Authors: RJ Scott
Somehow, by the time Riley was back with Connor, taking in the situation, Jack had called for paramedics and explained what had occurred. Although, fuck if he knew what the hell was wrong with Hayley.
Riley crouched beside her, his question desperate. “What happened?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did she fit? Or faint?”
“She… fell…. I called 911.”
“We should take her to the road.”
“What if she hit her head?”
Riley touched her arm. “Did you see her hit her head?”
“No.”
Riley stared at Jack, telegraphing his shock and fear. “Jack,” he pleaded, as if Jack could make any sense of this.
“Riley, I don’t know….”
Jack wanted to say “Pick her up, and we’ll take her to the hospital.” He wanted to shout that Riley should hold her close and lift her into his arms, but he couldn’t. What if she shouldn’t be moved? Something sparked in Riley’s eyes, a desperation that Jack wanted to scare away.
Carol came outside, stood in horror, said nothing, then took Connor and Lexie inside, followed by a happily chatting Max.
Riley picked Hayley up. She was limp in his arms. “She’s so small,” he murmured.
Jack jumped the porch steps. “I’ll drive.”
Jack started the Land Rover, reversed it to the house, and jumped out to help Riley. Once Riley and Hayley were belted in, Jack went back to the front of the vehicle, belted himself in, and put his foot down.
They met the paramedics at the beginning of the long mile of the road from the ranch, and the next few minutes passed in a blur.
The EMTs hooked her up to oxygen, and Jack had never seen anything as terrifying as Hayley hooked up to heart monitors, with a BP cuff on her arm. She looked so small, so horrifyingly tiny on the gurney.
“Can you tell me what happened?” Paramedic One asked as he worked.
“She fainted.” Jack answered when Riley looked to him for help. “She stood up, her eyes rolled back in her head, and she collapsed.”
“Okay, vitals are stable. We have a high reading on sugar, seven-twenty.” The paramedic looked at Jack, then Riley. “Is your daughter diabetic at all?”
“No,” Riley said immediately.
“Was she complaining of dizziness, lack of breath, sickness? Anything?”
Jack shook his head. “She was telling me she was tired, she had her phone, and then she fell.”
Jack saw the paramedic’s expression, the slight nod of his head to the other paramedic.
“Let’s get to Mercy,” Simmons, according to his embroidered name that Jack could now see, said. “Sugar at seven-twenty.”
The second paramedic made a note on his paperwork, then came out and around to climb into the driver’s seat.
Riley moved farther into the ambulance. One of them had been encouraged to ride along, and Jack didn’t begin to argue that it was Riley who should be there.
“What does that mean?” he asked Simmons. “Is that bad? What’s wrong?”
“Let’s get her to the hospital.”
Simmons was all patience and support, but Jack knew he had something on his mind. Jack opened his mouth to say something, but stopped when Simmons pulled the doors shut, giving Jack his last view of Riley’s tall frame hunched over Hayley.
Jack wasn’t a religious man, but at that moment, when he saw the doors of the ambulance shut on a pale Riley, he prayed to every single god that anyone believed in.
Keep her safe.
Jack wasn’t entirely sure how he made it to the hospital in one piece. He couldn’t see anything other than the back of the ambulance, and he only split from it when the paramedics pulled into the emergency bay and Jack had to take a turn into visitor’s parking. He was out of the car in an instant, locking it, sprinting past other parked cars to the ER entrance and sliding to a halt in the waiting room. He couldn’t see Hayley or Riley anywhere through the glass main doors. He bypassed the small queue at the window, leaning over to speak.
“My daughter has been brought in.”
The nurse on desk duty glanced over from booking in a woman with a bloody hand wrapped in a towel. “If you take a seat, I’ll find out where they took her.”
Jack shook his head. “I know where they took her,” he blurted. “Straight into the ER. Let me through.”
“One minute, sir.”
“I don’t have a freaking minute,” Jack snapped. “I need to see my daughter and husband.”
“Sir, please take a seat.”
“I need—”
“I’ll be with you in a minute. Please.”
Jack stepped back from the desk and screen, and turned to face the rest of the people in the waiting room: kids, moms and dads, elderly couples, a guy in Army uniform—a sea of faces staring at him as if he’d gone mad.
