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Once, when Andie was twelve, she’d broken her arm. She’d been playing with some friends on an overturned tetherball pole. One kid would roll the big tire that anchored it around while the others would sit on the pole and see who could stay on the longest. When Andie had fallen, she was still hanging on and the pole had continued its roll, slowly yet relentlessly forward, bending her hand back over her arm. Andie had watched in morbid disbelief as her knuckles bumped into the back of her wrist and she heard more than felt that insanely loud crack of bone. For one hot, blinding second, she had stared open-mouthed at her busted arm in mute horror, and then the pain had come in with a gruesomeness that nauseated her.
That’s what Andie felt when Dr. Green placed the birdlike, still, and impossibly small bundle in her arms. She felt her heart, her soul, the very center of her being simply crack. Life was never going to be the same.
“You had a girl.” Dr. Green’s voice, if possible, was even softer now. “I am very sorry for your loss.” Then she and the nurse quietly left the room.
“Oh my God.” Luke’s voice seemed to echo around the tomblike silence left in the wake of the medical staff’s departure. “She was so beautiful. Perfect. Oh, God.” His fingers trembled as he reverently brushed them over her miniscule features. “Look at her lips. Have you ever seen such perfect bow lips?”
He was right. From the exquisite feather of her symmetrically perfect brows to the soft little O of her lips, everything about their child was beautiful. Andie hadn’t been prepared for that. She had subconsciously braced for deformities or, since she hadn’t quite made it to the six-month mark, perhaps features not quite formed. But she had everything—even her eyelashes lay like miniature furry crescents on the roses of her thumb-sized cheeks.
“She’s like a doll,” Andie said reverently. “A tiny, broken doll.” She held that too small body, and it felt like she cradled the universe in her arms. Not just her world, but it was existence itself, weightless in her hands. Andie had the insane worry that not just her own life, but surely all life could not possibly go on after this. Unquestionably, the world had stopped spinning. How could anyone go on after this?
Andie wasn’t aware of anything but the impossibly tiny bundle in her arms. It was like she and the baby were being sucked down a vortex, and the rest of the world was spinning away, forever.
“Andie?” Was Luke shouting? “Andie!” Hewasshouting. Why did he sound so far away? “Dr. Green! I need a doctor! Somebody help!” Andie felt the room spin farther and farther away, Luke’s shouts as faint as if they’d been muted. She couldn’t really feel anymore either, she thought numbly, as she stared fixedly into her child’s still face. Everything seemed as though it were covered in a thick layer of gauze, and that white, cottony film felt as if it were getting thicker and thicker, muffling out the too harsh world and cocooning her and her baby in quiet warmth. The white closed in on her as Luke’s shouts continued, and she was vaguely aware of footsteps in the room, sounds of chaos, but Andie kept her eyes locked on her baby, even as that white plowed in like an avalanche and consumed her.
Chapter 17
“What’s wrong with her?” Luke heard the panic in his voice and didn’t care. He was more scared now than he ever remembered being in his life. “What’s going on? Dr. Green? What’s happening? She was just… just—” Shoulders shaking and chest heaving with suppressed panic, Luke felt like a fighter in the ring with the Invisible Man. He was getting the shit beat out of him with no idea how to retaliate or protect himself. His ass was getting pummeled, and there was nothing he could do to stop it or even slow it down.
“Luke, I need you to stay back and let us work.” Dr. Green’s voice, which had been calm and dependable as the Rock of Gibraltar up until now, held an icy edge of anxiety as she bent over Andie’s prone form. It scared the shit out of him to see the previously unshakeable doctor frantic. “Andie? Andie! I need you to talk to me now. Can you hear me, Andie? Can you look at me? Andrea?” Dr. Green held a penlight in one hand and was leaning over Andie’s unresponsive form as she shone the beam in first one eye and then the next.
Andie looked catatonic. She didn’t blink or turn her head or even flinch while the doctor lifted each lid and searched for a response. There were nurses and other medical technicians pouring in as machines shrilled out alarming warnings, and they all seemed to be talking at once. Luke heard it all as a cacophony of too loud noises and understood about as much as he would’ve if they were speaking in Pig Latin. All he knew, all he saw, was Andie lying as still and lifeless as their child, on that bed with wires and tubes attached everywhere, and he thought for an eternal, frozen moment that if he lost them both, it would break him.
