“Okay, fine, whatever,” she muttered, choking back a sob. “What is wrong with me? I can’t seem to stop crying.”
“You’re scared for your father,” he said. “You’ll feel better once you’ve seen him for yourself and know exactly how he’s doing. Let’s go.”
“I’m not just scared for my father,” she said. “I’m furious with my mother. She kept this from me. She didn’t think I needed to know that he’d been in an accident, that the tractor had rolled on top of him. He could have been killed!” Her voice escalated, but she couldn’t seem to help it. “And letting me know was some kind of afterthought.”
Tom hunkered down beside her and clasped her hands in his. “He wasn’t killed. Concentrate on that. As for the infection and the pneumonia, those are setbacks, nothing more.”
She shook her head. “And here I thought your mother was terrible,” she said wearily. “Mine takes the prize.”
“Do you really want to debate about which of our mothers is more dysfunctional?” he asked. “Let’s just get to the hospital.”
“He’d better not die before I get there,” she said angrily. “If he does, I swear I’m never speaking to either one of them again.”
Tom didn’t say a word. He just met her gaze, one brow lifted. Jeanette giggled. “Okay, now you must think I’ve really lost it,” she said, her fury easing slightly.
He tugged her gently from the chair. “No, I don’t. Your reaction is understandable,” he told her, sliding a comforting arm over her shoulders and guiding her out of the spa through the back door.
“I don’t want to do this,” she said, dragging her feet.
He grinned. “Also understandable.”
He continued to propel her forward until they reached his car, a nifty little two-seater she’d never seen before except in ads in luxury magazines. It was not the car she’d ridden in before. “You really are rich, aren’t you?”
“My parents are,” he corrected. “This car was a present when I graduated from college and they still had high hopes for me.”
“Can I drive it?”
“Not in your present state of mind,” he said, opening the passenger door.
“How fast does it go?”
“Pretty fast,” he said, regarding her with amusement. “Planning on running away from home?”
She smiled again. “Could we?”
Tom grinned. “Ask me again after you’ve seen your father. I might be all for it.”
Jeanette’s smile faded. “Tom, do you think you can really run away from home, when you don’t even know where home is anymore?”
Tom’s expression sobered, too. “I honestly don’t know,” he told her. “I think that’s a discussion best left for another day.”
“Yeah, I suppose,” she said.
She leaned back in the seat and closed her eyes. What she really wanted was to shut off her mind, but unfortunately that seemed impossible. All the way to Charleston, a steady reel of memories played in her head. In most of them, her dad was the way she liked remembering him—doting on her, always ready to comfort her or read her a story or to make her laugh. He’d been so proud of her accomplishments and of Ben’s. He’d been steady and sure, the glue that held them all together. She’d never been able to reconcile that man with the one who’d withdrawn from everyone, from life itself after Ben’s death.
Tonight she wanted to throw her arms around the dad she remembered from her childhood. Her greatest fear, though, was that she’d find that other man, the one who barely acknowledged her, lying in that hospital bed.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Jeanette hated the antiseptic smell of the hospital. She hated the squishy sound of the nurses’ shoes as they hurried up and down the hallways. The sounds of the machines, the steady beeping that monitored breathing and heartbeats, made her cringe. If Tom hadn’t maintained a firm grip on her hand, she might have made a run for it.
Outside the door of the intensive care unit, she hesitated. “Maybe I should find my mother first. She’s probably in the waiting room.”
“If that’s what you want to do,” Tom said. “I think it’s right down the hall.”
She stood there, wavering between two equally distasteful choices. “I’m still too mad at my mom,” she said at last. “I don’t want to start a fight with her first thing.”
“Okay, then go on in and spend a few minutes with your dad. I’ll find us some coffee.” He studied her worriedly. “Or do you want me to come in with you? I can stay in the background. Your dad wouldn’t even know I’m there.”
“The sign says family members only,” she said, pointing out the detailed list of rules posted on the door.
She watched him walk away and had to fight the urge to run after him. How had he suddenly turned into someone she knew she could count on? Someone she trusted completely to get her through this crisis? She had no idea.
Finally, she drew in a deep breath, pushed the button that allowed the doors to whoosh open and stepped into the high-tech unit with a half-dozen or so small rooms circling a central nurses’ station. She stopped a passing nurse.
“I’m looking for Michael Brioche.”
“You’re family?”
“I’m his daughter.”
“Right this way,” the nurse said, regarding her with compassion. Her name tag read Patsy Lou. “He’s having a tough time of it, but we’re hoping the antibiotics will work. Don’t be too alarmed by all the tubes or the respirator. Everything’s there to help him get well.”
Jeanette swallowed hard. “He’s not breathing on his own?”
“Don’t panic,” Patsy Lou soothed. “We’re already weaning him off it. It was just temporary while his lungs were having to struggle to get enough oxygen.”
“Is he awake?”
“From time to time, but we’re keeping him pretty heavily sedated most of the time so he doesn’t fight the respirator.”
Jeanette walked into the small, glassed-in room and gasped. Both of her father’s legs were in casts, one to his knee, the other to his hip. His skin was pale and waxy. His thick hair, once as dark
