Roll With the Punches Read online

  Emma snorted but didn’t reply.

  Jeff and Stuart appeared in the dining room doorway, flanking Emma.

  Tracey clasped her hands together. “The lease on the house comes due next month. I already called the landlord and told him I’m not renewing. I’m on the lease, not Pat. If Pat wants to stay there, that’s up to him, but I know he can’t afford the house on his own. I’ll be moving out. I’m going to rent a room from a friend of mine from work for now, Ruth. Her daughter just left for college out of state, and she said I can stay with her at least a year. She could use the extra help with her budget, and it’s not a bad house. Closer to work now.”

  “Does Pat know any of this?” Brandon asked.

  “He will when he gets served papers at work tomorrow. Well, not the moving part. When he comes home from work tomorrow, he’ll find out about that, because my stuff will be gone. I’ve got several friends coming over to help me move in the morning. If he stays in the house, he’ll need to buy new furniture, because pretty much everything is mine.”

  Jeff laughed. “That’s savage as fuck,” he said.

  “I know it’s petty,” Tracey said, “but after everything he’s done, I don’t care.”

  “So why are you here now?” Emma asked.

  “I know an apology isn’t enough, but I’m really sorry for everything that happened. I don’t have any excuse except I was scared I couldn’t make it on my own. That’s not a good excuse, though, and I know it. I hope one day you can forgive me and let me be a part of your life again. I know you’re angry right now, and I don’t expect that to change anytime soon. I deserve it.”

  Brandon didn’t speak, letting the tension build between mother and daughter. It’d have to be Emma or Tracey who made the next move. He couldn’t do this for them. Not after he’d encouraged Emma to give Tracey a chance and it had backfired in a horrendous way.

  He was done being a buffer. Tracey would have to step up to be the mother Emma needed. Emma wasn’t a child, and he couldn’t protect her from her mother’s bad decisions.

  It was his job as a responsible father to teach Emma to protect herself.

  Emma did not look convinced. She kept her arms crossed over her chest. “How can I believe anything you say after the past couple of years? Especially after what happened at the swim meet? Or Pat not letting me leave your house?”

  “I know, sweetheart. I don’t expect you to trust me now. I hope I can work to regain it, one day.”

  Emma continued to stare at her for another long, uncomfortable moment. “No contact with him once the divorce is done?”

  “I promise. Everything goes through my attorney.”

  “I’m really mad at you.”

  “I understand.”

  “I’ve never not trusted Dad, or Jeff and Stuart. Do you know that? I have more trust in Dad’s husbands, who I’ve only known for about a year, than I do in you. They’re my dads. Pat never was. He never even tried to be.”

  Both Jeff and Stuart visibly puffed up a little in pride over that statement. Sometimes it still took him by surprise, in good ways, when Emma referred to Jeff and Stuart as his husbands or her dads.

  “I know, sweetheart,” Tracey said. “I understand. I don’t blame you. I deserve that, too.”

  “Do you have any idea not only how much it hurt to know you picked Pat over me, but how humiliated I was over his stupid stunt at the pool?”

  Tracey nodded.

  “It’s not like I didn’t try to get along with him. He’s supposed to be an adult and can’t act like one. I consider myself free of any blame here.”

  “I know, sweetheart,” Tracey said. “You were right.”

  Brandon crossed his arms over his chest and waited to see what else Emma might blast her with, but his daughter surprised him. “If you want to eat dinner with us,” Emma finally said, “there’s enough.”

  Brandon didn’t know who was more shocked by that invitation, Tracey or himself.

  To her credit, Tracey looked to him first, to see if it was okay.

  Brandon shrugged. “We can set another place at the table.” He looked at Jeff and Stuart and gave them a silent head tip to go do it.

  “Okay. Thank you. I appreciate that.”

  When Tracey left about an hour later, Brandon was convinced she’d definitely changed, but he wasn’t sure Emma was.

  It was not his job to convince Emma how to feel about her, either. Not anymore.

  When the three men went to bed, Jeff said it first.

