Last First Kiss (42 page)

He closed his eyes and dreamed of Giselle—she was calling to him. He remembered hearing her speak softly to him. “Where are you, baby? Please, answer me, I love you so much,” she’d said to him. The dream had seemed so real he opened an eye.

He could see something bright yellow moving through the tall grass toward him. Was that the sun? It couldn’t be, it was moving too fast and making too much noise.

“
Jackson!”

There...he heard it again. She was here. Giselle was here, and looking for him. His mouth was so dry. He tried to answer but no words came out. Afraid she would leave without seeing him, he struggled to raise the arm that wasn’t broken. It took all he had, but he finally did it.
Please God...let her see
.

CHAPTER 25

Giselle saw a movement from the corner of her eye and ran to Jackson. She yelled at Bill to get Air Med out quickly then kneeled down next to the bent and broken body of the man she loved, struggling not to cry. “Jackson! Oh my God, can you hear me baby? Can you hear me? Oh Jesus—look at you!”

He tried to say something, but no sound came out, gazing at her through the one eye that wasn’t swollen shut.

“
It’s okay, baby! We’re here now and help is coming. Listen to me, Jackson. I love you, and you have to come through this so you can marry me. Do you hear me? I love you!” She kissed him gently on the cheek that wasn’t swollen. She thought she felt him squeeze her hand.

Bill ran up to them, and the look on his face was almost more than Giselle could bear. She knew it was bad, but his expression told her it was even worse than she expected. The compound fracture was bad enough with the bone jagged and protruding through the skin, but it wasn’t what worried her. His head injury looked extremely bad, and there was no telling what kind of internal injuries or bleeding he had. They were there with him between five and ten torturous minutes before they heard the Air Med helicopter approach. Bill ran to the road to meet them.

Giselle gave Jackson’s hand one last squeeze before she moved aside to let the medics do their work. It took another five minutes to stabilize him and load him into the chopper.

She leaned over to the man she loved and fought to keep from crying in front of him. “Jackson, you have to be strong now; don’t you give up. I love you. Fight for us. Do you hear me? Fight for us!” She turned to the medics and asked where they were taking him. When they told her they would bring him to the trauma center at St. Luke’s, she and Bill ran to his truck to make the seemingly endless drive to the hospital. On the way there, she made phone calls to keep busy and get the word out. She called Carrie and Gwen, then Gretchen, Lauren, and Amanda. Amanda told her she would pick her girls up from school for her. “Bill, do you have Red’s number?”

“
I think Jackson programmed it in my phone for me.”

She pulled up his phone book, found the number, and hit call. As soon as she heard his voice, she felt a surge of emotion. “Red! Jackson’s been in a motorcycle accident and we need you here.” She burst into tears and handed Bill the phone.

“
Red, it’s Bill. It’s serious; he’s got a bad head injury, a compound leg break, and surely some internal injuries.”

“
What the hell happened?”

“
As far as we can tell, he hit a cow on one of these back roads around my place. The cow’s dead, the bike’s totaled, and it looks like Jackson flew about thirty feet into a pasture. I don’t think he hit the pavement, and the pasture was pretty thick with tall grass. Maybe that softened the impact some. I didn’t see a helmet, did you, Giselle?”

“
Yes, it was that half helmet that he likes to wear. It must have flown off,” she said, between sobs.

“
Listen, I’ll leave here in about five minutes. What hospital?”

“
St. Luke’s on South Ryan.”

“
I’ll see you there. Put Giselle back on the phone.”

Bill handed her the phone.

“
Red?” she sobbed.

“
You listen to me, hon. He’s strong and he loves you. He’ll be fine. I
know
he will.”

“
He has to be. I can’t...I can’t lose him,” she cried.

“
You won’t. I’ll see you in an hour or so.”

Bill, Giselle, and Carrie all drove up to St. Luke’s at the same time. Before Bill’s truck stopped rolling, Giselle jumped out and sprinted to the door of the hospital.

Carrie walked quickly over to Bill. “How bad?”

“
Bad.” He filled her in as they walked to the information desk. The receptionist told them they were prepping Jackson for emergency surgery on the sixth floor. They took the elevator to the waiting room and began the long, agonizing wait for information on the man they all loved in different ways.

Giselle began to look through her purse for something, seeming to get more and more upset over not finding it.

Bill pulled something out of his shirt pocket and held it out to her. “Maybe you’re looking for this.”

She hugged the snapshot to her. “I thought I’d lost it,” she said, before handing it to Carrie.

Carrie inhaled sharply as she studied the picture. “I took this...right before I told them they were stinking up my house. I’d forgotten that I’d given Toby one. Wouldn’t have helped to give Jackson one, he’d have had to hide the damn thing.” She covered her mouth and suppressed a sob. “What happened, Giselle?”

“
It’s my fault, Carrie. If I hadn’t put off cleaning out Toby’s office for so long, none of this would have happened. I wouldn’t have overheard the conversation I heard this morning,” Giselle said.

“
What conversation?” Carrie asked. After Giselle had filled them both in, Carrie huffed. “That’s ridiculous! Toby would never have done that.”

“
I know that now, but I guess I went a little crazy,” Giselle admitted. “Besides, Jackson let me read the letter Chloe left him and it proved he didn’t sleep with her.”

“
You read the letter?”

Giselle nodded. “It explained a lot of things...like why Chloe was after Toby in the first place.”

“
She knew Jackson was in love with you, didn’t she?” Carrie asked, as Giselle remained silent. “Of course she did. She was a mean little bitch, but she wasn’t stupid.” She glanced over at Bill. “If the two of us could tell, she had to have known.”

