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For years after the divorce, Gwyn came to learn that any call from Owen was almost certainly bad news.
TK got in a fight.
TK overdosed.
TK was shot, he’s in the hospital.
Over and over, until the first words out of her mouth whenever Owen’s name flashed up on her screen were, What’s wrong?
Things have been better in the three years since her time in Texas. Gwyn suspects it’s partly TK’s influence—he’s been more than enthusiastic in getting to know his baby brother, and Isaac has latched onto TK despite only seeing him in person every few months or so. But they’ve talked as well, she and Owen, and they really are doing better. They’re almost like friends now, which is why Gwyn thinks nothing of it when he calls just after she’s put Isaac to bed for the night.
“Owen, hey,” she greets. “What’s up?”
The silence she’s answered with is the first sign that something’s wrong.
The sob that follows is the second.
“Owen?” Gwyn repeats, louder this time, her heart leaping into her throat. She sits down heavily on the sofa as she waits for Owen’s response; there’s only one thing that could make him cry like that, and tears prick at Gwyn’s eyes as she imagines TK hurt again, or worse.
“Gwyn,” Owen eventually manages to gasp out, voice wrecked. “Gwyn, it’s TK. He’s… You need to get here. You need— It’s not like last time. They don’t know if he’s going to— They don’t think— It’s bad. Really bad.”
Owen breaks off, crying harder, and Gwyn claps a hand to her mouth. She remembers well how devastated he’d been when he called about the gunshot, but this a whole other level. Gwyn’s head spins with the potential implications of that and she finds her breath coming in sharp gasps, but it’s Owen’s next words that knocks it from her altogether.
“They think we should say goodbye.”
The rest of the story comes haltingly—someone got angry after his son couldn’t be saved on a call, he came to the firehouse, he attacked TK—but Gwyn barely hears it. Her boy is in the hospital again and this time…this time he might not be coming home. She can’t understand it; she spoke to him just two days ago, they made plans for he and Carlos to visit for Isaac’s birthday, and now…
“I’m so sorry, Gwyn,” Owen finishes. She feels a flash of that age-old urge to scream at him, but she fights it off, not wanting to wake Isaac.
“I’ll be on the first flight over,” she promises, then ends the call, sliding off the couch to the floor. Her phone falls from limp fingers and harsh sobs tear from her throat, muffled by the press of her fist against her mouth.
Enzo finds her there an hour later and immediately takes her in his arms, not complaining about her tears soaking his shirt. When she tells him what happened, he insists on joining her, and Gwyn allows herself to take that shred of comfort and run with it.
She thinks it’s the only comfort she’s likely to get right now.
The next flight isn’t until morning, so Gwyn spends a sleepless night packing and unpacking their suitcases and making phone calls with the firm and her clients to cancel everything for the foreseeable. She has the brief, terrible thought about whether she should pack funeral attire, which almost sends her into a panic attack as reality hits her all over again.
Enzo saves her from it, gently guiding her to bed, but not before she packs the clothes anyway.
Isaac seems to pick up on her mood when they’re hurrying out of the house, remaining mostly quiet aside from the odd question about where they’re going. He perks up considerably when he finds out they’re heading to Austin, babbling about seeing TK, and Gwyn has to blink hard to keep from crying again. Enzo reaches over to take her hand, and he barely lets go until they’re landing in Austin.
The entrance to the ICU looms before her, and Gwyn feels stuck. There had been a part of her, still, that had hoped to find TK miraculously awake and on the mend, like the last time she had made this trip. She doesn’t want to believe that he’s here, hurt, maybe dying.
But he is, and she’s forcefully reminded of that fact when a kind-looking nurse approaches her hesitantly.
“Ma’am? Can I help you?”
Gwyn blinks at her, her brain taking a moment to catch up. “I, um. I’m here to see my son. TK Strand.” She pauses, then shakes her head, cursing herself internally. “Tyler Kennedy Strand.”
The nurse’s entire demeanour changes, a sympathetic smile taking over her face. “This way.” She leads Gwyn through the ICU, then points at a door near the end of the corridor. “Tyler’s room is just there. I promise, we’re doing everything we can for him.”
