Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 91622 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 458(@200wpm)___ 366(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91622 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 458(@200wpm)___ 366(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
From the city, Cole headed back to the hospital in time for the last visiting hours of the day. He stopped to talk to the doctor, who’d just finished rounds. Jed had been moved out of the CICU and into his own room. They were already getting him up and moving, and Cole couldn’t imagine the pain involved in such an endeavor—or the crap his father was giving the nurses.
He began walking toward the room and stopped right outside.
“Mr. Sanders, I need you to breathe into that tube. We can’t have your lungs filling with fluid.” An older woman stood beside the bed with a breathing apparatus in her hand.
Jed lay back against the pillows, refusing to look at her. “Go away.”
Cole bit the inside of his cheek, debating whether or not to step in.
“Not until you blow. You don’t scare me, and I’m not leaving. I’m every bit as stubborn as you.”
“Dang it, woman—”
“Ms. Reynolds. Lucy Reynolds. You can call me Lucy if and when you blow into this machine.”
She stuck the equipment in front of Jed’s face, and to Cole’s amazement, his father let her help him sit up straighter and did his best to comply with her instructions. Jed groaned and winced, and she finally eased him back against the bed.
“Good job, Jed!” the nurse said happily.
“That’s Mr. Sanders to you, and you can call me that until you stop being a pain.”
Ignoring him, she handed him a cup with a straw, from which he took a small sip.
Cole shook his head and walked into the room. “Still cheery as ever?” he asked his old man.
Jed’s eyes widened as Cole stepped inside.
“He’s doing well,” the nurse, who was attractive and about his father’s age, said to Cole.
“Well, I appreciate you putting up with him.”
She glanced at Jed, her eyes warming with amusement. “Anything he dishes out, I can handle.”
His father muttered something under his breath, but his cheeks turned a ruddy color.
“I have other patients to check on, but I’ll be back. Buzz me if you need me, Jed.” She turned and walked out.
Cole pulled a chair up to his father’s bedside. Silence surrounded them for a few minutes before he finally spoke up. “Well, you made it through.”
“Hurts like hell,” the older man muttered.
“I’ll bet.”
Cole leaned an arm on the metal bed rail. “Listen, there’s something you need to know.”
Jed met his gaze. “What’s that?”
Before Cole could reply, his cell phone rang. Unwilling to get sidetracked, he glanced down to see who was calling. Kelly Barron’s name came up on the screen. He narrowed his gaze.
“Someone important?” Jed asked.
Kelly was a paralegal at her husband’s law firm. The main firm in Serendipity. “Yeah, it’s important.” Legal documents, no doubt. But Cole planned to intercept Erin before dealing with those. “I’ll take care of it when I leave here.” Which had been his intention all along.
Turning back to his father, Cole gathered his courage. Though he’d prepped this speech, he knew it wouldn’t be easy, and he could never anticipate his father’s reaction. Especially after all he’d been through in the past couple of days.
“I’m staying in Serendipity. Permanently.”
Jed blinked, the only indication he’d heard as the announcement settled between them. “Erin know?” he finally asked.
“Not yet. I had some matters to take care of first.”
Jed nodded, his gaze focused on the wall across the room. “What if she won’t have you?” His voice sounded raspy from the tube and weak.
But his words were blunt and very Jed-like. At least it hadn’t been couched in an insult. “I’m staying anyway. I have a kid to raise. That’s more important than any job.”
“Don’t screw it up like I did.”
Cole stiffened, unsure he’d heard correctly. In fact, he was damned certain he hadn’t. But he couldn’t ask. “I plan to do my best.”
“So did I. My mother, your grandmother, raised me by herself. She worked and pretty much ignored me, letting me run wild.”
Cole sat in stunned silence. Jed never discussed his past. Never considered it important. All Cole knew was that Jed’s father hadn’t stuck around, and his mother had died while Jed was in the Army. Now his father was talking, and Cole was afraid to interrupt and have him stop.
“I was just like you were. Just like it.” He pointed at the can of ginger ale.
Cole copied what the nurse had done and lifted the straw to his father’s mouth. Jed took a few sips and, wincing, relaxed back again.
“Got myself arrested too.”
What the hell?
“Yep. Just like you. But I didn’t have a mother who’d bail me out or take me away. In fact, she wiped her hands of me. So the judge said I could do time in juvie till I hit eighteen, which was only a couple of months, and then he strongly suggested I join the Army. Get myself some discipline before I ended up back in front of him again. If I enlisted, he’d expunge my record. I didn’t see any better options, so I did.”