Abruption (24 page)

I touched my lips to his damp forehead and asked, “Maya, can you stay?” She was cuddled close to my girl who was still passed out. How she slept through that commotion was beyond me.

“Of course,” Maya answered as she always did, making it a little easier to leave Finn’s side. Jules followed me out.

Lucca’s pace came to a halt when he saw us, more like when he zeroed in on our joined hands. “Everything okay?”

“Finn’s stable. But we have no answers yet.” Jules explained with sadness in her voice.

Ignoring me completely, Lucca searched her eyes and asked, “Are
you
okay?”

Jules shifted her feet and nodded. If I didn’t know better, I would have said she was nervous.

Lucca shook his head. “Then I’m gonna take off. Give me a call later, Jules. And let me know if you need
anything
.”

His not so subtle innuendos brought me back to our exchange before Finn’s seizure, irking me even more now.

“Will do, thanks, Luc.” Her voice was curt and shaky. She was nervous.

Lucca made his way through the sliding glass doors, and I decided to put this mess to rest. I curled my hand tight around Jules’ and asked, “So where were you tonight?”

Jules flinched at my question, looking everywhere but my eyes. Uneasiness settled in my already torn up gut. What made this question so difficult?

“Jules?” My tone was demanding, and there was no mistaking that after a night like tonight I needed an answer.

Instead of an explanation, Jules tugged our hands and said, “Come.”

“Where?”

“We need a minute.”

“W
here are we going? I’m not leaving this floor,” Guy clipped.

“Of course not,” I forced out. There was no way I’d leave Finn either. The images of his frail frame jerking with such intensity and knowing that his little lungs were deprived of oxygen were all too much. Everything about this night and this morning was wrong. I couldn’t shake the vise squeezing my own lungs.

I’m breathing. Finn’s breathing. Everyone is breathing.

My silent chant wasn’t working. God, I needed it to work.

The door adjacent to the elevator bay was adorned with a small gold cross. I passed it a hundred times a day. People went in and out at all hours, looking for a reprieve or a place to mourn. Or maybe somewhere to take a moment to give thanks. Whatever the reason, I’d hoped it was comforting. A place to catch our breaths.

The chapel was quiet and the lights were dim. The glow of candles illuminated a small altar across the room. Four small church benches filled in the middle, while folding chairs lined the side walls. Otherwise, the room was empty. I slid into the mini pew, while Guy remained standing.

“Where were you?” he asked again, but this time there was an unfamiliar bite to his tone.

Before I could find the right way to begin, Guy started pacing. The room wasn’t large enough for more than two of his strides before he had to turn and head in the other direction. After several intense seconds, he finally paused at the kneeler in front of the altar. He bowed his head almost like he was praying. The breath I finally got back seized up while I waited on pins and needles. He slowly turned around, and I was met with tight lips, a knitted brow, and two stormy eyes.

“Tell me one thing. Did you fuck him?”

“What? Lucca? God, NO!” A steel vise gripped my chest, the pain was excruciating. How could he think I’d ever do that to him?

“Let me rephrase that, since we’re obviously having trouble communicating. Have
you
ever
fucked him?”

I gripped my neck, unable to speak past the razor blade lodged in my throat. I hated the way he was looking at me, hated the anger in his eyes, hated that Finn was sick again, and that I wasn’t here. I hated that it was
today
. But more than anything, I hated that I couldn’t ease his pain or give him the answer he desperately needed to hear to make this nightmare a little more tolerable.

I can’t lie to him. I won’t.

“It’s not what you think.” The words were weak, but they were all I managed to muster.

“Then the question should be simple, Jules. Very fucking simple. Where were you?”

Never in a million years did I think showing up with Lucca would have put such a fire in his eyes. Probably because I didn’t think. When I read his message, all rational thought ceased to exist and I had a single focus—getting home as fast as humanly possible. If I barked at Lucca to drive faster one more time I think he would’ve left me on the highway. I hated that I was away, that I wasn’t there when he needed me. That he was so worried. His anger was completely justifiable. Problem was, I couldn’t explain our relationship without shredding every fine stitch holding my heart together. This was what I’d been afraid of: the snag, the snip, the tear—the splinter that would pop our bubble and expose my darkest hour.

