Broken Wings (A Romantic Suspense)(74)

Jessica’s hand snakes out and she tries to pull me into the fire. Jack grabs my arm and yanks me back, and Jessica falls, shrieking in pain from her broken leg. She twists and goes down bad, and we both stare at her.

She landed wrong on the broken beam. A shard of wood, as thick as my arm and wickedly pointed, juts through her middle just before her breastbone. She stares at it in disbelief, mouthing a wordless argument, like she can talk her way out of it.

I start to reach for her and then another beam falls. Flaming wood dives from the ceiling and a great slab of burning timber crushes her face as she screams, her voice rising in keening agony until it fades out in a wordless shriek and she goes limp, the flames licking up her legs and arm.

“We have to go, now!”

“The door!”

“I know, front window! The office!”

Jack shoves the door open. The flames haven’t reached the office yet. We drag Richard inside, then pull the big man, Frank. It’s like pulling a car. My arms and legs are screaming and I’m bleeding from my right thigh and I don’t know how it happened. Every breath is hot agony. We have to get them out.

“Leave me,” Richard wheezes again.

Jack picks up my dad’s old desk chair and hurls it through the window. He throws the curtains over the broken glass, then with a massive groan of effort, heaves his father bodily from the floor and drops him on the ground outside. I try to help him move Frank, but my efforts hinder more than they help. Jack wrestles him through the opening then lifts me over and drops down himself, collapsing beside me.

I step back. Sirens wail as a column of smoke rises from the roof of my home, swirling into the sky with the embers.





Jack





There are fourteen steps between the far side of the waiting room and this one. I know because I’ve walked the distance exactly two hundred and thirty-six times. Counting is the only thing that keeps me from throwing a chair through the window.

I f*cking hate hospitals. The chemical smell in the hallway, the tacky, worn carpet, the cheap, shitty chairs, the ugly painting of a sailboat on the wall, the television tuned to The View with the missing remote.

It’s been thirty-six hours and I haven’t slept. I should be in there with her, but they wouldn’t let me. They said it was too dangerous.

So here I am, counting down the seconds. It’s like that old psychological thing, Xeno’s Error. Or Zeno’s Arrow. Something like that. Every second stretches out longer and longer into infinity until every step takes a year. I’ll be an old man before I hear the news.

I am I going to be a father, or a widower?

I realize I’m pacing faster and faster until I’m running back and forth, tapping the wall with my hand before darting back. I only stop, panting, when the door opens.

My heart rockets into my throat, but only for a moment. It’s not the doctor.

It’s my father.

He’s lost about ninety pounds and walks with a cane now. He was right, he does shit in a bag now. Over the last year he’s been pushing me constantly to take my so-called job with the company and the answer has always been no.

“She pop my son out yet?”

I sigh. “Do you even realize how much of an * you are?”

“Yes,” he groans, lowering himself into a seat.

Frank would be right there with him, but Frank took a severance package after he was wounded. We still exchange phone calls and emails now and then. He opened a restaurant that specializes in hot dogs. I’ve been there a few times with Ellie.

“So nothing yet, I take it.”

“No. They won’t let me in the room while they deliver the baby.”

My father sighs and the sigh turns into a cough.

“That’s not good.”

“No it isn’t.”

“You ought to sit down for a while.”

“I’d rather not.”

I go back to pacing, walking this time.

“I did that.”

“Did what?”

“Paced. At first, anyway. When it was time they brought me in for the delivery. When you were born.”

“Don’t try to win me over with sappy bullshit, Dad. It’s not going to work.”

He sighs again.

We continue to wait. In the twentieth hour, my mother arrives with my half sisters. The room feels more full. They take to the grubby pile of toys in the corner while my mother sits on the far end of the room from my father.

Walking between them, I can feel the fury, mostly from her. It’s like sticking my hand between two magnets pushing into each other from the wrong ends.

Ellie’s uncle is the last to show up. Well, next to last. Fitzgerald brings everyone dinner from the steak shop down the street. I skip the meal and pace instead. The waiting room smells like grease, Velveeta, and onions. Except for the kids’ baby-sized steaks, they don’t have onions. Fitz knew, somehow. He’s good at that.

My mother and Ellie’s uncle talk the most. My father sits hunched forward, big hands propped on his cane. The apelike hair that covers his hands and arms has gone all white as snow and thinner than it once was. The only dark remaining on his head is his big beetle eyebrows. In a few years, if he makes it that long, he’ll have nothing but a ring of white around his head.

So we wait.