Page 35 of Second Chance Fate (Hope Falls: Brewed Awakenings #5)
Even though she was completely out of it, Taylor did not miss that there was a strange vibe between the two men.
She wasn’t sure what the problem was between the two of them.
Maybe Dr. Davies didn’t like religion because he was a man of science.
Or maybe he’d heard some of the nurses talking about the ‘hot pastor’ thing.
They certainly liked to bring it up to her in the past eight months, every time one of them saw where she and Owen lived.
Dr. Davies looked at Owen, then Caleb, then Owen, then Caleb again. “Are you family?” his question came out sounding more like an accusation.
Panic rose in Taylor, and she blurted out, “What do I need to sign to leave?”
“You’re staying,” Caleb stated with an authoritative tone Taylor had never heard before and a look in his eyes she’d never seen, both of which left no room for argument.
If it were up to her hormones, they were Team Caleb, but it wasn’t up to them.
She didn’t care that her lady parts appreciated his alpha assertive thing he had going on; all she cared about was getting out of here and going home.
But she wouldn’t mind revising the alpha assertive thing at a later date and time.
D r. Davies cleared his throat. Caleb could feel the doctor’s eyes bounce between himself and Taylor.
He ignored him completely; he had blinders on.
He needed to communicate to Taylor the severity of the situation telepathically so he didn’t upset Owen.
Even though he was pretty sure that the kid did not miss anything .
He would bet a year’s salary he could go toe-to-toe with half the doctors in this place and keep up.
And it wasn’t just book smarts; he knew people.
It was obvious in how he related to all the residents at Golden Years and how quickly he’d made friends at school.
And out of all the people in the world, he knew his mom better than anyone.
They had a bond unlike any he’d ever seen.
No matter what, there was no way Caleb was going to allow her to check herself out.
He’d overheard some of the nurses talking.
She’d been unresponsive when she was brought in and had a high fever.
He didn’t want to say anything that might upset Owen, but he needed Taylor to understand just how serious this situation was.
“What is your relationshi—?” Before Dr. Davies could finish his question, the shrill beep of his pager went off. He looked at it, cursed under his breath, and squeezed Taylor’s hand. “I have to…go. I’ll be back.”
His parting remark was directed at Caleb.
As Dr. Davies exited the room, Caleb turned to the side.
Even at six foot four, the two men were nose to nose, just inches apart.
He held his stare until he turned and went down the hall.
Caleb didn’t love walking in and finding Dr. Davies holding Taylor’s hand.
There was no medical reason he needed to touch her.
Once Dr. Davies was gone, Caleb walked into the room and sat in the orange chair in the corner. He dropped the backpack at his feet. When he looked back up at her, he saw that she tried to swallow and licked her lips.
“Can I get you anything? Water?”
Taylor shook her head as her lips pursed.
Caleb read the stubborn set of her jaw and saw the iron resolve in her eyes.
Even in her critically ill state—especially in her critically ill state—she was unyielding in her decision to go home.
She wasn’t thinking straight. He recognized the signs because he’d seen the same wild-eyed determination at dozens of hospital bedsides he’d visited in his pastoral capacity but never when he had this kind of personal stake.
His stomach was in knots, trying to come up with what to say to convince her to stay.
Owen, however, didn’t seem to have the same issue.
He was the epitome of calm, cool, and collected.
He sat on the edge of the hospital bed, not disturbing any of the lines and tubes his mom was hooked up to.
He let out a long sigh and looked at her with an expression that appeared far older than his eleven years.
“Well…” A tiny smile curled at the edges of his mouth. “I bet you never thought you’d be the one lying in the hospital bed and I’d be using your words against you, but here we are.”
She closed her eyes and said his name in a warning tone, “Owen, I —”
“You have a few arguments to choose from. There’s the classic, which has shades of sarcasm I don’t feel get acknowledged or appreciated enough.
If the doctors say you have to stay, then unless you graduated from medical school, completed your residency, and obtained your medical license that I don’t know about, you have to listen to them. ”
“Owen,” she said his name again, but this time wearing a tiny grin on her face.
“There’s what I refer to as the Freaky Friday. What if it was me lying in that bed? Would you let me walk out of here against doctor’s orders?”
