The Best of Me (41 page)

With every gurgling breath, Alan felt as though he were being stabbed.

He couldn’t move from the floor, but through his blurriness, he could just make out what was happening.

Ever since the stranger had burst into the bar, craning his head around wildly as if pursuing someone, Ted and Abee had quit beating him and for some reason turned their entire focus on the newcomer. Alan didn’t understand it, but when he heard gunshots he curled himself into a ball and started to pray. The stranger had thrown himself behind some tables and Alan could no longer see him, but the next thing he knew, bottles of liquor were sailing over his head at Ted and Abee while gunshots ricocheted around the bar. He heard Abee cry out and the muted sound of cracking wood as pieces of a chair splintered around him. Ted had scrambled out of sight, but he could still hear his gun firing wildly.

As for himself, Alan was sure that he was dying.

Two of his teeth were on the floor and his mouth was filled with blood. He’d felt his ribs snapping as Abee had kicked him. The front of his pants was damp—either he’d wet himself or he’d started to bleed because of the blows to his kidney.

He distantly registered the sound of sirens, but convinced of his imminent demise, he couldn’t summon the energy to care. He heard the banging of chairs and the clank of bottles. From somewhere far away, he heard Abee grunt as a bottle of liquor connected with something solid.

The stranger’s feet raced past him toward the bar. Immediately thereafter, shouts were followed by a shot, shattering the mirror behind the bar. Alan felt the slivers of glass rain down, nicking his skin. Another shout and more scuffling. Abee began a high-pitched wail, the shriek ending abruptly with the sound of something being smashed against the floor.

Someone’s head?

More scuffling. From his vantage point on the floor, Alan saw Ted stumble backward, narrowly missing stepping on Alan’s foot. Ted was shouting something as he caught his balance, but Alan thought he heard a trace of alarm in his voice as another gunshot echoed through the small bar.

Alan squinched his eyes shut, then opened them again just as another chair came flinging through the air. Ted fired another wild shot toward the ceiling, and the stranger bull-charged him, driving Ted into the wall. A gun rattled across the floor as Ted was thrown to the side.

The man was on Ted as Ted tried to scramble away out of his sight line, but Alan couldn’t move. Behind him, he heard the sound of fist against face, over and over… heard Ted shouting, the hammering against his chin making the sound rise and fall with the blows. Then Alan just heard the strikes, and Ted was silent. He heard another, then another and another, slowing.

Then there was nothing at all but the sound of a man’s heavy breathing.

The howl of sirens was closer now, but Alan, on the floor, knew his rescue had come too late.

They killed me
, he heard in his head as his vision turned black around the edges. Suddenly, he felt an arm grasp him around his waist and begin to lift.

The pain was excruciating. He screamed as he felt himself being dragged to his feet, an arm looping around him. Miraculously, he felt his legs move of their own accord as the man
half-dragged, half-carried him toward the entrance. He could see the dark window of sky out front, could just make out the cockeyed door they were moving toward.

And though he had no reason to say it, he found himself croaking out, “I’m Alan.” He sagged against the man. “Alan Bonner.”

“I know,” the man responded. “I’m supposed to get you out of here.”

I’m supposed to get you out of here.

Barely conscious, Ted couldn’t fully register the words, but instinctively, he knew what was happening.
Dawson was getting away again.

The rage he felt was volcanic, stronger than death itself.

He forced open one blood-slicked eye as Dawson staggered toward the doorway, Candy’s boyfriend draped over him. With Dawson’s back turned, Ted scanned the area around him for the Glock.
There.
Just a few feet away, beneath a broken table.

The sirens had become loud by then.

Summoning his last reserves of strength, Ted lunged toward the gun, feeling its satisfying weight as he tightened his grip. He swiveled the gun toward the door, toward Dawson. He had no idea whether any rounds were left, but he knew this was his last chance.

He zeroed in, taking aim. And then he pulled the trigger.

B
y midnight, Amanda felt numb. Mentally, emotionally, and physically drained, she’d been simultaneously exhausted and on edge for hours as she’d sat in the waiting room. She’d flipped through pages of magazines seeing nothing at all, she’d paced back and forth compulsively, trying to stem the dread she felt whenever she thought about her son. As the hours circled toward midnight, however, she found her acute anxiety draining away, leaving only a wrung-out shell.

