CHAPTER THREE
Blaze
“With him, I wouldn’t be good driving. I wanna be back here, making sure he’s comfortable until we hand his care over.”
Logan nods, and we race like hell for the helipad where the air evac will meet us to take him to the nearest trauma center an hour away. I administer anything and everything I can to make him more comfortable, watching his low blood pressure and heart rate with a critical eye.
Suddenly his already low pressure begins dropping. “Trevor!” My hands shake, and for the first time, I don’t know what to do. My normally instinctual training is gone and I’m scared to death. “Don’t do this to me,” I look around in the back of the ambulance, everything looking foreign to me.
His blood pressure drops further, beeps going off everywhere and I’m lost. Tears are streaming down my face and I’m hyperventilating, unsure of what to do to help him. He’s dying in front of me, and I can’t help him.
I gasp, jerking awake so hard that I fall off the cot I’ve been sleeping on the past few days here in the hospital. As my body connects with the hard floor, I cry out, hopefully not loud enough for Trevor to hear, but it’s enough to get me out of the nightmare I was living in my dream world. Exhausted, I glance at the clock, seeing it’s six am. I’ve gotten maybe four hours of sleep, but I know I won’t be able to drift back.
Leaning over Trevor, I check to make sure he’s breathing and alive before I grab my purse and head downstairs. After the nightmare I just had, I don’t trust the machines. Coffee sounds really good right about now.
* * *
I’m sitting outside Trevor’s hospital room, my knees drawn up to my chest, head down, and crying. I’m not sure why I’m crying. Maybe it’s from relief that Trevor is going to be okay, stress from everything we’ve been through since the call went out, or just the emotional release I need after being at his side for the past few days.
Today, he gets to come home. Surprising everyone, he’s healing quicker than any of us imagined he would. Proof of how stubborn he is.
Getting up and moving away from the door, I walk down the hallway to where there’s a glass window spanning from floor to ceiling. Whoever wants to can look out over the Birmingham skyline. It’s peaceful. Up here, I can’t hear the bustling of the street, the roar of the cars, or the impatient honking horns of the drivers. It makes the noise in my head louder, letting the memories of what I saw when I got to Trevor’s truck force their way into my awake hours. The silence rings loudly between my ears and I want to scream at it to go away.
Try as I might, I can’t get the image of Trevor’s face when I first saw him at the crash site out of my mind. I can sleep for a few hours every night, but sometime during the slumber the vision comes to me and the ending to the story changes dramatically. I jerk awake quickly and then have to look at him for myself, just to make sure he’s okay.
When he was first brought to the trauma center, I wasn’t sure if he’d make it home, but like everything Trevor does, he’s excelled. Being in good shape helped, being stubborn definitely helped, but last night he told me I helped more than anything.
The strength of our feelings scares the hell out of me. When you’re faced with the possible death of the person you love most in this world, you realize what you have and what you value. It’s thrown into your face with the velocity of a major league pitcher’s fast ball, and you either duck out of the way or you take the hit head on. We’re both taking the hit head on, and we both want this second chance, me more than anything. I messed up once with someone in my life, I don’t want to mess up again, but I need him to see me for the woman I am. I need him to really look and accept me for who I am. I’m scared I’ll have to go into a dangerous situation again and then we’ll be back to square one. We both want it to work, but is it that simple? Can we both put aside thought patterns ingrained in us for years? I guess we’ll have to find out together.
“Blaze!”
I turn around and look down the hallway, seeing Whitney walking toward me. Actually it’s more like a waddle, but she’s making it. She’s been a trooper through this whole ordeal, coming to the hospital every day and staying until Ryan forces her to go home at night. I meet her halfway so she doesn’t have to make the entire length by herself.
“Hey,” I greet her with a hug. I may not have known her before all this started, but she’s become one of my favorite people in a short amount of time. She listens when I talk – whether I want to vent, remember, or cry – and she doesn’t judge me for what happened with Trevor before the wreck.