“Andie!” Luke pushed his way back to her bedside, nudging two nurses aside as he did. “Andie! Talk to me, honey. Come on. You gotta snap outta this. C’mon, Andie. Sweetheart, wake up.” Only, she was awake, he saw. Her eyes were open, but they held no spark. “Andie, baby, please.” His hands looked big and dark as he cupped her face between them, tried to get her to look at him; she was as white as the sheets she lay against. Luke shook her, or maybe it was the fear quaking within him that caused it, yet still she was beyond response.
Hands, gentle but relentless, pulled on his elbow and shoulder, dragging him from Andie’s bedside. “Luke.” Dr. Green’s voice held an edge of steel now. “Luke, we need to take care of Andie now. Luke? I need you to go out and wait in the waiting area. We’ll bring you back in when we’ve got her stable. Luke! I don’t have time for this!” She was almost shouting now as he resisted letting go of Andie. “I need to give her my full attention, and I can’t do that if I’m taking care of you. Do you understand? I need you to let me take care of her now.”
Though he understood her words, it was beyond his ability to walk away. Not when he was losing her. He couldn’t let go. Luke was shaking his head, denying both the doctor and the reality of what was going on. “This can’t be happening. I can’t lose them both. I can’t.” There were more hands on him now, pulling with serious effort, but he wasn’t going anywhere.
“Luke.” The voice he least expected, and a hand on his shoulder with a grip like a vice. “Come out here with us. Come on. Let the doctors help her now.” Jax. Jax’s hold was the only solid thing in the world at that moment, and Luke found himself out in the hall, unsure of how he’d gotten there.
More people were rushing into Andie’s room, and a helpless, panicky feeling began to fill his chest. “I need to get back in there. I need to stay with her.” He was trying to walk, but Jax was like a wall in front of him, blocking his way. “Get out of my way, Jax.” He eyed the man in front of him, and for the first time in nineteen years, he wasn’t talking to the jerk who’d run off with his girlfriend; he was looking into the face of his oldest and closest childhood friend. Right now, looking Jax in the face and meeting him eye-to-eye, the mistakes and hurts of the past melted away. Tragedy and fear had a way of burning down the clutter and stripping everything bare to its foundation. And the foundation he shared with this man was as solid and formidable as a tank. He’d loved Jax. Loved him as a brother and more deeply than he ever realized. But if he didn’t move and move now, Luke was going to deck him. He tried first to step to the left, but Jax blocked him, so he tried stepping to the right next. Jax blocked him again. Luke’s fists bunched, his fear transitioning righteously into anger. He planted his feet, braced his weight on his heels, squared off, and prepared to pound the helplessness and fear away. Starting with that pretty face.
Jax was crying. He wasn’t sobbing, and his chest wasn’t heaving with the same anguish as Luke’s was, but there were fat, steady tears flowing unchecked down his cheeks. The idiot stood there, solidly stationed in front of Luke like a martyred sacrifice. His arms were down close to his sides, and he held his hands palms-up at waist level like he was ready to catch someone. Him. Luke looked into the face of his childhood friend whom he’d steadfastly refused to acknowledge for almost a decade and saw that Jax would take whatever Luke wanted to shell out right now. If Luke started wailing on him, he knew Jax would withstand the beating like it was his due, or maybe he’d consider it his penance. As that realization sank in, he felt the sudden anger ebb away as swiftly as it had crested.
In the wake of the anger though, grief and fear swelled back in to fill the void left behind. Insanely, Luke wished he’d given in to the urge and pounded on Jax after all. This fear, this bottomless well of anguish, left him directionless and lost. Anything would be better than this. So Luke lifted his fists high and tried to reclaim that fleeting anger, but his heart wasn’t in it; his heart was in the room on the other side of that doorway, and there was nothing he could do to help her. And oh, God, his baby, his daughter was gone. Devastated, Luke dropped his hands.
“It was a girl.” He didn’t recognize his voice anymore. “She’s gone. My daugh—” He had to stop and clear his throat. “—daughter. Jax. I had a daughter.” Then Jax was holding him. Not the semi-homophobic, one-armed, half hug, back-pounding thing guys gave each other, but a full-body embrace from arms that trembled and hands clenched in tight fistfuls in the back of his shirt.
