A Missing Heart (34 page)

“Hey,” I shout. “Can someone please tell me what’s going on? I’m kind of freaking out over here.”

A doctor makes his way over and removes the nearby machines. “AJ, there’s another small blood leak that went unnoticed the other day during your original procedure. It may be because it’s on a different side of your brain than what we were working on, or it may have started bleeding after the fact. I’m uncomfortable leaving it the way it is, even though it only shows a small amount of blood. In any case, it’s not an ideal situation to put you back under anesthesia right now so soon after being comatose. We can risk it, or there is another alternative.”

“What’s the alternative?” I ask, scared to hear the answer.

“There are some patients, mostly those with brain tumors, who cannot be put under anesthesia for the risk of complications. While the possible complications are the same in your situation, I would feel more comfortable sedating you and performing the surgery while you are mostly conscious.”

“I’d have to be awake for brain surgery?” I clarify. Because, shit, I’m not sure I’m mentally capable of going through that.

“We will sedate you, but I need to know if you think you have the tolerance to remain calm?”

“How am I supposed to know something like that?”

“You know yourself better than I, son, and I want to give you the option because the alternative is more dangerous, in my professional opinion.”

“When will we have to do this?”

“Right away. Bleeding in the brain can cause many issues we don’t want to encounter.”

I nod my head, answering without answering. He’s giving me a choice; yet, I don’t feel like I have much of a choice. “Can I talk to my family first?”

“Of course,” he says.

I’m brought back to my room temporarily and everyone else is brought in at once, most likely to save time. They’re treating me like I’m minutes away from just dropping dead. The thought scares the shit out of me.

Every one of them is staring at me with a sickening look of fear in their eyes. “They gotta go back in. There’s still some bleeding I guess.”

“They’re putting you under?” Hunter snaps first. “No way.”

I swallow hard, trying to put the words together that I’m still trying to form in my head. “I’m going to be awake the whole time, actually.”

“What?” Cammy asks, her voice hitching in her throat.

“It’s too dangerous to put me under, but it’s too dangerous not to take care of this right now. So, it is what it is.”

“I want to talk to the doctor first,” Dad says.

“Yes, I do too,” Mom agrees.

“Guys, the doctor made it pretty clear that there isn’t a lot of time right now, and I’m going to trust this guy. He seems like he knows what he’s talking about, okay?”

Dad drops down in the chair, looking like the blood has been stolen from his face. He rests his head in his hand and breathes in and out slowly, but heavily at the same time.

Cammy has her hand locked over her mouth, and Ever is looking at me as if I were a ghost.
She shouldn’t be in here
. She’s been through too much already. Gavin doesn’t understand any of this, but she does.

“Are there any complications involved?” Cammy asks.

“He didn’t say, but without having much of a choice here, I think I’d rather go into this unaware of possible complications, especially since I have to be awake.”

Cammy shakes her head with understanding, though I’m pretty sure she’s not really understanding, because I’m having a hard time wrapping my own head around all of this myself.

“AJ, I want to know what this doctor’s credentials are,” Mom says, while rubbing Dad’s shoulder. “Where did Hunter just go?”

Knowing Hunter, he’s already found a doctor to lay into.

“Okay, folks, I’m going to cut this short once again,” the nurse says. “We need to prepare AJ for surgery now. As soon as he’s out and recovering, someone will give you all an update.”

Cammy leans over and places a kiss on my forehead. “Think of buying a house we can play Mommy and Daddy in. We’ll have a wooden swing hanging from a large tree in the back yard. Think about that the whole time. Think about us—your family, how we made it through every odd there was. Okay?” she whispers.

I take her arm, squeezing it gently. “Do you think I’ll make it through these odds?”

She grits her teeth firmly and I hear her swallow hard, seemingly trying her best to keep positive for my sake. “I know you will,” she says.

“Thank you for saying that,” I tell her, releasing her arm.

Ever gives me a quick hug and places her head on my chest. “I lost one dad, but you’re my real dad, and I can’t lose you too. I wouldn’t get over it so easily this time.”

Her words break me in half, split me down the center, and leave me lying helplessly in a puddle of nothing. “Ever, do you know what your name means?”

She shrugs with a tear forming in the corner of her eye. “I don’t know. I never questioned it, I guess.”

“The last thing your dad said to you before you were given away was that you were his everything,” Cammy says.

“Someone didn’t think Everything was a great name, so it was shortened to Ever,” I chime in.

“I’m everything?” she asks quietly.

“You
are
everything to us,” I tell her.

Ever breaks down into tears, and Cammy wraps her arm around her while she leans over to let Gavin give me a kiss. “I love you, Daddy.”

“I love you, buddy.” I wasn’t supposed to have to keep saying goodbyes. The days of goodbyes were supposed to be over. Why won’t they stop?

Mom is short on words but gives me a kiss and looks me in the eyes to tell me I don’t have a choice on whether or not I come out the other side. “I will hunt you down and bring you back here, Andrew, do you understand me?” she asks, trying her hardest to remain strong, though her voice is cracking with every word.

Dad is even shorter on words. He squeezes my arm and gives me a kiss on the forehead, muttering a quiet, “I love you, son,” before making his way out of the room.

Hunter is still missing, but he makes his appearance right as the nurse comes in to change my IV into the sedation liquid or whatever it is. “He’s a good doctor. I have faith in him. He’s going to get you through this, and you
are
going to come out of the surgery just fine. Do you understand me? You are coming out of this, AJ. You have no choice.”