Bill nodded as he took the photo from Carrie and studied it, even reading the back. “I’m sorry I never met him, he sounds like a wonderful man.”

Giselle looked up with tear-filled eyes. “He was every bit as wonderful as Jackson is.”

“
This is a sign, you know, a sign that Jackson’s going to pull through.” He smiled down at her. “Jackson loves you and those girls more than anything. He’ll fight like hell to live.”

“
He has to, Bill,” she said, allowing herself one last sob before she wiped her eyes and raised her chin in determination. “I will
not
lose Jackson.”

He smiled and pulled her to him for a hug. “There’s the spunky girl that Jackson fell in love with.”

“
Bill, how did you know?” she said, looking up at him. “That long ago, I mean? He said you and Carrie have known for years.”

Bill smiled down at her. “His eyes lit up every time he talked about something you did to put him in his place at the office. One day he told me it was worth pissing you off just to see those beautiful green eyes flash with anger. That’s when I knew he was in love with you.”

Giselle smiled and turned to Carrie. “How long have you known about Jackson’s feelings for me?”

Carrie sniffed then sighed loudly. “One day at the office you were telling Joan, Barbara, Tina, and Catherine a story about your girls. I think it was when Mac tied Lex up to your four poster bed in a sheet and told you to bring her back to wherever you got her.”

“
I remember that. We were standing around Joan’s desk. After I finished the story, I saw him leaning in the doorway drinking a cup of coffee, watching me. I expected him to fuss at me for keeping everyone from their work.”

Carrie shook her head sadly. “He was listening. I caught him watching you before you noticed him. The look on his face was so intense. I could almost hear him thinking how badly he wanted that
,
and suddenly I knew he wanted it with you. I started to pay closer attention after that, and all the signs were there. He was in love with you. There he was, trapped in that mess with Chloe, and he knew how happy you and Toby were. Then Toby and he became such good friends.” She got a faraway look in her eyes. “Looking back on it, I wonder how he managed to put one foot in front of the other.”

“
When you’ve never had it, you don’t miss it,” Bill said. “They had a decent year of courtship together, but it blew up a couple of nights before the wedding. He had to choose her over his best friend, the biggest mistake of his life.”

“
He never lost Red as a friend, Bill. They got together every chance they could,” Carrie told him. “Red understood.”

“
It ate at Jackson. Their first year of marriage was okay, then all hell broke loose. I don’t know how he put up with her.”

They turned, as a tall, blonde man in green scrubs walked into the waiting room through the surgery doors. “Excuse me; is someone here for Jackson Broussard?”

All three jumped up and went to meet him. “We are.”

Bill stuck his hand out. “I’m his Uncle, Bill Broussard.”

“
Of course, you look just like him,” the doctor said. “Mr. Broussard, I’m Dr. Collins...I used to play ball with Jackson at LSU. An old teammate of ours called to ask if I could get some info to you. Scott McAllister?”

“
Oh, Red...God bless him!” Carrie replied. “What can you tell us? Are you his surgeon?”

“
No, but I’ll be watching to see what’s going on and I’ll come in here periodically to keep all of you informed.”

“
What can you tell us now?” Giselle asked anxiously.

“
He’s got a compound fracture of the right tibia—that’s the shin bone, a slight fracture of his left arm, and they’re seeing some internal bleeding that needs to be taken care of. The most serious injury is his head. There’s swelling in the temporal lobe of his brain...We don’t know what’s causing it yet, but they’re going to remove a piece of the skull to relieve the pressure. Once they open him up, if they see he has a bleeder they can take care of it. After that’s under control, they’ll tend to the other injuries. This should take several hours, so don’t get discouraged if the surgery goes on longer than expected. The good news is Jackson’s in excellent shape and his heart is strong.”

Giselle nodded. “Thank you so much,” she said, a single tear rolling down her cheek.

Dr. Collins nodded and left the room.

Carrie touched her shoulder. “You see? It’s because of you that he’s in such good shape. If you hadn’t made him so crazy, he wouldn’t have gone to that gym every day. It was fate.”

Giselle gave her a tight smile. “Maybe so, but it’s also because of me that he’s in here today.”

After another ten minutes, both Sam and Gwen walked in to join them for the long wait. Giselle sat, walked, and sat some more before she rose abruptly to find the chapel. She raised her phone to let Carrie know she had it with her.

As Giselle exited the elevator on the first floor, she saw Red standing at the information desk. She called to him and he met her with an open armed hug. “Oh God, I’m so glad you’re here.”

“
How is he, Giselle? Have you heard anything yet?”

“
Dr. Collins came in and told us to expect a long wait.” She explained the injuries and procedures as best she could. “He’s a mess, Red. I don’t know how long he had been in that pasture, but he must have suffered,” she said, crying into a tissue.

“
Is there a cafeteria or someplace we can talk?”

“
I was about to go to the chapel—it’s through this door.” They entered the vacant chapel and knelt down in front of the cross hanging on the wall. They made the sign of the cross and bowed their heads. After a few moments, the silence and solitude overwhelmed Giselle. She covered her face and began to cry openly, her shoulders shaking with uncontrollable sobs.

Red leaned over and hugged her tightly. “Just cry and get it out of your system. He’ll need you to be strong.”

“
It’s him that’s going to need strength. If you’d seen him you’d know what I’m talking about. He must have been in unbelievable pain, and he was so alone, thinking there was no hope for us. I hurt him, Red. I told him that I’d made a mistake, and that I wasn’t over Toby yet. I hurt him so badly. Before they loaded him into the helicopter, I told him he had to be strong and that he had to fight for us because I love him so much. He squeezed my hand.” She looked up hopefully. “Do you think he heard me?”