BRODY AND I drove the whole way to the hospital in silence. I stared out the window at nothing in particular, but my peripheral vision kept catching Brody look over at me.
Finally, as we pulled into the hospital parking lot, he sighed. “Listen, obviously this whole situation sucks, but let’s not freak out until we know there’s something to freak out about, okay?”
Too late.
“Yep,” I answered coldly.
We walked into the emergency room, and Pete was already there.
“Hey,” Brody said to him stiffly as we walked up. It was clear none of us wanted to be there. “Any news?”
Pete grabbed a tissue from a box on the desk and wiped his eyes. My heart sank again.
Why is he crying? What the fuck is going on?
“Not really.” He shook his head. “They’re prepping him for surgery right now. Did you call his wife?”
“Surgery?” Brody panicked. “What kind of surgery?”
Pete cleared his throat and took a deep breath, looking back and forth between Brody and me. “Apparently he had a seizure and started puking uncontrollably in the ambulance, so they did a CT scan immediately, and he has bleeding around his brain.”
“Holy shit.” Brody barely got the words out, sounding like he’d just had the wind knocked out of him. My head spun again. I felt like I might pass out, so I hurried over to the nearest chair, where I plopped down and rested my head in my hands. What the fuck happened? Two hours ago, we were heckling each other in the weight room about whose ass was going to look better in the tutu, and now they were rushing him into surgery with bleeding in his brain. I desperately wanted to switch places with him. I had no kids, no family other than Gam, no life. I should have been the one with a bleeding brain on my way into surgery. I looked around for the nearest trash can as my stomach rolled.
“Where is he?” A panicked voice grabbed my attention. I looked up just as the sliding glass doors were closing behind Michelle. Pete was filling her in on what the doctor had told him as I walked over to them.
“What the hell happened?” Her eyes filled with tears as she bit her bottom lip to keep it from trembling.
“We were on the ice, doing what we do, and he slid into the boards,” Brody answered as he stared at the ground, deliberately not looking at me.
She wiped her eyes with the tissue Pete gave her and shook her head incredulously. “That doesn’t make sense. He’s fallen a million times before. Was he wearing his helmet?”
Brody nodded and I couldn’t keep quiet anymore.
I cleared my throat. “It’s my fault. We were playing one on one. The game got intense and I checked him.”
Her eyes went from sad to angry faster than I’d ever seen. “You did this?” she hissed through clenched teeth.
I wanted to tell her it was an accident, that I didn’t mean to hit him that hard, but nothing I could say at that moment would have taken away her anger. To be honest, I wanted her mad. I wanted her to take her fury and hate out on me, so I just nodded.
“Michelle, it was an accident—”
The words weren’t even out of Brody’s mouth before the side of my face stung with heat. I never saw her hand coming. She reeled back to hit me again, but Brody wrapped his arms around her waist, pulling her back. “Michelle! Stop! It was an accident!”
“You motherfucker!” she screamed at me, flailing like a wild animal in Brody’s arms as tears rolled down her face. “How dare you? How dare you hit him like that? He’s your friend!”
Brody struggled to hold her back. “He didn’t mean to. We were just playing a game.”
“Some fucking game it turned out to be, huh?” she continued yelling through her sobs. “You’re standing here just fine, and my husband is in surgery! I hate you. Even when he’s better, I’ll still hate you! You don’t deserve him!” Ouch.
I couldn’t defend myself against anything she said. She was right, and if Brody had let her loose, I would’ve let her hit me. Over and over. I deserved it.
A security guard walked up to us. “Is everything okay over here, folks?”
“Clearly not,” Pete said, “but we’ll keep it down. Sorry.”
Michelle had finally stopped kicking, but Brody was still holding her. “I’m gonna put you down, okay?” he said softly. “Don’t do that again or they’re gonna kick you out, and you won’t be here when Mike wakes up.”
