“Carrie,” I choke out. I start to rock. Mom moans in my arms so I stop. I squeeze her tighter, because I don’t know what else to do.
“Carrie,” he says softly, “would it be okay with you if I take your mom from you so that you can go and get dressed?” I look down and see that I’m wearing a T-shirt and some tiny sleep shorts. “You’re going to want to ride in the ambulance. I want you to be ready.” He motions like he’s asking for permission to take her from me.
I slide out from beneath Mom and he very gently takes my place. He feels for her pulse at the same time and says something to the woman with him. I run into my room and jump into a pair of jean shorts and put on a bra. I don’t even take off my sleep shorts. I don’t have time. I rush back out to my mom.
The paramedics are in the house now, and there’s a flurry of activity as they bring a stretcher inside.
“Are you alone here, Carrie?” Matt asks.
I nod.
“Do you need to call someone to tell them about this?” he asks.
“My dad,” I say. I step back as a paramedic rushes past me. “Is she okay?” I ask hesitantly. No one answers.
“Do you want to give Sky your dad’s number so she can call him for you?”
I look up at him. His eyes are soft. “What?” I ask. I heard him clearly, but I have no idea what he’s talking about.
“We need to let your dad know what’s going on,” he says gently.
“I can do it.” I pull my phone out of my pocket and dial. It rings twice.
“Carrie?” Dad barks. His voice is nasally from sleep. “What’s wrong?”
My voice breaks. “Daddy,” I whisper.
“What is it, Carrie?”
They take Mom out the door on the stretcher, and I follow. The woman the neighbor called Sky puts a pair of sandals on my feet. I keep walking, the phone pressed against my wet face. I watch as they put Mom into the ambulance.
They motion for me to climb in too, so I do, and they buckle me in.
“Carrie!” Dad yells through the phone. The doors of the ambulance close. “Carrie, you have to speak to me!”
I swallow hard. “I think I wasted my one last moment,” I whisper.
Nick
My bed dips and I roll toward the middle. “Nick,” someone says impatiently, calling my name. I open my eyes and see Jack.
“Get out of my bed, Jack,” I say, and stuff my face into my pillow, drawing it under my head and plumping it.
“
Nick
,” she says, a little more impatiently. She shoves my shoulder. “Get up!”
I open my eyes. “Why?” She has her clothes on and her eyes are clear. She’s not drunk.
“It’s Carrie,” she says.
My eyes fly open. “What about Carrie?”
She gets up and opens my drawers, passing me a shirt and pants. “Get dressed,” she says. “It’s her mom.”
I start to pull my pants on. “What’s wrong with her?”
“My aunt works at the hospital, and she was there when they brought her in, but she couldn’t give me any more information. Carrie’s all by herself, except for some strange men no one knows.” She shoves me again. “
Go
,” she says, and she points toward the door.
I jam my feet into my sneakers. I walk by Jack and stop quickly to kiss her on the forehead. She scrunches up her face and pushes me away. She wipes a hand across her skin.
“Eww,” she says. But she’s smiling.
“Thank you,” I say.
She flops back onto my bed and pulls the covers under her chin. “I’m just going to say right here,” she says.
I don’t have time to move her out of my bed, so I let her stay. She can’t go home at this time of the night anyway. I flip the light off on my way out.
I hop in my dad’s old jeep and drive to the hospital. It’s not too far away, but it feels like it takes forever before I see the big signs that announce I’m close to the emergency room. Finally, I’m there, and I park.
I go through the emergency doors and there she is. She’s sitting in a chair with her legs drawn up close to her chin, like she’s trying to curl into a ball. Matthew Reed is sitting next to her, and I almost have to stop and do a double-take when I see him.
“Carrie!” I cry out. She startles and looks up at me, her eyes filling with tears immediately.
“Nick,” she says as I drop down in front of her. She’s in my arms before I can blink. Sobs wrack her body and she seems so small all of a sudden.
She knocks me over and I sink back onto the floor on my butt, and she comes down in my lap. I couldn’t pry her off with a crowbar, though, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
I rub her back and stroke down the length of her hair until she settles. She sniffles and wipes her nose on my shirt.
“Sorry,” she whispers, as she wipes the snot into my shirt.
I chuckle and hug her tightly. “What happened?” I ask. “How’s your mom?”
