The Best of Me(88)

Abee pushed past the overgrown bushes and climbed onto the porch. Peering through the front window, he saw that the statue was definitely gone. The rest of the place looked the same. Of course, that didn’t mean much, since he knew it had come furnished. But the missing Buddha bothered him.

Abee worked his way around the house, peering in the windows, though curtains blocked most of the views. He couldn’t make out much.

Finally tiring of his efforts, he simply kicked in the back door, just like Ted had done at Tuck’s house.

He stepped inside, wondering what the hell Candy might be up to.



Just as she had every fifteen minutes since she’d arrived, Amanda approached the nurses’ station to ask if they had any further information. The nurse responded patiently that she had already given Amanda all the information she had: Jared had been admitted, he was being seen by a cardiologist, and the doctor knew they were waiting. As soon as she learned anything, Amanda would be the first to know. There was compassion in her voice as she said it, and Amanda nodded her thanks before turning away.

Even with the reality of her surroundings, she still couldn’t make sense of what she was doing here or how any of this had happened. Though Frank and the nurse had tried to explain it to her, their words meant nothing in the here and now. She didn’t want Frank or the nurse to tell her what was going on, she wanted to talk to Jared. She needed to see Jared, she needed to hear his voice to know that he was okay and when Frank had tried to put a comforting hand on her back, she’d jerked away as if scalded.

Because it was his fault that Jared was here in the first place. If he hadn’t been drinking, Jared would have stayed at home, or been out with a girl, or at a friend’s house. Jared would never have been anywhere near that intersection, would never have ended up in the hospital. He’d just been trying to help. He was being the responsible one.

But Frank…

She couldn’t bear to look at him. It was all she could do not to scream at him.

The clock on the wall seemed to be keeping time in slow motion.

Finally, after an eternity, she heard the door that led to the patients’ rooms swing open, and she turned to see a doctor emerge wearing surgical scrubs. She watched as he approached the duty nurse, who nodded and pointed in her direction. Amanda was paralyzed with trepidation as the doctor came toward her. She searched his face for a sign of what he might say. His expression gave nothing away.

She stood, Frank following her lead. “I’m Doctor Mills,” he said, and he signaled them to follow him through a set of double doors that led to another corridor. When the doors closed behind them, Dr. Mills turned to face them. Despite the gray in his hair, she could see that he was probably younger than her.

It would take more than one conversation for her to fully absorb what he told them, but this much she grasped: Jared, while appearing fine, had been injured by the blunt impact of the smashed car door. The attending physician had detected a trauma-induced heart murmur, and they’d taken him in for evaluation. While there, Jared’s condition had deteriorated markedly and rapidly. The doctor went on to mention words like cyanosis and told them that a transvenous pacemaker had been inserted, but that Jared’s heart capacity kept diminishing. The doctor suspected that the tricuspid valve had ruptured, that her son needed valve replacement surgery. Jared was already on bypass, he explained, but they now needed permission to perform heart surgery. Without surgery, he told them bluntly, their son was going to die.

Jared was going to die.

She reached for the wall to keep from falling down as the doctor glanced from her to Frank and back again.

“I need you to sign the consent form,” Dr. Mills said. In that instant, Amanda knew that he’d also smelled the booze on Frank’s breath. She began to hate her husband then, truly hate him. Moving as though in a dream, she deliberately and carefully signed her name on the form with a hand that barely seemed her own.

Dr. Mills led them to another part of the hospital and left them in an empty waiting room. Her mind was numb with shock.

Jared needed surgery, or he would die.

He couldn’t die. Jared was only nineteen years old. He had his whole life in front of him.

Closing her eyes, she sank into a chair, trying and failing to make sense of the world crumbling around her.



Candy didn’t need this. Not tonight.

The young guy at the end of the bar, Alan or Alvin or whatever his name was, was practically panting to ask her out. Even worse, business was so slow tonight, she probably wouldn’t make enough to fill her car with gas. Great. Just great.

“Hey, Candy?” It was the young guy again, leaning over the bar like a needy puppy. “Can I have another beer, please?”