Underneath It All (The Walsh Series #1) (32 page)

A shiver racked my body, and I knew it was time to change out of my wet clothes but I couldn’t muster the strength to move. If I contracted pneumonia, suffered, and died in this spot, it wouldn’t be nearly as awful as Lauren walking away. The outstretched arms of grim death were more favorable than reliving the moment when her hand left my chest.

Uncapping the bottle of Jameson I snagged from the pantry when I returned home, I guzzled the liquid, my throat burning.

This time,
I
was over it.
I
was disappearing.

For hours, I watched Coast Guard boats as they patrolled the waters off the harbor, sipping Irish whiskey and shivering while I kept my fingers wrapped around her scarf. In the distance, I heard my phone ringing over and over until the throbbing in my head synchronized with the obnoxious chime, but I knew it wasn’t Lauren. Turning away from the sound, I dropped into dark, fitful sleep.

Later, I barely registered the footsteps around me. Brightness filled the room, and Riley’s voice was in my ear. “Gotta get up, buddy. We have a problem on our hands.”

*

“If you vomit
on me, I will be punching you in the throat,” Sam said. I grunted in acknowledgement and angled away from him, only to feel the hard plastic armrest gouging my leg.

Bracing my arms on my thighs, I leaned forward and held my head between my hands to dodge the overhead lights. My stomach swayed and pitched like it was on the high seas, and the scent of hospital disinfectant was not helping. I watched Patrick’s feet as he paced the silent corridor, and for a minute, the rhythm of his steps lulled me to sleep.

It was quiet there, in my dreams, and I had a long, uninterrupted stretch of jogging trail ahead of me and engineering problems popping up every few feet. It was the perfect place to hide until my sister yanked me up by the ear and dragged me across the hall.

“Shan-
nonnnn
,” I wailed.

“Would you shut up?” she hissed. “Get your shit together and shut the fuck up.”

Resting against a wall, I rubbed my eyes and watched a blurry version of Nick stride toward us. He looked different in scrubs, his breast pocket filled with pens and instruments, his lighthearted smirk replaced with a sober expression. He was Dr. Acevedo now.

He stopped in front of us, his hands fisted on his hips, and said, “I want you to prepare yourselves. Your father experienced a ischemic stroke. His brain was deprived of oxygen for a period of time, and the longer the oxygen is cut off, the more brain cells die. We’re still running tests to determine how the stroke impacted his brain, and will know more in a few hours. We have him sedated right now, in a medically-induced coma.”

Standing required too much energy, and I slid down the wall to the floor. My ass hit the ground, and I discovered I was still wearing soggy track pants. They continued talking about Angus and his issues—the old bastard was kind enough to have his stroke in the main hallway, front and center, so the poor cleaning lady could find his miserable ass when she scaled the snow banks this morning—but I didn’t care. There wasn’t a shred of concern in my cells for Angus, and even in the darkest corners of my mind, I recognized that as one of the cornerstones of major fucked-uppedness.

“What is your deal?” Nick kicked my foot, squatted in front of me, and studied the eggplant-sized bruise on my jaw. It had faded to a gross palette of yellow and purple in the weeks since our last interaction with Angus, and I slapped Nick away.

“He’s still drunk,” Riley said. “I found him with an empty bottle of whiskey.”

“Why is he wet?” Nick grabbed my wrist and pressed his fingers over my pulse. “Please tell me you didn’t piss yourself.”

“I did a couple miles last night,” I said. “There was some snow.”

He angled my chin and beamed his penlight in my eyes, and I was ready to rip that hand off and beat him with it. “You’re being a little bitch,” he whispered, and stood to face the group. “Let’s bring y’all up to ICU. You can go in for five or ten—”

“Won’t be necessary,” Patrick said.

Nick studied us, waiting for someone to show a glimmer of sadness over Angus’s condition, and when he finally found none, he nodded to himself. “You need to know this is serious. He might not come out of it, and if he does, he could have extensive complications. Loss of speech, paralysis, memory loss.”

“I might prefer those options,” I said.

“That sounds sensational to me. He’s said everything he needs to say,” Sam added.

“You don’t have to see him, but you should,” Nick said. “At the very least, we’re getting some fluids into Matt, so sit tight.”

“That’s fine,” Patrick said. “Let’s run through the properties. I want status reports, and I want to figure out where we need crews this morning. Be ready in five minutes.”

*

From: Matthew Walsh

To: Erin Walsh

Date: November 26 at 13:01 EDT

Subject: Angus had a stroke

Call me when you get this.

From: Erin Walsh

To: Matthew Walsh

Date: November 26 at 21:05 CEST

Subject: RE: Angus had a stroke

Ummmmmm no.

But good luck with that.

From: Matthew Walsh

To: Erin Walsh

Date: November 26 at 13:16 EDT

Subject: RE: Angus had a stroke

Cut the shit, E. Answer your fucking phone.

