CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
DOMINICK
Darkness. How long I stayed in it, I don't know, but when I opened my eyes, the light blinded me. It was a sick fluorescent light with a yellow tint to it. There were shapes but no sounds. It took several seconds for me to blink the sleep away, for the images in front of me to take shape.
“Dom,” a voice said. Not Kim.
I turned my head, and pain shot through my neck. There was a strange stiffness in my body, as if I hadn't used it in a while. The face my eyes landed on was oval with soft pale skin and big green eyes.
“Tammy,” I replied, my tone filled with confusion. My memory slowly returned to me. Kim was upset, trying to run out to the car. The truck was coming too fast to stop. I had to push her out of the way. And then . . . and then . . . “Is Kim alright?” I tried to pull myself into a sitting position, but everything was sore.
“Shh. Calm down. Kim is fine. She's asleep. See.” Tammy pointed to a chair in the corner. Kim was curled up in it, sleeping soundly, unharmed.
I sighed in relief, “Thank God she's alright. Where are we?” I asked stupidly.
“We're in the hospital. You've been out for a few days with a cerebral contusion.”
“A what?” A sharp pain stabbed at the side of my head as if to wordlessly explain, and I found myself falling back onto the bed and grasping at my forehead. There was a bandage over my right eyebrow, and I could feel stitches beneath it.
“You hit your head on the concrete whenever that truck hit you.”
“Kim didn't get hurt then?”
“No. Thanks to you,” she said softly, turning her attention to her sleeping sister with a faint smile. “I'm surprise you remember any of that. Marcus said you'd probably have amnesia for a while.”
“I guess I'm just lucky,” I groaned through the pain.
“We're all lucky.”
I didn't get her meaning, but it didn't matter in that moment. All I wanted was for the pain to go away.
“Is there a morphine drip or something I can press?” I asked.
“If it hurts, I can call a nurse in.”
Somehow, the pain subsided at the mention of the word nurse, and I sighed in relief, resting my head against the pillow.
“It went away. I think I'll be fine,” I breathed heavily.
“I know this probably isn't the best time,” Tammy said. “I know I should probably wake Kim up to let her know you're alright, but I want to talk to you first, and this is probably the only chance I'll get. She's never left your side, you know.” She gave her sister a fond look. “I told her to go to school, but she refused. She wanted to be here when you woke up. I feel a bit bad for denying her that.”
“She's still here. She's just not awake.”
“I know, but I suppose she wanted to be the one sitting by your side when you did wake up.”
“That can't be helped. But I suppose I could pretend to be asleep until you guys switch places.”
“No,” Tammy laughed. “That would just be silly. But it's proof of how far you'd go for her, among other things.” She looked back at me thoughtfully. “I guess I just never expected that something like this could happen.”
“Well, I never expected to get hit by a truck either.”
“That's not what I mean.” Tammy shook her head. “I'm talking about you and Kim, falling in love, wanting to get married. Even though we were always all so close, it just seemed like a foreign concept to me, because all of our memories together are from when Kim was just a baby. It seemed weird to me that you would go for her. And I must admit that I thought that maybe you were trying to get to me by wanting to marry her.” She looked down shamefully. “I know you're not vindictive like that, but I couldn't justify it any other way. I mean, why would you be interested in someone so much younger than you. You've never been interested in younger girls for as long as I can remember.”
“Tammy, I—”
“No,” she cut me off. “You don't have to explain. I don't need for you to explain anymore. When you pushed my sister out of the way . . . You didn't even hesitate. The sound of your voice when you saw that she was in danger, the swiftness with which you moved . . . You didn't even think about your own safety. You didn't care if you lived or died as long as she was alright.” A tear silently fell down her cheek, and she wrapped her arms around herself. “I see that now.
“All this time, I don't think I've really been questioning Kim's feelings. She's loved you, for as long as I can remember. She never talked about it a lot, but I could tell. The way she looked at you, the way she perked up every time you called. It wasn't the reaction someone would have towards a friend. I even figured that when she moved in with you to go to college that her feelings might cause problems. That's one reason I didn't want her moving in with you.
“What I never expected though was that you would fall in love with her too. I thought you would brush off the way she acted, or that she would continue to keep it bottled up. The tension would eventually be too much for her to handle, and she'd tell me she wanted to move out. It almost happened once, I think. Then again, I don't know if you guys were together by then or not.”
“What?” I quirked an eyebrow, the injured eyebrow, which made it feel like someone had taken an ax to my head. “Gah.” I reached up to touch the bandage, pressing my head back against the pillow.
