Angel Falls Read Free Page B

more tomorrow, if …” He didn’t finish the sentence; it wasn’t necessary.
    If she makes it through the night
.
    “Thanks, Steve,” Liam said, his voice barely audible above the whirring of the machines and the steady
drip-drip-drip
of the IVs.
    Stephen started to leave but paused at the doorway and turned back. “I’m sorry, Liam.” Without waiting for a response, he left the room. When he came back, there were several nurses with him. Together they wheeled Mikaela out of the room for more tests.
    Courage, Liam thought to himself, wasn’t a hot, blistering emotion held only in the hands of men who joined the special forces and jumped out of airplanes and scaled unnamed mountains. It was a quiet thing, ice-cold more often than not; the last tiny piece you found when you thought that everything was gone. It was facing your children at a time like this, holding their hands and brushing their tears away when you were certain you hadn’t the strength to do it. It was swallowing your own grief and going on, one shallow, bitter breath at a time.
    He put away his own fear. Where, he couldn’t have said, but somehow he boxed and buried it. He focused on the things that had to be done. Tragedy, he’d learned, came wrapped in details—insurance forms that had to be filled out, suitcases that had to be packed
in case
, schedules that needed to be altered. All of this he managed to do without breaking; if he did it without making eye contact with another human being, well, that was the way it had to be. He called Rosa Luna—Mike’s mother, who lived on the eastern side of the state—and left an urgent “Call me” message on her answering machine. Then, unable to put it off any longer, he walked down the busy corridor to the hospital’s lobby.
    Jacey was sitting in one of the red vinyl chairs by the gift shop, reading a magazine. Bret was on the floor, idly playing with the toys the hospital staff kept in a plastic box.
    Liam’s hands started to shake. He crossed his arms tightly and stood there, swaying a little.
Help me, God
, he prayed, then he forced his arms to his sides and strode into the area. “Hi, guys,” he said softly.
    Jacey lurched to her feet. The magazine she’d been reading fluttered to the floor. Her eyes were swollen and red-rimmed; her mouth was drawn into a tremulous line. She was wearing a wrinkled pink sweatshirt and baggy jeans. “Daddy?”
    Bret didn’t stand. He pushed the toys away and wiped his moist eyes, tilting his little chin upward. “She’s dead, isn’t she?” he said in a voice so dull and defeated that Liam felt the grief well up inside him again.
    “She’s not dead, Bretster,” he said, feeling the hot sting of tears.
Damn
. He’d promised himself that he wouldn’t cry, not in front of them. They needed his strength now; the fear was his alone to bear. He forced his eyes to open wide and pinched the bridge of his nose for a second, then he knelt down beside his son and scooped him into his arms, holding him tightly. He wished to God there was something he could say, some magical bit of verbal wizardry that would banish their fear. But there was nothing save “wait and see,” and that was a cold comfort.
    Jacey knelt beside Liam and pressed her cheek against his shoulder. He slipped an arm around her, too.
    “She’s in bad shape right now,” he said slowly, searching for each word. How could you tell your children that their mother could die? “She’s suffered a pretty severe head injury. She needs our prayers.”
    Bret wiggled closer to Liam. His body started to shudder; tears dampened Liam’s lab coat. When Bret looked up, he was sucking his thumb.
    Liam didn’t know what to do. Bret had stopped sucking his thumb years ago, and here he was, huddled against his dad like a boy half his age, trying desperately to comfort himself.
    Liam knew that from now on his children would know that dark and terrifying truth, the one that he and Mike had tried so hard to