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My phone started blowing up as soon as we touched down. Lana and Lucy frowned at their own screens as the pilot taxied toward the private hangar where Violet’s jet was stored when on the West Coast.
Sharp inhales from both my sister-in-law and Lucy had me ignoring my own phone to make sure they were both okay. “What’s wrong?”
“Mom,” Lucy whispered, looking up at me with wide brown eyes full of…
Fuck, I didn’t like what I saw. And when I glanced at Lana, my dread only grew.
“What about your mom?” Harper asked, unbuckling her seat belt. “Lucy honey, what’s going on?”
“Mom collapsed when they touched down. She was taken to a nearby hospital, and they did tests.” Lucy blinked, and her tears started spilling. “Dad said she’s got a tumor. On her pituitary gland.”
Dallas stood and grabbed the phone out of Lana’s slack hands. As she read the messages on the screen, her eyes widened, and then she pushed the phone back into my sister-in-law’s hands and called to the flight attendant to bring two cups of strong black coffee with plenty of sugar in them.
Palms sweating, I finally looked at my own phone. I read the last text from Emmie first.
Em: Surgery is scheduled for first thing tomorrow. The neurosurgeon doesn’t know if he can safely remove the entire mass, but he’s the best in the country from what I could find out about him. If he can’t get it all, she will have to undergo radiation to shrink the rest of it. Once she’s recovered, she’ll have to be medicated for hormone replacement and adrenal steroids to regulate her thyroid and all that other shit.
Squeezing the back of my neck with my free hand, I thumbed up to the first of the missed messages. Emmie’s plane had been ready and waiting for them when they’d gotten to the airport, but Vi’s jet hadn’t even been taken out of the hangar yet. It took two hours for them to do the preflight inspection and have the pilot arrive since it was last minute. We hadn’t planned on returning home until Monday because we were going to attend Luca’s game on Sunday.
After the shitshow that my little girl’s wedding-dress-shopping experience had turned into, and knowing she would hide her pain and put on a brave face with all of us hanging around, Harper and I had decided that it was better for Violet’s mental health if we went home early. Vi being able to express her emotions without worrying if it would upset us was more important than trying to comfort her as we ached to do. But my kid was wired differently, always wanting to protect everyone from her own emotional state. I wouldn’t be able to sleep if I knew she was having a difficult time.
She only ever let Luca and Shaw see her break down, and if that was what she needed, then we weren’t going to linger and make things harder for her than they already were.
The extra time waiting at the Nashville airport had meant Emmie and the others got back to California several hours ahead of us. During that time, Layla had had a medical emergency that caused even the normally cool-headed Emmie to freak out a little.
And it was her reaction to what was going on that truly scared me.
As soon as the door was open to the jet, I guided the women down the stairs and out to the waiting van. Emmie must have sent it, because Rodger was behind the wheel. We all piled in and made the surprisingly short drive to the hospital where Layla had been admitted.
The press hadn’t gotten wind of the incident yet because there were no flashing lights of paparazzi cameras to greet us as we unloaded and rushed into the hospital toward the bank of elevators. Rodger had already given us instructions on how to get to Layla’s room. The distinctive smell that screamed hospital hit my nose, and I tried not to shudder. Nothing good had ever happened in any hospital I’d been to. Even with the births of babies came the pain and the fear. But it was the thought of blood that triggered me, and I tried to breathe through my mouth to avoid the antiseptic smell that had scenes of gore playing through my head like a PTSD flashback.
Lana and Lucy clung to each other as we rode up to the third floor. “She’s going to be okay, right, Dallas?” Lucy asked in a quivering voice.
“Pituitary tumors are rarely cancerous. They have a high survival rate, and recovery isn’t long. With proper monitoring and medication, she should be fine. But the pituitary gland regulates hormones. It could explain all the bizarre changes we’ve seen in Layla over the years. This kind of mass is normally a slow grower, so if it’s as big as what Emmie suggested in the text to Lana, it’s a good bet that this thing has been growing for a long time.”
“She’s been sick for years, and we didn’t know about it?” Lucy asked, her eyes growing more stricken.
“You can’t think of it like that. All we saw were mood swings and a few episodes of her not acting like the Layla we all know. Unless there were other symptoms, there was no way of knowing that she could have potentially had a tumor growing in her brain.” Dallas wrapped her arm around Lucy’s shoulders. “No one could have predicted this was happening inside her, Lu.”
“She did complain about having more headaches recently,” Lana said as we walked off the elevator.
“Headaches can be caused by anything,” Dallas excused. “No one rationally thinks they have a brain tumor just because of a headache.”
“Yeah, but—”
“Stop blaming yourselves,” Dallas interrupted. Stopping, she turned to face the other two women. “I’m sure Jesse is already doing plenty of that himself right now. He doesn’t need you two doing it as well. Think about how destroyed he’s feeling at the moment, and put on a brave face for him.”
Lana and Lucy interlocked their fingers and gave Dallas a firm nod. “You’re right. Let’s go. I need to see my sister,” Lana whispered.
Marcus stood outside the private room. Seeing us coming, he stepped forward and hugged Lucy. Before she’d married Harris, and even for a while afterward, he’d been her personal bodyguard. He continued to step in when she had to go somewhere alone, but mostly, he worked with Rodger protecting Emmie these days.
“She’s awake and alert now,” he murmured. “Don’t cry, or she’ll start crying again. She’s scared and upset with herself.”
Lucy swallowed hard but gave him a tight smile and nodded. “Okay. Thanks, Marcus.”
“I heard the doctor say she is going to be okay after the surgery. Even if she has to have radiation afterward, she’s got a good chance of making a full recovery.”
“But what if she doesn’t?” she asked in a small voice, reminding me of the little girl I’d met all those years before.
