Too Late to Win Me Back, Mr. Billionaire novel · Chapter 3 of 32

Chapter 3: First on the List

Darcy fights for the lungs in front of the waiting room and wins, sits out the surgery with Sawyer, and at dawn Pierce walks in with roses and his assistant.

"Nobody in my family declined anything," I said.

My voice came out far too loud for a hospital at midnight.

People in the waiting area looked up from their phones.

"I'm her family. I'm her only family. I'm her legal guardian for medical decisions. Did the woman who called say her name?"

The coordinator flipped a page.

"She said she was calling on behalf of the Delano family. She had Kit's date of birth and her patient number."

"Who else has her patient number?"

"You. Her doctors. The Foundation office that pays her bills."

The Foundation office.

Kenzie ran the Foundation office's paperwork for Kit. She'd told me so herself, with a sweet little smile, like she was doing me a favor.

At nine forty-one, Kenzie had been lying on a lawn holding her heart.

Hadn't she?

"Where is the next patient?" I asked.

"On her way in from Worcester."

"Is she here yet?"

"Not yet."

"Then Kit is here, and Kit is first, and Kit is the one you called."

The coordinator hesitated.

A man in the waiting area put his coffee down.

Kit lifted one hand off the stretcher.

Her voice was a scrape.

"I don't decline," she said. "Write that down. I accept. Very much. Thank you."

Somebody in the waiting room laughed out loud and then covered his mouth.

Sawyer stepped up beside me.

He didn't touch me. He just stood there, big and quiet, in his canvas jacket.

"Ma'am," he said to the coordinator. "I flew her here through fog that would ground the Coast Guard. If you need a statement from the pilot, you've got one. The family never declined."

The coordinator looked at the three of us.

Then she picked up the phone.

"Get me the surgeon," she said. "Tell him Kit Ingalls is on the floor."

I didn't hear the rest.

My knees went and I sat down on the floor right there by the desk.

Sawyer crouched beside me and waited until I could stand.

They took Kit at two ten.

I kissed her forehead at the doors.

"If I die," she whispered, "you have to burn my sketchbooks. Especially the blue one."

"What's in the blue one?"

"Mostly your husband as a peacock."

"I'll frame them."

"Okay. That's fine too."

The doors swung closed.

Then there was nothing to do but wait.

The waiting room had green chairs bolted together and a television showing a cooking show with the sound off.

Sawyer went away and came back with two cups from the vending machine.

"Hot chocolate," he said. "The coffee looked dangerous."

"You'd know."

"My coffee is a family recipe."

"Your coffee is a crime."

He sat down next to me and stretched his legs out.

His boots were huge. Mine, his old pair, were stuffed with paper towels at the toes.

"Thank you," I said.

"Don't."

"You didn't have to."

"Yeah, I did. My grandfather would've climbed out of the ground to kick my ass."

I laughed.

It hurt. Everything hurt.

We talked about nothing for a while.

About his grandfather's crossword habit, and the year the Hen's door blew off over Penobscot Bay.

About the Coast Guard, and the ten years he spent pulling people out of the water off Alaska.

"Why'd you come home?" I asked.

"Grandpa died. Somebody had to fly the mail."

"That's it?"

He turned his cup around in his big hands.

"Island needs a plane," he said. "You know what happens to an island that can't get off itself in winter."

I did.

Our father had tried to run his boat into Rockland in a January gale because there was no other way to get my mother to a doctor.

Neither of them came back.

Sawyer knew that. He'd been on the search boats.

He didn't say anything else, and I was grateful.

At two in the morning my phone lit up on my knee.

Not a call from Pierce.

A notification. Kenzie had posted.

It was a photo taken through a tall window, the Boston harbor glittering below.

She was wrapped in a man's black suit jacket.

I knew the jacket. I'd had it tailored for him in April.

The caption said: "False alarm, thank God. Scariest night of my life. Some people show you who they really are."

Under it, Constance had already commented a heart.

I turned the phone face down on my knee.

Sawyer didn't ask. But he'd seen it.

"That's the hospital's window?" he said.

"No," I said. "I don't think it is."

I sat there and watched the sky go gray over the parking garage.

At six fifteen the surgeon came out in his scrubs, a mask hanging off one ear.

I stood up so fast my hot chocolate went over.

"They're in," he said. "Both of them. They're pink and they're working. She's breathing on her own lungs right now."

I put my hands over my face.

Sawyer's hand landed between my shoulder blades, warm and heavy, for a moment.

Then the elevator dinged.

Pierce stepped out in a fresh suit with an armful of red roses.

He was smiling.

"Darce! I came as fast as I could."

Behind him, Kenzie stepped out of the elevator in a cashmere sweater, holding his coffee.

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