  “Do we believe her?”

  “Tracey?”

  “Yeah.”

  Brandon sighed, staring up at the ceiling. “I think so, but I’m not going to tell Em that and risk being wrong. For now, Tracey needs to rebuild trust with all of us. If she follows through what she says she’s doing, then maybe.”

  “I still can’t believe Grace growled at the pool that night,” Stuart said.

  Jeff snorted. “I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t been standing right there and heard it myself.”

  “Talk about being savage as fuck,” Stuart joked. “She’s a little stealth savage.”

  Brandon, in the middle, held up both fists for bumps from them, which they returned.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The next Sunday morning, Jeff and Emma were out in the garage working on the Edsel, since she didn’t have swimming practice. She was supposed to go out to a movie with Grace later that afternoon, but for now she wanted to help him with the car.

  “I’m not complaining that you’re helping,” Jeff said, “But I’m genuinely curious. Why are you so interested in the Edsel?”

  She shrugged. “It’s a cool car. Maybe some people think it’s ugly, but I like it. It’s got character.”

  “Fair enough. This is nothing like you fixing Pat’s car that time, is it?”

  Emma grinned, and the evilly playful twinkle in her eyes reminded him so much of Brandon. “That was sort of to prove a point to Pat, but mostly just to piss him off.”

  “How did you fixing his car piss him off?”

  “Because he couldn’t fix his car, and a girl did.”

  He tried to let the subject go and couldn’t. “Have you talked to your mom since she stopped by?”

  “She e-mailed me. Sent me a copy of the divorce filing. And pictures of the place she’s living now. And her new address.” Emma paused for a moment. “I guess she really did file and move out. It happened.”

  Jeff knew that much because Tracey had texted her new address to Brandon the other day, and Jeff had gone online himself to look up the divorce filing.

  She’d really gone through with it.

  Emma didn’t appear to have much else to say on the topic right now, though. She helped Jeff with the wiring, small enough she was actually able to climb into the engine compartment to do a lot of it with his guidance.

  Today, that was a good thing, because his body hurt like hell all over in bad ways, and his head felt fuzzy, his mind having trouble staying on task. Like he was coming down with the flu and a migraine and had a really bad hangover despite not drinking anything, all at the same time.

  I’ve got to go to the doctor and get checked out.

  He realized Emma had spoken. “Huh? Sorry, what?”

  She stared up at him from the engine compartment, a curious furrow in her brow. “Do you feel okay?”

  Like her father, Emma was a caretaker by nature. He didn’t think her job, as “the kid,” should be to worry about him and his health. So he’d mostly kept quiet around her about how bad he’d been feeling lately.

  “I’m okay. Just a headache. Why?”

  “You don’t look okay.” She climbed out of the engine compartment and stared at him. “Smile.”

  “What?”

  “Please, do it. Smile.”

  “Why?”

  She glared at him. “Just smile for me, Jeff.”

  He did. “Happy?”

  Her eyes widened. “Dad!” she screamed, running
for the door to the house.

  “Em? What’s wrong?” Jeff tried to follow her and somehow tripped over his own goddamned feet and went sprawling. But when he tried to get up, his feet didn’t seem to remember how to perform that maneuver. Combined with the joint pain, and the headache, he felt like he could just curl up and die and that might not be a bad option.

  Emma returned, grabbing him. “No, don’t move. Lay back.” She grabbed a fender cover and tucked it under his head, making him lie back.

  Brandon burst through the garage door. “What—fuck!”

  “What’s wrong?” Jeff asked, but he realized his voice sounded weird, slurred.

  “Call 911, Dad. Tell them suspected stroke. Hurry.”

  Brandon disappeared back into the house as Jeff looked up at her. “Stroke?”

  “Shh, it’s okay. Just stay calm.”

  He reached up to touch the right side of his face and realized it felt…odd. Droopy. Sort of numb. Like it wasn’t responding to commands.

  Stuart exploded through the garage doorway. “What’s wrong?” He dropped to his knees next to them, his eyes widening.

