The Military Wife (A Heart of a Hero, #1)(77)

Lines and wires connected Sophie to machines that beeped and hummed and clicked around her. Her face was almost as white as the bandage wrapped around her head. A tube was under her nose, but she wasn’t on a ventilator. Her leg was in a sling and raised off the bed, her left hand in a blue cast from her fingers to her elbow. She looked like a little shake would wake her right up, but it wouldn’t. She was Sleeping Beauty.

Allison shuffled to the other side of Sophie’s bed. Harper stayed in the doorway, telling herself the room was stuffed with equipment and small, but her leaden feet didn’t move for selfish reasons.

Imagining Ben in Sophie’s place made her stomach heave and an acidic burn of coffee creep up her throat. Yet through the stew, a sliver of thankfulness rose. It wasn’t Ben; he was safe. She pressed her cheek into the cool metal of the doorframe.

Allison brushed her hand over Sophie’s face. “I suppose they had to shave her head. She’s going to hate that when she wakes up.”

“If she wakes up,” Darren rumbled.

“Shut your mouth,” Allison ground out between her teeth, quietly but with a bite.

Darren rose and ambled out of the room. He stood in the hallway, looking down one side of the hall and then the other, obviously disoriented. “I need air.”

Harper watched him disappear around the corner before entering Sophie’s room and laying her hand on Allison’s shoulder. “I’m going to make some calls and meet the kids at the house. I’ll get them packed and bring them by here on our way out of town. Is that okay?”

Allison didn’t look away from Sophie’s face or stop stroking her cheek. “There’s a key under the red flowerpot. I’m going to sleep here as long as she needs me.”

“I’ll bring you a bag, too.”

Allison nodded and Harper backed into the hallway. On the sidewalk outside the hospital, Harper closed her eyes and lifted her face toward the early afternoon sun. The hospital seemed to exist on a different space-time plane. The brightness chased away the chill that had settled near her bones and around her heart and had nothing to do with temperature.

Darren sat on a bench set under a crepe myrtle that was beginning to leaf out. She joined him.

“She hates me.” Darren’s voice was devoid of emotion.

Harper didn’t believe for a millisecond that losing Allison wouldn’t devastate him. “She’s as upset with herself as she is with you about the accident.”

“Is she leaving me?” Darren turned his gaze on her.

“She’ll be staying here with Sophie.”

“And afterward?”

“I don’t know.” What Allison declared in the shadow of an emotional tsunami wouldn’t necessarily come to pass. “I’m going to pick up Libby and Ryan and bring them back to Nags Head for spring break. I’ll try to make things easier for them.”

“You’ve been a good friend to her.”

“Allison’s been a good friend to me.”

His chin dropped to his chest. “What if she dies?”

“She won’t.” Harper wasn’t a doctor or a prognosticator, but sometimes people needed something to hang on to and not the barren facts. “Sophie will be running and playing princess before you know it and this will all be a bad memory.”

“My life is a bad memory.” His laugh was self-deprecating, but the message worried her.

“That’s not true. Remember how happy you were when Sophie was born?”

Harper remembered his euphoria and the kisses he kept giving a tired Allison propped up in the hospital bed and the baby he showed off in his arms to visitors.

“It hurts to remember that,” he said softly. “It feels like someone else’s life.”

She was at a loss, unable and unqualified to drag him back into the light. After Noah had died, she’d had Ben to take care of and eventually he’d swamped her grief with the strength of a love she’d never imagined before she’d had him. Ben had saved her.

She worried Darren was beyond saving. He was falling apart before her very eyes. A decrepit ghetto of lies believed and lies told. Depression scurried and crept into every nook and cranny like rats. The slow decay of hope. Sophie’s accident only sped the process.

When the right words didn’t come, she covered his hand with hers, and they sat in silence, the sun bright, the birds chirping, the sound of laughter carrying from the parking lot.

He pulled his hand away from hers. “By the time you get down there, the kids will be getting off the bus.”

“We’ll stop to see Sophie before we head to Nags Head. Will you be here?”

“I don’t know.” Darren squinted and looked to the far distance where there was nothing but blue sky.

Disappointed but not surprised, Harper walked away. She collected the kids from the bus stop and filled them in on the basics of the situation, painting it with as rosy a brush as possible while preparing them to see their sister in a hospital bed. Libby and Ryan were quiet as Harper pulled in to the driveway of their house.

They stepped inside. The silence had an eerie cast as if the house was haunted. A shiver ran down Harper’s spine. Forcing an upbeat tone, she said, “Let’s get packed up. And don’t forget a swimsuit.”

Libby and Ryan retreated to their respective rooms. Once Harper was assured they had a handle on packing, she sidled into Allison and Darren’s room. On the surface, nothing hinted at the explosive undercurrents of their marriage. A framed wedding picture sat in a place of honor on the dresser.