All She Wanted (2) (32 page)

Briggs

Charlie didn’t move for the next two
days.

Every time I went to the hospital,
which was several times a day, Charlie was sitting in the same chair—the one
next to her dad’s hospital bed. Mrs. Julie had been in and out with her sister
Jo, and so far, Chief had been in and out of consciousness since surgery, but
mostly out. The doctor said his vitals looked good, but his body still needed a
lot of rest.

Charlie talked to her dad as if he was
actively listening to her, though he wasn’t, he was sleeping. She told him
stories of being on the road during her tour—most of which I had already heard
before. She told him about Camille and her funny Irish family. She told him
about Professor Wade’s latest muse—an old cast-iron hen, and she told him why
she liked Christmastime in Texas.

All the while, she held his hand in
hers.

Tori and Kai had been up to see the
Chief last night. They had brought us all dinner, but Charlie didn’t touch
hers. I knew she was trying to be strong, trying to make up for what she felt
was an
embarrassing display of weakness
on that first night in the hospital, but I worried about her.

Strength she had, but her stubbornness
often overruled her common sense.

I pulled a chair over from the corner
of the room to sit next to her. Mrs. Julie and Jo had just gone to get
something to eat in the hospital cafeteria. Charlie had refused to leave, of
course.

“You know your body still takes fuel to
function, right?” I asked, pushing a lock of strawberry hair off her shoulder.

She kept her gaze on Chief Max.

“So you keep telling me, ever so
annoyingly I might add,” she said.

I smiled, at least she wasn’t catatonic
anymore,
I
could work with this side of Charlie.

“Tell me what sounds good to you and
I’ll go get it…even if it’s something crazy like avocado ice-cream or pumpkin
pancakes,” I said.

She looked at me, a soft, tired
expression settling into her features. My heart nearly stopped.

“I don’t want anything, Briggs, but
thank you.”

I searched her face, my eyes landing on
her lips. I stared at them. I was desperate to feel them against my own again—
desperate
. I leaned in by a few inches,
tempting myself beyond restraint.

“You’re so beautiful.”

She questioned me with her eyes, but
didn’t pull away. I brought my hand up to her face, touching her cheek with my
thumb.

“I’ve
missed
you so much, Charlie. You have no idea what it feels like to
be this close to you again…after all this time,” I continued.

She closed her eyes, leaning into my
palm and opened her mouth to speak. But instead of words, the loud shock of
beeps and buzzes came from every angle of the room. We jumped to our feet, as two
nurses and a doctor rushed into the room, pushing us out into the hallway in
the process.

Mrs. Julie and Jo were there with us
before I could blink.

And then everything happened so fast…

Charlie

“Where are you taking him?” I yelled
after the pack of white coats that were wheeling my dad away. I ran after them,
but to no avail. Briggs was at my back all too soon, pulling me to him. I
thrashed against his chest, breaking out of his hold as anger radiated through
my body for the first time since I’d been at the hospital.

“What happened…where are they taking
him?”

My mom was crying again, and Jo was
comforting her—a sight I had become way too familiar with over the last
seventy-two hours. I was sick of it. I was sick of everything.

I
want answers!

“The doctor said he’s having a
complication from the surgery Charlie, they’re going to try and…”

I shrugged his hand off my shoulder. I
didn’t want to be touched, not right now. The grenade pin had been pulled, and
it was just a matter of time before it exploded. I raced down the hall to the
stairwell, running down four flights of stairs toward the exit door. I could
hear the drumming of feet behind me, but I chose to pretend I didn’t.

I gasped, the cold, December air filled
up my lungs as I paced in the darkness. Two streetlights stood in the distance
beyond me, their glow failing to reach the shadow I claimed as my own.

Until that moment, I hadn’t even
realized it was night.

“Charlie, it’s freezing out here, let’s
go back inside,” Briggs said.

“This can’t be happening!” I threw my
hands in the air. “Do you even know the last thing we talked about? The last
conversation I had with my father? It was when I told him I wasn’t coming home
for Thanksgiving.”

He looked at me with confusion.

“But that’s not the worst part…I knew
that it made him sad, but I said it anyway—like I didn’t care about his
feelings at all,” I said, shaking my head.

“Charlie, you can’t start blaming
yourself for-”

I whipped my face back toward him,
sharply. “You’re absolutely right, Briggs…and I don’t—not solely, anyway. I
blame you, too.”

“Me?” he choked.

I walked closer to where he stood,
pointing my finger at him, feeling a rage inside me that was fighting for
release.