“We should be focused on Finn right now.”

“You’re right, Jules,
I
should be focused on
my
son. Instead, I’m wasting my time waiting for you to tell me what the hell is going on. I can’t fucking do this. Not again. The secrets and lies. Never again. The last woman I trusted put my son in that bed. She fucking left us this life.
She
did all of
this
.” He waved his hands.
Brittany?
My stomach plummeted, as he kept talking with so much seething rage his voice was unrecognizable. “I hate her for what she did. She’s not even here, and her selfish mistakes are still wreaking havoc on my family. Some days I feel like she’s killing me. Literally strangling me. I’m in this suffocating death roll I can’t escape. All because of what she did, her selfishness.”

He raked his scalp. His anger moments ago had nothing on this palpable pain. I could feel it. I could see it. His forearms trembled from the sheer force of his hands squeezing his head. I scooted to the edge of my seat, needing to get closer, wanting to hold him, but knowing he needed this space.

They
said you must work through the stages of grief to achieve acceptance. What
they
never said was that, even years later, when you thought you’d finally come to terms with the loss and patched together a semblance of a life, triggers could set you back. Send you spiraling.

Those triggers could be anything from blatant reminders that you’d conditioned yourself to avoid at all cost, unpredictable subtleties like simple words or phrases, the faint smell of a shampoo, or the first notes of a familiar melody. Subtleties that kicked the wind out of you and decimated the progress you’d made, forcing you to regroup and start over.

Grief was not a process; it was a vicious cycle. One that was never talked about because
they
know you have to live it to understand it. I understood. And that’s why as much as I wanted to cocoon Guy in my arms and tell him everything was going to be okay, I didn’t. Instead, I sat glued to the edge of my pew, helpless, witnessing a distraught Guy spiral. Finn’s seizure was
not
subtle. His uncertain health would always be Guy’s trigger. That was why his anger was justifiable, even if it was directed at me. I could take it. Didn’t mean it broke my heart any less, especially watching him displace some of it onto his deceased wife. I fought back the burning tears and did the only thing I could for him. I listened.

“She got lucky with Maxie. Made it thirty-six weeks before she abrupted. You think she would’ve thanked her lucky stars for having a healthy baby. Not my wife. She was too busy planning her picture perfect future back in her hometown, where she could make her mother proud and live the life of a doctor’s wife, regardless of
my
dreams or what I had to give up to make that life happen for us. Too busy shopping or lunching or whatever the hell else she was doing to have some simple postpartum blood work drawn that was recommended by her Philly OB to investigate why she abrupted in the first place. Seemed relevant, being that she was already pregnant
again,
don’t you think? Again, not to my wife. Hell, she didn’t even bother to tell me about it. And since she was a nurse, why would I think to question her?”

The self-loathing dripping over his sarcasm ripped at my soul.
Make it stop, please, God, ease his pain.
I should have known God wouldn’t hear my prayers. Not today.

“Probably the same reason her OB, who’s a friend of mine, never mentioned it to me either. She assumed my wife had her shit together. Yeah, not so much. Quinn called a month after we moved up here to check in, see how the high risk OB she recommended was working out, and how Britt was handling the daily shots. She rambled on about how surprising Britt’s results were, given no family history. And if she would have known, Britt could have been easily treated during her pregnancy with Maxie too. You know what I said during that conversation?
Nothing
. I sat in my office with my goddamn jaw hanging open.”

I was so confused trying to follow his disjointed thoughts. He was so overwrought and all over the place. A dozen questions stung the tip of my tongue, but I held back. I couldn’t push. Instead, an eerie silence filled the space before he shook his head in disgust and continued.

“Inherited thrombophilia. I was supposed to be a vascular surgeon, for fuck’s sake, and it never crossed my mind. I take thorough histories on all my patients before I operate on them … make sure there are no red flags for clotting disorders. But my own wife? Never. Crossed. My. Mind.”