She covered her face with her hands and started sobbing. Her shoulders bounced up and down and her legs started to give out as she turned toward Brody and wailed into his chest. Once again, he wrapped his arms around her, only this time it was to hold her up.
I walked quietly to the other side of the waiting room, knowing space for Michelle was the most important thing right now. After a couple hours, Kacie showed up and immediately went over to Michelle. They hugged and cried for a solid three minutes while Brody came over and sat by me.
The back of my head rested against the wall behind me as I stared straight ahead, refusing to look at him. “Where’s Pete?”
“He left a while ago. He asked us to please keep him posted,” he said quietly. “Viper, listen, about before—”
“Don’t. I deserved it.”
“No, you didn’t. I understand she’s upset, but this isn’t your fault.”
“Oh, really?” I finally glared at him out of the corner of my eye. “Then whose is it? Because from where I’m sitting, it’s no one’s fault but mine.”
“Accidents happen. You can’t take this on.”
“Whatever,” I snapped, staring straight ahead again.
Do. Not. Cry.
The double doors opened and a nurse appeared. Brody and I collectively held our breath as she looked around the room. “Michelle Asher?”
Michelle quickly lifted her head off of Kacie’s shoulder and stood when she saw the nurse. “Yes?” she responded in a shaky voice. Kacie stood beside her and held her hand. The nurse smiled at them and walked over; Brody stood up and followed. I stayed behind. The four of them talked intimately for a good ten minutes before Michelle hugged Kacie and followed the nurse back through the doors. Kacie turned to Brody with tears in her eyes and wrapped her arms around his waist, squeezing tight. She closed her eyes as he hugged her back and rested his chin on the top of her head.
Fuck. What’s happening?
Kacie’s eyes opened and looked right at me. The second we made eye contact, I looked down at the ugly gray tile and shifted uncomfortably in my chair. A few seconds later, I felt her sit down next to me, but I refused to look up.
“Hey,” she said softly.
“Hey.”
“Are you okay?”
I didn’t answer. Dumb question.
“Sorry, that was a dumb question.” She laughed nervously.
“Yep.”
“Oh, Viper.” She hooked her tiny arm around my back and laid her head on my shoulder, not saying another word. I waited for her to ask something else or give me some bland speech about how it wasn’t my fault, but she didn’t, and I was grateful. Brody disappeared around the corner toward the bathroom sign and I finally decided to ask.
“Is he dead?”
She shot up straight. “What? No. Why would you think that?”
“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “The nurse came out, Michelle left, you and Brody hugged…”
“Oh, no. Sorry. I just wanted to hug him.” She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “No, he’s in the ICU. They did a craniectomy and now they’re watching him closely.”
“A craniectomy?” I finally looked over at her. “What the fuck is that?”
“His brain is swollen, so they removed a piece of his skull to allow for the swelling.”
As if someone had punched it out of a sleepy haze, my heart started beating fast. “They removed part of his fucking skull?” my voice thundered. “Seriously?”
“Shhh.” She frowned and held a finger up to her mouth, glancing around the waiting room. “Sit down,” she ordered in a loud whisper.
I sat while she continued, “Yes, it’s a pretty common procedure for someone whose brain is swelling.”
Like a giant tsunami washing over a tiny island, my mind was instantly flooded with questions. “What do they do with the piece they took out?”
“I’m not positive in Mike’s case, the nurse didn’t say, but typically if they can save it, they tuck it into the patient’s abdomen so it’s preserved by his own body.”
Holy shit.
“So he’s gonna be okay?” I asked slowly.
Kacie’s eyes looked up to the ceiling and for a quick second, I thought maybe she was praying. “Not sure. He’s definitely not out of the woods. It’s going to be a long recovery.”
I looked back down at the floor and closed my eyes.
“Listen, Viper—”
“Don’t,” I stopped her.
