Chapter 165 The Long Road Ahead

Chapter 165 The Accident

Jake crashed on a Wednesday and nobody told Lily until she was already halfway to the hospital.

She had been in the middle of a case review when Ethan called. She had let it go to voicemail because she was mid-sentence with a registrar and stepping out was not an option. Then he called again. Then Ava called. Then Ethan called a third time.

Three calls in four minutes meant something had happened.

She excused herself.

She stepped into the corridor.

She called Ethan back.

He answered before it rang.

"Jake is at Hartwell," he said. "Northern wing. Emergency."

She was already walking.

"What happened?" she said.

"He drove to the northern circuit," Ethan said. "To talk to the man directly. To tell him the race was not happening and the debt was being settled through Richard. I did not know he was going until he had already gone."

She pushed through a set of double doors.

"He went alone?" she said.

"Yes," Ethan said. His voice had a quality she had not heard in a long time. Tight and controlled and holding something underneath it. "They did not respond well to him refusing the race on my behalf. There was an altercation. He came off his bike on the way back."

"How bad?" she said.

"I do not know yet," he said. "I am five minutes away. Ava is already there."

"I am in the building," she said. "I will find him."

She did not wait for him to respond.

She ended the call and moved faster.

\---

The northern wing emergency bay was three floors and two corridors from where she had been standing.

She found Ava in the waiting area outside the trauma bay.

Ava stood up the moment she saw Lily.

Her face was the kind of controlled that came right before it stopped being controlled.

"Tell me exactly what you know," Lily said.

"He came off the bike on the northern ring road," Ava said. "A car behind him stopped and called the ambulance. He was conscious when they arrived. He told them his name and where he had been. He passed out in the ambulance."

"What are they working on?" Lily said.

"They have not told me anything," Ava said. "I am not family."

Lily looked at the closed trauma bay doors.

She had the Littmann around her neck.

She had her hospital lanyard.

She walked to the trauma bay doors and pushed them open.

A nurse looked up immediately.

"You cannot be in here," she said.

"I am Dr. Carter, senior registrar, cardiology," Lily said. "The patient is family. What is his status?"

The nurse looked at the attending.

The attending was a man she recognised from the surgical floor. Dr. Mensah's registrar. She had spoken to him twice in the corridor. He knew her face.

"Head injury," he said. "GCS was twelve on arrival, down to nine in the ambulance, back up to fourteen now. Right clavicle fracture. Three broken ribs. No pneumothorax on the initial imaging."

"Cardiac?" she said.

"ECG is clean," he said. "No cardiac involvement."

"Is he conscious?" she said.

"In and out," he said. "He has been asking for someone named Ava."

She went back out.

She went to Ava.

"He is asking for you," she said.

Ava's face did the thing it had been holding back since Lily arrived.

She did not let it fully through.

"How bad?" Ava said.

"Head injury," Lily said. "His GCS is coming back up which is a good sign. Broken clavicle and ribs. No cardiac involvement. He is going to need monitoring and imaging but the initial picture is not catastrophic."

"Not catastrophic," Ava said.

"It is a real description, not a comforting one," Lily said. "I am telling you what I actually see. He is injured and he needs to be here and he is being looked after correctly."

Ava breathed.

"Can I see him?" she said.

"Give me two minutes," Lily said.

She went back to the registrar.

She asked.

He said yes.

She brought Ava in.

Jake was in the bay with a neck brace and a monitor and his right arm immobilised. His face had the specific grayness of someone who had hit something hard and was still absorbing the information that they had survived it. But his eyes were open and when he saw Ava they focused immediately.

"Hey," he said.

His voice was rough.

"You absolute idiot," Ava said.

She sat in the chair beside him.

She took his left hand in both of hers.

She did not say anything else for a moment.

Jake looked at Lily over Ava's head.

"Ethan," he said.

"On his way," Lily said.

"Is he," Jake paused, "is he okay?"

"He will be when he gets here and sees you," Lily said.

Jake closed his eyes briefly.

"I should have told him I was going," he said.

"Yes," Lily said. "You should have."

"I knew he would try to stop me," he said.

"Yes," Lily said. "He would have."

"Someone had to go," Jake said.

"Someone could have gone with a plan and backup," Lily said. "Not alone."

"There was not time," Jake said.

"There was time to call Richard," she said.

He looked at her.

"I know," he said. "I acted without thinking it through."

"Yes," she said. "Which is what Ethan used to do and you used to stop him from doing."

Jake was quiet.

"That is fair," he said.