She sniffles again and buries her head in my shirt.
Matt speaks up for her, thank God. “She’s having a reaction to the chemo. It’s pretty normal, but really scary.”
I stick my hand out to Matt to shake. “Thanks for hanging out with her.”
He smiles and shakes my hand. “I didn’t mind.”
Of all the people in the world, she got one of the Reeds to come to the hospital with her. Then I look up and see Paul come around the corner. My heart almost stops. He hands Matt a cup of coffee. “Hey, Nick,” he says.
Holy crap. He just said my name. He remembered me. “Paul,” I say with a nod.
Carrie looks up. “You guys know one another?”
Matt nods. “Nick was nice enough to get us some firewood.” He reaches for his pocket. “We still owe you for that.”
I wave him off. “Keep it. It didn’t cost me anything.”
He pulls his hand back from his wallet. “Thanks, man,” he says. He smiles at me.
“Can I go back and see her yet?” Carrie asks, her voice soft and wet.
Paul shakes his head. “I just saw the nurse in the hallway. She said they called your mom’s oncologist in and he’s with her now. He’ll be out to talk to you in a few minutes.”
“It’s not good, is it?” she asks.
He shakes his head and looks at Matt. “Probably not,” he says.
“I messed up, Nick,” she says. “I screwed up my one last moment,” she whispers, looking up at me. “Why did I do that?”
“Shh.” I pull her against me. “She’s still here. You haven’t passed up the last moment. There’s still time.”
“I really messed it up.”
“Shh,” I say again, because I don’t know how to comfort her.
I hold her until the doctor comes out to talk to her. She scrambles out of my lap and into a chair, so I sit down next to her.
The doctor looks at her over the rims of his glasses. “I told your mother not to do more chemo,” he says. He blows out a heavy breath. “It was a choice between having four good weeks and six bad weeks, but she opted for the bad weeks because she said she had some unfinished business. But at this point, I can’t continue the chemo. It’s time to take her off it.”
Carrie trembles beside me, so I take her hand and squeeze it.
“She’s done with chemo?” Carrie asks.
He nods.
“How much longer?” she asks.
My heart clenches for her, and I already feel like someone has sliced me open and I’m bleeding on the floor, and I’m just watching. I can’t even imagine how she feels.
“About a month.” He looks down at his notes. “You should all go home. She can’t see anyone until tomorrow.”
She jumps to her feet. “Not even me?”
He shakes his head, but Paul and Matt stand up, too. “Give her two minutes,” Matt says.
The doctor shakes his head again.
“Two minutes!” Paul barks. He’s big and physically intimidating. The doctor is slightly rocked, I can tell. “Two minutes,” Paul says more quietly.
The doctor nods. “All right. Two minutes. Follow me.” He motions Carrie forward with his fingers. Matt goes with them.
I stand in the corridor with Paul. “Thank you,” I say.
He shrugs like it’s nothing.
Then I remember Matt. I remember his cancer treatment, and I suddenly know why he’s here. “Is Matt going to be okay with this?” I ask.
Paul nods. “If he didn’t get to come, he wouldn’t be okay with it. He’d worry, and wish he could have done something for her.”
“That’s why you came with him.”
He shrugs again. “It’s what we do.”
I wish I had someone to do that.
“If the tabloids find out we’re at a hospital, they’ll announce tomorrow that one of us overdosed or something.” He chuckles.
It’s so easy to forget they’re famous. “You should go before people with cameras show up.”
He shakes his head. “I’ll wait for Matt.”
Carrie comes out just a minute later, and she looks calmer than she did when she went in. “You okay?” I ask. I wrap my arm around her and pull her close to kiss her cheek.
“I’m okay,” she says. “They’re going to keep her here at least overnight.”
“Is your dad coming?”
“He’s on the way.”
“Okay,” I say. “You ready to go? I have my jeep outside.”
“We can take her,” Matt says.
I shake my head. “I can do it.” I won’t leave her. Not now.
Matt motions me toward the front door and I follow him. Suddenly, he turns and jerks me toward him, his hand strong on my neck. I flinch, but I take it. “Her dad’s not here, and no one else is here to take care of her while she’s vulnerable. So why should I trust you to do that?” He stares into my eyes.