“I wouldn’t put you through this again,” I tell him shamelessly, knowing what little control I have over this situation.

The minutes pass and the world becomes a blur as the sedatives kick in. I don’t feel much, sensation-wise. It’s like I’m numb inside and out. The nurses and doctors are speaking to me but it sounds more like gibberish than anything else.

I know I’m moving down a hall, but I can’t figure out how slow or fast I’m going. We pull into a room, and it looks like a fuzzy blur of white and metal liquefying together. I know I’m awake, but I feel as though I might as well be asleep with as incoherent as I am. I’d rather not think much, and I’d rather not hear what’s happening or feel anything.

The seconds and minutes blur together and the sounds around me are like a muted construction site situated a mile away. My breathing is labored, but I feel calm, considering what’s happening to the outside and inside of my head.

I’m moving again, still unaware of the speed in which I’m going, and I’m not sure where we’re going this time.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

I HAVE CARRIED A
lot of guilt and blame around with me for years, but this is as much as I can possibly handle. I should have fought my parents when they forced me to give up Ever. I should have fought my parents when they forced me to leave Connecticut. I should have fought my fears when I decided to cut AJ out of my life at eighteen. I should have begged him to come with me earlier this year when I was fighting for parental rights. I should have told him to put his seatbelt on last week. It’s all me. Every single thing that has gone wrong is because of me. Yet, he doesn’t look at me that way. He understands everything. I don’t deserve him.

Never having to sit in a waiting room as long as I have this past week, I have stared at one particularly small hole in the wall every day. Right now, though, I feel like I have gained the ability to stare through the hole completely. This hole is the only way to avoid the sickening look on the faces of AJ’s parents and Hunter. Gavin is playing with a book on the seat beside me, and Ever is playing a game on my phone. I can’t help wondering about the worst case scenario. I wasted so much time of AJ’s life not being there, not being together with him like we were always supposed to be. I thought I always knew best, or my parents knew best, and I went with my first thoughts, never second guessing much.

I wanted to set him free after I destroyed his life, taking away his daughter without so much as asking him how he felt. That was my biggest regret, along with not putting his name down as the biological father. It was the worst thing I have done, and I still haven’t apologized for it properly.

Going through the trouble of putting the information together to prove AJ’s biological connection was worth every second of time and effort. It was my only way to apologize for stealing the last thirteen years.

“Stop blaming yourself,” Hunter says, breaking my stare from the wall.

“I—I’m not,” I lie.

“Are you forgetting I’ve known you since you were fifteen?” he asks.

I force a half smile. “I know. Can’t help it.”

He lifts Gavin up and places him down on his lap so he can sit beside me. “I threatened the hell out of him. He’s coming out of this surgery, Cam. He has no choice.”

I feel myself slowly breaking down inside, but I can’t cry in front of every person who loves him as much as I do. Everyone is trying to be strong, and I have to be strong too. It’s just that I have more guilt than they all do.

“Do you know how many times AJ told me he was going to go find you in D.C.?” Hunter says.

“Really?”

“God, it was probably once a month for the first two years after you cut things off. He was convinced if you saw him, you’d change your mind.”

“Did you stop him?” I ask.

Hunter laughs. “Yeah, after his tenth trip to D.C. and coming home empty handed.”

“He came after me?”

Hunter turns his body toward me. “Cameron, AJ has loved you since you two were sixteen. He must have been twenty-five by the time we were able to go a week without hearing your name at least once. Usually it was a story or a memory. I let him air himself out, feeling sorry for him, but at the same time understanding why you did what you did.”

“I don’t even understand why I did what I did,” I tell him, feeling ashamed. “My parents were overbearing and they got into my head more than I should have allowed them to.”

“You were a pretty smart eighteen-year-old. You wanted AJ to go his own way, and you wanted to go your way, preventing any risk of either one of you giving up a future you deserved. You weren’t both going to go in the direction you wanted, only one direction would have been chosen, and that wouldn’t have been fair to one of you.”

What he’s saying makes sense but I’m not sure my train of thought was so in-depth when I was a freshman in college. It was along those lines, but he makes it sound far more thought out than I made it seem at the time. “I don’t know if I was thinking that clearly,” I tell him.

“You know what you proved, though? You did something Ellie and I were too scared to do. I won’t ever say we made a mistake by following each other into circles that kept us in a bubble until she died, but that’s essentially what we did.”

“It didn’t diminish your relationship,” I tell him. “You two could never be separated.”

“Maybe, but you and AJ, though, you went to the schools you wanted to go to, then life brought you back together. Something bigger than yourselves brought you here.”

Here. To a moment in my life where we’re all wondering if AJ is coming out of this surgery. And if he does, will he come out of it without lasting damage?

I shrug. “I can see it your way, but I regret wasting so much time in between. That’s all.”

“Look, I love my brother more than anything, but he would have screwed things up with you if you had gotten together at a younger age. AJ had a rough transition into adulthood. I mean, the guy has been through two failed marriages.” I know Tori wasn’t his fault, but I don’t know much about Alexa—his first wife. I’m guessing there’s a good reason for that too. “He had to learn the hard way. A lot of us have to learn the hard way. But when you learn things through error, you figure out what is important and what you absolutely need in your life, and that has always been you. He won’t screw things up with you, I can promise you that.”