Eighteen
YOU DON’T CALL an ambulance in the country.
You just get yourself to the hospital.
As we sprinted across the yard, Jack called “get the keys” to me, and I was able to pull the Range Rover around to the side porch just as Jack was coming out with his mother in his arms. He and Hank worked Connie into the back seat, while Doc climbed in the other side to hold her head on his lap.
As Hank ran off to his truck and Jack climbed into the passenger seat, Doc asked, “Aren’t you driving?”
Jack said, “Trust me. We want Hannah.”
The hospital was twenty minutes away, and I had no idea how to get there. The guys had to direct me with: Left past the tractor! Right at the longhorns! Don’t run the stop sign!
Even still, we made it in fifteen.
At the emergency bay, I dropped them off, and it was only as I took in the sight of The Destroyer carrying his unconscious mother through the sliding doors that I realized he didn’t have a hat.
I mean, how exactly was he supposed to hide that world-famous face without a hat? The crooked glasses would never be enough.
I called Robby at HQ from the parking lot, briefed him, told him to get on the horn with intake to find us a private waiting room, and asked him to bring us “any other incognito items” ASAP.
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know! A fedora? A big newspaper? Get creative!”
I checked the gift shop on the way in, but it was closed.
By the time I got to Jack, it was too late. Jack and Hank were fighting in the hallway just off the waiting room—and every single person there was staring-but-not-staring at them.
“I’ll take it from here,” Hank was saying.
“We don’t even know what’s wrong yet.”
“Just go home and I’ll call you when there’s news.”
“That’s not how this works.”
“It works how I say it works.”
“I’m staying.”
“You’re going.”
“It’s not your decision.”
“It’s sure as hell not yours.”
“If you think I’m just going to carry my unconscious mother into the ER, drop her off, and go on home to watch TV, you’re crazy.”
“And you’re crazy if you think I’m going to spend one more second with you than I have to.”
Jack was trying to keep his voice low. But that just gave it more pressure. “I didn’t ask to come home!”
“But you came, anyway.”
“What choice did I have?”
“There’s always a choice.”
“Not always.”
Hank was advancing on Jack now. Their voices were low and tight, but their body language was loud as hell.
“Don’t stand there and act like you deserve to be here. You know who you are, and you know what you did. You gave up the right to be part of this family. I’m here, every day, picking up the pieces of everything you shattered. This is my family, not yours—and when I tell you to get the hell out, you go.”
Hank had been building like a wave ready to crash.
I rooted for Jack to lift his hands, take a step back, and defuse the situation.
But he went the other way.
“Fuck you,” Jack said.
And it was just the permission Hank had been waiting for. He drew his fist up like an archer, ready to let fly—
But I stepped in and caught it.
Caught his wrist, more specifically, and twisted it down by his side. Hank let out a grunt of pain.
Safe to say Hank did not see that coming. And neither did Jack.
The surprise broke the moment.
“We’re not doing this here,” I said.
In the silence that followed, the murmuring of the waiting room got loud.
I grabbed both of their elbows, clamped tight, and steered them around the corner toward the vending machines.
Whatever they were fighting about was bigger than this moment. But this moment was the only thing I could solve.
“Jack, you’re coming with me,” I said. And before he could protest, I added, “The entire waiting room is staring at you.”
“You think I care about that right now? People stare at me all the time.” His face was tense.
“I get it, but there’s a bigger picture.”
“This is my mom we’re talking about.”
I turned to Hank. “Go be with your folks. We’ll meet you in a few minutes.”
But Hank didn’t need my instructions—or my permission. After blinking at me, like What the hell? for a second, he turned and left without a word.
“We need to find you a room to hide in,” I said to Jack.
“That’s what I was trying to do,” Jack said, his voice tight like a wire. “He won’t tell me the room number.”
I frowned. “Why not?”
“Because he’s an asshole.”
Just then, a gaggle of teenage girls rounded the far end of the hallway.
On instinct, I reached to the back of his head to pull his face down toward my shoulder. “Keep your head down,” I whispered into his ear, keeping an eye on them. “Pretend I’m comforting you.”
Jack didn’t fight me. He leaned down and buried his face in the crook of my neck, as I pulled him closer with both arms to cover as much of him as possible.
Just as the girls went past, I felt his arms come around me and tighten.
“Hey!” I whispered, once the girls had passed us.
“You said pretend.” His breath tickled my neck.
“Not that much.”
“I don’t actually have to pretend much. You are genuinely comforting.”
I broke away to scan the hallway. Clear now—both directions.
“It would be better if you just left right now,” I said.
“Are you taking Hank’s side?”
“You’re going to be all over the internet if you stay. You don’t even have a hat.”
I wasn’t wrong, but Jack shook his head. “I’m not leaving till we find out about my mom.”
Fair enough.
I led him to the stairwell. “Can you wait here? I’ll figure out where she is and then assess the route to get you there.”
“You’re really not kidding.”
“Just stay here. Don’t make trouble.”
