Saving Us (The Billionaire Brothers of NY Duology #1)

31. Harper

CHAPTER 31

Harper

“ H arper.” The voice saying my name sounded as if it was talking through mud or very deep water. I wanted to respond, but it was as if my mouth was frozen. My limbs felt heavy, too heavy to lift. But finally my eyes. My lids seemed to listen to my brain and move slightly. A sliver of light blinded me, though, forcing me to close them again.

“She’s coming around,” the voice said. It was a female voice, I could decipher that. “Harper, do you remember what happened?”

“Okay, good, she wasn’t out that long,” a second voice, definitely male, chimed in.

I felt a cuff tightening around my upper arm, and it was then I realized I was strapped tight, arms crossed, onto a gurney, in what had to be a moving ambulance. As the cuff started filling with air, tightening around my skin, it hurt.

But I didn’t care.

I welcomed it because I did remember. And as the memories of what happened started coming back to me, I wanted them to go away.

Forcing my eyes open, I tried to look around. But I couldn’t, and I realized I had one of those big neck braces on. My ankles and wrists lightly pushed against the restraints, testing how much room I had to move.

It was very little.

And all I cold see was the ceiling as we bounced along the bumpy mountain road. The strong need to turn my head, to see who was here with me, took over, yet the collar around my neck wouldn’t let me. I felt my heart rate rise, it beating against the strap holding me tight agains the stiff board underneath me. Then I caught sight of the EMT sitting near me.

“Hi Harper, my name if Kate and I’m with Kingston Ambulance. This is my partner, Jack. Do you remember what happened?”

Tears welled up in my eyes as I nodded yes to her question. It was all I could do, words wouldn’t form. It was as if I spoke, it would make it real.

My body fidgeted beneath the straps again, sweat forming on my temples. I pushed my entire body against the bands and the board, the panic setting in.

“Fuck!” My pain and torment came out in one word.

Kate turned my way, seeing me struggling. “Try to stay calm, Harper. Does something hurt?”

That was when I realized the intense pain in one particular spot. I nodded as my eyes instinctively looked toward my hand. “My,” I said through gritted teeth, “wrist.”

“Jack, can you cut her sleeve off.”

“Jack removed my one hand from the restraints, carefully cutting the material from my arm.

She came back around with a splint for my wrist and started wrapping it.

Jack sat on the bottom of the cot holding what looked like a tablet. “Does anything else hurt, Harper?”

“My head,” I told him.

He made a note of that. “Are you nauseous or dizzy?”

I only shook my head.

“I know you’ll be in a lot of pain tomorrow; it’ll happen with a crash like that. But any other acute pain like your wrist? Any bones that we might need images of?”

A crash like that .

This was it.

This was my feeling of doom.

It wasn’t Rebecca after all.

I knew something was going to happen—and it did.

Fuck, it did.

The anxiety started slowly. The panic started to bubble in my chest at a low simmer. But then it ratcheted up fast. My breathing became erratic while sweat formed on my brow.

“Kate, take her pulse,” Jack said, an urgency in his voice. He came to sit closer to me on the cot, his hand now on my lower leg. “Harper, it’s okay. You’re okay.”

Kate had her fingers on my other wrist and was looking at her watch.

“One forty” she said.

Watching them take care of me was helping a bit. It was distracting my brain from what it was trying to think about.

But I had to know.

“Where’s Gage?” I screamed.

They shared a glance, and then Kate answered.

“Our main priority right now is you. Once we get to the hospital we’ll see if there’s someone there that can give you some answers.”

And that was all I got.

X-rays. CAT scans. MRIs. Every type of test imaginable I’d been sent for. Then they had to cast my wrist. That was a whole other process. Being wheeled to another part of the hospital for them to set and cast me. Then back up to the ER.

A broken wrist. Two lacerations on my head that needed stitches, one on my arm. And a concussion. All things considered, I was in good shape, according to the doctors and nurses. Though I wasn’t quite sure what that meant.

Compared to whom?

By the time they were done taking care of me, I was done with them.

“Will someone tell me where my boyfriend is, please?” I begged the nurse currently in my room.

“Did he come in with the same accident, honey?” she asked as she looked at my chart.

“Yes,” I said, hopeful someone was finally going to help me.

“What’s his name? I’ll try and find something out for you.”

“Gage Parker.” The tears welled up in my eyes of their own volition. “Thank you.”

As she was exiting the room and the door was open, I could hear a ruckus in the hall.

“…Wilson!”

It was Gage!

Getting out of the bed and making my way to the hall, I looked back and forth. Three doors down, he was standing in a gown, looking destroyed, bruised, and broken but more beautiful than I’d ever seen him.

“Gage.”

His head turned toward me. And he took off for me, the best he could, crashing into me as he held me against him.

