Hooked (8 page)

“Which third is my father in?”

“He flat-lined in the ambulance.” Chris drew in a deep breath and let it out again. “They have his body on machines to keep him alive until you can get home but Luke, he’s brain dead.”

Anger replaced all of Luke’s other emotions. “Why the hell didn’t you call me first thing this morning? At five-thirty when it happened, instead of worrying about the damn herd?”

“We decided we couldn’t tell you this over the phone. That’s why I got right in the truck and drove here. To tell you in person and drive you home.”

“Then why didn’t you tell me the minute you got here?” Luke’s eyes flashed.

Chris’s expression softened. “That was my own decision. I wanted to let you finish the event.”

“Fuck the event, Chris. This is my father.”

“What difference would an hour make either way, Luke? It doesn’t matter now.”

“I could have been with him.”

“Luke, he’s gone. When you get home, they’re going to unhook the machines.”

“No, maybe—”

Chris shook his head. “There is no maybe. He’s gone.”

It couldn’t be true. People came out of comas all the time. Luke had just seen something about that on television. “How can they be sure?”

“They’re sure, Luke. They brought in some neurologist.” Chris shook his head. “I’m so sorry.”

Luke felt dead inside as the full impact of what he was hearing numbed him.

“I just need to get my gear, then grab my bag at the hotel and check out.” He clung to the details, as if putting things in order would turn his world right side up again, because it sure as hell wasn’t that way now. Then another reality hit him. “My mother?”

“She’s…” Chris looked at a loss for words. “She’ll be happy you’re home.”

“We have to get going.” Luke stood, surprised he could do so, and began shoving gear into his bag.

“I know.” Chris began coiling Luke’s bull rope. “We’ll be home by nightfall.”

“Okay.” Luke drew in a shaky breath and let it out just as Annie came around the corner.

Her smile faded the moment she saw him. If he looked half as bad as he felt, Luke guessed Annie had figured out something was horribly wrong just from the expression on his face. He had to tell her what had happened. They had tentative plans for tonight and he needed to cancel. The other guys would have to be told too. And he’d have to let somebody in charge know he wouldn’t be competing next week. He didn’t know how long it took to plan a funeral, and he couldn’t leave his mother so soon afterward anyway, so of course he couldn’t compete this coming weekend.

He just didn’t know if he had it in him to say it out loud to even one person, let alone repeat it all a whole bunch of times.

“Luke?” Annie’s gaze cut from him to Chris, and then back again. A frown creased her brow. “You okay?”

He started to nod but it turned into a shake when he realized he wasn’t okay at all, and he wouldn’t be for a very long while. He turned to Chris with a pleading glance.

His friend’s hand came up and gripped his shoulder. “I’ll tell her.”

“And the guys—” Luke hated laying it all on Chris, but at the moment he had no other choice. He was holding on to his composure by the skin of his teeth. If he opened his soul to Annie and saw the sympathy in her eyes, he’d lose it. He’d turn into an emotional mess in the middle of everyone and he didn’t want that.

Chris gave his shoulder one last squeeze and then released his hold. “I’ll take care of it all. You finish packing up then we’ll go.”

All Luke could do was watch Annie and Chris walk away, and try to remember to breathe.

Chapter Six

The drive had been hell. Knowing his family needed him and he couldn’t get home fast enough while he sat helpless in the passenger seat had been torture. But actually arriving at the hospital was not a relief in any way either. The sights and smells of the ICU nearly took Luke off his feet. The steady beep-beep of monitors. The overpowering scent of bleach or whatever it was they used to clean with. He walked like a zombie through the hallway guided by Chris. Without his friend, Luke probably wouldn’t have been able to even follow the simple directions the floor nurse at the desk had given them to his father’s room.

Maybe the truth was that deep down he didn’t want to locate it. Inside would be simply the shell of the man who’d been the most important person in his life since the day he was born. The man who’d put him on top of his first sheep in the mutton-busting competition in the local rodeo when Luke was barely five years old. The man who’d worked day and night to make the money to help pay for Luke’s entrance fees and equipment when he was just starting out as an amateur bull rider in high school. The man who had taught him to shoot, to pray and to respect both women and the value of a dollar.

