Hard Beat(79)
Without returning my eyes to the nurse, I sink back in my seat because every other person I’ve asked this question has left and never come back. I lean my head against the wall and scrub a hand over my jaw, surprised when I hear the chair next to me scrape across the floor as she moves it. I snap my head forward, my hope building that I might get some kind of answer here.
She stares in silence with sympathetic eyes that flicker toward the door every few seconds before she starts. “I could get in a lot of trouble if anyone found out I’m giving you this information,” she says, emphasizing how much she’s risking by being here. All I can do is nod. “Ms. Croslyn is stable. She had some swelling of her brain due to her proximity and the force of the blast. After the medical team successfully stopped the swelling, they were able to determine that she has what is called a diffuse axonal brain injury.” She pauses momentarily because yes, I knew coming here that Beaux had a head injury, but hearing the technical term scares the crap out of me, and without my computer open so that I can Google it and see all of the details, I need more.
“What does that mean?” I plead for more information even when she’s giving me more than anyone has thus far.
“Once she arrived here, the neurologists were able to do some more intensive testing and believe she’s incurred a stage one injury, which is the least worrisome of them —”
My audible exhale cuts her off, the pressure in my chest abates some, so that I lean forward, elbows on my knees and head in my hands as I try to rein in the rush of emotion that thunders through me like a freight train. And the nurse hasn’t even explained what an axonal whatever it is called means, but that it’s stage one is enough for me to hold on to until I can look it up myself.
“Now please remember that it’s still a brain injury. Until she wakes up, we won’t know the extent or if there will be any long-term damage, but compared to some of the injuries that we see here from the same scenario, I’d say luck seems to be on her side.”
I swallow over the lump in my throat as I nod my head because the diagnoses I’d imagined were so much worse and daunting. “How long until she wakes up?”
“That’s up to her body and the doctors. They did give her a mild sedative to allow her body to settle some, so they’ll probably bring her off that later today and then it’s a wait and see… but she’s a fighter. Has been responsive and seems to be struggling to wake up.”
All I can do is nod once again while tears well in my eyes before I blink them away as relief and hurt surge through me. “Thank you for talking to me,” I whisper as she scoots her chair back and nods in kind to me before walking away. She’s almost to the door when I speak without thinking. “I didn’t know she was… That’s not the kind of person I am…” I’m not sure why I feel the need to explain to her that I didn’t knowingly fall in love with a married woman, to let her know I’m not that guy. Maybe so she doesn’t regret her decision.
The nurse falters in her footsteps, keeps her back to me, but nods her head. “I figured as much by the way you came barreling into the ward. A man acting like that doesn’t know. I’m sorry for you too.” And with that she exits the room and leaves me alone with my thoughts.
I slump back in my chair and close my eyes as I let my thoughts war against one another. I’m the fool here. I should leave and never look back since the woman played me like a damn violin, but I can’t find it within myself to leave just yet. A small part of me hopes that there is some huge misunderstanding, that she’s going to wake and clarify everything, because I can’t comprehend that she doesn’t love me. If I was watching someone else go through this, I’d tell them they were a sucker, to cut their losses and leave with some of their dignity intact.
But I just can’t bring myself to put one foot in front of the other and walk out of the hospital. Only I know the passion in her kiss, the raw honesty in her eyes. God, I am a sap. Honesty? It seems that word doesn’t apply to Beaux Croslyn at all.
The longer I sit here, the more I hold on to that fact, shoving away how much I care for her, and try to focus on the anger I feel – at her, at John, at the whole f*cking world. But then as the reality of my situation comes crashing down on me in this solitary waiting room, the eddy of my thoughts whirls back to the fact that there has to be a reason why she’d let me fall in love with her when she was committed to someone else.
Her explanations about her past filter through my anger, make me recall my fears that she had an abusive ex or a bad situation at home that she was escaping. Could that still be true? Is John one of those missing pieces that Beaux purposefully left unexplained? And if so, how does it all fit together?
Further, why the f*ck do I care? If that was the case, then she should have just told me. Wouldn’t she at least have told me there was someone else and that it was complicated?
Stop making excuses for her, Tanner. She played you from the get-go, made you believe her time and again until you fell for her. Fell for her? Shit, more like yelling “Timber” at the top of my lungs in a forest-full-of-falling-trees type of fall for her if I’m being honest with myself. And yet through everything, rooftop confessions, afternoons spent making slow and sweet love, trying to teach her the lay of the land, none of it mattered because in the scheme of things, I was being played on every level imaginable.