“Harper,” he cried, his face buried in my hair. “Oh, fuck, baby, I thought I lost you.”

His words were mixed with tears, his voice cracking.

Only when he pulled away did I realize he had been holding me with one arm, the other in a sling.

“Gage,” I whispered, reaching out to his shoulder. “What happened to you?”

As I asked, he noticed the cast on my wrist, as well as the stitches across my forehead. His free hand reached out, gingerly touching the bandage on my forehead.

“Mr. Parker,” a nurse said, sidling up next to us. “You can’t be out of bed, sir. You have a pretty serious concussion. I need you to come back to your room.”

He never took his eyes from mine but spoke to the nurse.

“I’m not leaving her side,” he said with finality in his voice. “If either of us needs to stay overnight, please start the arrangements for a private room.” He broke our stare, looking at the nurse, who looked confused by his orders. “Now.”

She was stunned by his words, and a bit annoyed, but walked away.

“C’mere,” he said, pulling me to him again. “Come to my room until we figure this out.”

Climbing into bed with him was challenging, but it worked with my cast being on my left side and his sling on his right. Snuggling in, I finally felt as though I could take a full breath. My first one since waking up in the ambulance.

“I don’t even know where to start, Gage,” I said. And then the tears started falling. They quickly turned to sobs against his chest, my face twisting into his gown as I tried to cover them up.

“I …” My words stammered from me as the shock from what we’d been through was setting in. “Do you have any information? Do you know anything? About Jared? Or Delia?” My voice escalated with each question, the panic starting once again.

When I was in the ambulance, they told me it was normal to deal with anxiety or panic attacks after a traumatic experience.

But this was happening several times an hour.

“Hey,” he said, rubbing my back to soothe me. “Calm down, baby. It’s okay, we’ve got each other now. We’ll get through this.”

But he didn’t believe his own words.

Gage Parker seemed unsure.

He seemed full of fear.

The room they placed us in resembled a fancy hotel room. Who knew these even existed in a hospital? Along with it came a private nursing staff and chef’s service dedicated to all the private rooms in this particular wing. Gage’s concussion was quite a bit more serious than mine. Apparently, he hit his head hard against the side of the car. Hard enough to not only break the window but dent the frame. He’d been vomiting for a few hours before we were reunited earlier, but that thankfully had stopped.

The lacerations he suffered were stitched up on the side of his head as well. We would both have some scars to show for this: physically and emotionally.

We were able to request a bigger bed so that we could sleep together. As we watched TV, my phone lit up with a call.

It was my mom.

“Aren’t you going to answer it?” Gage asked.

Shaking my head, I silenced my phone and put it away. He didn’t ask any more questions. He understood.

It was only five o’clock in the evening.

Nine hours after Jared and Delia picked us up.

Seven hours since the accident.

One hour since we’d been moved to our private room.

And we still had no information about Jared or Delia.

“Can’t we call their family or something?” I asked. “And you’ve tried both their phones?”

“Yes, Harper.”

He was worried, but it came across as him being annoyed. I’d asked him the same questions quite a few times.

But I understood. These were his best friends, and we were in the same fucking building as them and couldn’t find a damn thing out.

And then his phone buzzed. He had it on his chest for easy access, and when he lifted it up, the name DELIA showed across the screen.

“Hello?” he screamed into the phone while putting it on speaker.

But there was only silence on the other end.

“Delia!” he screamed, sitting up. The scowl from his pain didn’t stop him from getting out of bed. The nervous pacing as the silence continued on the other end was maddening. “Is that you? Are you there?”

He was about ready to lose control. He looked at me, his red-rimmed eyes imploring for some type of answer. Anything.

“What do I do?” he cried.

Then we heard the small whimper through the line. Gage stared at the phone. He stared at it as if it would destroy him, like a bomb about to go off in his hand.

The whimpers from Delia turned into full-blown sobs.

“Gage!” The scream was so many things wrapped into one.

Fear, anger, agony.

Gage couldn’t respond. He froze. Yet his knuckles turned white from the pressure of him squeezing the phone in his hand.

Taking it from him, I led him to the bed and sat him down.

“Delia?” I said softly into the phone as I walked toward the hall. Once outside the room, I tried to get through to her. “Where are you, honey? Tell me where you are?”

She couldn’t calm down, hyperventilating while trying to talk.

“I’m…on floor…three…” she said. “Room…three…fourteen.”

She was admitted, no longer in the ER.

“Okay, we’ll be up to see you as soon as we can,” I told her.

All I heard was some shuffling noise on the other end of the line and some light crying. Then there were some faint voices in the background, most likely those of a nurse.

And the line disconnected.

As I opened the door, I found Gage bent over the end of the bed, his feet propped on a bar, his elbow on his leg.

