“She sure ran into the wrong john this time.” Just once, Tripp wished his mother would’ve said no, and let him handle the mess. But moms never did what was best for them. They always showed up when their kids needed them, and they always got their hearts broken when they did.
The longer Tripp sat, the more TEAM agents showed up. After several long hours waiting for news from the surgeon, the only agents missing were those from the Seattle office, the ones on assignment, and The TEAM task force against human trafficking, now somewhere in the Far East. Zack and Beau should’ve been with them, but they’d stayed stateside to assist Mother. Tripp wondered if they got hazard pay for that.
But mostly, he watched the large, closed double doors at the end of the hall that declared, Do Not Enter. The ones hospital personnel in gray scrubs ignored.
His poor mom. She’d already been through so many different levels of Hell with Trish. Searching the length of the East Coast for the know-it-all, runaway teenager after they’d first moved. Faithfully reporting her missing daughter to APD every time Trish took off. Problem was, it’d happened so often that Andy knew most local police officers by name these days. She even took homemade cookies to the local precincts because she knew how hard they’d tried to locate Trish, and how hard their job was.
Then there were the various detox and rehab centers that had cheerfully taken every last cent of Andy’s meager savings, promised the moon, but in the end, couldn’t contain Trish’s demons any better than her mother could. Add to that all the halfway houses, back alleys, bars, and drug houses Andy and Tripp had searched. The filthy streets and dirty park benches. The worst dives across the Potomac River…
Yet Andrea had never given up. Tripp wished she would.
He looked down between his boots at the generic, easily-washed and disinfected tiled-floor. He’d given up on Trish long ago. In Idaho. She’d been an embarrassment then. Still was. Yet here he was… God, he was just as bad as his mother.
Andy patted his clenched hand on his thigh. “My turn to get coffee. Would you like a breakfast biscuit or two?”
“No, Mom. Stay put. Let me do that for you,” he told her, squeezing her slender hand in return, wishing he could save her from whatever prognosis still lay ahead. It couldn’t be good, not with all the blood Trish had lost.
“Nonsense. I need the walk. It’ll do me good. Sitting here and worrying is eating me alive. You stay here with your friends. The cafeteria’s not far. I won’t be but a minute.”
Alex sprang to her side, his arm cocked for her to take. “May I accompany you, Mrs. McClane?”
She smiled tiredly up at him but accepted his assist. “Thank you, yes. It’s not a long walk, Mr. Stewart, but this is a big place. I may need help finding my way back.”
“That’s what I’m here for, ma’am,” he replied respectfully.
“Your friends are too kind,” she told Tripp before she walked into the hall with his boss.
Tripp turned his head and asked Jameson quietly, so no one else would hear, “You ever wonder that if you’d died, maybe someone else would’ve lived? Would’ve wanted to live? You know, because the universe is all about balance, and at some cosmic level, your death, no matter how it came down, might turn a wayward person around? Might make them think? Make them care less about themselves and more about others? What they put others through? Make them consider doing something decent with their lives for a change?”
Tripp didn’t expect an answer. His question was more rhetorical and desperate, than earnest. Truth was that Trish had been born selfish, while he’d stepped up and had always taken care of his mom after his dad had died. Even as a little boy, he’d been the responsible half of the pair. Trish had been the selfish princess with a rhinestone tiara stuck up her entitled ass.
Jameson took a long, slow sip of the bad hospital coffee left in the paper cup in his hand. He’d been quiet since they’d arrived after the ambulance. Had only asked Tripp what he’d needed when they’d sat down together and began this vigil. But the guy seemed to have his life figured out. Tripp needed some of that inner calm.
Jameson shifted the cup to his left hand and ran a finger under the lower rim of his dark glasses. “When I first lost my sight, yes. I wondered why them and not me. I lost two good friends in that firefight, but I’ve had a longer time to deal with my survivor’s guilt than you. I know now that mess was the perfect trifecta designed by ISIL to kill American soldiers. It took me a while to realize that, in order to move on, I had to put the blame where it belonged. Saving those little boys’ lives was not a mistake. My buddies and I made the best moral decision that day. We chose the high road, Tripp, something I strive to do every day. In a way, the universe does balance. It took two Navy SEALs, sure, but it left two children alive and…” He set the cup on the table beside him. “We do the best we can, when we can. Do you think sacrificing yourself when you were in Afghanistan would’ve somehow saved your sister from making bad choices now? Is that what you’re asking?”
“Maybe.” Tripp dropped his chin and went back to counting the tiny black flakes in the square tile between his boots. He’d come up with twenty-six each of the last five times. An even number. Like thirteen sets of twins. That had to mean something.