“Owen, it’s not?—”
“Can’t forget the Guilt Trip, which is always a crowd pleaser. Sure, you can go home against doctors orders, but if anything happens to you, it will be my fault, and I’ll have to live with that.”
“Owen, stop. This is not?—”
“And then there is my personal favorite, rated PG-13: Dazed and Confused. You should stay in the hospital; they have better drugs than at home.”
Owen had a razor-sharp wit; he was clearly using it to try and lighten the mood. It worked.
Taylor’s eyes widened, and for the first time Caleb saw some color back in her cheeks. “I never said that.”
“My bad. I guess that was just one I told myself.” Owen’s eyes twinkled with mischief.
Taylor laughed, really laughed, but even that caused her to go pale as a ghost once again.
Caleb wasn’t the only one who picked up on her complexion change. Owen clocked it as well; his demeanor shifted from lighthearted to somber.
“Mom, you have to stay. You know you do. Seriously, what if it was me?'“
“That’s different.”
“How?”
“Because it is.”
“I don’t think that would stand up in a court of law.”
Caleb watched the back-and-forth between Owen and Taylor like a match at Wimbledon. Despite Taylor being very ill, the two of them were in perfect sync. They were in their own world.
A movement in the doorway caught his eye. Dr. Davies was back. His face was set in a mask of professional calm as he cleared his throat once again, entered the room, and sat on the chair in front of the screen.
“Your blood work is back.” Dr. Davies glared at Caleb across the room.
He could glare all he wanted. There was no way Caleb was leaving unless Taylor asked him to. He wanted, no, needed to know exactly what was going on.
After a long pause, Dr. Davies went over the results. “The good news is you’re not contagious. You were concerned about that when you came in.”
“I was?”
Caleb could see that it looked like she didn’t remember that.
“It’s more or less what we thought. You contracted Lyme disease, which wasn’t treated and turned into sepsis. We will be admitting you into the ICU for a day or two.”
“I don’t need to be in the?—”
Dr. Davies cut Taylor off. “We just need to stabilize you and make sure your condition doesn’t worsen.”
Caleb pulled out his phone and googled sepsis as Dr. Davies continued making his case for why the ICU would be the best place for Taylor.
He read that the reason they needed to monitor her in the ICU was because sepsis could turn into septic shock, which could be deadly.
They had to stabilize her organ functions, blood pressure, temperature, and oxygen levels, which were all critical.
Sixty seconds into his research, he regretted looking it up at all.
So many things could go wrong. He knew better than to go down the Web M.D.
rabbit hole. He always advised people against doing exactly what he’d just done.
He put his phone back in his pocket and sat quietly as Dr. Davies finished going over how he saw her path to recovery over the next weeks and months.
A page came in, and Dr. Davies stood to leave but paused at Taylor’s bedside and squeezed her hand again. “I’m here if you need anything; just have someone page me.” He looked at Owen and then back at Taylor. “And you have my cell if I’m not on duty.”
Caleb didn’t miss the glare Dr. Davies shot his way as he left. He seemed very territorial over Taylor and Owen. Caleb didn’t like it. Two beeps sounding like texts echoed in the room. One was coming from Owen’s backpack. Caleb wasn’t sure where the other was coming from.
Taylor lifted her head and looked at Caleb. “Where’s my phone?”
“I don’t know.”
Caleb handed Owen his backpack and got up to look for Taylor’s phone.
There were only a few places it could be in the 10×10-foot room.
After a short scavenger hunt, he discovered her purse in the lower cabinet in the corner.
He pulled it out and reached in to retrieve her phone and hand it to her.
As he did, he saw that there was a notification about Owen’s blood sugar.
“I’m gonna go to the vending machine.” Owen hopped off the bed and headed out of the room.
“Is he okay by himself?” Caleb asked.
Taylor nodded, and Caleb saw that she had unshed tears in her eyes. When one slid down her cheek, his heart shattered. He didn’t know if the tear was because she was in pain, ill, or upset about being in the hospital. If he had to guess, he would say probably all of the above.
He pulled the chair up to her bedside and lowered down into it. Without thinking about it, he lifted his hand and wiped the moisture off her cheek with the back of his hand. When he did, she leaned into his touch, and he felt just how hot her skin was. Her fever must still be fairly high.
