strong. Strong is a good thing—Max will need your strength—but this is one of those times where you’d better call in the cavalry. That’s harder for some people than others. Just promise me that when people offer to help, you’ll say yes.”
“Call for backup.” She was familiar with the concept. And yes, she’d always had a bit of trouble calling for backup before. Hadn’t she just rebuffed Alex’s multiple offers to help? It made JJ wonder if all ICU nurses had Leslie’s high level of intuition.
Leslie smiled. “Exactly. Promise me you’ll call for backup. And that includes me. I happen to know the coffee from the machine on the fourth floor is the only stuff in the hospital worth drinking.” A nursing assistant knocked gently and then slid the glass ICU door open to reveal a cart full of bandages and such. “Stan and I have some less than dignified tasks to do to your brother. Why don’t you take this chance to go get yourself some breakfast and make some calls? Max is out cold for the time being, and he’ll want you here, on top of your game, later.”
Whereas a few minutes ago the room felt small and claustrophobic like the inside of a combat vehicle, it suddenly felt wrong to leave Max. Her presence had turned into some kind of vigil to her, as if she were keeping Max alive—just one more responsibility she was taking on for his sake. How quickly she had catapulted herself back into big-sister mode, absorbing Max’s self-inflicted catastrophes as some sort of failure on her part to keep him in line.
Leslie caught her hesitation. “Thirty minutes. It will do you good. Believe me, he’s not going anywhere and he’s very stable. Go on.”
“Okay.” JJ had to mentally command her feet to walk toward the door. Her head knew Leslie’s advice was sound; it was her heart that wouldn’t swallow the truth.
The glass doors closed behind her with an antiseptic swish, and JJ blinked in the stark light from the hallway windows. When had the sun come up?
Again, she forced her feet to move. It felt like her shoes echoed too loudly against the tiled floor and calm-colored walls until she pushed open the double doors that led out of the ICU unit. There, on the square navy couches she’d already come to hate, sat Alex. He looked like she felt, but he raised one of the two cups of coffee he held. “It’s awful, but I thought you could use some.”
Intrusive, but offering help. JJ could practically feel Leslie pushing her along toward the sad paper cup and its lukewarm contents. “Sure.”
Chapter Four
They drank the horrid stuff in silence. Alex had a million things to say, but all of it seemed so trivial in the face of the circumstances. They had sat in silence several times together out on the dock, but it had felt much different. That silence had been warm and soft and effortless. This silence was cold and sharp, and holding it up was exhausting. Finally, just to break the quiet, Alex said, “I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah,” she muttered. The weariness in her voice was worse than the silence.
“I want to help, but I don’t know how. Can you think of anything you need?”
JJ put down the cup and squinted her eyes shut. “I need Max to be okay.”
Ouch. He’d been able to get word that Max had stabilized, pressing his position at Adventure Gear into a scrap of information from a nurse at the desk. She’d refused to tell him anything else and had insisted he shouldn’t ask again. “He will.” Of course, Alex had no basis whatsoever for the pronouncement, but it seemed downright cruel to say anything else.
“They’re telling me he’ll definitely live. It’s more of a how question at the moment.” JJ’s eyes shot open, fire blazing behind the turquoise currently leveled straight at him. “It is a how question. Like how did this happen? Max knew how to climb. How did he fall?”
She stopped just short of saying, “Whose fault is this?” He answered it for her as carefully as he could.
“I don’t know all the facts yet. People are scurrying all over the set trying to find things out, and I’m hearing conflicting reports.” That wasn’t exactly true, but Alex also knew that the only thing worse than no information was the wrong information. “It could’ve been a safety issue with the climbing site. Or the rain. Or bad knots or someone doing something they weren’t supposed to, or all four. People tend to get stupid when the cameras start rolling. And not just the contestants.”
She leaned against the couch’s padded arm. “Max always had a gift for stupid ideas, especially with an audience.”
Alex was sure WWW feasted on guys like Max. “Took all the double-dog dares as a kid?”
“Every one. Mom used to say he stayed up nights looking for ways to hurt himself.” Her voice caught on the last two words.
Alex knew the type. Specializing in extreme gear as they did, those types were a big part of AG’s customer base. Sam was one and had made a career out of knowing just how to push thrill seekers’ buttons.
“I’m trying to find out what I can, but WWW isn’t really sharing lots of information with us right now. Even though we’re a major vendor, I don’t have as much clout as you’d think. It may be you learn things before I do, seeing as your Max’s family.”
“Why isn’t someone from WWW here?”
“There’s someone on the way.” He’d met the guy they were sending and had taken an instant dislike to him. Way too smooth. “You probably won’t like him much.”
“I skipped straight to hating WWW an hour ago when they wheeled Max out of surgery.” She looked at him. “Why are you still here? Don’t you have to go cover your corporate tail or something? Get legal on the phone?”
Alex didn’t really know why he was still here. Did people think his leaving was just ditching blame, “covering his tail”? Her eyes told him that was exactly what people thought, and he couldn’t refute it, could he? He did have a bad habit of ditching tough situations, and something told him that had to stop. It struck him that if he didn’t stay—here, now—he never would. “I didn’t think it was fair to leave you alone in all this.”
That remark shot something through her spine. She sat up, defensive and prickly. “I’m a combat fire specialist. Army. I’m not some little girl whose hand you have to hold.”
Funny, he’d wanted to do just that, take her hand, out on the dock or even in the helicopter when she’d let her head fall against the glass. “I know you can hold your own. I just don’t want you to have to.”
“I have friends.” Defiance honed a sharp edge to her voice. She’d told him just the opposite out there on the docks—said that other than her brother and one cousin she didn’t know people in Illinois and she rather liked it that way. He didn’t doubt that she had friends who would love to be there for her, but the simple truth was she didn’t have friends nearby, which made all the difference in a situation like this. Still, he was sure she’d never admit that.
“Okay.” Alex drank his awful coffee and stared at the industrial carpeting. They both sat in silence for a minute, then she let out a sigh that seemed to ease some of the iron from her spine.
“I didn’t mean to snap at you.” She pulled the elastic from her hair and then began nervously working it into a quick braid down her back. Efficient and out of the way. “That
