“It’s not like you didn’t do the same.” I shrugged.
“Ha,” Tex shook his head. “We all did it the normal way — five days’ worth of injections, basically no side effects. You’re getting bone marrow pulled from your freaking hipbone. Yeah, good luck with that. I may love inflicting pain, but needles in my bone? No thanks.”
“Wow, great pep talk, Tex.” I pulled off my shirt.
He smirked. “Alright, this is where I leave you. Try not to die.”
“And again with the encouraging words.”
“Hey, I’m Italian.” He nodded. “I’ll bring you wine later, we cool?”
I burst out laughing. “Yeah, if you bring wine.”
“Chase can cook some pasta.”
“Tell him to bake some bread while he’s at it.”
“Anything else you want me to tell my bitch?” he joked.
“Hey, I thought I was your bitch!”
A nurse walked by. Her steps faltered before she raced past our door.
Tex kept laughing. “You can both be my bitches.”
“Now you’re talking.”
Tex sobered. “Be careful, alright?”
“I’ll do my best to lie very still.”
“Wouldn’t want that knife to slip.”
I rolled my eyes. “Leave already before you talk me out of it, and make sure the girls distract Andi long enough for me to wake up and at least be able to carry on a decent conversation.”
“When have your conversations ever been decent?”
“Maybe not with you…”
“Valid point.” He knocked his hand against the door and waved. “See ya on the other side.”
“Yeah.” I swallowed as he closed the door, leaving me in silence. The last time I’d been in this hospital had been when my mom had died and then again when Andi was in here. I’d vowed to never come back again.
I’d vowed never to even have surgery.
I’d even told both Ax and Nixon that if I got a bullet wound to take me anywhere but there.
Because in my mind, this hospital was where people went to die.
And yet, there I was, facing a fear, doing something I swore I would never do. Hell, I would have rather died.
So yeah. It was love.
Because it couldn’t be anything else.
Nothing else would have brought me back to this place.
Nothing else would be able to keep me here.
But Andi.
I loved her.
I just hoped it would be enough — because it hadn’t been with my mother and something in the back of my head told me, it wouldn’t be for Andi either.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Andi
THE NEWS WAS BAD. I KNEW before the doctor even walked in, report in hand. I wasn’t stupid. It wasn’t like I didn’t know my body backward and forward.
Bruises weren’t healing.
The dizzy spells were getting worse — another reason I wanted to stay in bed with Sergio. At least, having sex distracted me from the fact that when I wasn’t horizontal I wanted to fall down onto my hands and knees just to keep the room from spinning.
But more so than the physical symptoms, I just… knew. I felt it in the way each breath of air left my lips — those breaths were counted. They were numbered. My soul knew it even before my doctor did, and that was the sucky part. Modern medicine could perform miracles — but I was beyond saving.
I put on my brave face, which basically meant I forced a toothy grin and tried extremely hard not to let my eyes fill with tears. Basically, there was a lot of fanning my hand in front of my face. I probably looked like a southern debutante after winning another pageant, but whatever; if it worked, it worked.
“Miss Smith…” Doctor McHotpants held out his hand.
I shook it, firm — always firm. He wasn’t one of those doctors with sad eyes. I appreciated that about him. He was too good-looking to be sad, something I would never tell Sergio, lest the good doctor find himself strapped to C-4 for blinking too long in my direction.
Sergio wasn’t the type of guy to half-ass a threat, and I was pretty sure that he’d see the good doctor as a threat, especially considering McHotpants rarely kept his hands to himself.
He was one of those doctors.
He felt things.
A lot.
He cried with me once.
I was still trying to figure out if I liked the fact that he empathized, or if it just made me want to punch him in the face and give him some Midol.
“So…” My smile felt so forced I almost just gave up and cried. “…what’s the diagnosis?”
His smile looked how mine felt. His normally radiant green eyes were dull, his sandy brown hair messy. Black-framed glasses fell low on his nose, and I could see dark circles under his eyes.
“Andi…” he began, his voice low.
I sighed. “Just tell me.”
“…at this point…” He licked his lips and stared directly through me.
Ah, I knew that stare; it was the one that said the doctor was trying to emotionally detach from the patient. Look at the patient like an object, not a person, because it would hurt too bad otherwise.
Hell, I knew it already did. He was a good man, and I was young. Too young.
Cancer didn’t care if you were six months old or sixty; it had no prejudices; it just was.
“…I’ve taken it upon myself to come up with a two-month plan.” He nodded encouragingly. “I think if you take a look at the—”