The doctors and nurses took over after that. For several minutes, they reattached tubes and wires and took my vitals. The doctor had at least a dozen questions and just as many explanations, but my mind was still with Remi at a hospital on the other side of the city.
I was fine—or at least I would be. During the lulls in their examination, I found out it had been three days since the crash. It took my family a full twenty-four hours of thinking I was dead to get word that I was one of the lucky few who had survived. Since then, Tyson had been sleeping at the hospital around the clock along with my mom, and Dad and Cassidy had been holding down the fort at home with the dogs.
I was grateful beyond measure to have such an amazing support system, but it wasn’t me I was worried about. When the doctor was finally done and the nurses left the room with the promise of coming back with pain medicine, I laid into Tyson.
“Now, what’s going on with Remi? Why am I here and she’s at Grady?”
My mom sank to the side of my bed and held my good hand. The trauma of the last few days had dimmed her usually bright smile.
Tyson stood at the foot of my bed, his arms crossed over his chest, and calmly answered, “There were about forty survivors initially. First responders spread everyone out to hospitals across the city. That’s why it took us so long to find you.” He cleared the emotion from his throat, and I gave Mom’s hand a squeeze when her eyes welled with tears again. “There are only thirty-one of you left now. Six in critical condition. It’s”—he shook his head—“been a nightmare.”
I could definitely agree with him there. “Get to Remi. How is she?”
He sighed. “She broke multiple bones in each arm and had fractures on her clavicle and ribs. But all of those will heal. The biggest concern for her now is the swelling on her brain.”
A vise cranked down on my chest, and fears I never fathomed I’d need to have crashed into me like a tidal wave. “Her brain?”
“It appears she took a hard hit to the head. Her CT and MRI look promising, but they’re keeping her in a medically induced coma until they can get the swelling under control.”
My stomach churned and the weight of the entire world settled on my chest. As if she hadn’t been through enough already. As if the entire universe hadn’t been hell-bent on destroying her. Now she was fighting for her life in a different way. And God, I prayed with every fiber of my being that she still had enough fight left in her.
I covered my face as tears leaked from my eyes.
Why was everything so fucking hard?
Was one fucking day to catch our breaths too much to ask for?
Tyson patted my leg. “Listen, she’s young and strong. She’ll be okay.”
Okay was such a relative term. Only weeks earlier, we’d been in the hospital after she’d tried to kill herself for the third time. Did that constitute as okay too just because she’d survived? What about all the months before that when the woman I’d fallen in love with was barely recognizable, so filled with fear and pain? Was that the goal? To go back to that? Because quite honestly, it wasn’t the world I wanted her to wake up in.
Though, as long as she woke up, I’d take whatever version of Remi I could get. No matter what the universe threw at us, I would never give up on that woman. We were a team. Through and through. We hadn’t gotten married yet, but I’d already vowed for better or worse a hundred times over.
I didn’t need perfection in our lives. I just needed her.
I sighed, scrubbing a hand over my face to dry the tears. Now was not the time to be defeated or wallow in the injustices of a cruel world.
People had died—a lot of innocent people had died.
But Sally was alive, and so was I. We could figure out the rest later.
The knots in my stomach tightened when a thought struck me. “Aaron?”
“He’s fine, honey,” my mom answered immediately. “He was very lucky and walked away with nothing more than a few stitches.”
“Oh, thank God,” I groaned.
Aaron was a good guy who had become a good friend, but as awful as it was, my relief was purely selfish. No matter how bad things had gotten between Remi and Aaron, losing him would have been another hurdle she couldn’t handle.
“I have to see her,” I declared.
Tyson tossed me a warm smile. “You will. As soon as we can get you out of here, I’ll take you there myself. But until then, you have to concentrate on healing yourself. She’s going to need you, Bowen.”