“So, he gets to go home today, huh?” She smiles at me, positively glowing.
“He does, I can’t believe he’s made so much progress. The doctors are surprised too, but he’s strong and he’s stubborn. That’s half the battle right there.”
Whitney bites her bottom lip, and gets this look on her face that says she wants to maybe ask me something.
“Are you okay?”
She runs a hand through her blonde locks, so like Trevor’s, before she clasps her hands in front of her very pregnant belly. “I have a favor to ask, actually we, as a family, have a favor to ask.”
My palms sweat because I’m not sure what they’re going to ask. What if they want me to stay away from Trevor while he’s recuperating? What if I’ve overstepped staying at the hospital and spending every waking minute with him? I mean it’s not like I have a ring on my finger. Hell I don’t even have a toothbrush at his place – at least I don’t think I do anymore. Pretty sure he probably threw that out when I told him to take his high-handed archaic attitude and go to hell. I regret that sentiment now, not the fact I said the words. They needed to be said, but I wouldn’t have told him to go to hell. I would have been mature, and we would have sat down; talked things out like adults.
It’s a super human effort, but I manage not to fold my arms across my chest to close myself off from her. She and her family have been nothing but nice to me, and I remind myself, not everyone has an ulterior motive. “I’m listening.”
“The thing is, all of us have a lot going on with the baby coming. Ryan’s going to have to do overtime now that Trevor’s hurt. Mom’s going to be helping me with the business, and Dad’s working down on the Gulf. He won’t be able to make trips back except for the weekends, but someone needs to stay with Trev,” she starts, her blue eyes showing the exhaustion of the past few days.
“I totally agree, he doesn’t need to be by himself. If you want, I can call around and see about some Home Health nurses. I know some of the best in the business. It’s not a problem for me to do that, just tell me what you want me to ask about.”
She’s struggling, she’s gripping her fingers in front of her, twisting them so tightly I’m afraid she’ll break them off. “That’s not it, exactly.”
Then I’m lost, because I thought it was pretty clear what she was asking me. “Maybe you better tell me, because now I’m a little confused.”
Taking a deep breath, she walks over and grabs the handrail before turning around, bracing her back against it. “I think you should be the one to help Trevor. He cares about you, and he’ll do things for you he won’t do for other people. There’s not one other person in the world who will push him the way you will, but you’ll make sure he doesn’t hurt himself.”
“I have a job,” I remind her. “One that requires I work long hours.”
“Don’t you have leave?” she pleads. “I know it’s a lot to ask, but you have the medical experience and you know Trevor. You want to be with him, I can see it every time I’m with the two of you. You both want to be together. What better way to figure out if you can be together than in the hardest of times? Seeing your way through this together? Might make the two of you realize how much your professions don’t matter in the grand scheme of things.”
I’m speechless, but I understand where she’s coming from. And she’s right. If I want to prove to Trevor how important my job is, I have to show him. Doing it for him is the best way to do that.
“I do have leave,” I shrug, starting to weaken. “But what if it all blows up in our faces?”
Whitney takes my hand. “Then you’ll at least know you tried, and if something like that ever happens again, you’ll know you don’t have regrets.”
In Trevor’s job there’s a damn good chance something like this could happen again, and the no regrets thing sounds tempting.
“Okay, I’ll give it a week. If we’re doing good at the end of the week, I’ll extend it until he doesn’t need me anymore,” I hold my hand up. “But Trevor’s got to agree to it.”
“Already taken care of,” she winks at me and gives me the brightest smile ever.
I wonder how in the hell she managed that, then my mind flashes back to Thanksgiving morning, I left the two of them alone so they could enjoy their breakfast. She’s already turned and is walking back down the hallway as I shake my head.
Those Trumbolt siblings are slick and nothing but trouble. Trevor though, he’s the kind of trouble I like to get into.