  Brandon returned, his cell phone pressed to his ear, “They’re on the way.” He knelt next to Jeff. “Em, go get his wallet from the dresser in his room, please, and mine from my bedroom.”

  “On it.” She jumped up and bolted into the house.

  “Stuart, go to the street to flag them down when they arrive.”

  “Yes, Sir.” He raced to go do it.

  Jeff stared up at Brandon, trying to focus on his blue eyes and not the panic flowing through him.

  “Stay calm, buddy,” Brandon told him. “EMS is on its way.”

  Emma returned with the wallets and Brandon pocketed both of them. “You and Stuart follow us to the hospital in my car. I’ll ride with him in the ambulance. Bring a phone charger for me, okay?”

  “Yeah, sure.” She ran to go change and get her purse.

  Barely a minute later, they heard sirens approaching in the distance.

  “I’m scared, Master,” Jeff whispered.

  “Shh, stay calm. This is going to be okay.” He refocused on the phone. “Yes, the ambulance just arrived. Thank you.” He ended the call as they pulled up in front of the house.

  Minutes later, they had him loaded on a gurney and were racing to Proctor-Collins Medical Center, with Stuart and Emma following close behind.

  And Jeff wondered if he was even going to be alive by the end of the day.

  * * * *

  Stuart grabbed Brandon’s keys because his car was the easiest to get out anyway. After he and Emma locked the house, they followed only a minute or two behind the ambulance.

  He struggled to stay strong for her and knew he was failing.

  “We called 911 fast,” she said. “They can do a lot for this.”

  “We don’t even know for sure it’s a stroke,” Stuart said. “It could be the flu or something. He hasn’t been feeling well the past couple of weeks.”

  She nodded, but he suspected Emma was doing a lot better than he was right then.

  “How scared were you when they airlifted you off that boat that time?” he asked.

  “I wasn’t scared then,” she quietly said. “I actually felt a little guilty for making the nurse think I was sicker than I was. I didn’t realize they were going to call in a helicopter. But it got my point across.”

  “How are you so calm right now?”

  “We had first-aid training in Girl Scouts,” she said. “Plus I took the lifeguard training class at the pool last summer. If you panic, you can die. Whether it’s someone drowning, or because you’re lost in the woods, or it’s a medical emergency. People who don’t panic have a better chance of survival.”

  “Is that how you recognized the signs of stroke?”

  “Yeah. FAST. Face, arm, speech, time. I heard his voice start to sound funny, which is what made me start paying attention. Then I didn’t get past the drooping face after I made him smile.”

  It only took them a couple of minutes to be reunited with Jeff and Brandon once they reached the ER.

  When Brandon had suggested calling Jeff’s family, Jeff had begged him to hold off until they knew something. The more time that passed, the more things doctors ruled out, and the more certain they seemed that whatever this was, it was serious, but probably not fatal, and likely not a stroke.

  By late that afternoon, after a CT scan, MRI, and other tests, the doctors had ruled out a stroke in favor of Bell’s palsy…except they didn’t know what was triggering it, and it didn’t explain his other symptoms.

  But convinced he wasn’t in immediate danger of dying, they admitted him to a regular room while they waited for more test results to come back.

  Meanwhile, the drooping had eased a little, although it was still noticeable.

  When Brandon tried to suggest Stuart could take Emma home so she wasn’t stuck waiting there, both of them nixed that decision.

  “I’m not leaving, Dad. Not until we know what’s going on.”

  Stuart nodded. “What she said.”

  Brandon arched an eyebrow at him, but Stuart would take the strokes later for defying him, if there were any.

  Finally, Brandon relented. “Okay.”

  * * * *

  Stuart, Brandon, and Emma took up vigil in Jeff’s room while waiting for the doctor to come talk to them. Brandon noticed that Emma didn’t want to leave Jeff’s side, her expression somber but sometimes breaking into tears, just to catch herself almost immediately.

  Jeff’s face still drooped somewhat on the one side, but with the MRI negative for anything like a stroke, tumor, or vascular problem, all they could do now was wait for test results.

