Surrendering to Us (23 page)

I didn’t want to bother Lucah, or upset him, so I didn’t say anything.

“Do you think he was trying to kill himself?” he said after a few moments of quiet.

How did I answer that? Lucah and I had discussed Ryder at length. What he’d done, his screw ups, his failed relationships, all of the bad things. But I barely knew anything about him, really. Other than his record of terrible decision-making.

“I can’t answer that, Lucah. We don’t need to talk about it right now, okay? Let’s just take one moment at a time. Do you want me to call Tate?” Lucah nodded and put his head in his hands.

I took my hand from his, and it felt awful, as if I was abandoning him, but I needed to call Tate without Lucah overhearing. I stood just outside the disgustingly cheery room and called. April answered, and I could hear the girls chattering in the background.

“Hi, April, this is Rory. Um, I don’t know how to say this, but I’m at Mass Gen with Lucah, and Ryder’s here, and he overdosed on pills. They’re not sure what happened exactly, but he’s here and we’re with him.” I tried to go on, but April gasped.

“Oh my God. We’ll be right there. Tate! Tate!” she yelled, muffling the sound, but I could still hear her panicked voice. And she hung up.

I put my phone in my purse and walked back into the room. Lucah still had his head in his hands, but his body shook.

I crouched down in front of him and reached for his hands. Tears dripped down his face and his nose and onto our hands. He cried silently, that kind of cry that’s so painful you couldn’t even make a sound if you tried to.

“Oh, Lucah. I wish there was something I could do.” I gripped his hands and tried to avoid crying myself. He was always being the calm, stable one for me. Now it was my turn.

He gasped and tried to breathe, but it had become too difficult for him to manage.

“Lucah.” I repeated his name until he raised his head and looked at me. “Inhale . . . exhale.” I talked to him until he listened and started breathing normally again.

My Lucah was broken, and there was next to nothing I could do to fix it.

“I can’t do this again. I won’t survive it, Rory. I just can’t.” He rested his head on our entwined tear-drenched hands.

“You’re not going to have to. He’s strong, like you. You’re the strongest, bravest person I’ve ever met and I see that more every day I’m blessed to spend with you. You’re an extraordinary person, Lucah Jacob Blythe.” I kissed his head and squeezed his hands. “I love you so much.”

“I love you, too,” he whispered. “Thank you for being here.”

“There’s nowhere else I’d rather be. I belong with you.” Whether that was in the penthouse at a hotel, or a hospital room decorated like it was a place of happiness instead of a place of sickness and death.

Lucah took another breath and moved to get up. I stood with him, my knees feeling bruised from kneeling on the hard floor.

“Do you want some coffee? I can go get you some.” It would give him some time alone with Ryder. I also wanted to call Sloane. She needed to know what was going on.

“That would be wonderful, thank you. I’m going to, uh, call Tate back and see how long it’s going to take them to get here.” He gave me a tight hug and kissed my mouth before walking back toward Ryder’s room.

I called Sloane first.

“Hey, I can’t talk right now. What’s up? Ouch! Fucking pins.” I considered not telling her and hanging up, but when she found out later, she would be upset. Really, really upset.

“Ryder overdosed on pills. Lucah and I are here at the hospital. He’s going to be fine, he’s sleeping right now, but they had to pump his stomach.” The sounds of Sloane’s studio hummed in the background, but from her I heard nothing.

“Sloane?”

Nothing.

“Sloane.”

She inhaled sharply.

“Which hospital?”

“Mass Gen.”

“Room?”

I told her.

“Sloane?”

The call ended. I immediately tried to get her back to make sure she was okay, but she didn’t pick up. Shit. I wished there was a better way I could have done that, but there really wasn’t. I just hoped she could get herself into a cab and get here without incident. We didn’t need another person in a hospital bed. I tried her again, but it went straight to voicemail, so she must have shut her phone off. I took a deep breath and then went to find the nurses’ station and some coffee.

I was about to give up on the great coffee search when I saw a nurse emerge from a room at the other end of the hall with a steaming cup. I dashed forward like I was being chased by a murderer and found the tiny room with a sink, a coffeepot and a fridge. Jackpot. Someone had just made a fresh pot, so I poured two disposable cups’ worth and added powdered creamer to mine but left Lucah’s black. We were going to be patronizing this room a lot, for as long as Ryder was going to be here.

It made my stomach twist when I thought about Ryder. About what he’d done to land himself here. It also made me feel like absolute shit for what I’d said about him, and thought about him. I’d made judgments and assumptions without understanding where he was coming from. It could have just as easily been Lucah in his place, and what then?

I shook the thoughts from my head and walked back toward Ryder’s room just as April and Tate burst out of the elevator.

“Rory!” April said, seeing me.

“Where is he?” Tate said, his head whipping up and down the hall. I wondered if that was what Lucah and I looked like when we’d first arrived. Probably.

“This way,” I said, hurrying down the hall and trying not to spill the coffee. We found Lucah sitting in a chair, with his head resting on one hand and Ryder still asleep.

“How’s he doing?” Tate said as Lucah roused himself and got up to give Tate and April a hug.

“Where are the girls?” Lucah whispered.

“They’re with the neighbors,” April replied. Tate went to check on Ryder, and Lucah motioned with his chin for us to leave the room so we could talk.

He gave April the details, even more than we’d heard initially. A nurse must have come in while I was searching for coffee.

