woman is capable of and brought the tray over to me.
“God, I love you,” I said, eyeing the pile of cookies instead of her pretty face. Sometimes I wondered if Marcus realized how lucky he was. Not only was his wife sexy, she was smart as a whip, using her gifts to run one of the local Penn National Bank branches.
She pointed a long red fingernail at me. “And that’s why you get cookies. Take a bunch. Not like Marcus will get any, not after that.”
I took four of them, feeling the hot chocolate melting into my fingertips and all over my gauze-wrapped hand as they bent in half. Some chocolate smeared into the gauze, making the wrap look liked I’d wiped my ass with my own hand. I quickly palmed a napkin to cover it up.
Marcus smacked my arm. “Quit hitting on my wife.”
I licked my finger, knowing that if he really meant it, his punch would have hurt. “Stop giving her a hard time and she won’t be tempted to run off with me.”
“That’s right,” she snapped. “Keep it up and it will be you sleeping on the couch in the den tonight.” She put her hand on my shoulder. “Adam can have your spot upstairs.”
Marcus clipped my arm again, gritting his teeth at me. Something told me my days of crashing at his house instead of going home to my empty one were numbered. “Touch my pillow and I’ll shoot your ass.”
It was all in good fun. I shoved the other half of the cookie in my mouth. “So much for vowing to protect my life and shit.”
“Your ass goes anywhere near my bedroom and all bets are off.”
I ignored him and gave Cherise another wink just for added effect. “I might as well go home then if you can’t share.”
Cherise set the plate next to my elbow, far enough away that Marcus would have to reach across the table for one, and winked at me. “It keeps snowing like it is right now and none of you will be going anywhere.”
Nate took another cookie and looked at his watch. “Thought it wasn’t supposed to start until midnight?”
I tapped my phone to see the time. It was only going on ten o’clock.
“Yeah right,” she sai
d. “News said we have a nor’easter coming now and by the looks of it, they just might be right this time. It’s coming down fast. Supposed to be worse than the blizzard we got back in ‘06.” She tisked. “Best get playing before Marcus has to quit so he can go plow the driveway.”
He gave her an ugly glare and reached for the last cookie but I snagged the plate. Too bad he wasn’t quick enough. It was fun to rile him up, and for the last few years it was my favorite pastime. He always got even.
My phone rang, vibrating on the round wooden table. I had no idea who would be calling me at this hour and for a moment a tinge of panic rolled through thinking that something might have happened with my dad again. I squinted, not recognizing number.
Marcus snagged the cookie out of my hand before I got it near my mouth. “Give me that.”
I tried to decipher the local number, thinking maybe it was one of my CIs checking in. I had informants all over Philly—past criminals taking lighter sentences in exchange for providing tips on chop shops and stolen cars—and I’d been waiting for one to get back to me on a lead I was following. Someone had to know something about all the cars boosted that night we pulled her over.
Erin.
Those amazing blue eyes and soft pink lips came swirling into focus, along with a warm flush throughout my veins.
Part of me hoped to hear her voice on the other end of this call, answering my question of whether or not I had crossed her mind at all. The other part that flashed a healthy dose of panic hoped to hell it wasn’t her reaching out; what the heck would I say?
The digits on my screen were foreign to me, making me wonder if Nikki was using an unknown number. It had been several days since she’d called last, trying to convince me once again that I’d made a mistake and she deserved another chance. I could easily hit ignore, which meant if she couldn’t get a hold of me she’d send mutual friends to do her dirty work again.
What I did not expect was to hear my friend Kip’s voice when I answered.
I was up on my feet before I realized it, patting my pockets for my truck keys.