“I know you don’t want to be here. I know you’re worried about Owen, but I’ve got him. I can grab Minnie and stay at your place, or I can pick up Casper and his stuff, and they can stay with me.”
Her bottom lip quivered as she inhaled a shaky breath.
“All you need to do is rest. Just rest and get better. I’ll take care of Owen.” He saw fear in her eyes. “Unless you’d rather him stay with someone else.”
She shook her head back and forth, and he realized that she was just scared because of her situation and not because he was the person Owen was staying with.
Before he could follow up any further. Owen returned, clutching a bag of M&Ms and cradling a Sprite.
He paused in the doorway when he saw his mom was upset, and his gaze shot to Caleb and then back to his mom.
Caleb stood and moved back to the chair in the corner so Owen could sit next to the bed.
The two of them talked as Owen ate his M&Ms and drank his Sprite.
Caleb focused on his phone to give them a modicum of privacy.
A half an hour later, a nurse Caleb hadn’t seen entered, this one in lavender scrubs and an impeccable bun. She knocked lightly on the door, even though it was open. “Ms. Taylor, we’re going to get you transferred to the ICU now. Do you need anything before we take you up?”
Taylor shook her head, and Caleb was relieved she appeared to be resigned to her fate.
“You guys go. It’s late,” she said to Caleb.
“Are you sure?” Caleb asked as he stood.
“Visiting hours are over, so it would be pointless to come up,” the nurse pointed out.
Caleb thought about Good Will Hunting, about the scene on the bench where Robin Williams says that he spent two months sleeping in the hospital room with his wife because the nurses could see that the terms “visiting hours” didn’t apply to him.
He’d gone to see that movie with Taylor, and now as he looked down at Taylor in the bed, she looked so small and so fragile, and he didn’t want to leave her.
If he didn’t have Owen, he would have stayed.
There is no way he’d be going home tonight.
The nurse set about unhooking monitors and prepping the IV pole for travel, working with the quiet efficiency of someone who had done this a thousand times before.
“You got this, Mom.” Owen leaned down, hugged Taylor, then stood back up. “Just remember, it’ll be fine...”
She smiled, and they both said in unison, “…or it won’t.”
Clearly they had an inside joke, one that had put a little color back in Taylor’s cheeks.
Owen grabbed his backpack, and before they left the exam room, Caleb asked, “Do you have your inhaler?”
He’d noticed Owen take it out when he pulled out his phone earlier.
Owen looked in the front pocket, then spun on his heels and went back and grabbed it off the cubby in the corner. Caleb lifted his hand to say goodbye to Taylor. He wished so badly it was him in the bed and not her.
“We’ll be back tomorrow.”
She nodded and breathed out a barely audible, “Thank you.”
They made their way out of the emergency room down the maze of hallways. Owen was already tapping away at his phone, playing a video game.
Once they hit the parking lot, Caleb asked, “Are you okay staying with me while your mom is in the hospital?”
He hadn’t really thought out what the solution would be if he wasn’t. His first thought was to ask him if he’d rather stay with Jonah and call Gabe and then speak to Taylor about it tomorrow. The most important thing was for Owen to feel comfortable.
“Yeah.” He nodded.
“Do you want me to pick up Minnie, and we can stay at your house, or do you want to get your stuff and pick up Casper and stay at mine?”
“Do you have room for us?”
“Yeah, there’s a bedroom you can stay in. But I can also stay at your place.”
“No, I think I’d rather be at your house. If I’m home, I’ll just be thinking about Mom.”
“Okay.”
They made it to the Jeep, and Caleb clicked the fob to unlock it.
They climbed in, and neither of them spoke as Caleb pulled out onto the road.
As they drove, his headlights carved twin tunnels in the darkness.
The silence was thick, but not uncomfortable.
Caleb had always prided himself on knowing what to say to people in any situation.
He was never at a loss for words, unless remaining quiet was what the situation called for.
If there was ever a time that Caleb needed to use his superpower of being a comfort, of making someone feel seen and not alone, this was it, and he was failing miserably.
His own son, the one person in the world he should protect, shelter, and support, was suffering, and Caleb had no clue how to make him feel better.
He didn’t know what to say or what to do.
Caleb felt completely helpless, which was not an emotion he was familiar with, and he had zero plans to get used to it.