How in the world could he live without that steadying force in his life?

Chris slowed to a stop and then stood to the side of a doorway. Luke knew this was it. Steeling his nerves, and dreading what waited inside that room, he walked through the entrance. He saw first his mother, her face tearstained and showing the strain of the past day. Luke realized how selfish his thoughts had been. Only of himself and what his father’s death would mean to him. How would his mother live without the man she’d been with since they’d started dating at age fifteen?

His gaze traveled to the figure in the bed beneath the oxygen mask and wires. It was not his father. He couldn’t think of this as his father, because far too soon all that stuff would be unhooked and then…

Luke couldn’t even think of it.

“Luke.” His mother rose from her chair and threw herself into his arms.

“Mom. I’m sorry I took so long to get here.” He held her tight and buried his face against the top of her head. The familiar feel and smell of her helped combat the less than comforting atmosphere of the hospital.

“It’s okay. You’re here now.”

He glanced over his mother’s head and at his father in the bed. His face was ashen, the sickly color obscuring whatever tan was left over from all the hours the man had spent working out in the sun.

“What—” Luke’s voice caught in his throat. He cleared it and tried again. “What happened?”

“He got up early just like he always did to feed the stock. He went into the kitchen and turned on the coffee pot. The next thing I heard was something crashing. By the time I got to the kitchen, he was lying on the floor with the chair on top of him. He must—” his mother’s voice cracked, “—must have grabbed for it when he started to fall. I called the ambulance right away. Then I called the Collins’s house.”

“But why did he fall? What caused it?” A strong man like his father didn’t faint or just collapse for no good reason.

“The doctor said it was a brain aneurism.”

He still didn’t know exactly what that meant or what they could have done to avoid it. All Luke knew was that his father never looked so helpless. A man who could rope and wrestle a steer to the ground, taken down by what? Some sort of microscopic blood clot or whatever an aneurism was? How was that possible? How was that fair?

“Luke…we have to—” She stared at the machines beeping away. Proof his father still lived and breathed.

“Why? Why do we have to?”

“Because he’s gone.”

“He’s not gone. Maybe he’ll—”

“No. He won’t. There’s no brain activity.”

“But maybe—”

“No, Luke. There’s no hope. Please don’t make this harder than it already is. You know your father and you know what he’d want. Hell, if he wasn’t so healthy and stubborn and convinced he’d live to be a hundred, he probably would have thought to get one of those do-not-resuscitate orders when we had our wills drawn up right after you were born. But you know this…” She swept her hand at the room full of equipment. “This wouldn’t be what he’d want. This isn’t living.”

Luke knew she was right, but that didn’t make it any easier. Hell, he’d barely been able to let his old horse go a few years back when the vet had said it was time to put him down. This was the man who’d raised him. How the hell could you simply unplug the machines and let him die? His thoughts must have shown on his face.

“It’s not him, son. It’s just his body. We’d be keeping him here for us, not for him.”

Tears he didn’t let fall blurred Luke’s vision as he nodded. “When?”

“They’ve arranged for the organ donations, so as soon as you’ve said your good-byes. I’ve had all day. I’ve already made my peace with it. Take your time, son.”

Time wouldn’t change anything. He shook his head, not knowing if he could do as she asked. He knew he needed to be strong for her, but right now he was like a little boy again clinging to his mother.

She took his hand, her grip stronger than it should be given the situation, and led Luke to the bed. He forced his gaze up from the floor, trying to ignore the machine breathing for his father because he couldn’t do it for himself. He knew his mother was right. There was no dignity in living like this. If he had been aware of any of it, his father would have hated it.

With one loud sniffle, Luke released his mother’s hand and took his father’s in his. It remained limp in his grasp. One more indication the strongest man he’d ever known was gone.

“Hey, Dad. It’s Luke. I’m here. Um, sorry I took so long, but I did real good this competition. I placed third. Made some good money.” Luke figured his father, being a practical man, would appreciate knowing that. Now what? How in the world did you say goodbye forever? He couldn’t. All he could say was, “I love you.”

He squeezed his father’s hand one last time and then took a step back and looked for his mother. She gave him a weak, watery smile and nodded.