“You don’t,” she scolded. I glared at her to scare her off, but she lifted her chin higher and kept going. “I’m not going to tell you how to feel right now because I have no idea how you feel. I’ve never hurt one of my friends like this. What I’m going to tell you is that regardless of what happens, it was an accident. You didn’t set out to hurt him; it was an accident. Beating yourself up over it will only hurt both of you, and right now, we need all the positivity we can get. So feel sorry for yourself later. Fall apart and be pissed later, at home, but we need you to be strong for Big Mike now, and for the rest of us.”
Do not cry.
“You’re right.” I nodded.
“Damn right I’m right.” She looped her arm through mine and rested her head on my shoulder again, staring straight ahead with me. “I love you, Viper.”
Fuck… Do. Not. Cry.
Thankfully, Brody rounded the corner again at the perfect time. “Hey.” He walked over to us, looking exhausted with dark circles under his eyes. “We can go back to the private ICU waiting area, but we can’t actually see him yet. You guys wanna?”
“Absolutely.” Kacie hopped up and walked past Brody.
He laughed as he watched her walk by, full of independence and attitude. Shaking his head, he turned back to me. “You coming?”
I wanted to say no. I wanted to sit there and pout. I wanted to sit there and feel sorry for myself. I wanted to disappear.
But Kacie was right, so I stood up and nodded. “Lead the way.”
Brody’s hand clapped my shoulder hard and he offered a tight smile as he turned around.
“By the way,” I added, “that woman you have there… hold on tight to her. She’s pretty amazing.”
BRODY AND I walked side by side toward the ICU waiting room. I’d never been in an Intensive Care Unit before. It was different. Instead of a hallway with rooms on each side, it was more like a pod—one central hub in the middle with all the patient rooms circled around it. Before we reached that central station, there was a waiting room on the right side. It was smaller than the waiting room in the ER, but it was also more private. When Brody and I walked in, it was empty except for Kacie and Michelle.
We rounded the corner and my eyes met Michelle’s on accident. I didn’t look away; neither did she. She didn’t seem to be angry anymore, but I couldn’t figure out exactly what she was.
“Hey.” She sighed and puffed her cheeks out. “Can I talk to you?”
I shoved my hands into my pockets and nodded. “Sure.”
“Ummm,” Kacie stammered as she stood up, “Brody, I’m gonna go grab some coffee and water. Wanna come with and help me carry?”
“Sure,”—he looked back and forth between me and Michelle—“assuming I’m not needed here for security?”
Michelle sniffed and shook her head, looking down as she played with her wedding band. “No, we don’t need security.”
“All right, we’ll be right back.” Kacie pushed Brody’s chest gently and they left the room. I sat down in a chair across from Michelle and waited. I had no idea what she wanted to say. A million different things ran through my head, and I was prepared to take whatever she needed to give out.
Finally, after a long awkward silence, she looked up at me with puffy, red-rimmed eyes and sighed heavily. “Viper, I’m so sorry.”
What?
“Huh?”
“I’m sorry about the way I acted before, and I’m even sorrier about the things I said.” She grabbed the wadded-up tissue off of the coffee table and started picking at it.
“You don’t have to apologize, Michelle—”
Her eyes swept up to mine and she cut me off. “Yes. I do. No matter what happened, he really is your best friend, and you didn’t deserve that from me. I know you love him, and I know he loves you. I was just…” Her voice trailed off as she shook her head back and forth.
My throat felt tight. I was getting choked up because she was choked up.
Do not cry.
I got up and went around the table to her couch and sat down. Not knowing how she would react, I hesitantly put my arm around her shoulders. Me hugging her may have been the last thing in the world she wanted at that very moment, but I couldn’t help it. I had to hug her. Thankfully, not only did she not punch me in the face, but she leaned into me just a little and rested her head on my chest. “Don’t say any more, okay? Let’s just sit here and… I don’t know,” I sighed.
She sniffed. “Pray?”
“Nah,” I said confidently. “Mike is as strong as they come. I’ll be surprised if he’s not trying to sign himself out of here this time tomorrow.”