Lynn had rushed in an hour earlier, her panic evident. Clinging to Amanda, she’d peppered her mom with endless questions that Amanda couldn’t answer. Next she’d turned to Frank, pressing him relentlessly for details about the accident. Someone speeding through the intersection, he’d said, with a helpless shrug. By now he was sober, and though his concern for Jared was apparent, he failed to make any mention of why Jared had been driving through the intersection in the first place, or why Jared had even been driving his father at all.

Amanda had said nothing to Frank in the hours they’d been in the room. She knew that Lynn must have noticed the silence between them, but Lynn was quiet as well, lost in her worries about her brother. At one point, she did ask Amanda whether she should go pick up Annette from camp. Amanda told her to wait
until they had a better sense of what was happening. Annette was too young to comprehend the full extent of this crisis, and in all honesty Amanda didn’t feel capable of caring for Annette right now. It was all she could do to hold herself together.

At twenty past midnight on what had been the longest day of her life, Dr. Mills finally entered the room. He was obviously tired, but he’d changed into clean scrubs before coming to talk to them. Amanda rose from her seat, as did Lynn and Frank.

“The surgery went well,” he said straight off. “We’re pretty sure Jared is going to be fine.”

Jared was in recovery for several hours, but Amanda wasn’t allowed to see him until he was finally moved to the ICU. Though it was normally closed to visitors overnight, Dr. Mills made an exception for her.

By then Lynn had driven Frank home. He claimed to have developed an intense headache from the blow to his face, but he promised to be back the following morning. Lynn had volunteered to return to the hospital afterward to stay with her mom, but Amanda had vetoed the idea. She’d be with Jared all night.

Amanda sat at her son’s bedside for the next few hours, listening to the digital beeps of the heart monitor and the unnatural hiss of the ventilator slowly pushing air in and out of his lungs. His skin was the color of old plastic and his cheeks seemed to have collapsed. He didn’t look like the son she remembered, the son she’d raised; he was a stranger to her in this foreign setting, so removed from their everyday lives.

Only his hands seemed unaffected, and she held on to one of them, drawing strength from its warmth. When the nurse had changed his bandage, she’d caught a glimpse of the violent gash that split his torso, and she’d had to turn away.

The doctor had said that Jared would probably wake later that day, and as she hovered at his bedside she wondered how much
he would remember about the accident and his arrival at the hospital. Had he been frightened when his condition suddenly worsened? Had he wished that she’d been there? The thought was like a physical blow, and she vowed that she would stay with him now for as long as he needed her.

She hadn’t slept at all since she’d arrived at the hospital. As the hours passed with no sign of Jared waking, she grew sleepy, lulled by the steady, rhythmic sound of the equipment. She leaned forward, resting her head on the bedrail. A nurse woke her twenty minutes later and suggested that she go home for a little while.

Amanda shook her head, staring at her son again, willing her strength into his broken body. To comfort herself, she thought of Dr. Mills’s assurances that once Jared recovered, he would lead a mostly normal life. It could have been worse, Dr. Mills had told her, and she repeated that sentiment like a charm to ward off greater disaster.

As daylight seeped into the sky outside the ICU’s windows, the hospital began to come to life again. Nurses changed shifts, breakfast carts were loaded up, physicians began to make their rounds. The noise level rose to a steady buzz. A nurse pointedly informed Amanda that she needed to check the catheter, and Amanda reluctantly left the ICU and wandered to the cafeteria. Perhaps caffeine would give her the energy surge she needed; she had to be there when Jared finally awoke.

Despite the early hour, the line was already long with people who, like her, had been up all night. A young man in his late twenties took his place behind her.

“My wife is going to kill me,” he confessed as they lined up their trays.

Amanda raised an eyebrow. “Why is that?”

“She had a baby last night and she sent me here for coffee. She told me to hurry, because she was getting a caffeine headache, but I just had to make a detour to the nursery for another peek.”

Despite everything, Amanda smiled.

“Little boy or little girl?”

“Boy,” he said. “Gabriel. Gabe. He’s our first.”