📖 Excerpt
Present day
Friday, April 1, 2016
Curtis Walker
?Pop!?
I glanced around, looking for the face of the person calling me. I recognized the voice, but for the life of me, I couldn?t place it. The last few hours had left me jittery and frustrated, making it damn near impossible to think about anything except my wife.
Lorrie.
God, baby, please be okay.
My chest hurt so much that it was difficult to breathe. My lungs felt ten times too small. As though a band was cinched tightly around my ribs, squeezing, suffocating.
Damn it.
I needed air. Needed ? something.
A firm hand touched my shoulder, and I focused long enough to realize my oldest son was standing at my side.
Shit. Where am I?
?Pop? You okay??
No. No, I wasn?t. Not even a little bit.
Then it all came back to me in a rush of noise and light mingling with the stench of disinfectant and disease. I was in the emergency room waiting area because they had taken Lorrie back for some tests. I remembered the nurse had kindly asked me to wait out here because I was a nervous wreck and I was making the doctor uneasy. At first, I'd considered arguing?for a brief moment, even throwing a punch at the surly doctor?but when I'd looked down at my wife, so pale, so weak, lying in that bed, her lips thin, eyes dim from the pain she was enduring, I had relented.
And yeah, damn it, I was a fucking nervous wreck. How could I not be? My wife was sick. Sicker than I'd ever seen her in her life, and I'd been by her side through plenty of illnesses over the past fifty-plus years we?d been together.
?Where?s Mom?? Travis asked, his tone gruff, his face a stony mask of concern.
I met my oldest son?s gaze, those hard, blue-gray eyes identical to my own. ?Tests,? I forced out, noticing that Travis?s wife, Kylie, his husband, Gage, and their daughter, Kate, were with him.
?Pop, you need to sit down,? my daughter-in-law stated firmly, her hand curling around my arm as she led me toward one of the empty chairs.
I hadn?t even realized I was standing. Shit.
I needed to pull myself together.
Although I towered over Kylie by a solid foot, outweighed her by God only knew how much, it seemed she had more strength in her hand than I had in my entire body.
Lorrie.
?Breathe,? Kylie stated delicately. ?Just breathe.?
Not so easy when there were ten tons of emotions sitting on my chest. Not knowing what was going on with Lorrie made it damn near impossible to function, but I forced myself to draw air into my lungs, exhaling slowly.
?Where?re your brothers?? I asked Travis, doing my best to clear the fog from my head.
?They?re on the way. I called them as soon as I hung up with you. Did the doctor say anything before they sent you out here??
I shook my head. Hell, I couldn?t remember half of what the doctor had said. ?Something about infection??
Travis?s hand was once again on my shoulder, giving me comfort. ?From the kidney stone??
?They said that shouldn?t have caused it.? In layman?s terms, the stone was gone, so technically it was no longer an issue.
Oh, God. I put my hands on my face, tried to gather my composure, but it was futile. The riot of emotion was tearing me apart. I just needed to be by Lorrie?s side. It was the one place on earth that I belonged, and they had sent me away. Banished me to the godforsaken waiting room.
I knew Lorrie would be fine on her own, but I wasn?t so sure I'd be fine without her.
?Hey, Trav. Pop.?
I looked up to see more of my boys coming toward me. Ethan and his husband, Beau, along with Kaleb and his wife, Zoey. Not far behind were Sawyer and his wife, Kennedy. I knew the rest would be along shortly, especially if Travis had told them that their mother was sick.
?What sort of tests are they doing?? Kylie asked, her hand gently resting on my forearm.
?Blood tests and a CT scan.? At least that was what I thought they?d said. I really wasn?t sure.
?What happened?? Kennedy questioned.
I sat up straight, gripped the arms of the chair, and took another deep breath. I tried to ignore the incessant pounding of my heart as I looked at my daughter-in-law, then around at the others. ?She woke up this mornin?, said she felt horrible. She couldn?t eat, and if she tried, she couldn?t hold anything down. Her temperature was one-oh-three?? God, she?d looked so pitiful. It had broken my heart to realize I couldn?t do a damn thing to help her, either.
Ethan squatted down in front of me, placing his hand on my knee. ?When did this start??
?When she went to bed last night, she said she didn?t feel well. Thought maybe she was comin? down with the flu.?
?The flu?? Ethan frowned. ?But she?s been better since Friday??
I nodded. ?For a bit, yes. Then this mornin?, her skin was kinda ashy. Finally, she told me to get her to the hospital.? That was when I knew it was bad. Lorrie hated hospitals, so for her to suggest it meant there was a serious problem.