He stared across the room at nothing. A blank wall.

And was motionless as I approached him.

Sitting on the bed next to him, I was unsure of what he needed.

As I put my hand on his leg, he pushed it away. He not only pushed my hand away, but he also physically turned himself away from me.

“Gage.” My voice was weak.

We were both breaking.

“Delia is on the third floor. We’ll see her when you get out, okay?”

Gage was only supposed to be held for observation overnight. Once he got discharged in the morning, we’d see her then.

“No.”

His strong word and voice surprised me. Our heads snapped toward each other.

“We’re getting out of here now. Seeing her now.”

Stomping to the armoire that held our clothes, he tore open the drawer and started throwing the blood-covered, ratty clothes from the accident out of the drawer to the floor.

“What the fuck are we going to wear!” he yelled. “I’m not putting this shit back on!”

Going to his side, I took the shorts gently from his iron grip and led him to the chair by the window.

“I’ll find us both something,” I told him.

He didn’t look at me as he sat in the chair. His gaze went to the window, a scene of trees and a parking lot.

A nurse was able to locate some old clothes from a donation pile they kept. It wasn’t much, but I put together some sweatpants and t-shirts. They were clean, that was all I could guarantee.

As I handed Gage the clothes, he stared at them in disgust. At first. But he adjusted his attitude quickly. I helped him with his pants, which went on easily. The t-shirt was going to be a challenge with his broken collarbone.

“You’re going to have to take off the brace,” I told him.

Once he did, we slid the gown off his good arm, then maneuvered it around the bad arm, keeping it close to his body. The grimace that formed across his face informed me of the pain he was in, but he made sure not to let on.

Then it appeared to be a puzzle ahead of me.

How to best put on a shirt when you can’t lift an arm.

“Just put it over my head, Harper!” he yelled.

His impatience was understandable, but he wasn’t thinking at the moment.

“That won’t work,” I told him. Taking the shirt sleeve and slipping it over the hand of his bad arm, I pulled it up and over his shoulder, then his head.

“Fuck,” he whispered, the pain evident.

“I’m sorry.”

He then pulled his good arm through the other armhole.

And we figured out how to get a shirt on him.

The next six weeks were going to be a challenge for us with his brace and my cast.

But we were alive…

He finally looked at me and gave me a small smile.

“Thanks,” he said.

His smile made tears come to my eyes. But I didn’t want him to see that. And I didn’t want my tiny tears to turn into big tears, so I wiped them away as quickly as I could and got to work on getting myself dressed.

We gathered what few personal belongings we had with us, and happily turned our back on the room.

Gage held my hand, which surprised me with how he was acting before we left the room. Not only was he holding my hand, but his grip was strong, painfully strong. There were no words. We left the room, passing the nurse’s station without telling them we were leaving. After a short ride on the elevator, we stood outside room 314.

Neither of us wanted to go inside. I knew that. Going inside made it all…real.

But then we heard voices from within the room. Gage grabbed the knob and pulled.

The scene on the other side…was tragic.

Delia had a leg in traction but also in a cast. Her face was unrecognizable with a swollen, bruised eye and cuts and lacerations.

Four adults turned toward us as the door opened. One of the women walked toward Gage as we entered the room.

“Gage,” the older woman said warmly as the tears streamed down her face. She had him in her arms, holding him tightly.

“Mrs. Foster,” Gage said.

And then he broke.

He shook with sobs.

My man was reduced to a boy being held by the mom of his best friend who had died.

My only guess was she’d become a mom to him over the years.

They held each other for long minutes, both crying for the man they lost and for each other. When she pulled away from Gage, she held his face in her hands, looking him straight in his eyes.

“He loved you, sweet boy. More than you will ever know.”

His nod was slight as he looked down upon her. But then his gaze shifted to an older gentleman, who I figured to be Jared’s father. He stood by Delia’s side, with whom I had to assume were her parents, and cried as he watched the two of them. Gage went to him, and they fell into each other’s arms, their cries echoing in the room.

Looking at Delia, fresh tears fell for them as she took in the scene. She reached out to me, and I rushed to her bedside.

“Harper,” she whispered.

Reaching down, I wrapped my arms around her and whispered my apologies into her neck.

“Delia, my God, I’m so sorry,” I told her. “I…” But I couldn’t bring myself to say what I wanted to. Not with Jared’s parents in the room, it was too soon.

No talk about the accident.

Maybe ever.

This was hard. It was bringing back old feelings I hadn’t felt for so many years. I didn’t think Gage had lost anyone close to him before, but I was unaware if any of the others had experienced it.

“They were like brothers,” Delia said, tearing me from my thoughts.

And she was right.

Jared wasn’t just his best friend.

He was family in every sense of the word.