Page 36 of Falling into Place

Chapter Twenty-Five

Brooks

I’m proud of you.

—Coach McKee to Brooks Martin, University Medical School graduation

One week later when Brooks was on his way to Coach’s house for Saturday morning coffee, something didn’t feel right.

He couldn’t put his finger on it, exactly, but he checked his calendar to make sure there wasn’t somewhere else he was supposed to be, and confirmed his text thread with Coach that they’d agreed to get together today.

Maybe it was a full moon. He always felt edgy on full moons, as was typical for health care professionals everywhere.

He was thinking about what he’d tell Coach about Carly this week—like how fucking happy he was and that yes, Coach was right about her all along—when he turned onto Coach’s street.

Red and blue lights flashed bright, momentarily disarming Brooks before he processed the ambulance parked outside the house.

The feeling didn’t fade even when, after he’d thrown the car into park and run inside, he’d found Coach alive and well, yelling at the EMTs that it was “just a little chest pain” and everyone was “overreacting.”

Brooks convinced him to let them run some tests, and that a brief stay in the hospital wasn’t the end of the world. When it turned out their “overreaction” was, in fact, a mild heart attack, Coach became marginally more amenable to listening to what the doctors had to say.

Coach was admitted for observation, and Brooks felt better when he knew Coach’s every bodily function was monitored and the best cardiac medical care in the state was mere feet away.

Yet ... something still felt off.

Brooks didn’t leave the hospital that day, and either rotated with Linda or sat in Coach’s room with her, playing cards and shooting the shit to keep them occupied. James wasn’t on service, but after hearing a close friend of Brooks’s was in the cardiac unit, he popped in to introduce himself.

By the time night fell, Linda looked dead on her feet.

Hospital accommodations weren’t ideal for getting a good night’s sleep, so Brooks convinced her to head home and promised he’d stay with Coach all night.

He expected a discharge tomorrow or the day after, and he’d have had a hard time leaving whether Linda stayed or not.

He lingered around Coach’s room for a few hours, chatting with employees he knew, then settled into the leather recliner with the remote in his hand. Coach was out cold, snoring louder than a freight train, so Brooks figured sleep wouldn’t be something he’d get much of himself.

After several episodes of Friends on Nick at Nite, his stomach growled. He checked his watch—right at three in the morning—and stood. But just when he put his hand on the sliding door to grab something from the vending machine, a loud alarm filled the air.

Brooks jerked around, searching for the source.

The cardiac monitor.

Flatlined.

Several machines immediately detected abnormalities and began alarming in quick succession.

“Sarah!” Brooks yelled for the nurse taking care of Coach tonight. “Crash cart, now!”

He dropped everything in his hands—his phone, his coffee cup, his wallet, and lurched for the bed. The backrest had been propped up and he lowered it manually with a crash, pressing his fingers against Coach’s neck.

“Please, please, please,” he chanted, despite the equipment having already told him what he needed to know. “Fuck.”

He clasped his hands together, centered the heel of his lower hand over Coach’s sternum, and went up on the balls of his feet.

He pushed. “One, two, three ...” Over and over. “Four, five, six, seven ...”

He hadn’t even made it through one round before Sarah came running, a second nurse behind her with the crash cart and three more on their heels.

“Two of epi,” he yelled as a rib cracked under his weight. “One, two, three ...”

Training and adrenaline took over while his subconscious drifted off into memory.

Red and blue lights flashed in the rearview mirror. Brooks’s forehead fell against the steering wheel.

Macy was going to kill him.

His dad wouldn’t, because he didn’t care, and his mom wouldn’t, because she was dead.

Something tapped on the window, startling him. He rolled it down, wincing and shielding his eyes from the bright flashlight shining on his face.

“Son, do you know how fast you were going?”

“Yes. I mean. Um, no, ma—I mean, sir.” Shit.

The police officer leaned down and took one sniff, then stepped back. “Step out of the car.”

He failed the field sobriety test with flying colors, and minutes later found himself sitting on the curb with his hands cuffed behind his back while the officer ran his information.

Fucking idiot. He was too drunk to think much else, but that seemed appropriate and he said it over and over. It kept being true.

He was eighteen now. This would go on his permanent record.

Not that he had any plans to do anything worthwhile anytime soon, but maybe he would have someday.

A DUI was a felony, right? They’d definitely find the weed in his car if they searched it, too.

Would colleges even want him after this? Employers? Would his sisters?

Would anyone?

He sat there in the dark with his head against his knees for what felt like forever. Long enough to sober up a bit, and the shame of what he’d done settled on his shoulders like a ton of bricks.

What the hell was taking this cop so long? If he was going to jail he just wanted to get it over with already.

Headlights flashed across him, and he ducked his head lower, not wanting someone he knew to drive by and see him like this. He’d get up and move behind something but didn’t want it to look like he was trying to run. Some modicum of sense reminded him he was in enough trouble as it was.