?Be right back.? Travis patted my shoulder, then headed over to the nurse?s desk as more people moved toward me.
Braydon and Jessie, Brendon and Cheyenne, Zane and Vanessa. Now all my boys and their significant others were there, along with my nephew, Jared, and Jared?s son, Derrick. Not far behind them, I saw my sister, Maryanne, and her husband, Thomas.
My phone buzzed. Kylie reached for it, passing it my way. Reluctantly, I took it, but only in case it was something about my wife.
It wasn?t. Just my brother, Frank, letting me know he and Iris were on the way.
Looked as though word had gotten out.
?I need to see her,? I mumbled to myself, not thinking about all the people who were there watching me lose my shit.
?You will,? Kylie assured me. ?Travis?ll make sure of it.?
?She?ll be okay, Pop,? Ethan said, his voice low. I heard the concern in my boy?s tone, though. I knew everyone was as worried as I was. Lorrie was the backbone of our family. Without her?
No, I wasn?t going to think like that. She was going to be fine.
She had to be.
* * *
Lorrie Jameson Walker
I felt like crap warmed over. My entire body hurt and I had no idea why. It was as though every fiber of my being was being pricked with tiny needles, then squeezed with pliers. I couldn?t stop vomiting, either, but they?d given me something to help with that, or so they said. The only thing I wanted to do was sleep until I could wake up and be well again.
They?d been poking and prodding me for the past couple of hours in an attempt to figure out what was going on with my body, but no one seemed to know. And the worst of it was, they had sent Curtis out into the waiting room because he?d been looming over them, making the medical staff nervous. I hadn?t wanted him to leave, but I knew it would be best for the doctors and for Curtis if he didn?t have to sit and watch.
Now that the CT scan was done and I'd given more blood than I thought I had in my veins, I was settled into the bed, and they promised they would go get him, but twenty minutes had passed, and I could hardly keep my eyes open. Still no Curtis.
When the bubbly blond nurse walked in, I shifted my legs, trying to get comfortable. ?Is my husband comin???
?Oh, right. I?m so sorry, Mrs. Walker. I?ll go get him in just a minute. You should probably get some rest in the meantime.?
For most of my sixty-seven years, I?d been described as kindhearted. Non-confrontational. Loving even. And yes, I was usually all of those things, including the easygoing woman everyone expected me to be, but there were a few things in the world guaranteed to set me off. One surefire way was if someone messed with my boys. Another was when it was clear they were trying to keep me away from Curtis?or vice versa. At that point, the gloves came off and a different side of me came out. A side most people didn?t want to see.
This nice young woman should?ve been warned. Too late now.
?You need to go get him,? I said, keeping my tone as polite as I could while I breathed through the pain that was currently tearing apart my insides.
?We will, Mrs. Walker. Just close your eyes and rest.?
I smiled, and based on the way the nurse was looking at me, it wasn?t a pleasant one. ?I?m only gonna say this one time. And it?s more of a warning for you than anything else. If my husband finds out that you?re purposely keepin? him away from me, the outcome is gonna be unlike anything you?ve ever seen before.?
And heaven help us all if my boys were out there, too.
The men in my life did not take kindly to someone attempting to keep me away from them. Especially Curtis.
The woman?s smile faltered, her forehead creasing. ?We understand, but??
?No, I really don?t think that you do.? If she did, she wouldn?t be standing there gawking at me.
?We thought it might be best if you got a little rest without him here.?
I plastered a fake smile on my face. ?I highly suggest you don?t tell him that.?
Lord have mercy. Was it that difficult to understand?
Thankfully, the nurse nodded and rushed out of the room. Within a couple of minutes, Curtis was walking in, his face hard, his beautiful blue-gray eyes reflecting the fear I'd expected to see in them. I hated that he worried so much, but the truth was, I was worried, too. Never had I felt like this before, and I couldn?t even pinpoint exactly what the problem was. I hurt everywhere.
?What did they say?? Curtis asked, his voice deep but soft as he leaned over and kissed my forehead.
?Something about high white blood cell counts from the preliminary tests,? I told him, trying to remember exactly what they?d said. I was having a hard time focusing as it was. Nodding toward the IV in my arm, I continued, ?They?ve put me on antibiotics while they wait for more tests to come back.?
Curtis eased into the chair beside my bed and rested his hand over mine.
?I?m so tired,? I told him.
?I know, darlin?. Close your eyes and rest. I?m right here.?
?You won?t leave me??
?Not in this lifetime.?
Knowing he meant every word, I succumbed to sleep, instantly drifting off, knowing Curtis would keep me safe. Just as he always had, since that very first day...