“I wouldn’t take advantage of her,” I say. I shrug out of his hold, and he looks surprised by that. “In fact, I’m the one who will protect her from anything. So don’t assume you can run me off by intimidating me.”
He grins. “I like you.” He steps back. “See you in the morning!” he calls over his shoulder. Paul follows him to the truck, stopping for only a moment to pat me on the shoulder and say, “Good boy.”
I laugh. Paul’s talking to me like I’m a puppy. “Screw you,” I say to his retreating back. He just laughs at me. I’ve seen all the words they bleep from his mouth on the show. I doubt I could surprise him.
I shake my head and turn to Carrie. She yawns, and she looks like she can barely stay on her feet. “C’mon,” I say. “Let’s get you home.”
We get to her house and she climbs out of the jeep. I go inside with her, and she walks straight to her bedroom. Does she want me to follow her? I do it anyway, because I can’t stand having so much space between us. I feel almost like she’s going to shatter, and that I need to be there to catch the pieces. Maybe even to put her back together.
She turns down her covers and steps out of her jeans shorts. Then she does that trick women must be born doing—when she unhooks her bra and pulls it from her sleeve.
“Stay with me?” she says quietly. She looks at me, watching my face. I pull back the other side of the bedcovers and kick my shoes off. I slide beneath her covers with my clothes on and she rolls into me. “I had another minute,” she says quietly. “Two, actually.”
She lays her head on my chest and wraps her arm around my chest so tightly that she tucks it under me on the other side.
“How did it go?” I ask.
“It went.”
“Good?”
“Yeah.” She heaves a sigh. “Thank you.”
I kiss her forehead. “You’re welcome.”
She yawns against my chest, and I can feel the warm breath of her exhalation through my shirt. “You won’t leave, will you?” she asks quietly.
“No, I won’t leave.”
“Promise?”
“Yeah, I promise.”
“Good.” She snuggles into my chest, and I imagine that our heartbeats have lined up, just like our breaths and our bodies. I’m not sure that our worlds can line up as cleanly.
***
It’s probably a few hours later when I hear her door open. I jerk awake and look up to find her dad standing beside the bed, staring down at me. Then he turns and leaves the room. He leaves the door open, so I roll out from under her and follow him into the kitchen, where he’s getting a bottle of water from the fridge. “Mr. Michaels,” I say.
“Nick.” He doesn’t look at me. He just looks into the fridge.
“Um…” I jerk a thumb toward the bedroom. “I was just keeping Carrie company. I didn’t want her to be alone.”
“Um-hmm,” he hums.
“Really, sir,” I say. “I didn’t…I wouldn’t…” Shit. I swipe a hand down my face.
He glares at me. “You couldn’t keep her company and
not
be in her bed?”
“Well, she kind of needed me, sir.”
“Needed you in her bed?” His brows form a vee.
“She needed someone to hold her. She was having a pretty hard time.”
“Dad?” Carrie says from the hallway.
“Care,” he says softly.
She falls into him and he holds her tightly. “I’m so glad you’re here.”
He glares at me over the top of her head. Then he sets her back from him. “No boys in your bedroom, Care,” he says.
“Oh, yeah.” She looks at me sheepishly. “Sorry about that. We weren’t doing anything. It was nothing.”
“It didn’t look like nothing,” he says. He tips her face up. “It looked like something. Dads don’t like somethings when it comes to their daughters.”
She laughs. “I get it, Dad.” She reaches out for my hand. “Can Nick stay?”
He snorts. “Not in your bed.”
She nods, and he kisses her forehead.
“I’m going to lie down. I want to go see your mom early tomorrow.”
He goes into the master bedroom and closes the door behind him.
Carrie grunts. “That’s Mom’s bedroom,” she says.
I brush her hair back from her face. “I think he knows that.”
“Thanks for staying.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Will you stay some more?” She looks up at me, blinking those wide eyes. “Come sit on the couch with me.”
I nod. “Will he be mad at me for that?”
She laughs. “If he was truly mad, he wouldn’t have gone to bed.”
She leads me to the couch, and I sit down. She crawls into my lap and tucks her head under my chin. Then she starts to talk.
She tells me all about what happened with her mom, her mom and dad, and her mom’s boyfriend. Then she settles against me, once the story is out there and off her chest. I hold her until her breaths are steady and she’s asleep. Then I close my eyes too.
Carrie