“Let me call the nurse.”
“I'm fine,” I insisted, trying to swallow back the pain until it subsided.
My head throbbed for what felt like forever, but Tammy sat patiently, waiting for me to recover with a concerned look on her face. It had been such a long time since she'd shown any worry for me, I couldn't help but appreciate it. At least, she didn't seem to hate me anymore.
“Are you sure you're alright?” she asked quietly.
“I'll be fine. What were you saying before about the tension being too much for her to handle?”
“She called me shortly after she had moved in with you to tell me she wanted to move out.”
“Oh,” I replied, searching my memory banks. Kim had never spoken to me about wanting to move out early on that I could remember. Then again, my recollections of the past were a bit fuzzy. It didn't matter anymore. That was back then. Things were different now. “Well, she obviously didn't move out.”
“No. She didn't.” Tammy took a deep breath. “And now you guys are going to get married. I'm still not sure what to think about it, but I'm not angry anymore, not so worried as I was.”
“Why is that?”
“Because I know that your intentions are pure. I suppose that I should have always known. I'm kind of a crappy friend for not believing you.”
“We haven't really hung out on the regular in years. I can't blame you for suspecting I had changed. I have changed, as have we all, but I'm still the same person at the core.”
“I know. I know that now, and that's why I'm going to give your wedding my blessing.”
“That's good to hear.” I smiled weakly, though it seemed like every change of expression made my head injury hurt.
“Well, that's all I wanted to talk to you about. I suppose I should wake Kim now. She'll be ecstatic to know you've regained consciousness.”
“I suppose you should, and then we can call that nurse in. I'd like to pretend to be strong, but my head is killing me.”
“Of course.” She nodded, standing up to go wake Kim while I pressed the button to call the nurse in.
Kim groaned as Tammy gently shook her shoulder, uncurling from the chair like a cat who had just risen from a nap. As soon as she heard Tammy tell her that I was conscious, her body stiffened a bit, and she looked at me, relief sweeping over her face. Immediately, she stood to cross the distance to my bedside, reaching out to grab my hand before sitting down in the chair that Tammy had previously occupied.
“Dom, are you alright?” she asked, noticing that I winced when she laced her fingers with mine.
“I've been better,” I replied, trying not to grimace too much.
“I'm so sorry. This is all my fault.” Kim leaned down and hid her face behind our hands.
“Shh. Don't worry about it. I lived, and you didn't get hurt. That's all that matters.”
“But I was being so stupid. If I hadn't blindly run out into the parking lot, this never would have happened.”
“Stop it. I don't want to hear another word about it.”
“Okay,” she sounded small and childish. The guilt wasn't going to go away no matter how many times I told her not to worry about it.
“I'm going to give you two some time alone,” Tammy said, smiling down on us with a serene look on her face.
As strange as it was to think, perhaps this tragedy had been for the best. Now Tammy knew that both Kim and I were serious about our relationship, and I doubted she would bring it up again. That made it all worth it to me, the near-death experience, the pain, everything.
“I love you,” Kim whispered to me after Tammy left.
“I would certainly hope so,” I teased.
“You know I do.” She gave me a sardonic look.
“And you know that I love you.”
“There's no question in my mind about that. There never has been.”
“It looks like everything worked out in the end.”
“How do you figure?” Kim quirked an eyebrow.
“Well, Tammy isn't angry at me anymore, and she approves of us. I suppose we couldn't ask for more.”
“At the expense of you almost dying,” her voice took an angry turn.
“Hey now, don't be like that. No one died.”
“Pfft. You don't understand.” She turned away from me, though her grip on my hand tightened. “If you had died . . . Oh God, I don't even want to think about it.”
“Then don't think about it.”
“If you had died, I think it would have destroyed everything.”
“Well, it certainly would have destroyed me,” I joked.
“No. I mean, Tammy and I. I would have blamed myself for the rest of my life, but I also would have blamed her. I would have blamed her for trying to drive us apart. And I would have hated her for it.”
“Well, you don't have to worry about that now.” I gave her hand a gentle squeeze, noticing the tears that were forming around her eyes.
“I'm sorry.” Kim wiped her face with her arm. “I just . . . when I think about it.”
“Stop thinking about it. I'm here. Everything is okay.”
“Oh Dom. I'm just so glad you're alright.” She stood and leaned over the hospital bed, untangling our hands to caress my face while she kissed me. It was strange to feel her lips so hard upon mine, so desperate.
It had all been worth it. Even if I had never woken up. Even if I had died, it would have been worth it to me. To save the woman I love.