Page 115 of From Us, Forever

My heart still felt like it was going to leap out of me, but the cold numbness and tingling kept me steady as I made my way to them.

The boys and Katy crowded as Richard explained, “Emmie is doing fine. The surgery went well.”

“Thank God,” Mikey muttered as a collective sigh of relief left everyone.

“But there was extensive damage, and he lost a lot of blood, and it was touch and go for a while. So they put him in amedically induced coma. The next few days will be critical, but they are hopeful. He is young and strong so he’ll pull through.”

Coma was the only word I heard loud and clear in that sentence.

“They would only let one of us stay with him,” Emily said before her eyes slid to me. “Evelyn, we would like you to go.”

My eyes widened, and I was shaking my head before I could even speak. “I cannot possibly.”

“Evy.” Her soft hand gripped mine. “I know my son, and if there was anyone in this world he would’ve wanted with him in there, it’s you.”

I nodded.

“Good.” She smiled.

I blinked as I followed them, and they introduced me to the doctor as Jay’s wife. He looked skeptical at that but let me go with him anyway.

“He’s in ICU at the moment, but we’ll shift him tomorrow to the regular rooms,” the doctor, whose name was Dr. Martin, explained as he led me past a dozen rooms.

“When will he wake up?”

A sympathetic smile curved his lips. “We can’t say for sure.”

I nodded as they asked me to sanitize my hands and don a sterile gown and shoe covers.

A nurse led me farther down the hallway to a room with a fogged door. “Go ahead, he’s in there.”

I pushed the door open, and cold air blasted as the beeping monitors crowded the air. My heart stopped when my eyes landed on him. He looked so alone and melancholic that it hurt me. He was huddled up with a thick blanket with a bunch of tubes sticking out of him.

I willed my heavy feet to move forward. Bending, I clutched his cold hand in mine, rubbing it slowly while I leaned closer to him.

Oh, what would I give for those blue eyes to blink up at me right this moment?

Catching a stray strand of his velvety soft hair, I slid it back in place and traced a soft thumb over the arches of his face.

“Come back to me,” I whispered. “What will I ever do without you, Jay? I only just got you back. You can’t just leave me like that. You promised you would marry me, you promised that you would give me six children, and you promised that you’d show me the world. Now, who’s going to do all that if you’re gone? I want you, wait… no… I need you. You can’t possibly think I can live without you. I’m as good as dead if you’re not with me.” My fingers felt along the slopes of his cracked lips. “You hear me? Don’t you dare give up. Don’t you dare leave me.”

I pressed my lips to his and gave him a soft kiss. “I love you, Jay.”

CHAPTER 22

It’d been five days since that wretched night, and he still hadn’t woken up. In my head, I kept saying he was resting and taking time to heal, but as the hours stretched, I became more and more wary of that thought.

I hadn’t left his side, and I’d been watching him like a hawk. Till now, his fingers only twitched twice. I took that as a sign that he was coming back to me. The doctors had been checking up on him, asserting that he was recovering very well, and that added to my hope. They reduced his sedative load and reassured us that he would wake up when he was ready. But that was two days ago.

“E, why don’t you eat or go get a shower or something? We can watch him for a while,” Katy prodded with her gentle voice.

“No.” I shook my head. I wasn’t leaving this chair anytime soon.

“But you haven’t eaten anything, Evy,” Mikey added from where he stood leaning against the wall, opposite us by the table filled with cards and flowers. They started arriving as soon as they shifted him to the room andhadn’t stopped. Now, the whole room smelled like flowers and had so much color that it felt like a Disney movie.

Yet my world was still dull and gray.

“I’m not hungry,” I replied to Mikey, who just sighed at this point, well-versed in my usual answer. I wasn’t going to eat when he wasn’t eating. The only thing sitting in my stomach was the tremendous amounts of coffee I consumed.

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