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Not now that I’d experienced life with her in it.
“Jesus. You’ve got blood all over you.” He reached for my hands and took his coat off and put it around my shoulders. “Where is the blood coming from?”
“It was coming from her head,” I said, staring down at my bloody hands. “She was unconscious. She never spoke.”
“Was she breathing?” Hugh’s voice cracked, and my eyes snapped up, and I saw the panic.
“Not at first. I did CPR, and she started breathing. But she wasn’t conscious. I don’t know what the fuck happened. I’m so fucking sorry. I let her go out on that ice. I fucking let her go out on the ice!” I shouted and turned and punched the wall.
Hugh grabbed me again, just as Cage and Finn came running around the corner. The next hour was filled with all of Georgia’s family members showing up. There were tears and questions, and they hugged me, repeating over and over that it wasn’t my fault. Lila brought me dry clothes, and Cage and Finn dragged me over to the bathroom and forced me to go in the stall and change. When I came out, I washed the blood from my hands and then fell against the wall beside the sink, sliding down to the floor and letting myself break down. They moved on each side of me, sitting on the floor as they cried right along with me.
When Brinkley arrived, she paced for the longest time and then went and got a hot tea and insisted I drink it while she paced some more.
The next few hours were brutal. We were told that Georgia had suffered a traumatic brain injury when she’d fallen through the ice and most likely hit her head hard enough to split it open. She was in a coma, and they had no idea how long it would be until she woke up.
I called my grandfather, who had a friend that was a prominent neurosurgeon in San Francisco, and he flew on our helicopter to give a second opinion. No one thought she was in a state to be moved, so we’d bring doctors here and do whatever it took to make sure she got the best care.
We were able to sit in her room in the ICU, and the Reynoldses had all agreed to take shifts, as the hospital didn’t want more than two people in her room at a time.
I wasn’t big on taking shifts.
I was here, and I wasn’t leaving.
When the sun came up in the morning, I blinked a few times, my hand covering hers and my head resting beside her waist on the bed. I’d slept in the chair on one side of her bed, with Alana on the other.
“Good morning, Tink,” I whispered. “Can you hear me, baby?”
Nothing.
She looked peaceful, not a sign of distress other than the gash that they’d stitched up at the top of her forehead.
Her hair was wild and wavy from being submerged in freezing cold water.
I squeezed my eyes closed as I remembered how she looked when I’d pulled her out. Her lips were blue, her body lifeless.
Just like my mother had been.
Was I fucking cursed?
The two most important women in my life had put their lives in my hands.
I’d failed the first time.
We had no idea if Tink had suffered a loss of oxygen to the brain. Dr. Lexington, my grandfather’s doctor friend, had agreed with Dr. Pruitt here in Cottonwood Cove.
Time would tell.
Fucking endless years of schooling, and that was the diagnosis?
Time would fucking tell?
Time had never been much of a friend to me.
It had taken my mom too soon.
I rubbed my thumb over the back of her limp hand and glanced over to see her mother sleeping in the other chair.
“I didn’t get to give you your other gift. It wasn’t just the skates in that box, Georgia. There was a key to the house,” I said, my voice cracking on the last word. “Ourhouse, Tink. The one with the pickleball court. I promise I’ll play as much as you want me to if you wake up. If you let me know that you’re in there.”
