Emerald Fire (Christian Romance) (The Jewel Series) (27 page)

“There’s been an accident.” Tony said, “She was driving your Jeep and…”

“Where is she now?” Barry interrupted.

CAROLINE’S
husband, Peter, drove. Barry sat in the passenger’s seat of Maxine’s sports car and pushed against the floorboard with his feet, willing the car to go faster. Begging the car to go faster. Peter drove the little green bullet with absolute precision, darting in and out of traffic, cutting off this car or shooting past that car, going through a few lights that were more red than yellow. Barry didn’t care. He just counted off blocks then miles then blocks again as they raced to the hospital nearest to his home. Their home. His and Maxine’s home.

He saw Tony’s car skewed carelessly across the line into the “No Parking” zone and knew he’d beat them here. Peter barely had the car stopped before Barry had the door open and his feet on the asphalt of the parking lot, running – driving toward the emergency room doors. He turned sideways to slide between them because they opened too slowly. He barely noticed how people leaped out of his way as he dashed into the waiting area.

He scanned faces in the waiting room, taking in Robin’s tears, Tony’s stoicism. Sarah, who looked shell-shocked but calm. He picked Sarah as he rushed forward. Sarah the nurse. Sarah who would understand.

“What have they told you?”

Sarah reached under her glasses and rubbed her eyes. “Nothing. Absolutely nothing.”

“Will they let you go back and see her?”

She pressed her lips together and shook her head. “I’ve tried twice in the last ten minutes. They won’t let me.”

Barry ran a hand through his hair, not surprised to find it shaking. “What does that mean? That can’t be good, can it?”

She gave half a shake of her head before she stopped herself. “We don’t know that. Better if we just wait and see.”

“Oh, dear God,” Robin breathed

Barry whirled around to see what had made Robin gasp that little prayer. A trauma team had thrown the emergency room doors open as they rolled a gurney through in a real hurry. A nurse crouched atop the bed straddling the patient, pressing up and down on her chest. Two nurses pushed the bed toward the elevator doors a third nurse held open. A female doctor at the side of the gurney squeezed a breathing bag every few seconds. Barry made out a strand of jet black hair against the bloodstained sheet seconds before the bed disappeared into the elevator.

THE
wait was interminable. Sarah continued to try to get information – any information at all – but all she could get out of anyone was that Maxine was still in surgery. They wouldn’t even tell her what was being operated on, they just directed them all to a waiting room on the surgical floor. The family moved up there to hold their vigil.

Barry signed form after form for the hospital. A police officer came to speak to Barry, and the group learned what had happened. Maxine apparently stalled out in the middle of the road and was t-boned by a driver of an SUV. Forensics verified that the driver had only been doing the speed limit of 45 miles per hour. The impact turned the Jeep around until it faced oncoming traffic, where it was hit head-on by a midsized Honda. Both the driver of the SUV and the driver of the Honda were saved from serious injuries by their air bags and were able to leave the hospital with little more than stitches. Both drivers confirmed what the crash site investigators predicted. Maxine had simply stalled out in the middle of the road.

“I don’t understand. Maxine could out-drive any Formula One racer. She’s the best driver I know.” Robin said. “How could she stall out?”

Barry sat in the vinyl chair with his elbows on his knees and stared at the tiny black specs in the white tile floor. “The clutch has been sticking lately. I noticed it last week. It hadn’t gotten too bad yet but I should have taken it in.” Guilt clawed at his chest and tried to rip through his flesh.

Robin put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed, then shifted TJ from her breast to her shoulder. “There’s no way you could have known.”

He sighed and stared at the floor. “I should have taken it in.”

The door flew open and Caroline O’Farrell hurried in, closing her cell phone. “I’ve updated the prayer chain.” She looked at Robin. “If you’re done nursing the lad, I’ll take him home with me,” she said. “I have three teenaged girls at home who can help me watch him.”

Robin started to protest, “No, please don’t worry about it.”

Caroline put a hand over Robin’s, stilling her patting on TJ’s back. “You have to worry about the other men in your life right now. Let me take my first grandchild home with me. You can come nurse him in a few hours, or I’ll bring him back here, whichever.”

Tears spilled out of Robin’s eyes and flooded her cheeks as she whispered, “Thank you.”

Caroline gingerly took TJ from his mother’s arms. “Come here sweet pumpkin. Come see your
Seanmháthair
.” She patted the baby’s diapered bottom as she rounded up the diaper bag and stroller. In a few moments, she departed with TJ and all his gear.

