Ruin

“He’s okay, right?” I asked in a hoarse voice. “Right? He’s just tired? Or dehydrated?”

“Sure.” Lisa gripped my hand in hers.

The sound of an ambulance almost killed me.

I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t just stand there and wait. I ran. I ran as fast as I could and jumped over the barrier so I was on the field with Gabe. He intercepted me in his arms as I ran for Wes. And then another set of arms braced me.

I turned and cried.

I cried into Randy Michels’s chest like he was my dad, like he was my lifeline. I clung onto him with everything I had. The fu

“He’ll be okay,” Randy whispered. “He’s a fighter, okay? He’s a fighter, don’t you forget it!” He nodded as his Adam’s apple bobbed against my face. “He’s not like his brother, God rest his soul. Wes is strong. He’s like his mom.” Randy sighed. “Come on, I’ll take you to the hospital.”

I gripped Randy’s hand on one side of me and Gabe’s on the other as cameras went off.

Wanting to yell, I kept my head down as we made our way off the field, amidst the flashes of cameras and yelling from the fans. They wanted to know what was wrong. They wanted to know all the things I wanted to know. I just didn’t have the answers.

My body went into a state of shock on the way to the hospital I couldn’t stop shaking. I was pissed that it seemed that Gabe knew what was going on but I didn’t. Even Randy seemed like he had expected Wes to pass out. What kind of father expects his son to pass out on the field?

“Come on.” Gabe tucked me under his arm, and we made our way to the private wing of the University Hospital.

“Is he stable?” Randy asked once we reached the room the nurse had directed us toward. The nurse paused and lowered her clipboard.

Her eyes flickered to mine before returning to Randy’s.

“Family,” he said. “They’re family.”

“Right.” Her eyes flickered between us before she answered. “He’s stable but had a very dangerous reaction with his last group of medications. As you know they’re trial basis only, there was no way for us to know he would have that type of reaction. Luckily, he was in a public place, so the minute he blacked out he was able to get help. Had he been in his room or even—”

“That’s enough,” Randy interrupted with a wave of his hand. “We’d like to see him now.”

“But—”

“Now,” Randy said smoothly. “He needs his family.”

“Yes, sir.” She ducked out of the way and walked briskly down the hall, her clipboard tucked firmly under her arm.

I hated that his name was already on the door. I hated that I was in a hospital. Pausing in the middle of the doorway, I asked in a small voice, “What don’t I know?”

Randy swallowed and looked to Gabe.

Why the hell would he look at Gabe?

With a curse, Gabe licked his lips and nodded into the room. “Let him tell you. I refuse to be the guy to bring that kind of news.”

“That kind of news,” I repeated over and over again in my head. What did that even mean? My heart clenched. My stomach felt like it was in a billion knots, yet I walked farther into the room.

Wes was hooked up to an IV and a heart monitor, but other than that he looked normal, healthy even.

His eyes flickered open. He groaned and asked, “Did we win?”

“By a lot, man.” Gabe laughed. “Though we could have done without the theatrics.”

“Theatrics?” he asked, his voice kind of slurring. “Holy shit! Kiersten! Where is she? I have to tell her. I have to…” His voice died off when I stepped out from behind Gabe. Tears streamed down my face, most likely ruining the paint. I watched his face fall.

“Give us a minute,” he whispered.

His dad nodded at me, then kissed Wes on the forehead and walked out with Gabe, leaving us in a crazy, tense silence.

“So,” I said in a shaky voice. “It’s after Homecoming.”

Wes didn’t reply.

I didn’t care. I was just glad he was breathing. I moved to the side of his bed and sat, folding my hands in my lap. “You promised you’d tell me everything. No more lies, no more omissions.”

With a shudder I looked into his eyes. They pooled with tears as he blinked a few times and then closed them. “I’m sick.”

“Figured that.” I bit my lip. “How sick?”

“People always ask that, you know?” He chuckled. “How sick are you? On a scale of one to ten, will you die? Are you nauseated? Rate the nausea.” He laughed again. “Lamb… the wolf is really sick.”

“As in the wolf got shot and it’s only a flesh wound?” I asked hopefully.

“Monty Python.” He actually laughed. “Classic, and to answer your question, probably more than a flesh wound.”

“Oh.” I bit my lip to keep from crying, but the tears came anyway. Didn’t he know? I was his. He was mine. How could God do this to me? How could he take the one thing I could count on? I kept rubbing my hands together — most likely rubbing them raw until Wes grabbed them and pulled me down to his side, caressing my face with his fingers.

“I have cancer.”

The ground fell out beneath me.

Drowning.

I was drowning like I’d always feared — only this time it wasn’t in water, it was in air. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t think. That one word: cancer. The word every person feared. That word had the power to destroy a person, only cancer never destroyed in an instant. It was always slow. It always tortured. My heart felt like it stopped beating. I tried to suck in a breath but nothing would come.

“Hey, hey.” Wes grasped my head against his chest and sighed. “You’re fine. It’s fine. It’s just a shock. You’re okay. Just breathe.”

Apparently my body needed permission from him to do something that simple — to breathe. I took in a few soothing breaths and then asked the inevitable.

“Will you get better?”

“I want to,” Wes said against my hair. And then I gasped. Everything made sense. His obsession with my hair, all his cryptic talk about not being here or about giving me as much time as he had.

I fell into a sob over his chest. I couldn’t control myself. “No, No, No.” I slammed my fist into the mattress as he held me tight. “You have more time than that, Wes. Damn it! You have more time! Promise me! Promise me this isn’t goodbye! Promise me, Wes, Promise!”

Arms came around me, they weren’t Wes’s. I collapsed onto the floor in those arms.

I noticed tattoos first — Gabe. It was Gabe.

“Hold it together,” he whispered in my ear. “And let him talk. I’ll be ready to take you home in a few, okay?”

I nodded. I wasn’t going home. I wasn’t freaking leaving Wes’s side. But I nodded anyway.

Gabe released me and stepped back out of the room.

“You can’t die,” I said in a shaky voice.

Wes smiled. “I don’t want to.”

“Why did you collapse?”

He patted the mattress and I sat again, trying to keep myself from going into hysterics.

“My dad’s rich, what can I say? It’s my last week of experimental drugs before I go in for surgery.”

My head jerked up. “Surgery?”

“Yeah, to remove the tumor.”

“Well, where is it?” This was good, right? If they removed it, the cancer would be gone!

“Wrapped around my heart.”

“Oh, God.” I closed my eyes as more tears rolled down my cheeks, “Do they, um…” I sniffled. “Do they think they can get it all?”

Wes leaned forward and wiped some of the tears from my cheeks with his thumbs. “Aw little lamb, don’t cry.” He held my hand and squeezed it. How could he have a tumor when he looked fine? “I’m about fifty-fifty at this point. They don’t know if they can get it all, but because it’s so close to my heart, they get too close and they could kill me. They don’t get it all and I die anyway.”

I couldn’t trust myself to speak so I just stared into his crystal blue eyes and prayed the nightmare would vanish.