A nurse and a doctor Luke hadn’t noticed enter the room stepped forward, toward the equipment, and Luke’s world changed forever.

Luke woke up in his own bed in the room he’d had since birth. Some things had changed over the years. The cowboy wallpaper from his youth had long ago been painted over. The wall was covered instead with pictures of him in competition and buckles he’d won framed in shadowboxes. Some things, like the old maple dresser handed down from his grandparents’ time, remained the same. It showed the deep patina that comes with age.

But now that his father was gone, everything seemed different.

Chris had driven him and his mother home from the hospital late last night. It had felt wrong to leave his father there, though Luke supposed he wouldn’t be alone for long. It wouldn’t be long before the funeral home came to get him. Chris’s father, Jack Collins, had called the family who owned the only funeral parlor in town and asked them to handle the arrangements. Chris had dated their daughter for a while.

Small town indeed.

That was a blessing right now. The town was small, and his family was a well-known fixture among the townspeople. That meant news traveled fast and most knew everything that had happened already. There was no need to make phone calls to tell anyone. Thank God for that. Luke didn’t have it in him, and he wouldn’t have felt right leaving the task to his mother alone.

Emotionally exhausted, Luke had forgone eating a late dinner. Instead, he’d taken a quick shower, which he hadn’t had the time for after the competition. As Luke had let the scalding water pound into his back, the championship round he’d ridden in that day felt like months ago, not just hours. He’d fallen into bed and, amazingly, had slept, even though he’d feared he’d never be able to sleep again.

It didn’t take but a moment for reality to creep back in as he woke now. Memories of the day before and dread for all yet to come filled him and had Luke wishing he could close his eyes, pull the covers over his head and make it all go away. Instead, he rose from bed, threw a flannel shirt over the T-shirt he’d slept in, and pulled a pair of jeans over his boxer shorts.

The shearling-lined slippers his parents had given him for Christmas last year sat on the floor next to the bed. He shoved his feet in those to combat the chill in the bare wooden floorboards and shuffled to the kitchen.

He smelled the coffee and nearly groaned with need. In the kitchen he found a counter strewn with cakes, pies and muffins that had his stomach grumbling and reminded Luke that even if he didn’t feel like eating, he needed to.

His mother stood next to the coffee pot, his father’s favorite mug in her hand. The family and any regular guests in the house knew that mug belonged to Charles Carpenter, and no one else dared use it.

She looked up at him with glistening eyes, before she let out a short, teary laugh. “I just almost poured a cup of coffee for your father. It’s such a habit after all these years—” She shook her head.

Luke took her in his arms and felt her trembling. “It’s okay. I’m sure he’s looking down at us and appreciating the thought.”

He felt her nod against his chest before she pulled back, visibly gathering her composure. She reached up, replaced his father’s mug in the usual spot and grabbed the one next to it. She filled it with steaming hot coffee and handed it to Luke, then went back for a second mug for herself as if nothing had happened.

“Thanks.” He took a gulp of coffee that burned its way all the way down his throat. His gaze hit on the rows of baked goods lining the kitchen. “So, ah, where did all this stuff come from?”

His mother shrugged. “Just about everyone in town I guess. Half of it was here last night when we got home from the hospital. The rest was here this morning by the time I got up.”

The doors of his family’s house were never locked. That was obviously common knowledge among friends who’d wanted to drop something off but not disturb them. Funny how people thought sweets would make the loss of his father any easier.

His mother took a long sip of coffee and stared at the counter. “So generous of them all. It will come in handy when everyone comes back to the house after the funeral. I don’t think I would have had it in me to bake right now. I’ll have to remember to borrow Marge’s coffee urn though. Our little pot won’t make enough for all those people who’ll want to come back here after they pay their respects. Your father was a popular man.”

Luke watched his mother in amazement. Right before his eyes she’d transformed from a woman crying over a coffee mug after suffering the greatest loss in her life, to a calm, organized hostess. It was then Luke realized how many things needed to be handled and how clueless he’d been about it all. Suddenly the ridiculous amount of cakes made sense. Apparently the women in town knew they’d need them. They were helping his mother.