Gwyn nods absently, her gaze stuck on the door the nurse had indicated. She walks forward slowly, the room seeming to get further and further away until, suddenly, she’s standing on the threshold, and she sees her son.
TK is barely visible, his face half-obscured by the ventilator, half by bruises, and heavy gauze covers his forehead. His arms, resting limply at his sides, are littered with scrapes, and if Gwyn squints, she can just about make out more bandages peeking out from under the hospital gown.
She’d thought that seeing him would make it all real, but she feels separate from everything somehow, only one thought going through her mind on repeat.
This is not my son.
A quiet whisper draws her attention to the figure sitting at TK’s side. Gwyn has to suppress a gasp as she takes in Carlos’s appearance; she hasn’t seen him in person since the wedding last year, and his pale face and red-rimmed eyes cut a stark contrast to that day. He hasn’t noticed her yet, wholly fixated on TK, one hand gently stroking the tufts of hair poking out above the bandage. His lips move and Gwyn knows she should walk away, but instead she finds herself leaning closer, straining to hear Carlos’s words.
“It’s okay, sweetheart,” he’s saying. “I know you’re fighting and I know you’re going to try as hard as you can to come back to us—believe me, Ty, I am praying every day to see those pretty green eyes of yours open again. But I—I want you to know that it’s okay if you can’t. If it gets too hard, if you need to let go, you can. I already miss you like crazy and I really, really , don’t want to live the rest of my life without you, but the thing I can’t stand more than that is the idea of you suffering.
“Come back if you can, but if someday you find you can’t, remember that I love you and we’ll be okay. I promise.”
Carlos sniffs and ducks his head to place a gentle, lingering kiss on TK’s cheekbone. It’s such a tender, intimate moment, but it quickly shatters when Carlos looks up and spots her, his eyes going wide. “Gwyn. I’m sorry, I didn’t realise you were there.”
She waves him off, willing herself to finally step into the room. “I’m the one who’s sorry. I should have said something, but I didn’t want to interrupt.”
Carlos nods, giving her a small, sad smile, which Gwyn does her best to return. She pulls up another chair and sinks into it, reaching out to take TK’s hand. She’s startled by the coolness of his skin, and more tears burn in the back of her eyes.
“What did the doctors say?” she asks, clearing her throat and twisting her body towards Carlos, though her eyes never leave TK.
“That it was a miracle he made it through surgery,” Carlos says, sighing wearily. “Eight stab wounds, too much blood loss, damage to his organs, broken ribs—that’s all bad enough, but they’re most worried about his brain. He took at least two blows to the head, and add that to the fact he wasn’t breathing for a good few minutes… They keep saying not to speculate, but we all know the odds here.”
Carlos’s voice breaks and Gwyn reaches out to comfort him, feeling sick to her stomach at the revelation. Why anyone would do this to her boy, she can’t comprehend; she finds herself both wanting answers and feeling unable to take any more.
Owen chooses that moment to appear in the doorway, looking every bit as wrecked as he sounded on the phone. “Gwyn,” he says roughly. “I’m glad you’re here.”
Carlos moves as if to give them privacy, but Gwyn shakes her head at him, cutting off his protests before he can even get them out. “You stay with him, Carlos,” she tells him. “We’ll talk in the hall.”
They head to a quiet spot not too far from TK’s room, and Gwyn turns to face Owen, holding her arms. “What the hell happened, Owen? Why is our son lying in there, not even breathing on his own?”
A flicker of a frown crosses Owen’s face. “I told you—”
“No, you didn’t.” Gwyn clenches her jaw, staring him down. “You said he’d been attacked, not that some maniac had used him as their personal punching bag.”
A few more seconds pass before Owen relents, sighing. “There was a call,” he starts, voice heavy with sorrow. “A car accident; dad and his kid were trapped inside. We got the dad out but the son was stuck pretty good. It took a long time to free him and by then it was too late—EMS did their best, but he was gone.