A car door slammed and a figure walked toward him. It took Brooks a few seconds to realize who it was.

Coach McKee stopped at the hood of Brooks’s car and leaned against it, everything about him radiating disappointment.

“What are you doing here?” Brooks asked.

“Greg called me. We’re friends, go way back.”

Greg must be the cop.

“Said he’d pulled over someone I might know, and if I wanted to come pick him up it would save him a hell of a lot of paperwork.” Coach crossed his arms and leveled a hard stare. “You reek of alcohol, kid.”

Brooks said nothing.

“What the fuck were you thinking, driving like this?”

He’d been yelled at by Coach enough during practice to know it was best to stay silent.

“You realize you could have killed yourself? Is that what you want?”

Brooks shrugged. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Stop mumbling and talk to me like a man. You’re eighteen and acting like you think you’re some big shot now, huh? Prove it.”

“Go to hell.” Yeah, he was still plenty drunk. No matter how pissed he was, he’d never have said that to Coach sober.

“What did you say?”

Brooks clenched his jaw and looked up, rage and pain burning a hole through his veins. “I said it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what happens to me.”

Coach pushed off the car and strode forward, leaning down to get in Brooks’s face. “The hell it doesn’t. You could have killed someone else, did you think about that, you selfish kid? You want someone else to end up like your mom because you thought you’d get wasted and get behind the wheel?”

Brooks shot to his feet. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the police cruiser door swing open, but Coach glanced that way and held his palm out, shaking his head.

“Don’t you dare talk about my mom,” he seethed.

Coach didn’t back down. “Look at yourself. You think she’d be proud of you? Proud of this? If your mother saw you now, she’d be ashamed of you. Don’t taint her memory this way. Don’t shame her with the man you’re turning into.”

Of course she’d be ashamed of him. She’d look at him like Coach was now, with disbelief and disappointment and despair. And it would hurt like a motherfucker.

But she’d still love him. No matter what he said, no matter what he did, no matter where he went. Mothers were the only people in the world who were supposed to love their kids with total abandon. Without condition. He used to think his dad felt that way, too, but he wasn’t so sure anymore.

If his mom saw him right now, he’d want to crawl into a hole and hide.

But she would have loved him.

That realization is what broke him.

Coach saw it coming and his arms were open when Brooks fell into them, sobs racking his body.

He wailed and screamed while Coach kept him upright, his hands still locked behind his back. A year’s worth of suppressed grief poured out all at once, and his tears for a beloved parent lost was enough to fill the ocean seven times over.

He cried for the pain she might have felt, though the doctors had said it had been instant.

He cried for his sisters. He cried for the memories they’d never made and the advice he desperately needed from his dad but would never hear.

He cried because he wanted to hug his mom just one more time, breathe her perfume into his lungs again.

He cried for the kid he was before she died and before his dad may as well have, because he’d been happy and kind and good, but he was gone.

And he cried because he’d become a person he wouldn’t have wanted his mom to see, but he didn’t know how to be anything else.

Everything hurt and the things he’d done over the past year had been the only things he could to numb the pain.

“It’s okay.” Coach’s voice broke, and Brooks cried harder. “You’re okay. I’ve got you, son.”

“I hate this,” he hiccupped. “I hate it.”

“I know.”

“I can’t do this.”

“Yes, you can.” Coach grabbed him by the shoulders and looked him in the eye, his own eyes red-rimmed. “I know it doesn’t feel like it now. But you can do this. You will.”

It sure as hell didn’t feel like it.

It had taken him a while to get ahold of himself, and eventually the cop had come over to remove the handcuffs and let Coach drive Brooks home.

They hadn’t gone to his house right away, though.

They drove around for a while and talked.

Coach had given him his signature tough love and told him he had to change the path he was on.

That the next time Brooks made a mistake like that, he wouldn’t be there to bail him out.

Brooks hadn’t known it at the time, but when he woke up safe in his bed the following morning and thought about what happened the night before, it had been the start of a new life for him.

A life where he would focus on being good again.

One where he would make something of himself and make his mom, and Coach, proud.

And one where he’d never let his emotions take over his life like that ever again.

“Dr. Martin.”

Sarah’s face came slowly into focus.

“It’s been thirty-seven minutes,” she said gently.

Brooks surveyed the scene around him. One of the respiratory therapists had taken over compressions.

The nurse keeping record was watching and timing, ready to let him know when they could give another dose.

But after this long with wide-open fluids, four doses of epinephrine, and persistent asystole, he knew it was futile.

Coach was gone.

“Stop.”

All eyes were on him. As the senior physician in the room, it was his responsibility to make the call.

He listlessly looked at his watch. “Time of death: three forty-one,” he said, and walked out of the room.