Page 9 of Broken Dream (Steel Legends #3)
Chapter Eight
Jason
Once I’m back at my own place, I strip off my coat and gloves and turn on the gas fireplace.
I’m chilled.
But not so much from the weather.
From the effect Angie has on me.
I just visited the graves of my wife and daughter, and the guilt is still eating at me.
Only more so.
Angie’s a student.
And…
Angie’s not Lindsay.
I pour myself a glass of bourbon, the liquid burning a slow path down my throat. The guilt, the sorrow—none of it washes away.
The room is quiet except for the low hum of the gas fireplace and the clinking of ice cubes in my glass. My gaze falls on the picture of Lindsay and our daughter that sits on top of the mantel. A wave of melancholy washes over me.
They were my world once, and now they’re not.
Angie.
She’s not Lindsay, indeed.
Lindsay was my first love. My only love.
We met in college and hit it off right away.
She had dated some awful creep in high school, and I was the first guy who treated her the way she deserved to be treated.
She got a job teaching high school social studies while I went to medical school.
It wasn’t easy. Our marriage suffered, and it only got worse during my internship when I was on call during all hours. We’d go days without seeing each other.
Then my fellowship year, Lindsay got pregnant with Julia.
We laughed at the time. About how we never saw each other, so how could it have even happened?
But we were thrilled.
And by the time she was born, I had an offer to be an attending general surgeon at the university hospital, and I had authored several papers. When I got an offer to present one of them in Switzerland, Lindsay couldn’t go with me because she was too far along in her pregnancy to fly.
I went without her, and I fell in love. Switzerland was so beautiful, and I promised I’d take her back there sometime.
But months turned into years, and we always put the trip off.
Just one of the many promises I couldn’t keep.
And among all of those broken promises, the one that haunts me the most is the promise of forever.
I glance over at the framed picture on the mantel again, my heart constricting. My wife, my daughter, both trapped in a still moment of time as I continue to live and breathe and feel an unbearable emptiness.
The guilt has been my constant companion ever since. It corrodes my soul, gnaws at me, an incessant reminder of everything I’ve lost.
Everything I failed to protect.
I down the rest of my whiskey in one gulp, grimacing as it claws its way down my throat. The empty glass clinks against the wooden table as I set it down a little too harshly.
Angie.
She’s not Lindsay.
I know this, but she’s young and full of excitement about psychiatry.
God, psychiatry.
But it excites her. She’s such a stark contrast to my own existence, which feels like it’s been in a state of perpetual winter since Lindsay and Julia passed away.
Passed away.
What a fucking euphemism.
I should really be truthful.
Three years ago…
Dazed.
Confused.
The airbag. It’s big and white and all around me.
Someone hit me. Or I hit someone. I’m not sure.
Head hurts. Blood.
My vision swims as I try to untangle myself from the airbag.
My ears.
Ringing.
High-pitched ringing.
Blood. I know the scent. Sharp and metallic. But I’m not in the OR. And the blood I smell is my own.
Blood.
Panic.
I squeeze my eyes shut and then force them open, hoping my sight will clear.
“Lindsay…” My voice sounds strange to me, distant and muffled. “Julia…”
I try to turn my head, and agony explodes through my skull. But it’s not the pain that makes me gasp. It’s the thought of my daughter in the back seat.
She’s strapped in. She’s okay. She’s got to be okay.
But why is there no crying? Why?
“Jul—”
I try to crane my neck to see the back seat, but another jolt of pain stops me. Panic and dread seize me when I can’t see her.
I fumble with the seat belt, my fingers shaking. Every nerve ending in my body screams in protest. But I can’t afford to give in to the pain. Not now.
“Julia…please,” I rasp out, choking on the words as I finally manage to unclip the seat belt. The car tilts as I climb into the back seat.
And the pain.
Fuck, the pain!
But I don’t care. I need to get Julia?—
Julia!
She’s not in her car seat.
She’s…
“Julia!”
Her small body is wedged on the floor, her stuffed frog next to her.
“No! No! ”
Tears mix with blood as I reach a trembling hand toward her, praying for any sign of life. Dread pounds in my chest.
“Julia, please! Oh my God, Julia.”
My right hand is numb, so with my left hand I grab her, lay her on the back seat, press my fingers to her carotid to find a pulse.
Blood flows from a cut on her head.
I’m a doctor. I should be able to save her.
I begin CPR. Or try to with only one functioning hand.
The rhythm, so familiar from years of training and practice, becomes a desperate lifeline in the back seat of our totaled car.
I press, breathe, press, my heart pounding out a frantic rhythm against my ribs.
My body moves mechanically, my mind trying to push away the horror that is unfolding before me.
“Julia…Julia…come on,” I plead between each compression. Tears blur my vision, but I can’t afford to close my eyes. Not even for a second. “Stay with me.”
Time loses all meaning as I continue CPR.
No response, no twitch of tiny fingers or fluttering of eyelids.
A strange calm settles over me as if time has slowed down. I can hear the sirens now—distant but getting closer—and I feel strangely detached from it all.
I don’t stop the makeshift CPR until the sirens are on top of me, until firm hands are prying me away from my daughter’s lifeless body.
“Sir, we’ve got it,” a voice says, and then a jumble of words I can’t comprehend.
My knees buckle as they pull me back, and I crumple onto the cold asphalt, rain still pelting. Everything is spinning and blurring. The flashing lights glow, illuminating the faces of the medics working to save my daughter.
It’s cold. So cold.
“Julia…” My voice is a broken whisper. I don’t even realize I’m sobbing until I taste the salt on my lips. “Lindsay,” I croak out, my voice raw from screaming and crying. “Where’s Lindsay?”
“Sir? Was there another passenger?”
“Lindsay…”
“Sir, there wasn’t anyone else in the car with you.”
Nothing matters. Nothing matters anymore.
Lindsay.
She’s not here.
Thank God, she’s at school.
But Julia…
Julia…
Julia…
The world around me tilts and blurs, as if reality is trying to escape.
The steady rhythm of sirens becomes a distant echo, the flashing lights seem muted, and the busy scene of paramedics working on my daughter fades into a nightmarish scene.
I’m floating, disconnected from everything and everyone.
“I need… I need to call Lindsay…” My voice is barely a whisper. I struggle to sit up, but my strength seems to have abandoned me. I gasp for air.
A paramedic kneels beside me. She’s saying something to me, her words melding together into an indecipherable string of nonsense. She tries to steady me, gives me an oxygen mask, but all I can think about is Lindsay.
All I can think of is how I need to tell her.
In a daze, I fumble for my phone in my pocket, pulling it out with trembling hands. The screen is cracked. I cackle out a laugh.
It’s cracked.
My soul is cracked.
Everything is cracked.
Can’t feel my right hand.
I manage to unlock the phone.
Lindsay’s contact.
Her smiling face.
God, her smiling face.
I press send and hold my breath.
It rings, rings, rings…
Finally, a click, and then…her voice.
“Hi, it’s Lindsay. Sorry I missed your call. Leave a message, and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.”
Her voice, so light and cheerful, cuts through the chaotic sounds around me, slicing into my gut with an almost physical pain.
“Li-Lindsay…” My voice trembles on her name, the reality of everything crashing down on me. “Something’s happened…” I choke out the words between gasping breaths.
The phone drops from my grip and clatters onto the ground.
Hands grab at me again, pulling me away from the car as they work on Julia. But I can’t tear my eyes away from her, from her still form.
“Lindsay… Julia…”
My words are swallowed up as consciousness slips away.
Oblivion.
Blissful oblivion.