Considering the fact that he didn’t have enough energy to pull his ass out of the chair, the gurney didn’t sound bad.
Back in bed, the nurse who’d put him in his place returned to hook him up to a monitor that sat above his gurney. His brothers sat in chairs at his bedside and watched him as if he were a fish in a flippin’ tank.
“What’s that for?” Glen asked the nurse.
“The doctor wants us to monitor his heart.”
“It’s still beating,” Trent joked. Yet he wondered why after he’d been in the hospital for nearly an hour they were hooking him up to machines. Seemed like the longer the stay, the less need there would be for wires and tubes.
The nurse patted his shoulder when she finished and offered a half-assed smile. “Maybe the doctor just wants to keep you in your bed.” She turned on her heel and walked out of the room.
Jason laughed and leaned back in his chair. “She’s a sassy thing.”
“Cute, too,” Glen added.
That she may have been, but Trent couldn’t think of any nurse save one. “Can one of you go and find Jack Morrison or even Dr. Eddy?”
“I’ll go.” Jason released a heavy sigh and headed out into the ER.
Several seconds passed in silence. When Trent’s gaze met his brother’s, he squirmed in place. “What?”
Glen’s appearance always reminded Trent of their father. They shared the same cocky smile and hazel eyes. Glen turned those eyes on Trent now with a mixture of love and remorse. “We’ve missed you.”
“Oh, Jesus, Glen. I was a few hours away by plane.”
“You know what I mean. Reynard said you were planning on leaving the island before getting trapped in the cave.”
“Yeah. I was.”
Glen smiled, flashed his father’s dimples. “Figure out where you’re going to settle?”
No, he just knew that home wasn’t on the island any longer. Jason and Dr. Eddy walked in the room. Walt shook his hand.
“How’s Monica?”
“Stable.”
Trent was starting to hate that word.
“Stable and the ICU sound like the ultimate in oxymoron.”
Walt pulled up a rolling stool and sat beside Trent’s bed. The doctor glanced over at Trent’s brothers. “You mind giving us a minute?”
Glen stood and smiled. “I could use some coffee.”
Trent flashed a smile at his family as they left the room.
Once alone, Walt’s smile fell. “She’s sick,” he said. “But we’ve managed to bring her blood pressure down. We’re jumping on the antibiotics.”
“Has she woken up?”
Walt shook his head. “Not yet. But her fever is coming down, slowly. She needs to rest and we need to get her white count down before we can fix her leg.”
“Is it bad?”
“Nothing that a few screws and a steel plate won’t fix. They have a great group of orthopedic surgeons here.”
That’s good.
Walt glanced up at the monitor above Trent’s head. “It’s going to take a little time for the lab results, but I have the doctor here checking for lead and mercury poisoning on both of you.”
Trent pushed his brows together. “That doesn’t sound good.”
“It’s not. And usually toxicity takes time to occur unless you bite into a thermometer or eat paint. Both of you show signs of liver and kidney involvement.”
Trent hadn’t thought of his liver since he was in college testing his beer limit consumption. “Anything serious?”
“We’ll want to keep you in the hospital to run some tests.”
“You didn’t answer my question.” And he wasn’t thinking of himself so much as the woman in the ICU.
“Serious enough to keep you here.”
He guessed he didn’t need to understand it any more than that. It sounded like there were unknowns at this point. “The water was bad, wasn’t it?”
“That’s my guess. The water you sent with Monica is at an outside lab and we won’t get the preliminary results until the morning.”
Walt stood and took Trent’s hand in his. “I’m going to check on Monica again, and then find a cot and some food. I’ll find where they put you in the hospital and keep you up to date.”
“So I can’t see her yet?”
“Let’s get you fixed up, fed. I’ll bet you’re starving.”
Trent tried to smile. “I could eat.”
“I’ll tell the nurses.”
“OK. And thanks, Walt.”
Muddy water threatened to pull her under again, but instead of allowing the thick desire for sleep to keep its death grip any longer, Monica forced her eyes to flutter open.
Bright, shiny light had her blinking several times, as the familiar smells and sounds of a hospital crept into her consciousness.
“Barefoot?” Her pasty lips tried to stick together as she spoke.
“Mo?”
Monica turned her stiff neck to the right to find Jessie on the other side of a guardrail of the hospital bed she lay in. “Jessie?”
Jessie lifted Monica’s hand to her lips, kissed the back of it. “Oh, God. You’re awake.”
Her sister had dark circles under her eyes, her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and she huddled under a sweatshirt that looked like it belonged to Jack.
Monica squeezed her sister’s hand, surprised at the effort it took to close her hand. “Where am I?” She remembered snippets. Trent’s voice telling her they were going to be found. Him laughing at her attempt to sing the theme song to Gilligan’s Island. Then there was an airplane and faces… some named, many nameless. Then a whole lot of nothing.