But as I started to step back out of the stairwell door, I saw that same roving band of teenage girls. They’d circled around and were coming back our way. What were they even doing here? As they made eye contact with me, I realized they had their phones out.
I ducked back into the stairwell and grabbed Jack’s hand, pulling him behind me as I started up the stairs.
“What?” Jack said.
“We’ve got teenagers after us,” I said, noting how silly it sounded.
But seriously—there was nothing worse for spreading the word of a celebrity sighting than a pack of teenage girls with phones. “Come on,” I said. “Move.”
At the top floor, I pulled him into the hallway, and we made for the elevators. We were halfway there when I saw a closet labeled SUPPLIES.
I pulled us both in, pushed the door closed, and leaned against it.
Taking my lead, Jack did the same—and wedged his sneaker heel against the door, too.
We stood there like that, side by side, breathing, for a minute before I noticed there were towels and sets of scrubs folded on the shelves. “I know how we’re getting you out of here,” I whispered.
“How?”
“Scrubs.”
Jack looked to where I was pointing, but just as he did, we could hear the girls through the door as they passed by.
“It was so totally him.”
“It was absolutely totally him.”
“But that was not Kennedy Monroe.”
“Yeah. Not even close.”
We held our breath, waiting, any second, for the girls to try the handle.
But they didn’t.
Once all was quiet, I darted over to the scrubs supply. “What size are you?” I whispered, looking him up and down.
“I’m not leaving,” he said. “We don’t even know what’s happening with my mom.”
But just as he said it, his phone dinged.
A message from Hank. Guess he had his number now.
Can’t find you. Mom’s OK. They think she’s dehydrated. Possible vertigo. Getting fluids now. Much better. Staying the night for observation. Go home.
Jack held it out for me to read.
“Ah.”
He let out a deep sigh and closed his eyes for a minute. “Guess we’re going home after all.”
“You know,” I said, expecting the usual brick wall. “It really might help me to know what’s going on with you two.”
But this time Jack met my eyes. “Hank hates me because I’m not Drew. Because Drew died and I lived.”
“That’s it?” I asked.
“That’s enough of it.”
I felt like an anthropologist. Was this how sharing worked? Had I earned some sharing from him by offering sharing of my own? Anyway, I nodded, like Go on.
To my surprise, he did. “I was the dumb one in the family, by the way. Drew and Hank were the smart ones, so they’d hang out and be smart together. I was the one with ADD and dyslexia and dysgraphia, too. The whole package.”
“None of that makes you dumb.”
“To me, it did. And my teachers, too. So I did the class clown thing. Hank and Drew were total Eagle Scouts with straight As. And I … was not.”
“That’s the deal with you and Hank?”
Jack sighed. “I was always kind of on the outs. Hank stayed here and became the ranch manager. Drew went to vet school here and went into practice with my dad. I was the only one who left. I was closest to Drew, for sure, because I always made him laugh. And he could always see that I was good at different things. He was kind of my buffer zone for the family. But after he died … there was no one to be that anymore.”
I nodded. “He was important to you.”
“I don’t know how to be in this family without him.”
That did not feel like the whole story.
But it was a start.
And then, realizing something positive, I said, “Hey! You drove over a bridge tonight! Without stopping to throw up.”
This was not news to Jack. “Yes.”
“That’s progress, right?”
Jack tilted his head. “Without stopping to throw up right away. I threw up later. In the ER bathroom.”
Ah. I took in the sight of him, just standing there being handsome. It’s so easy to think that other people have it easy. “Still though,” I lifted my fist, like Yay. “A time delay. That’s progress.”
I tossed him the scrubs and a little surgical hat, and then—while he was changing and I was deliberately, specifically not looking—I scanned the shelves for anything else that might help obscure his identity. I found a box of those disposable dark glasses they give you after they dilate your eyes and turned to hold a pair out, like These?
But my timing couldn’t have been worse. He was just peeling off his T-shirt and I got an accidental eyeful of his naked torso.
I clamped my eyes closed.
“You really don’t like the sight of me shirtless,” he said, as he wriggled into the top.
“It’s like looking at the sun,” I said.
“Maybe you should wear those glasses.”
“Maybe I should.”
Then Jack asked, “Like looking at the sun in a good way? Or a bad way?”
“Both,” I said, now rummaging the shelves.
“That’s not an answer.”
“Here’s an idea,” I said, after a minute. “I’ve got eyeliner in my purse. Maybe we could draw a mustache on you.”
In the wake of that suggestion, the room went quiet. And it stayed quiet for so long, I had to turn back around.
And there was Jack, in a scrub top and his boxer briefs, one leg partway in the pants, and bent over laughing so hard, he wasn’t making a sound.
No sound at all. Laughing too hard to even make noise.
Finally, he lifted his head up to the ceiling to take a big breath. “You want,” he said, “to draw a mustache on me?”
“Look,” I said. “This is creative problem solving.”
But he was still laughing. “Can I get a monocle, too? And a puppy nose and some whiskers?”
“Put your pants on,” I said, lacing my voice with irritation.
But he was pretty irresistible.
I felt an urge to laugh, too. But I tamped it down.