“I’m sorry, Luke.” Jax’s voice was just as grief-roughened as his own. “I’m so fucking sorry, man.” And Luke felt the walls between them crumble. The two decades filled with broken trust and hatred crumbled under the onslaught of this fresh and unimaginable disaster. The men held onto each other in despair.
“Dad?” Logan’s voice sounded the way it had when he’d been a kid. It had the same shaky quality it used to carry when he was scared but trying not to show it. Nothing on this earth could’ve reached where Luke’s grief had taken him. No other force in this world could have wrenched Luke from the wasteland of grief he’d been cast into. He lifted his head at the sound of his child in need and found the strength to go on.
For Logan.
“C’mere, son.” Luke stayed close to Jax but turned enough so he could hold his arms out to his son. “It’s bad, Logan.” He didn’t let his chin wobble or his voice crack now. He sucked it up and went on. “We lost the baby. It was a girl, but she was just too small.”
He could do nothing about the tears, but he never raised his son to pretend grief and sorrow weren’t a part of life. When they lost his parents back-to-back a few years ago, he and Logan had cried together plenty. But this wasn’t an elderly couple who lived their lives fully to pass quietly in their sleep six months apart. This was his little girl, a tiny, beautiful life that never got a chance, and Luke was dismayed at the depth of his grief. This was a pain at a level he’d never experienced, and he could tell his son was frightened. So, Luke bore down and got the rest of it out, striving for the same detached professionalism the doctor used.
“Dr. Green told us that if we’d have made it even one more week, they could’ve tried to save her. But she… she was just too little and wasn’t strong enough yet. So there was nothing they could do. And they just stood there and watched as she… as she….” His breath hitched again, so he cleared his throat and got the rest out while he could. “Now something’s happened with Andie. They wouldn’t tell me what’s going on. I’m sorry, son, so sorry. Your sis-sister….” Logan’s shoulders hitched against him, his suppressed sobs all but choking the young man. Luke cupped his hand over the back of his son’s head and held him closer, giving and receiving a comfort that could only be felt between a parent and a child, and as he reflected, it was a bitter, razor-edged pill to swallow, knowing he’d never have this exchange with his daughter.
“God, Dad. I’m sorry.” Logan’s arms were as strong and crushing as Jax’s had been. “I-I-I’m so sorry, Dad.” Luke let out a gruff sound meant to convey there was no need for sorrys and kissed his son’s temple.
“It’s okay, son,” he told him. “Everything’s going to be okay.” But it wasn’t. The baby—Christ, his daughter—was gone, and Luke was afraid nothing would ever be okay again. Before he could crack and lose himself in grief again, Luke braced and pulled back. This was better, thinking about Logan—or hell, even Jax was better. He’d be able to keep going if he focused on them. “Let’s sit down. Are you hungry? Did you eat today?” The questions were automatic ones he’d been asking of his son his whole life, and they came out now more as reflex to fill the void of silence. Silence was the enemy right now. With silence came thoughts and fear about what was happening in the room just behind him, and that he could not bear without going insane.
When he turned to find the waiting area, Kiki was standing just a foot away. Her pixie face was ravaged by grief. Even her riotous-colored hair seemed to have dimmed from sorrow. With a hiccupping catch to her words, she touched his shoulder and said, “Not this one. There’s too much joy in that room for us.” And she pointed him away from the waiting room across the hall. Luke nodded, thankful for her insight. He understood completely what she meant; there was no room in this day for the anticipation and righteous shouts of celebration that were to be had in there. Just the thought felt like an affront, as if the entire world should be in mourning right now. Any display of happiness would be obscene. Kiki headed down the hall with Logan trailing behind, and Luke motioned for Jax to join with a tilt of his head.
The gesture was unnecessary, because of course he would be coming along, but Luke made the effort—small though it was—so Jax would understand things had shifted between them. He knew Jax received his unspoken message when the other man’s face scrunched up in a grimace of suppressed emotion. Jax gave his shoulder a hard squeeze then the four of them headed for a waiting area that wasn’t full of expectant and jubilant family members.