"Rest," she said. "We will talk about the rest when you are not in a neck brace."

Ethan arrived seven minutes later.

Lily heard him before she saw him. His footsteps in the corridor had a specific quality when he was running and he was running now.

He came through the waiting area door.

He looked at Lily.

"He is okay," she said immediately. Before he could ask. Before his face could go to the place it was heading.

He stopped.

He breathed.

"He is okay," she said again. "Head injury, clavicle fracture, ribs. GCS is back up. He is conscious and he is asking sensible questions."

Ethan put his hand on the wall.

Not dramatically.

Just steadying himself.

"Can I see him?" he said.

"Yes," she said.

She took him in.

Jake looked at Ethan.

Ethan looked at Jake.

Neither of them said anything for a moment.

Then Ethan pulled the chair on the other side of the bed and sat down.

"You went alone," he said.

"Yes," Jake said.

"Without telling me," he said.

"Yes," Jake said.

"Why?" he said.

Jake looked at the ceiling.

"Because you would have gone instead of me," he said. "And you have Lily. And the baby. And the house. And the garage deal. And all of it." He paused. "I did not want you to be the one sitting in this bed."

Ethan said nothing for a moment.

The monitor beeped steadily.

Ava was looking at the wall.

"That was not your decision to make," Ethan said.

"No," Jake said. "It was not."

"You could have been killed," Ethan said.

"I was not," Jake said.

"That is luck," Ethan said. "Not a plan."

"I know," Jake said.

"Jake," Ethan said.

"I know," Jake said again. "I know. It was wrong. It was the wrong way to handle it. I acted the way you used to act and I have spent ten years telling you not to act that way and I did it anyway because I was scared for you and I thought I was protecting you."

Ethan looked at him.

"You spent ten years telling me that protecting people by removing them from the decision is not protection," Jake said. "And then I did exactly that."

"Yes," Ethan said.

"So we are even," Jake said.

Ethan looked at him.

Something shifted in his face.

Not forgiveness exactly because there was nothing to forgive.

Something more specific.

The expression of someone looking at another person and understanding completely, in one moment, every version of that person they had ever known.

"We are not even," Ethan said. "You have ten years of credit. This does not cancel any of it."

Jake looked at him.

"Does it cancel the wrench debt?" Jake said.

"What wrench debt?" Ethan said.

"The socket wrench you broke two weeks ago," Jake said. "That was a forty pound wrench."

Ethan stared at him.

Ava made a sound.

Lily put her hand over her mouth.

"You are in a neck brace," Ethan said.

"The wrench was expensive," Jake said.

"I will buy you a new wrench," Ethan said.

"Two," Jake said. "I want two."

"You are unbelievable," Ethan said.

"I am concussed," Jake said. "I can ask for whatever I want."

"That is not how concussion works," Lily said.

"I am taking your word for it," Jake said.

Ethan stood up.

He put his hand briefly on Jake's left shoulder.

Not a speech.

Not a moment.

Just a hand on a shoulder.

Jake covered it with his own hand for a second.

Then Ethan stepped back.

"I am going to find your doctor," he said. "And find out exactly what happens next."

"Richard," Jake said.

"Already called," Ethan said.

"The circuit man," Jake said. "He knows I came. He knows who I am."

"Richard is handling it," Ethan said. "Today."

"You called Richard before you came here?" Jake said.

"I called Richard from the car," Ethan said.

Jake looked at the ceiling.

"Step one of the protocol," he said quietly.

"Yes," Ethan said.

"You called Lily first," Jake said.

"I called Lily three times," Ethan said.

"And then Richard," Jake said.

"Yes," Ethan said.

Jake breathed carefully around the broken ribs.

"Good," he said.

"Rest," Ethan said.

He went to find the doctor.

Lily stayed.

She looked at Jake in the hospital bed with his neck brace and his broken clavicle and his monitor and his two-wrench request and she thought about ten years of someone choosing correctly over and over and then getting it wrong once for exactly the same reason everyone always got it wrong.

Because they were scared for someone they loved and fear made the old choices feel like the only choices.

She thought: we have all been in this bed.

Not literally.

But in some version of it.

"Rest," she said to Jake.

"You sound like Ethan," he said.

"Rest," she said again.

He closed his eyes.

The monitor beeped.

Ava held his hand.

Outside the corridor the hospital moved through its afternoon.

And somewhere in the city Richard was on the phone making the kind of calls that turned threats into legal documents and legal documents into finished things.

That was how it worked now.

That was how they had built it to work.