“
You
are the reason I didn’t come home, Briggs. You! Whatever
this
is,” I said, pointing between him and me, “It’s over. I can’t
do it anymore! I can’t be your
friend
…it’s
too exhausting. I don’t have the energy to worry about one more thing, so I’m
finished—done!”

His eyes grew huge as I stared at him
mercilessly.

I continued, undeterred, “I knew if I
came home at Thanksgiving, I’d be forced to deal with some things I wasn’t
quite ready to let go of—primarily
you
,
and because of that, I don’t have a
goodbye
memory
with my dad. I don’t have a last hug, or a last kiss. The only thing
I do have, is the memory of his disappointment after I told him that I wasn’t
going to come home and see him…because of
you
!”
I shook my head, my voice calming momentarily. “I let you steal those moments
from me once, and I won’t give you any more.”

A tearless sob rolled off me as I
crossed my arms over my chest.

He took a step toward me, his hand
outstretched. “Charlie, I know you’re upset right now, you have every right to
be, but you don’t mean those things,” he said.

My head snapped up in attention, “I
have never meant anything more in all my life. Do not follow me, Briggs. Do not
call me, do not text me…I don’t need you!”

I stalked back into the building, and
this time no one followed me.

Briggs

Truth be told, I had taken many blows
in my life.

I’d taken hits that had knocked me
unconscious, hits that had left me crumpled in a pile of blood and broken
bones, hits that had taken me weeks to recover from. But none of those came close
to the level of power that Charlie had packed into her punch. The girl knew how
to fight.

As I stared at the backside of the
hospital, watching her leave, I told myself she didn’t mean it.
 

I told myself that she was tired,
hungry, stressed, and scared. I told myself that if not for the man lying on an
operating table for the second time this week, I would have ignored her
outburst and ran after her. But there was a shred of truth in her argument, and
that’s what stopped me. There had been too many missed opportunities in the
past, too many unspoken words and moments. I understood that concept more than
anyone.

This night was bigger than me, or her,
or even us.

Charlie needed to focus on her dad, and
I needed to let her do that.

Charlie

My dad always said that pride was the
ugliest part of humanity.

Not only did it aid us in hurting those
we loved, it told us we were right, justified in our hurts. It kept us from
saying sorry. It kept us from offering forgiveness. It kept us isolated and
alone. Pride was ugly.

When my dad woke up from his
complication
—also known as a
life-threating pulmonary embolism—I was there, sitting in the chair by his
bedside. The days following were painful to watch as he struggled to talk or
move, but the nurses assured us that his responses were normal.

Normal
.

Would
anything ever be normal again?

The men from the station had staggered
their visits over the last few days, and though I had seen Briggs several times
in passing, we had not spoken a word to each other.

The guilt I felt was nearly unbearable.

I had felt so much anger that awful
night, but as my therapist would say, “
anger
is only a surface emotion”
. Underneath my anger was fear; I had been scared
out of my mind. My frustration over my ever-shifting relationship with Briggs
had been the big, blinking target.

I had shot to kill.

I cringed thinking of the things I had
yelled at Briggs—
horrible
things,
maybe even unforgiveable things. Sorry wasn’t enough, but what else was there?

The dust may have been settling on my
dad’s medical drama, but I knew that I couldn’t go back to being
just friends
with Briggs. As much as the
thought of life without him caused me physical pain, I couldn’t keep doing life
with him either, not the way we had been doing it. I couldn’t sit back and
watch him date or marry someone else while I was off on tour abroad—alone.

Neither of us could move on with our
futures if we didn’t let go of each other now.

I hated that my rational mind was back;
I almost preferred
crazy
on days like
today.

**********

“Go home Charlie, you need to sleep in
a real bed and eat a real meal. Mom’s here, and I have several of my guys
coming here soon, anyway,” dad said.

I rolled my eyes. This argument of his
was wearing me down, and he knew it. It was hard to fight a man in a hospital
gown.

“You know I’ll go and then just come
right back, Dad. I can’t just sit at home when I could be here, with you,” I
replied.

“Charlie, it would be good for you to
go stretch your legs. Go for a walk, shower, eat, take a nap, and then you can
come back, okay?” My dad leaned over, whispering, “Maybe you can even slip a
coke in your bag for me.”

“I heard that, Maxwell.” My mom
scolded.

“No caffeine,” I repeated.

“You girls are going to be the death of
me.”

“Better us than another heart attack,
right?”

“Funny…now get out of here before I
call security,” he said.

“Fine, but I won’t be gone too long.”

“Well, you’re not getting back in here
for at least four hours. I’ll post a guard if I have to.”