Present day
Friday, April 1, 2016
Curtis Walker
“Pop!”
I glanced around, looking for the face of the person calling me. I recognized the voice, but for the life of me, I couldn’t place it. The last few hours had left me jittery and frustrated, making it damn near impossible to think about anything except my wife.
Lorrie.
God, baby, please be okay.
My chest hurt so much that it was difficult to breathe. My lungs felt ten times too small. As though a band was cinched tightly around my ribs, squeezing, suffocating.
Damn it.
I needed air. Needed … something.
A firm hand touched my shoulder, and I focused long enough to realize my oldest son was standing at my side.
Shit. Where am I?
“Pop? You okay?”
No. No, I wasn’t. Not even a little bit.
Then it all came back to me in a rush of noise and light mingling with the stench of disinfectant and disease. I was in the emergency room waiting area because they had taken Lorrie back for some tests. I remembered the nurse had kindly asked me to wait out here because I was a nervous wreck and I was making the doctor uneasy. At first, I’d considered arguing—for a brief moment, even throwing a punch at the surly doctor—but when I’d looked down at my wife, so pale, so weak, lying in that bed, her lips thin, eyes dim from the pain she was enduring, I had relented.
And yeah, damn it, I was a fucking nervous wreck. How could I not be? My wife was sick. Sicker than I’d ever seen her in her life, and I’d been by her side through plenty of illnesses over the past fifty-plus years we’d been together.
“Where’s Mom?” Travis asked, his tone gruff, his face a stony mask of concern.
I met my oldest son’s gaze, those hard, blue-gray eyes identical to my own. “Tests,” I forced out, noticing that Travis’s wife, Kylie, his husband, Gage, and their daughter, Kate, were with him.
“Pop, you need to sit down,” my daughter-in-law stated firmly, her hand curling around my arm as she led me toward one of the empty chairs.
I hadn’t even realized I was standing. Shit.
I needed to pull myself together.
Although I towered over Kylie by a solid foot, outweighed her by God only knew how much, it seemed she had more strength in her hand than I had in my entire body.
Lorrie.
“Breathe,” Kylie stated delicately. “Just breathe.”
Not so easy when there were ten tons of emotions sitting on my chest. Not knowing what was going on with Lorrie made it damn near impossible to function, but I forced myself to draw air into my lungs, exhaling slowly.
“Where’re your brothers?” I asked Travis, doing my best to clear the fog from my head.
“They’re on the way. I called them as soon as I hung up with you. Did the doctor say anything before they sent you out here?”
I shook my head. Hell, I couldn’t remember half of what the doctor had said. “Something about infection…”
Travis’s hand was once again on my shoulder, giving me comfort. “From the kidney stone?”
“They said that shouldn’t have caused it.” In layman’s terms, the stone was gone, so technically it was no longer an issue.
Oh, God. I put my hands on my face, tried to gather my composure, but it was futile. The riot of emotion was tearing me apart. I just needed to be by Lorrie’s side. It was the one place on earth that I belonged, and they had sent me away. Banished me to the godforsaken waiting room.
I knew Lorrie would be fine on her own, but I wasn’t so sure I’d be fine without her.
“Hey, Trav. Pop.”
I looked up to see more of my boys coming toward me. Ethan and his husband, Beau, along with Kaleb and his wife, Zoey. Not far behind were Sawyer and his wife, Kennedy. I knew the rest would be along shortly, especially if Travis had told them that their mother was sick.
“What sort of tests are they doing?” Kylie asked, her hand gently resting on my forearm.
“Blood tests and a CT scan.” At least that was what I thought they’d said. I really wasn’t sure.
“What happened?” Kennedy questioned.
I sat up straight, gripped the arms of the chair, and took another deep breath. I tried to ignore the incessant pounding of my heart as I looked at my daughter-in-law, then around at the others. “She woke up this mornin’, said she felt horrible. She couldn’t eat, and if she tried, she couldn’t hold anything down. Her temperature was one-oh-three…” God, she’d looked so pitiful. It had broken my heart to realize I couldn’t do a damn thing to help her, either.
Ethan squatted down in front of me, placing his hand on my knee. “When did this start?”
“When she went to bed last night, she said she didn’t feel well. Thought maybe she was comin’ down with the flu.”
“The flu?” Ethan frowned. “But she’s been better since Friday?”
I nodded. “For a bit, yes. Then this mornin’, her skin was kinda ashy. Finally, she told me to get her to the hospital.” That was when I knew it was bad. Lorrie hated hospitals, so for her to suggest it meant there was a serious problem.
