“You look like a million bucks, Jonathan. Seriously. Never better.”
He laughed a little, and then convulsed. Jonathan was choking on the breathing tube, and as he gagged, he began coughing furiously. Juniper felt a flash of dread and cast around frantically for the emergency call button. Why weren’t alarms going off?
“It happens all the time,” Law said from his seat near the foot of the bed. “It’ll pass.”
“He’s choking!”
“It’s a reflex. He can’t actually choke because there’s a breathing tube down his throat.”
Law sounded frustratingly dispassionate, but the experience was unnerving. The coughing fit left Jonathan exhausted, and in the wake of new visitors and choking on his own breathing tube, it was apparent to Juniper that he had already reached the end of what he could handle. As she watched, Jonathan blinked, and it was a long moment before he opened his eyes again.
“You need some rest,” she said, trying to bite back her disappointment. Her expectations had been unrealistic. There would be no heart-to-heart, no answers today. Jonathan was still hooked up to ECMO. He had a very long road ahead of him. Scariest of all, he was a shell of the man he had once been.
Juniper leaned over to say goodbye, to make eye contact one last time before she let him drift off and rest. “Get some sleep,” she said, touching Jonathan’s face with the very tips of her fingers. “We’ll talk later. We’ve got lots of time.”
He looked at her, and then his eyes widened in shock. Jonathan tried to lift his head from the pillow, but he couldn’t.
“What?” she whispered, keenly aware that Law was just behind her. Something was really upsetting Jonathan, and she desperately wanted to know what. “What’s wrong?”
Jonathan’s eyes cut hard to her chest and back again. When he did it once more, Juniper looked down. Her necklace had fallen loose from her shirt and was dangling in the air between them.
“This?” She touched it briefly, and when he tugged his chin down in affirmation, she slipped it back into the loose collar of her sweater. “Officer Stokes found it. It was—”
Jonathan silenced her with a look.
“What do you want?” Juniper whispered.
He pointed to the marker board and she went behind his bed to grab it. There was a blue dry-erase marker stuck with Velcro to the top, and Juniper pulled it off and uncapped it, then handed it to Jonathan. When she held up the board for him, he wrote a single word in a shaky hand.
Dad.
Juniper felt herself deflate. “He’s right here, Jonathan. He’s been here the whole time.” To Law she said, “He’s asking for you.”
Lawrence lifted himself with some difficulty. At seventy-five, he was aging quickly, rapidly pulling away from his much younger wife simply because his knees and shoulders, even his mind, were tired from wear and tear. Still, he pushed himself to his feet and shuffled over to stand on the opposite side of the bed from Juniper.
He hovered there awkwardly for a moment, but then Law reached out and rubbed Jonathan’s arm with his own gnarled hand. It was just a few seconds of contact, but it affected Juniper in a way she hadn’t thought possible. Those arthritic fingers touching Jonathan with such unexpected tenderness was almost her undoing. Juniper blinked back sudden tears. She didn’t know Law had it in him.
“I’m here,” Law said, his voice thick. “I’m right here.”
As Juniper watched, Jonathan studied his father’s hand on the blanket. But he didn’t look at Lawrence’s face. And instead of saying anything to him, instead of using the marker board to communicate what Juniper believed had to be an important message, Jonathan turned his face toward her, away from Lawrence, and very deliberately closed his eyes. Tears leaked from beneath his lashes and dampened the starched pillowcase.
After the ventilator had pushed a few breaths into Jonathan’s lungs and he didn’t stir, Juniper caught Law’s gaze. “What was that all about?” she asked quietly.
There was something fragile in Lawrence’s look, but she could tell he was hurt, too. He sniffed once, hard, and then walked away from the bed as quickly as he could manage and yanked open the door.
“I told you he wasn’t himself,” Law said over his shoulder. “That’s not my Jonathan.”
CHAPTER 20
THAT NIGHT
When we get home from the pancake breakfast, I head straight to my room and call Sullivan. He doesn’t answer, nor does he respond to the multiple texts that I send him over the course of the next hour. I have no idea where he is or I’d hop in my car to go find him, and then the level of my hopelessness hits me and I feel sick. It strikes me that I hardly know Sullivan. And, up until very recently, I deeply distrusted and even disliked him. He was insolent and arrogant and downright creepy at times. Sullivan never tried to disguise his attraction to me, and haven’t I given him exactly what he wanted?