And I was. Until I wasn’t. Michelle made sure of that.
“What the fuck was that?” Trevor asks.
“What are you talking about?”
“That sound you just made. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you wanted to punch me in the throat.”
“Sorry. Was just thinking about New York.”
“Thinking about New York causes you to sound like an animal about to attack?”
“No. Thinking about Michelle does.”
We let the silence hang a little longer before I ask the question that’s really been on my mind.
“Would my life have been different if I hadn’t ended up in New York? Would things have not gone down the way they did?”
Trevor doesn’t answer right away, and I almost forget that I asked it. “Unless you found a hospital with an entire staff of male nurses, I’m pretty sure your ass would still be here next to me right now, no matter where you went.”
Trevor is right. I would be here. We could have gone anywhere in the world, and I still would have spent all my time working and fucking nurses. Michelle still would have divorced me. I still would have reached out to Mark to help me get back on my feet. I’d still be running on this beach.
“We are doing pretty well for ourselves, aren’t we?” I ask out loud, not really expecting an answer.
“We are. We have a client list a mile long, have made a good chunk of change, and have hot women on our arms. Well, you have Annika and I have whomever I want. What more could we ask for?”
“Not a damn thing, brother. Not a damn thing.”
He’s right. What more could we want? This is exactly what I wanted when I came here to start over.
Money. Success. Notoriety.
“We have it all, my friend. We have it all.”
But as the last word comes out of my mouth, I feel it fall short on my tongue. My feet stop. My body bends in half so fast it’s like I was snapped into the position. The ground is spinning. Am I spinning?
What the fuck…
My breathing is short. I can’t… I can’t breathe.
And the pain… oh, fuck, the pain.
“Garrett!”
It’s the last thing I hear as I fall to the ground and the once warm Virginia air goes cold.
Chapter Eight
Garrett
Beep. Beep. Beep.
The steady cadence of the hospital monitor stirs me awake. Which is strange. Usually, if I’m catching a power nap in the on-call room, I can barely hear the monitors. After years of pulling multiple shifts back to back, after a while they became white noise in the sea of constant commotion that is a hospital.
Today they are not. They are loud and annoying and all I can hear.
Come to think of it, I haven’t needed to sleep in an on-call room since I moved to Virginia.
The beeps, they are close. Right over my shoulder, if I had to guess. I could look, but I can’t muster the energy to open my eyes.
Why does everything hurt? Why can’t I wake up?
“Garrett?”
Mom? What is she doing here?
“Garrett… sweetie… can you open your eyes?”
I try. God, do I try. I might be a bastard in most aspects of my life, but when it comes to the commands of Julie Dixon, I do all I can to be a good son.
Opening my eyes shouldn’t be this hard of a request. I just… can’t.
I try a few more times to no avail. It’s no use. Before I know it, the beeps that stirred me awake just seconds ago start to fade into the distance.
“He’s been out since the surgery.”
“Is that… OK? Mom, is he OK?”
I can hear everything Mom and Mark are saying despite the beeping that once again pulled me into a state of semi-consciousness, but it sounds like they are a million miles away.
“The doctors aren’t worried. At least, not yet. His body has been through quite the trauma in the past forty-eight hours. They say the sleep will do him good.”
I let my mom and Mark’s words process as I do my best to get my bearings. I vaguely remember hearing Mom’s voice before. I have no clue how long ago that was. Apparently, I’ve been asleep for two days?
How did I get here?
“Thank God Trevor was with him,” Mark says, a worried tone to his voice. “I can’t imagine how long he would have been on that beach had he not been there.”
And just like that, it all comes back to me.
The beach.
Running with Trevor.
The pain. Fuck, there was so much pain.
And then darkness.
“I—”
I mean to ask for more, to ask more questions, but the single letter is all I can get out. I slowly open my eyes and am immediately blinded by the light in the hospital room. By the time I open them again, Mark and my mom are perched at either side of my bed.
“Oh, sweetie,” my mom begins, grasping my hand in hers. “You scared the ever loving hell out of me. And if I wasn’t so happy that you were alive, I’d whip your ass for scaring me like that.”
Leave it to my mom for the warm and comforting words.
“Water.”
My request comes out strained, but before I know it, I feel the plastic straw at my lips. The cool liquid tastes like heaven against my parched throat.
Before I can ask the thousand questions that are forming in my mind, a man I vaguely recognize comes into my room, iPad in hand.
“I see our patient is awake? How are you feeling, Dr. Dixon?”
“Dog shit.” No sense in pulling punches, even if I can only speak a few words at a time.
The doctor chuckles. “I’m not surprised. You’ve been through a lot the last few days. Do you remember anything that happened?”
I take a bigger sip of water, giving myself a second as I try to put the fragmented pieces of my memory together.
“Running with Trevor. Sharp pain. That’s it.”
“Yes, Dr. Stewart brought you in. He called me on the way to the hospital.”
Now it hits me. This is Jesse Corbin. He’s a med school buddy of Trevor’s. And if my memory serves me correctly, he’s the best cardiothoracic surgeon in Virginia.
“Well, if you’re here, I’m guessing that nothing good happened to me.” I take a breath, saying a silent thank you that I can put together a full sentence. “Spill it. Why did it feel like I was being stabbed with a thousand knives?”
Mark takes a step back from the bed, but my mom grips my hand a bit tighter. Both motions tell me they already know what’s coming. And that it’s nothing good.
“You suffered a pulmonary embolism. If Trevor hadn’t been at the beach with you, there’s a good possibility you would have died.”
I let Jesse’s words sink in, though none of it seems possible.
This can’t be happening again. I had to have heard him wrong. It had to be something else.
“How could I? Are you sure that’s what it was? I’m healthy, Jesse. I exercise regularly. I don’t smoke. I eat as well as a doctor who works eighty hours a week can. No way could I have suffered a pulmonary embolism.”
Jesse looks down at the tablet, though I’m guessing it’s a stall tactic before he gives me the business. I know this because I’ve done the same thing probably fifty times over in my career.