“They said they’d be out as soon as they know anything,” Sean says, but he doesn’t look at me when he speaks.
“This is bullshit,” Callum, the brother most like my father with his nuclear temper, grinds out. “They should tell us something.”
“Maybe if you’d gone to medical school instead of spending your life at the bottom of a bottle of tequila, you’d be a little more helpful,” Quinn tells him.
“Fuck off,” Callum snaps.
“Has this ever happened before?” I ask, clueless at everything that’s been happening the last seventeen years.
“You’d know if you’d been around,” Finn is quick to reply, throwing the guilt of my absence right in my face.
I deserve it. I left them all behind, but they could’ve gotten out too. And after I left, no one reached out to me to make a new life for themselves. They were right where they wanted to be, and I was where I needed to be to keep my sanity.
“Don’t be a dick,” Quinn tells him, pointing a finger at my brother. “You’ve always been jealous he left, but that doesn’t mean you can keep holding a grudge because you were too much of a pussy to follow in his footsteps.” Quinn shifts his gaze my way and sighs. “It’s happened one other time. It’s how they found the cancer in the first place, but since then, he seemed to be doing as well as he could be with poison still inside his body.”
“The family of Ian Walsh,” a woman in scrubs says as soon as she enters the waiting room.
All of us turn to her and stand. “We’re his brothers.”
Her eyes widen for a moment as she takes in the motley crew. “He’s awake and talking now. We have him on fluids. His vitals are good, but we’re running some blood tests and sending him for a scan soon to determine if there’s a more serious issue.”
“You’re aware of his cancer, right?” Quinn asks.
“Yes, sir. We’re aware. As soon as he’s back from the scan, you can see him, but only one at a time. When we know more, I’ll be sure to let you know.”
“Thank you, Nurse,” Quinn tells her, looking relieved.
“Dr. Baker,” she corrects him, and he rocks back like he’s been kicked in the gut.
“Sorry. Thank you, Doctor.”
She gives him a nod and does another sweep of us. “Any other questions or concerns before I get back to him?”
“Can we take him home today?” Finn asks because he’s a dumbass.
“It’s highly doubtful. We’ll probably keep him overnight for observation, especially with his cancer diagnosis, but we’ll know more in a couple hours when we get some of the test results back.”
“Thank you for the update, ma’am,” I tell her with a dip of my chin.
She doesn’t stick around to have more dumb shit hurled at her by my brothers.
“Well,” Callum says, collapsing into a chair and kicking back. “I’m off today. I can stick around.”
“I’ll stay too,” I offer.
“You don’t have to,” Quinn tells me. “It’s not like you’ve been around before.”
I point to the bandage on my arm. “I went for my blood test this morning. If I didn’t want to be here, I wouldn’t. I have as much right to be here as any of you. If you want to be pissed at someone, be pissed at yourself that you stayed as long as you did. I offered to take each and every one of you with me, but you made your choices just like I made mine.”
Quinn and Finn grumble under their breath, calling me more than a few names.
Sean, the quietest of my brothers, stares at the bandage on my arm like it holds the secrets of the universe. “So, we’ll know in a few days if you’re a match or not. If you’re not…”
“I will be,” I promise him, but I have no clue. “What are the odds that none of us are a match? They said twenty-five percent chance any of us would be a match to him, and since none of you are, I have to be. I just have to be.”
I take a seat across from my brothers, preferring not to sit next to them, and think about all the things I could’ve done differently. The list is short. Sticking around would’ve landed me in a bad place, probably prison or knocking up someone and repeating the pattern my father set.
The only regret I have is the disconnect I have with my brothers. After seeing Rosie with her family, I want a little sliver of that for myself. We should be closer than we are. Only time will heal the wounds our father inflicted and we let widen through time and distance. And for that to happen, I’d need to stick around.
I now have two reasons to stay in this small-ass town. Rosie Gallo and my family. If I can win her back, grovel at her feet and beg for forgiveness, the rest will come over time. Without her, I don’t know if I can stay here, seeing her beautiful face everywhere, reminding me of what I could’ve had if I’d had the smarts to realize I wasn’t my old man.
“Well, you can do what you need to do to help him and then go back to wherever you’ve been,” Finn says. “No need to stick around.”
“I’m not leaving,” I tell him and all of them. “I’m back, and I’m not leaving. We have shit to straighten out. Shit the old man robbed us of, and I’m not going anywhere until we figure out how to do that.”
“We’ll see,” Quinn adds. “Sometimes it’s easier to run than stick it out.”
I turn to him with a curled lip. “Do you want a medal for being a martyr and staying with the asshole? You think you’re better than me because you took his abuse year after year, waiting for the fucker to die?”
Quinn growls and crosses his arms, stewing in his own self-loathing and pure hatred for me.
Sean leans forward, resting his arms on his legs. “Time hasn’t healed some wounds, Dylan. But we’re thankful you’re here, even if you only came back for Ian.”
“I came for Ian, but I’m staying for the rest of you.”
Callum turns toward me, brushing his dirty-blond hair back with his fingers. “Where have you been, by the way?”
“Everywhere and anywhere.”
“Jail?” Quinn asks.
I shake my head. “I did join the service, did four years overseas. Saw some action in the Middle East, but that was ten years ago.”
“Huh,” Quinn mutters. “Never knew you enlisted.”
“Didn’t feel the need to share.” I shrug. “Thought I’d make a career out of it, but four years was enough of following orders for me.”
“And after that?” Callum asks.
“As soon as my boots touched American soil, I bought a bike and took off, letting the wind and road take me wherever it wanted. I’ve been to every state except Hawaii and Alaska on the back of my girl.”
“Can’t say I’m not jealous,” Sean says. “If I could do it all again, I’d enlist. Maybe see more of everything on Uncle Sam’s buck.”
“You’re not too old. You can still join up,” I tell him.
His face scrunches up. “I’ll think about it,” he says, but I know he’s full of shit. Everyone’s good at talking a big game, but following through is something entirely different.