“Oh my God,” Connor whispered, envisioning it all. How could this be happening, especially now, when they had a real chance to work things out? “Did Kevin say…?” He swallowed hard. “Did he say if she’s going to be okay? Come on, Dad. He knows this kind of stuff. He must have said something.”
Mick avoided the question. “Just concentrate on the fact that your brother was right there on the scene. She had a trained EMT with her starting treatment even before the ambulance arrived. You know your brother, Connor. He has years of experience with trauma injuries. There’s no question, he did everything he could.”
All Connor heard was what his father hadn’t said. The evasion hung in the air until he couldn’t stand it another second. “Dammit, Dad, is she going to live or not?”
Mick shook his head, his expression helpless. “I don’t know, son. I just don’t know.”
And with those words, Connor knew that his life could very well be changing forever. “Please give me another chance,” he prayed silently. “Please, God. I’ll do it her way this time. I’ll get down on my knees, propose, the whole nine yards. Just let her be okay.”
He remembered how Kevin had barely gone through the motions of living when Georgia, Davy’s mom, had died in Iraq. He doubted he’d be any better at being a single dad than his brother had been during that terrible time.
“My son needs his mother,” he whispered.
“I know, Connor,” his father said, giving his hand a squeeze. “The whole family’s praying that he’ll have her for years to come. That you both will.”
But even with Mick’s reassurance and as he himself prayed, Connor wondered if after all the church services he’d missed, the mistakes he’d made, God would even hear him.
* * *
At the hospital, they found Kevin and the rest of the family in the emergency waiting room. Connor went straight to his brother. Thanks to his EMT experience and his tour of duty in Iraq, Kevin, as Mick had said, knew trauma injuries as well as any doctor around. Moreover, he’d be brutally honest about what lay ahead.
Connor stood in front of him and held his gaze. “How bad is it, Kev?”
Kevin returned his gaze unblinkingly. “Bad,” he said quietly.
Connor tried to hold back a gasp of dismay, but a sob seemed to be wrenched from somewhere deep inside him. Kevin nudged him into a chair, then hunkered down in front of him.
“Tell me,” Connor pleaded.
“She has a pretty severe head injury, more than likely a grade three concussion since she was unconscious. Maybe worse,” he told Connor, his tone straightforward. “I was focused on trying to get the bleeding to stop, but she probably has a couple of cracked ribs from the airbag, and it looked as if her right leg got jammed under the dashboard. I’m pretty sure there were breaks in her tibia and fibula, just below her knee. I didn’t try to move her. I didn’t want to make anything worse. There’s no way I could tell about internal injuries. Her pulse…” He shook his head. “It wasn’t good, Connor, but the EMTs took her vitals and said she was hanging in there during the ride over here.”
“Was she conscious?”
“In and out for a couple of minutes, then unconscious.”
Connor nodded. “What’s happening now?”
“The trauma docs are assessing her, probably taking a CT scan or an MRI of her head. I imagine she’ll be in surgery before long, once they can prioritize which injuries they need to focus on first and determine if any of her internal organs were injured.”
Connor stood up. “I need to see her. Where is she?” He spotted the double doors to the treatment area and headed in that direction. Kevin stepped in front of him.
“Don’t,” his brother commanded. “You’ll only be in the way back there.”
Connor just walked right past him. “There are things I have to say, things she needs to hear in case…” He couldn’t bring himself to complete the thought.
Before he could push his way through the doors, Megan appeared at his side. “Connor, sweetheart, listen to your brother. There will be plenty of time for you to say all the things you want to say,” she assured him. “Let the doctors do their job. Right now, saving Heather’s life is the only thing that matters.”
Mick joined them. “Why don’t you and I go for a walk?” he suggested, putting his arm around Connor’s shoulders.
“I’m not leaving here,” Connor said, regarding all of them with defiance. “Not until we have answers, not until I’ve seen Heather for myself.”
“I’m not suggesting we go far, just get some air,” Mick coaxed. “You need to hold it together for Heather and for your son. We could be here a while. Someone will come for us if anything changes, right, Kevin?”
“Absolutely,” Kevin said. “I’ll get you myself.”
Connor didn’t want to leave, but sitting around in this cold room filled with plastic chairs and frantic people would only increase his anxiety.
“Okay, okay, I’ll go,” he murmured and followed his father into the courtyard outside. He paced for a few minutes, but the frustration of not having any real information finally got to him.
“Dammit, I need answers,” he said.
“And you’ll have them,” Mick promised. He settled onto a concrete bench, then patted the spot beside him. “Come on and sit here beside me.” When Connor had complied, Mick met his gaze. “Did you know what a difficult time your mother had the night you were born?”
Connor blinked at the information. “What are you talking about? I never heard anything about that.”
“You were a breech birth, and it wasn’t going well. I was in the delivery room, freaking out, and then they made me leave. I thought I was going to go out of my mind waiting for information. Your uncles sat out here with me, trying to convince me that everything was going to be fine, but that was just a bunch of words. After