Barry watched the door shut behind them and sank further into himself, feeling the dark fist of despair clutch at his chest with jagged claws. The spots on the floor shimmered and shifted until he closed his eyes so that he wouldn’t have to use the energy it took to focus.

If only. If only he had moved her car out of his way and driven his Jeep. He had been fighting the temperamental clutch all week and wouldn’t have stalled it in the middle of the intersection, which meant that two cars wouldn’t have plowed into his wife. Then Maxine wouldn’t be lying on a table while doctors tried desperately to repair her shattered body.

The tendrils of fear sank deeper, blackening his thoughts, banishing any hope. He just realized how much he loved Maxine – how much he wanted to give it his all, and he realized that she may never hear the words pass his lips.

The door opened again, but he was afraid to look up, afraid to see compassion in some doctor’s eyes when he told them how they had done everything they could, but that her injuries were too severe. How despite their best efforts, Maxine had died.

He braced himself to simply hear the words, nearly the same words he had heard once before. Before, his feelings were so confused. When he heard them today, his world would crash down around him and life would lose meaning. He braced, except he didn’t hear a stranger’s voice. He heard Derrick’s.

“I just got your message. Do we know anything?”

“Nothing yet,” was Tony’s reply. “We’re still just waiting.”

He felt the brush of clothing as Derrick took the seat next to his. “What happened?” He talked to Tony over Barry’s hunched form.

Sarah answered him. Sarah, the calming force for all of them that day, set aside her animosity and spoke kindly to Derrick. “She stalled out in the middle of the road. The other driver said it looked like she’d just got the car restarted before he hit her.”

Because, Barry silently added, her husband left her with a broken vehicle to drive. Because he couldn’t be bothered with something as mundane as swinging by an auto mechanic when he had obviously more pressing business at hand.

He couldn’t take it any more. Barry lunged to his feet and ripped the door open, never looking behind him. Scanning the halls for the exit sign, the need to escape flooded him, panicked him. Then immediately departed. He found he didn’t even have the strength to go back into the room. Leaning against the wall, he raised both hands and pressed them against his eyelids. All around him, he heard the sounds of a hospital, and wanted to scream and find out how people could be going on with their lives as if nothing had changed. As if the world wasn’t teetering on its axis, ready to collapse in on itself.

Barry lowered his hands when he felt Tony take up the wall space next to him. They didn’t immediately speak, because no words needed saying, but Barry was surprised when he realized just how much he required the company of his friend.

“She loves me,” he said at one point.

“I know.” Tony shifted and crossed his ankles in front of him. “I think she always has.”

“It just dawned on me what I might lose.”

Tony sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. “Bear, if Maxi doesn’t make it, she gets to go home. One day, you get to go home and you’ll see her again. But we’re going to count on her pulling through this.”

Barry took Tony’s rebuke to heart with a single solemn nod. “My head is spinning.”

Tony stood straight. “You’ll go insane pondering the ‘might have beens.’ I have to believe, and Robin has to believe – and you have to believe – that she’ll pull through. We have to have faith. If not, whoever walks through the door next will find a group of raving lunatics.”

Barry leaned his head back against the cold wall – Why were hospitals always so cold?– and pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes again. “I know. I know. You’re right.” Pushing away from the wall, he looked down the hall to the set of doors that led to the operating rooms. There was no movement that he could see.

The cry in his heart that he had ignored all of these months suddenly became audible to him. The unexpected death of his first wife sent him careening away from God. The impending loss of his current wife, this beloved woman, almost sent him to his knees. He turned his head and looked at his best friend, at his brother, as tears burned the back of his throat. “Will you do me a favor?” he asked, his voice hoarse with emotion.

“Of course,
mi fratello
.”

“Will you pray with me?”

Tony faced Barry and placed both hands on his shoulders. “It would be my honor.”

IT
was the darkest part of the night, the part of the night that hangs on just before dawn takes over. Peter had come and gone with TJ, bringing the baby to be fed, comforting both infant and mother. Derrick vanished and shortly returned with food that no one ate and strong coffee that everyone made disappear. Sarah went back and forth pestering the staff, finally finding someone that would tell her only that they were still working on Maxine and offered vagaries about internal bleeding. Mostly, they all sat silently, each numb from the worry and the fear, no longer even interested in the pretense of conversation. At last, the doctor finally arrived.