Read Online Yours: A Standalone Contemporary Romance by Jasinda Wilder - Free Book Online Page A

relative term. My brain was on, but my heart was a useless lump in my chest. I was unconscious. If they switched off the machine, I’d die.
    Which is what should have happened.
    I should have died at the hospital in LA.
    So why the fuck am I awake, in a hospital bed?  
    Because I am. It’s taking me some time to sort through things, to wake up, to take stock of reality.
    And reality is, I’m alive. There’s a catheter—fuck those things, and the indignity of them. A bunch of wires trailing to monitors, keeping track of HR, BP, pulse-ox, all that. But no heart-lung machine. No pumps whirring and sucking and plunging. No mask over my face, no tubes down my throat. I mean, there’s a cannula in my nose, but that’s typical for post-op care.
    It’s hard to move.  
    There’s a cockload of pain, not localized to anything in particular, just…everything hurts.
    Wait.  
    Post-op care?  
    No.
    Fucking no.
    I can barely get my finger to slide across the bed and hit the call button.
    In less than a minute a middle-aged woman with brunette hair done up in a tight bun bustles in; all nurse efficiency and sharp friendliness.  
    “Mr. Montgomery. Good to see you awake. How are you feeling?”
    My voice, when I speak, is a rough, sandpapery rasp. “A…alive.”  
    “And isn’t it wonderful?”
    “No.”
    She looks up from checking my charts. “No? What do you mean, no? It’s a miracle you’re alive. That they found a heart to match you, and that your system has accepted the new organ…it’s a miracle. You are truly fortunate, Mr. Montgomery.”  
    “I signed a fucking DNR.”  
    “Your mother argued, successfully it would seem, that you signed the DNR under mental and emotional duress, and that you weren’t in a position to make such decisions for yourself.”
    “It was my goddamn decision.”  
    “You’ll have to take that up with God, and your mother.”
    “Fuck God, fuck my mother, and fuck you.”  
    “Well now, that’s not very nice. I’m just doing my job, Mr. Montgomery, and my job is to help you get well so you can get out of here. So you can get mad at me for situations I had nothing to do with, and we can be at odds, or you can realize that I’m just the nurse and that I’m here to help, and we can get along famously.”
    “I don’t want to be here.”  
    “That much is obvious. So it’s in your best interest to cooperate with me. Then we can get you out of here and you can get on with your life.”  
    “I don’t have a life to get back to.”  
    “Then you get to start one.” She smiles at me, and the smile is warm, bright, and—like everything about this woman—sharp. “You have a new lease on life, Lachlan Montgomery. It’s a cliché phrase, but it’s grounded in a very real truth. You were supposed to die. You should have died. You did die. And now you’re alive. You have a strong, healthy new heart in your chest, and your whole life in front of you.”
    I swallow hard. Nothing makes sense. My emotions are all haywire. Wild, manic, frenetic, a hurricane of so much bullshit I can’t grasp at any one thing. Everything hurts, but it’s not a physical pain. It’s emotional pain.  
    I’m alive. And I don’t know how to fathom that.  
    I duck my head, stare at the thin white blanket covering my lap, and blink back the bizarre tears that burn my eyes and blur my vision. The nurse bustles around me, checking charts and paperwork and monitor leads, not looking at me. Giving me privacy to deal with my embarrassing emotions. God, I’m fucking crying? What the fuck? I don’t cry. I never cry.
    What the hell am I crying for? I’m alive. I should be glad.  
    I spent my whole life expecting to die. Waiting to die. Knowing I’d die.
    And now I’m alive, and…
    Now what?  

    *   *   *

    Trinidad, California  
    Three and a half months later  

    I refused to see Mom through the entire post-op care process.  
    I refused to let her into my room. When she came in anyway,