He couldn’t sit; the energy sparking in every one of his veins was enough to have him resting his hands on his knees and bending over. His chest was tight, and he realized he was losing it.
“Jack!”
Riley’s voice.
Jack looked up and saw Riley the other side of security. In seconds, he was at his husband’s side with the door shut behind him. The nurse at the desk caught his eye, and all the adrenaline left him in a rush.
Sorry,
he mouthed.
She smiled a little, then turned back to the woman she’d been dealing with before.
“What did they say?” Jack asked as Riley led him past screened-off cubicles and a couple emergency rooms. The scent in this place was overwhelming: sterile, bleach, and the noise was unbelievable. People talking, the buzz of conversation; there was crying and a toddler screaming from behind the last curtain to the left.
“They haven’t said anything. A doctor is with her.” Riley pushed aside the curtain, and Jack followed right on his heels. There wasn’t a lot of room around the bed for two big men like them. A nurse was extracting blood. A doctor, peering at notes and ordering tests, was looking way too damn serious.
What the hell is happening?
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Diabetes.
Riley followed the sign for the cafeteria, but he wasn’t thinking about the coffee he’d promised a shell-shocked Jack. He was questioning every single thing the doctor had told them. He’d needed distance. A moment when he didn’t have to see the way Jack was reacting, or feel the anger that curled inside him.
This is probably my fault. Something in my genes.
Jack knew. Jack looked at him with such shock in his eyes.
“Riley, wait up!”
Riley stopped and turned on his heel, seeing Eden rushing along the corridor toward him.
“I was calling,” she said as she reached him. “Where’s Hayley?”
Riley turned and carried on to the cafeteria. “They moved her to a pediatric ward. She has diabetes.” The words were so final, but he didn’t want to talk anymore, so what was the point in encouraging questions. Eden had the facts, now she could go find Jack and Hayley and do her Aunty thing.
Eden yanked him to a stop. “You stand right there, Riley Campbell-Hayes,” she snapped.
Riley attempted to tug his arm free, but she had a grip of iron and knew exactly where to hold him.
“Let me go,” he said.
“No. You’re doing that Riley thing again.”
“I’m not.”
“Yes you are. You’re shutting down and dealing with everything inside.”
“No I’m fucking not,” he said harshly and endeavored again to get free.
“Jack is sitting there staring at Hayley, and he tells me you went quiet and disappeared off for coffee, I knew this was what you were doing. He didn’t want to leave Hayley alone, said she needed one of her dads in with her.”
“He’s right. He can deal with this.”
“This isn’t about you, big brother.”
“It is,” Riley snapped. “This is my fault.”
“Jesus Christ, Riley,” she hissed and yanked him to one side of the corridor as a gurney was pushed past. “It’s nothing to do with you.”
“I’m her father—”
“So the fuck what? If it’s genetic, you going to hide away feeling sorry for yourself?”
“Eden, it’s guilt—”
She gripped his other bicep and gave him a shake. “You and Jack together, talking and realizing this is a shitty hand that Hayley has been dealt, is what she needs from you.”
Riley stiffened in his sister’s hold. Somehow, like his strings had been cut, he slumped. “She collapsed, on the porch, she was so little. We should have seen…. She was tired and thirsty, losing weight, and we didn’t notice. What kind of parents are we, for fuck’s sake?”
Eden released her hold on Riley. Gripping his hand, she led him down a side corridor and encouraged him to sit on the floor. She followed him down, and they sat holding hands.
“I had a friend who was diabetic. She had the same birthday as me, and we used to do things together. You might remember her—Yasmin?”
Riley shook his head. He didn’t remember the name Yasmin at all.
“She was a bit older than Hayley, maybe fifteen, she was diagnosed diabetic. They stabilized her, I remember that, she would inject insulin, test her sugar levels, and she did all the stuff we used to do. Except she needed to take that single step back and be careful to keep an eye on her levels. She would carry her stuff in her purse, she partied like I did, only with slightly less alcohol. She was rebellious, funny, and did things her doctor said she shouldn’t, but she was young, she moved on from it. She moved to Canada about three years ago. We Facebook, she’s a mom of two, married, settled, and works as a teacher to senior kids. Like nothing has changed inside her. Diabetes doesn’t mean she can’t have a healthy, beautiful life.”
Riley glanced at his sister. “Really?”
