Page 75 of Your Echo
After what Molly said about the concert being cancelled, I thought Ace’s band mates would be more pissed off than anything else, but the guys look as drained and edgy as I feel.
“What if his lung is punctured?” I hear JP whisper, as Kay leads me over to the room.
“They would already know if his lung was punctured,” Cole shoots back, but I can still hear the worry in his voice.
Kay stops in the doorway to let me go inside on my own. A middle-aged woman is reading a newspaper in the bed closest to the door. There’s a curtain blocking off the far end of the room. I take a step closer and Matt comes into view, his back to me as he stares out the window. Another step and I can see the bottom of the bed.
When I’m finally past the curtain, I gasp. If I didn’t know the man lying there was Ace, I wouldn’t be able to recognize him. One side of his face is so swollen that even if he wasn’t sleeping, he wouldn’t be able to open his left eye. His right one has a mottled, purple bruise underneath it, and his lip has been split. There’s a bandage on his forehead and an IV hooked up to his wrist.
“Sacrement,” I whisper.
Matt turns around.
“Stéphanie, you’re here.” I don’t even look at him. He follows the path of my eyes to Ace’s face. “Looks bad, doesn’t it? They said the swelling won’t last too long. Nothing in his face is broken.”
I move closer and rest my hand on the edge of the bed.
“He looks like he got beat up.”
“I think he probably did,” Matt replies. “That would explain the rib, too. He drank a lot last night. I just can’t figure outwhy. He was so on his game these past few weeks. Ever since he met you...I’ve never seen him like that, Stéphanie. I thought this”—he gestures up and down the bed—“was over for good.”
I stare down at him, covered in the blue hospital blanket. His chest barely rises when he breathes. I feel a lump form in my throat.
“Can I...Can I touch him?” I murmur.
“Go ahead,” Matt tells me. “He’s out cold, so I doubt he’ll wake up. Kay and the guys were just in here, and he didn’t show any signs of coming to.”
I trail my hand up the blanket and stop just before I meet with his. I brush my fingertips over his knuckles and feel myself tremble.
“He’s cold.”
I wasn’t really talking to Matt, and he doesn’t say anything in response. The beeping of the machines around us and the bustle in the hallway all go quiet as I take Ace’s hand in mine.
I feel like I’ve just been thrown at a brick wall, like I’ve slammed into something I’ve been headed towards at full speed for weeks. I’m finally faced with the full impact this man has had on my life. All the confusion and doubts clear away. I’m forced to acknowledge that if the wrist my thumb is stroking right now no longer had a pulse, it would break me. It would rip the earth out from under my feet.
Ace’s voice rings through my head:
I don’t know what the fuck this is, but it’s not casual. Nothing about what I feel for you is casual.
He was right. He was so right.
Matt hears me chuckle under my breath, and even though no words pass between us, I know he understands what’s going on here when I hear him laugh too.
“He’ll really be okay?” I ask, still staring at Ace’s puffy face.
“Yeah, he’ll be okay.”
I keep my hand curled around Ace’s for the next few minutes while Matt gets me up to date on what’s happening with the doctor this afternoon. He says they don’t think the fracture is very serious, but they want to be sure before they send him home. I stare down at the hospital bracelet on Ace’s wrist and wonder how a fractured rib cannotbe serious. The plastic of the bracelet is digging into his skin, so I reach down to twist it into a better position.
My body temperature feels like it drops several degrees.
TURNER ACE, NÉ THOMPSON ACTON.
“Why does it say that?” I hear myself ask. “On his bracelet, why does it say that?”
“Say what?” Matt gives me a curious look, and then understanding seems to dawn on him. “Oh, the Thompson thing.”
He looks away and stays silent for a moment.