I stared at him, but he was always
better at these staring contests than I was. I may have learned from the best,
but my talent was still not equal to his. I threw him a smile before exiting
the room. I could hear him laugh as I closed the door behind me.

Briggs was waiting on the other side.

My throat was suddenly void of all
moisture.

“Hi, Charlie.”

“Hey,” I managed to croak out.

He placed his hand on the door handle as
I scooted around him. I could hear the words screaming like a siren in my head,
they were begging for release.

Say
it, just say it!

I’M
SORRY!

I’M
S-O-R-R-Y!

He pushed the knob, knocking twice as
he entered. The sadness in his eyes had held me prisoner as I watched him
disappear behind he door.

It was true: Pride was an ugly, ugly
thing.

Briggs

“Briggs, it’s nice to see you, son,”
Chief said, pointing to the chair that Charlie usually occupied. I sat down. He
had texted me an hour ago asking me to come, telling me he was going to make
Charlie take a break. If I hadn’t just seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn’t
have thought it possible.

“I think I’ll go get some coffee…do you
need anything Max?” Mrs. Julie asked.

“A Coke?” Chief asked.

“You’re beating a dead horse, Maxwell.
I’ll be back soon, call if you need me.”

“I will sweetheart.”

Chief turned to me after the door
clicked shut.

“I heard what you did for Charlie,” he
said.

I wasn’t quite sure what he was
referring to. A lot had happened since the day of his heart attack.

“Driving to get her from school,” he
continued.

“Oh, yes,” I said, looking anywhere but
his face. This conversation was quickly turning painful and it had only been a
few seconds in length so far. I wasn’t sure I was up for a talk about how I
could help him fix Charlie—apparently, she still believed I was the reason for
her distress.

“Thank you for doing that, it means a
great deal to me—to Julie and I both, actually.” He took a deep breath,
drumming his fingers soundlessly on his lap. “I never got to finish the
conversation I started with you before…the old heart had other plans, I
suppose.”

He tapped his heart like the Tin-man on
The Wizard of OZ. It was a funny gesture, though my smiled was short-lived.

“Well, Chief, it might be pointless to
try and continue it now since she’s not speaking to me. I doubt I can be of
much help to you, although I did find out the reason she didn’t come home for
Thanksgiving. It was because of me, she told me that much,” I said.

He nodded, as if the information I had
just shared with him wasn’t a surprise. Maybe she had told him that. I hadn’t
been around for too many conversations lately—or any, for that matter.

“And you’re feelings for her haven’t
changed?”

I laughed humorously. “Hardly.”

“Good.”

I stared at him. “I don’t see how
that’s
good
, sir. She’s barely spoken
a word to me since-”

“She can be stubborn, Briggs, but Julie
and I believe she’s just trying to protect herself.”

“From what?”

“You.”

What
does that even mean?

“Something happened when she was home
last spring…it
changed
her. She’d
been so distant and defensive prior to that term that when I came home from my
trip, I hardly recognized her. She was so
joyful
.”
He paused. “But in my excitement to have my daughter back, I think I overlooked
a vital part—or person—who helped in that transformation of her heart.” He
pointed to me. “
You
, Briggs.”

I shook my head, dumbfounded. “What?
But you just said you think she’s trying to protect herself from me.”

“I do.” Chief said again, nodding.
“Charlie has always tried to escape hurt and pain by doing whatever she could
to avoid it—all of us do that to some degree, but with her it’s a little
different. Charlie has always had the same weakness Briggs, do you know what it
is?”
 

In an instant, the answer was there, in
my head and on my lips.

“She’s never felt wanted.”

Tears welled in his eyes as he spoke,
“I have spent many years praying that Charlie would grab ahold of her second
chance. When Julie and I realized her talent, we both believed that piano was
the vehicle she needed to leave behind her past.” He shook his head slowly,
“There is no question that Charlie is gifted, but her accomplishments in piano
will never overshadow what she needs the most. I can’t say what she will choose
for her future, but I hope you’re in it, Briggs. I’m convinced your love for my
daughter runs as deep as my own for her does. You’ve waited a long time, and I
don’t want you to have to wait any longer. You have our blessing, Briggs. I
hope the two of you can figure out your future…together.”

 
My mouth hung open.

“But Chief, Charlie…” I couldn’t finish
the sentence. I’d waited nearly eight months for his approval, and now that I
had it, Charlie would barely look at me.

The slap of irony stung.

“Go, Briggs. Charlie will want to hear
what you have to say.”

I nodded, thanking him as I made my
exit.

I didn’t need to be told twice.