“Be right back.” Travis patted my shoulder, then headed over to the nurse’s desk as more people moved toward me.
Braydon and Jessie, Brendon and Cheyenne, Zane and Vanessa. Now all my boys and their significant others were there, along with my nephew, Jared, and Jared’s son, Derrick. Not far behind them, I saw my sister, Maryanne, and her husband, Thomas.
My phone buzzed. Kylie reached for it, passing it my way. Reluctantly, I took it, but only in case it was something about my wife.
It wasn’t. Just my brother, Frank, letting me know he and Iris were on the way.
Looked as though word had gotten out.
“I need to see her,” I mumbled to myself, not thinking about all the people who were there watching me lose my shit.
“You will,” Kylie assured me. “Travis’ll make sure of it.”
“She’ll be okay, Pop,” Ethan said, his voice low. I heard the concern in my boy’s tone, though. I knew everyone was as worried as I was. Lorrie was the backbone of our family. Without her…
No, I wasn’t going to think like that. She was going to be fine.
She had to be.
* * *
Lorrie Jameson Walker
I felt like crap warmed over. My entire body hurt and I had no idea why. It was as though every fiber of my being was being pricked with tiny needles, then squeezed with pliers. I couldn’t stop vomiting, either, but they’d given me something to help with that, or so they said. The only thing I wanted to do was sleep until I could wake up and be well again.
They’d been poking and prodding me for the past couple of hours in an attempt to figure out what was going on with my body, but no one seemed to know. And the worst of it was, they had sent Curtis out into the waiting room because he’d been looming over them, making the medical staff nervous. I hadn’t wanted him to leave, but I knew it would be best for the doctors and for Curtis if he didn’t have to sit and watch.
Now that the CT scan was done and I’d given more blood than I thought I had in my veins, I was settled into the bed, and they promised they would go get him, but twenty minutes had passed, and I could hardly keep my eyes open. Still no Curtis.
When the bubbly blond nurse walked in, I shifted my legs, trying to get comfortable. “Is my husband comin’?”
“Oh, right. I’m so sorry, Mrs. Walker. I’ll go get him in just a minute. You should probably get some rest in the meantime.”
For most of my sixty-seven years, I’d been described as kindhearted. Non-confrontational. Loving even. And yes, I was usually all of those things, including the easygoing woman everyone expected me to be, but there were a few things in the world guaranteed to set me off. One surefire way was if someone messed with my boys. Another was when it was clear they were trying to keep me away from Curtis—or vice versa. At that point, the gloves came off and a different side of me came out. A side most people didn’t want to see.
This nice young woman should’ve been warned. Too late now.
“You need to go get him,” I said, keeping my tone as polite as I could while I breathed through the pain that was currently tearing apart my insides.
“We will, Mrs. Walker. Just close your eyes and rest.”
I smiled, and based on the way the nurse was looking at me, it wasn’t a pleasant one. “I’m only gonna say this one time. And it’s more of a warning for you than anything else. If my husband finds out that you’re purposely keepin’ him away from me, the outcome is gonna be unlike anything you’ve ever seen before.”
And heaven help us all if my boys were out there, too.
The men in my life did not take kindly to someone attempting to keep me away from them. Especially Curtis.
The woman’s smile faltered, her forehead creasing. “We understand, but—”
“No, I really don’t think that you do.” If she did, she wouldn’t be standing there gawking at me.
“We thought it might be best if you got a little rest without him here.”
I plastered a fake smile on my face. “I highly suggest you don’t tell him that.”
Lord have mercy. Was it that difficult to understand?
Thankfully, the nurse nodded and rushed out of the room. Within a couple of minutes, Curtis was walking in, his face hard, his beautiful blue-gray eyes reflecting the fear I’d expected to see in them. I hated that he worried so much, but the truth was, I was worried, too. Never had I felt like this before, and I couldn’t even pinpoint exactly what the problem was. I hurt everywhere.
“What did they say?” Curtis asked, his voice deep but soft as he leaned over and kissed my forehead.
“Something about high white blood cell counts from the preliminary tests,” I told him, trying to remember exactly what they’d said. I was having a hard time focusing as it was. Nodding toward the IV in my arm, I continued, “They’ve put me on antibiotics while they wait for more tests to come back.”
Curtis eased into the chair beside my bed and rested his hand over mine.
“I’m so tired,” I told him.
“I know, darlin’. Close your eyes and rest. I’m right here.”
“You won’t leave me?”
“Not in this lifetime.”
Knowing he meant every word, I succumbed to sleep, instantly drifting off, knowing Curtis would keep me safe. Just as he always had, since that very first day…
