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From what he described, Aaron's divorce was the oddity in a family who seemed to be all happily married. Except for Austin himself, that was. Hearing about his family now, she wondered why he had been satisfied with having a string of girlfriends, none of them serious. Had something happened in the past to make him a relationship shy? She wished she were bold enough to ask. “Your family sounds wonderful.”
“Yeah. They are.” His expression was solemn. “Our family is a testament to my parents. We were very blessed and had a great life growing up. My parents taught us about faith and God. They were wonderfully supportive and of course cared about us. Yet it was even more obvious the way they loved and doted on each other. My dad was pretty freaked out when my mom tripped over their dog Murphy, falling down the stairs and breaking her hip a few years ago.” His eyes darkened. “I can't imagine what she's going through right now.”
The way he spoke about his parents, and the love they had for each other, brought a lump to her throat. He was close to his family, much closer than she would have believed, considering the thousands of miles between Sun Valley, California, and Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
The lump in her throat swelled to the point she feared she might choke as realization sank deep. If something bad happened to his dad, would Austin want to stay?
Was it possible he would consider moving back home for good?
They arrived in Milwaukee late, almost eight o’clock at night, partially because of the two-hour time difference between California’s Pacific Standard time and Wisconsin’s Central Standard time. As Austin arranged for a rental car, she tried to explain the whole time zone thing to Josh.
“Back home it's still only six o’clock at night?” He asked, a puzzled frown in his brow. “I don't get it. How can it be one time here and another time someplace else?”
She launched into a discussion about time and the way it continually changed around the world. The more she talked the more she struggled to explain. Austin returned before she could confuse herself even more. She rested her hand on Josh’s shoulder. “Just trust me, the time is different all around the world. In the US it's only a few hours from one side of the country to the other, but in Tokyo or Australia it's more than half a day.”
Josh mulled this over as they threw their carry-on luggage into the back of the rental car. “I still don't get it,” he mumbled.
At this point, she wasn’t sure she did, either.
Austin headed straight to the hospital where he quickly found his siblings in the family center, which turned out to be a common gathering place for people waiting to hear about loved ones coming out of surgery and those waiting to visit patients in the intensive care unit.
“Austin.” A pretty woman that she thought was probably Amber ran over to give him a big hug. “Dad made it through surgery just fine. Did you get my message?”
“Yeah, I listened to it the moment we landed. Thanks for the call.” He took Lindsey 's arm and drew her forward even though she tried to hang back to give him space. “This is Lindsey Winters and her son Josh. Lindsey this is Amber and the rest of my family.”
The Monroe group took up a large corner of the waiting room. She glanced over the sea of faces and easily picked out the Monroe brothers from the crowd because of their striking resemblance to Austin. “Hi.”
“Welcome, Lindsey.” An older woman approached, her gait stiff and her expression drawn but with a friendly smile on her face, nonetheless. “I'm Alice Monroe, Austin's mother. It's wonderful to meet you. I just wish it could be under different circumstances.”
“I’m so sorry to hear about your husband,” she murmured, feeling as if she didn't belong here with these people in their time of grief.
“Well God has carried him through surgery, so I am hopeful he will recover just fine.” Alice sounded confident. The rest of the family nodded in agreement.
“Can I go up and see him?” Austin asked.
Amber nodded. “Sure. Andrea and Stuart are up there now. We've been taking turns,” she explained. “They don't want the entire family up there all at one time. I'll talk to the nurse and ask her to send Andrea and Stuart down so you can go up.”
“Thanks, sis.”
Josh was uncharacteristically shy, standing close to her side. She noted the two girls sitting next to each other and a young boy who looked to be about four or five playing a video game on the setup located in the corner of the waiting room. She turned to her son. “The two girls are Bethany and Shannon, and the little boy is Ben. Why don't you see if you could play Ben's video game with him?” She gave her son a gentle nudge. “I’m sure he won’t mind.”
“Will you come up to the ICU with me?” Austin asked in a low voice, when Amber got off the phone with the nurse. “I might need you to explain a few things.”
She wasn't a critical care nurse, but she nodded anyway. “Of course.”
Josh crossed over to join Ben, leaving her to follow Austin up to the third-floor cardiac intensive care unit.
He held her hand during the elevator ride up. His muscles tensed as they found the intensive care unit and walked through the main doorway. His dad was in the room right next to the nurse’s station.
She heard Austin draw in a swift breath, and she didn't blame him for his horrified reaction. His father was connected to a ventilator and there were numerous IV pumps around his bed. His heart rate, blood pressure, and pulmonary artery pressures were all displayed on a monitor over his head. His dad's eyes were closed, and she felt Austin hesitate, as if he didn't want to go into the room.
A cute blonde nurse hurried over. “Hi, my name is Tiffany and I'm Mr. Monroe’s nurse for this evening.” Her gaze zeroed in on Austin. “You're one of his sons?”
He nodded, his gaze never wavering from his dad's prone figure. “I’m Austin. How is he?”
“Doing really well. We're weaning him off the medications to keep his blood pressure stable, and we're also slowly weaning him off the ventilator.” She turned to look at her patient. “I know there's a lot of equipment in the room, but he's doing fine. We refer to his condition as critical but stable.”
He finally turned his gaze to the nurse. “Can he hear us?”