From: Erin Walsh

To: Matthew Walsh

Date: November 26 at 21:22 CEST

Subject: RE: Angus had a stroke

Let’s get a few things straight, kid. He’s made it perfectly clear that he’s not my father. I don’t think this is my concern.

Oh, and I’ll be unreachable for a few weeks. No need to send further updates.

From: Matthew Walsh

To: Erin Walsh

Date: November 26 at 14:04 EDT

Subject: RE: Angus had a stroke

No one is disputing that he’s an evil cocksucker. We all agree on that. You don’t have to keep defending that proof.

Look, I get that you’re angry. He shouldn’t have thrown you out of the house. He shouldn’t have said Mom slept around. He shouldn’t have done any of it and we all know that, but you know as well as I do that he’s your father. He sees Mom when he looks at you, and Shannon, too. That’s why he hates you, and you know that.

None of it should have happened, but he’s in a coma right now and we’re all here dealing with it. You don’t have to care about him, but it would be nice if you cared about us.

You could start small and care about me for a minute. At this moment, my knee feels about three times its normal size, I’m pretty sure I’ve caused another round of shin splints, and my liver will most likely stop functioning before the calendar year ends.

You’ll probably love hearing that Lauren broke up with me and the universe as I know it has imploded. We had a stupid fight and I said stupid shit, and it’s over. You called it from the start, and I probably should have listened.

So thanks for that, e.

M

*

Nick returned with
a yellow IV bag, a pissy scowl, and a nurse who probably wasn’t old enough to vote. It took her five tries to get the needle in my vein and she left a puddle of my blood behind as a reminder.

“Well this is delightful,” I said, wiping a bloody hand over my pants.

“Would this be a good time to talk about Miss Honey?” Riley asked.

This was a good time for curling into the fetal position and sleeping for nineteen hours.

“Riley, do not doubt that I’ll reach down your throat and pull out your fucking intestines if you say another word. I don’t need your shit right now.”

“I think we should talk about what happened with Miss Honey,” he said.

Pressing my fists to my eyes, I groaned. I was ready to vomit. Another word, another breath in the wrong direction, and I was spewing that wretched night all over the shiny linoleum floor. “Don’t fucking call her that—”

“Actually, I’d like to know the answer, Matt,” Patrick interrupted, crossing his arms over his chest. Few were the days when we weren’t talking over each other. “Did you call her?”

“Why do you care?” I asked.

“Because she’s nice, and she makes you happy,” Riley said. “You’re a dick with an attitude problem when she’s not around.”

“I can’t believe you fucked this up,” Sam said.

I was definitely vomiting. The jackhammers in my head coupled with the disinfectant that I could fucking taste on the air and the siblings who knew all about poking the rough spots left me choking back bile.

“You need to call her, Matt. She would want to know what happened, and she’d be pissed you’re sitting on the floor in wet clothes being all grumpy,” Shannon said.

Riley, Sam, and Patrick nodded in agreement, and I gulped back another wave of nausea rocking my stomach. God, I was never drinking again.

“Is it possible I’m
not
the one who fucked it up?”

“Sam’s right. Riley, too,” Patrick murmured.

“Not really sure why I’m the douche canoe here, or why you’re all tearing my ass up right now. She’s no angel, you know.”

“Yeah, Matt. Keep sitting there, thinking about how perfect you are,” Shannon said. “But if you don’t call her, I will. Believe it.”

Perfect I was not, but I wasn’t interested in listening to them bitching at me anymore, and I slumped against the wall.

“Do whatever the fuck you want, Shannon. It’s not like anyone gives a damn what I think anyway,” I said.

“Could you give it a rest, Matt? I don’t feel like listening to your pissing and moaning about us ignoring you and your precious opinions,” Patrick said.

“It’s not pissing and moaning, Patrick. I told her I loved her and asked her to live with me, and she basically told me to shove it up my ass because she didn’t see this going anywhere. Why don’t you geniuses enlighten me: what did I do wrong?”

Maybe that was a slight oversimplification, but the one thing I knew to be true was that Lauren wanted something else, someone else.

“Oh,” Shannon said, the word stretched and contorted to contain a dozen different reactions. “That’s not what I expected to hear.”

“Yeah,” I snapped. “So either tell me how to fix it, or shut the hell up.”

Unable to endure another minute of this debate, I closed my eyes. I sensed their wordless reactions pinging over my head, but I was too exhausted for another round.

Shannon spent the afternoon on the phone with Angus’s lawyer, who couldn’t get to his office to determine whether Angus wrote any medical directives into his will, because last night’s storm dropped a little over two feet of snow and most residential streets were blocked. Patrick went to work getting snow removal crews deployed to our jobsites, and Riley and Sam prioritized the properties at risk for roof leaks and collapse. All in all, a regular day at the office, with the minor exception of the office being an ICU waiting room and my fucking soul was shattered.