He didn’t know a lot about diabetes, only that it was a critical illness. A death sentence of sorts.
“It’s not cancer, Ri. It’s not a brain tumor, she isn’t dying. She’s different, that’s all.”
Riley bowed his head and considered Eden’s words. He knew he was doing what she called the Riley thing. It was how he rolled. Normally Jack was there to snap him out of it, but like Eden said, at least one of her dads needed to be with her.
Jack’s voice interrupted his dark thoughts. “Riley?”
Jack was at the corner of their little quiet space.
Riley reacted immediately and made to stand. “Is Hayley okay?”
Jack held up a hand to stop him moving. “The doctor is with her, and your mom is there. She sent me to find you because all I was doing was pacing outside the room.”
Eden scrambled to stand, using Riley’s shoulder to push herself upright. “I’ll get the coffee.” She looked at Riley meaningfully, her eyes narrowed. “You can tell Jack about Yasmin.”
Jack crouched in front of Riley. “Hey,” he said in that soft, caring tone that Jack did so damn well.
“Hey,” Riley replied.
“She’ll be fine,” Jack reassured.
“I know,” Riley said. He reached out a hand, and Jack gripped it hard. “We’ll get the best of everything, and we’ll look after her, she’ll be the best goddamn diabetic teenager in the entire state.”
“The world,” Jack said. He was smiling, and the smile reached his blue eyes. “Let’s get back.”
He helped Riley to stand, briefly they hugged, away from prying eyes and concerned words.
“Sorry,” Riley whispered.
Jack squeezed him once and released him. “We do what we do, then we get together and get things done,” he offered in his typically philosophical way.
Hand in hand they made their way back to Pediatrics, and after Riley hugged his mom and dad, all four of them sat on crappy plastic chairs. They took the coffee Eden brought, and made room for Beth, Steve, Sean, Josh, Anna, a subdued Logan, Donna, and Neil. In fact the entire Campbell-Hayes extended family clustered around her room, enough so that Riley felt he had to apologize to the staff and order in cakes and barista coffee for the nurses and doctors as an apology.
Only two people were allowed in when she woke at first. Riley and Jack hovered at her bedside, each holding a hand. Riley held the hand with the cannula and the fluids they were pumping into her.
“Hey, punkin,” he said when she looked at him.
She smiled tentatively, then closed her eyes again. “Hey,” she whispered. “What happened?”
“You fainted,” Jack explained. She coughed and swallowed, and Jack held a cup with a straw so she could sip some water. “They did some tests.”
Jack looked at Riley, asking they agree to what they were going to say before Jack said it. Riley nodded and hoped he telegraphed that they shouldn’t hold back on telling her everything.
“I’m really sorry, sweetheart,” Jack said. “You have diabetes.” He opened his mouth to add some explanation, but Hayley let out a noisy sigh.
“That’s okay,” she began.
“Do you want to talk to anyone? We could get the nurse in here.”
“No, I just want you.”
Riley and Jack smothered her with hugs until she was smiling.
“Can we get you anything?” Jack asked.
“I’ll get some books,” Riley interjected, “Find out how to fight this.”
“Gemma at school has diabetes. She’s the new transfer. I see her injecting and stuff.” She paused and struggled to sit up, and Riley and Jack helped her. When she was upright, with her blonde hair loose against the pile of snowy pillows, she smiled that
Hayley smile
. “She still does PE. We can handle this,” she said.
Something inside of Riley unraveled. If anyone was going to deal with having as life-changing as this, it would be Hayley. The ability to focus on the future and not get wrapped up in her own head? She must have got that from her mom.
Hayley was moved to her own private room the moment a reporter, in with his kid who’d caught his hand in a car door, noticed the Campbell-Hayes family en masse in the public area. He asked why they were there, pulled out his cell phone, and let out an unmanly squeak when Steve and Josh escorted him to the door and shut it firmly in his face. Josh stood with his foot wedged against the door, and Riley had to smile. Damn journo was not getting back into this particular waiting area.
The new place was on the eighth floor and had an anteroom where people could sit. Their family came and went around childcare or work, but there was always a core of support for Jack and Riley. Carol brought the twins in, and Max. The twins were fractious and didn’t want to be held. Max, on the other hand, sat by Hayley’s bed and stared at her.