  When the doctor walked in, carrying a laptop, he was accompanied by a woman dressed in scrubs. “Mr. Ortiz?”

  Jeff held up his right hand.

  The doctor set the laptop on the rolling table on the bed and stuck his hand out to shake with him. “Dr. Galbreiten. I wanted to discuss something from the admission notes in your file before we go any further. You mentioned you’ve been feeling bad ever since you returned home from your trip a couple of weeks ago. Where did you go, exactly, and when? It wasn’t overseas, was it?”

  Brandon’s heart squeezed as Jeff had to lick his lips before he could speak. While his face wasn’t as droopy, it still seemed like his mouth didn’t want to work exactly right.

  “New Hampshire.” He pointed at Brandon and motioned for him to continue for him.

  “He went to help his sister move a friend of hers four weeks ago. She left her abusive husband and moved here to Florida.”

  The doctor noted something on the laptop. “So you weren’t hunting, hiking, camping, any outdoor activities like that?”

  Jeff shook his head.

  “Why?” Brandon asked.

  “Well, what I’m seeing could easily be explained by Lyme disease, but if he wasn’t outdoors—”

  Stuart gasped. “The tick!” He stared at the doctor. “There was a tick I found on his—” He stared at Emma. “Um…”

  Brandon saved him. “Jeff had a tick in his groin region. It was discovered upon him returning home, so was attached for at least twenty-four hours, best guess. Maybe longer. His sister’s friend lived in a house in a rural area. She was battling ticks on her dogs. Jeff helped her bathe and dip them.”

  The doctor started nodding. “Any kind of rash after you found the tick?”

  “Just some redness in the area, but we never saw a bulls-eye pattern,” Brandon said, “so we didn’t think about it. We thought the redness was from him obsessively going over it with rubbing alcohol and checking the area constantly. You think this is Lyme disease?”

  “I’m almost sure of it now. Not everyone gets the bulls-eye rash, and some people never have a rash at all. If the tests don’t show Lyme, we’re still going to proceed like it is until we figure out something else. It also explains the Bell’s palsy, and your pain and neurological
symptoms.

  “So, good news, bad news. Bad news is, the tests might not show it’s Lyme. They’re still somewhat unreliable. But the good news is, if this is Lyme, which is my primary suspect, now we have a plan of attack. I’m going to go ahead and order some meds to start via his IV, order more tests, and I want to monitor him for at least a day or so before we talk about letting him go home, in case it isn’t Lyme. By then we should have all his preliminary blood work back.”

  Jeff looked like he’d rather do anything but spend more time there, but Brandon took the decision out of his hands. “Whatever needs to happen,” Brandon said.

  Emma cleared her throat. “So is he going to be okay?” she asked the doctor.

  “Hopefully, depending on how he responds to the medication.”

  “But he’s not…dying, right?”

  Now the doctor smiled. “Probably not today, and likely not any time soon.”

  She finally relaxed, slumping back in her chair, a hand covering her mouth as she obviously struggled not to burst into relieved tears. Stuart leaned in to hug her.

  The woman with the doctor was his PA. When he finished making notes in the laptop, he handed it to her and she headed out with it.

  “I’m not going to lie and tell you there’s a magic bullet for treating this,” the doctor said. “Every patient is different. Some respond well and immediately to medication. Some don’t.”

  “And if he doesn’t?” Stuart asked before Brandon could.

  “Well, worst-case, we could be looking at chronic pain and some other symptoms long-term, but I don’t want to get into that right now. Way too soon for that discussion. And you said you’re an auto mechanic, correct?”

  Jeff nodded.

  The doctor shrugged. “Sometimes, it’s difficult for us to tell what’s a ‘normal’ ache and pain versus one linked to Lyme. There are other symptoms, too. We’ll make sure you get a checklist so you can watch out for them. But this isn’t cancer or a stroke or an aneurysm or anything like that. We can hopefully knock it back with medication. Right now, that puts us in wait and see mode.”