“I can’t believe this,” April said, hugging herself and shaking her head. “Did you have any idea, any warning?”

“No. He’s been avoiding me for the past few weeks, but Rory saw him the other day.” I recounted my interaction with Ryder at the restaurant, leaving out the part about Sloane.

But as soon as I thought her name, there she was, walking with purpose down the hallway.

“I called her,” I said to Lucah as I walked to meet her. Her face was red and streaked with tears and mascara. I was always telling her to buy the waterproof kind, but she said it didn’t give her as much volume.

“Is he okay?” she said, holding her bag in front of her as if it was going to protect her.

“He’s going to be okay.” I got some tissues from my purse and started blotting her face.

“I’m a wreck. I couldn’t stop crying on the way over. I think the cabbie thought I was crazy.”

“A crying woman is probably not the craziest thing he’s ever had in his cab, babe.” That made her laugh and she grabbed one of the tissues to blow her nose.

Lucah approached us.

“Thank you for coming, Sloane.” He gave her a hug and patted her back.

“I didn’t know if I should or not. If it was my place.”

“No, no. I’m happy you’re here. The more, the, uh, merrier. That doesn’t really work in this situation, does it?” We all sort of laughed, and I looked around, afraid that someone was going to yell at us for laughing in a hospital. Like when you spoke too loudly in a library.

“No, it doesn’t,” Sloane said and we walked closer to Ryder’s room.

“This is Rory’s best friend, former roommate and the woman she will eventually leave me for, Sloane. Sloane, this is my older brother Tate and his wife, April.” Tate and April both hugged Sloane, and said how much they’d heard about her, and how lovely it was that she was here. We all stood outside of Ryder’s room, a precipice Sloane had yet to cross.

“Do you want to go see him?” Lucah said.

“Oh, no. I don’t know. It would be weird. I mean, I barely know him.” She was saying the words with her mouth, but her body was inching closer. It didn’t matter that she barely knew him, because of the way she looked at him, the way she laughed when she talked about him, and the fact that she’d put everything else aside to be here.

“Go on. I’m sure he’d like to see you,” Lucah said, nearly pushing her into the room. He didn’t have to push too hard.

We all hung back as she walked inside, rolling her shoulders back and taking a deep breath. Despite her tear-smudged face, she looked fabulous, in a black dress with cherries all over it that looked like it was made in the 1940s. She’d done waves with her hair and pinned it back. Add red lipstick and she was an updated version of Lauren Bacall or Ginger Rogers.

“Ryder?” The four of us, me, Tate, April and Lucah stood and watched, which we probably shouldn’t have, but we wanted to see what would happen.

“Sloane?” His cracked voice said her name like a wish. Or a prayer.

“Hey, how are you?” She kneeled down next to his bed and reached for his hand, but it was covered in tubes, so she moved upward to his tattoo-covered upper arm.

“Been better,” he croaked. He tried to say something else and coughed. Sloane reached for the pitcher of water on the table next to his bed and poured it into a plastic cup, then held it to his lips. He took a few sips.

“Thanks.” His voice was a tiny bit stronger after the water. She put the cup down and reached out to stroke his forehead. That was when we all stopped watching. It was too intimate a moment to intrude on.

While Sloane talked to Ryder the four of us stood around. And waited.

We ended up eating dinner at the cafeteria. I’d heard all these horrible things about hospital food, but it wasn’t as awful as I was expecting. It was hard to eat, but not because of the quality of the food.

April got a call from her neighbors, saying that Gracie had thrown up and was running a fever.

“Fuck, this is just perfect,” April said, putting her head in her hands. I’d never heard her swear before.

“If you need to get back, go ahead. We’ve got this here. You can come back tomorrow,” I said. I didn’t know if I could miss work, but I knew Lucah would need to.

“Okay, we will,” Tate said, taking April’s hand. They said goodbye and left, so it was just me, Lucah and Sloane, who was just poking at the food on her plate.

“I should probably go too. I’m pretty sure my interns are crying and screaming in agony at the amount of work I left them. They’ve been blowing up my phone.” Sloane went and tossed her tray.

“You can stay, if you want. It’s completely up to you. Don’t feel as if you’re intruding.” This was the first time Sloane was actually cautious about overstepping boundaries, which showed me, again, how much she liked Ryder.

“I’ll come back tomorrow, if that’s okay. Have a good night.” She hugged both of us. And then there were two.

“Hey, how are you holding up?” I reached across the table for Lucah’s hands. I felt like I needed constant contact with him, to show him I was here, and I loved him.

“I’m doing okay. Sorry about earlier. I kind of lost it, I guess.” His face went a little red.

“You can lose it any time you want, Lucah Blythe. I lose it on you just about every day. In fact, I think I’ve filled my yearly quota of losing it. So never apologize for that.” My words made him smile, so we were getting somewhere.

“Do you want to stay all night? Or go home?”

“You can go home. I think I’m going to stay. Sleep isn’t really going to happen, and I can always crash in the chair in Ryder’s room if I have to. Oh, shit what about work?”

I held up my hand. “First of all, don’t worry about work. I have connections and I can get you out of it, second, I won’t be able to sleep if you’re here and I’m at home. So whatever you do, that’s what I’m doing.”

He nodded because he knew there was no point in arguing with me on this.

“They’re probably going to try and kick us out. I’m pretty sure visiting hours end in a little while,” he said as we dumped our trays and went to take the elevator back up to Ryder’s room.