“The dad went ballistic, screaming at all of us, but especially at TK. We don’t really know why, but it was probably a convenience thing; TK had been the one to break the news, he was the closest person—the guy wasn’t exactly thinking clearly. He threatened him, tried to hit him—the cops had to arrest him eventually, but you know TK. He refused to press charges, said that the dad was just in shock and that he understood.”
Gwyn smiles a little at that; her son has always been too forgiving for his own good. It’s never come back to hurt him this badly before, though.
Owen pauses, throat bobbing as he seems to work up to the next part. His voice is quiet, and he seems reluctant to meet Gwyn’s eyes. “He showed up at the firehouse a week later—the dad, I mean. He said he wanted to apologise and, I swear, Gwyn, he really did seem genuine. None of us wanted to let him near TK, but ultimately it was TK’s decision. They went round the side of the house to talk; when neither of them came back after twenty minutes, we went looking.
“By that time, the guy was gone, and TK was…” He stops and shakes his head, swallowing hard. “He could barely breathe. Tommy and Nancy did what they could and they got him here quickly, but we have no idea how long he’d been like that before we found him.”
Gwyn’s head snaps up, a white-hot anger flashing through her. “I can’t believe you,” she hisses. “You left our son alone with a man who had already threatened him for twenty minutes , Owen.”
Owen frowns. “I told you, he seemed genuine. And TK—”
Gwyn can’t help it; she slaps him. “Don’t you dare ,” she grounds out, crowding into Owen’s space. “Don’t you dare act like this was his fault.”
“I wasn’t—”
Her arm moves on instinct, but before she can connect again, a hand closes around her wrist. Gwyn turns to find Enzo staring at her, brow wrinkled in confusion.
“Gwyn, what’s going on?”
She shakes her head and takes a step back from Owen, freeing herself from Enzo’s grasp. “What’s going on,” she responds tightly, “is that he is part of the reason why my son is half-dead in there.”
Enzo gapes between them. “What?”
She ignores the question, needing to focus on anything else to keep her anger from overwhelming her. “What are you doing here anyway? Where’s Isaac?”
“He’s with Grace and Judd, they offered to babysit so I could come here. What—”
“Hang on,” Owen interrupts. “What is he doing here? I figured he’d stay in New York with the kid.”
“Isaac is TK’s brother, Owen,” Gwyn says, turning on him again. “And Enzo has just as much right to be here as any of us; he was more of a father to TK than you were sometimes.”
Owen’s eyebrows shoot up to his hairline. “ Him? You’re joking, right?”
Gwyn isn’t sure what happens next, who starts it, but soon they’re all yelling, insults and accusations flying around the ward. There’s a furious nurse heading their way, but before she can say anything, another voice cuts through the argument, quiet and trembling but still somehow powerful.
“Get out,” Carlos says. “All of you.”
They all turn to him, Gwyn’s lips parting in shock. Owen takes a step towards him, holding his hands out in a gesture that’s probably meant to be pacifying.
“Carlos—”
“I mean it, Owen,” he snaps, harsher than Gwyn has ever heard him before. “You all screaming at each other is the last thing any of us needs, least of all TK. The only person to blame in all this is the guy who attacked him, and he’s already in custody; he’ll get what’s coming to him. If TK—” Carlos breaks off, clenching his jaw and staring down at the floor. He closes his eyes for a moment, before breathing out shakily and looking back up at them. “If anything changes, I’ll call you, I promise. But you can’t be here right now. Go, please.”
Carlos doesn’t wait for a response before turning on his heel and going back into TK’s room, reassuming his position next to the bed. Gwyn watches him for a second, nodding when Enzo pointedly takes her elbow.
“He’s right,” she says, directed at Owen. “We should go.”
Owen glares, gearing up to argue again, but he must think better of it as he suddenly slumps, all the energy draining out of him. “Right,” he mutters. “Right.”
They file slowly out of the ICU, closely watched by the hard eyes of the nurse from before. Gwyn spares one last look before forcing herself forwards; if getting here was hard, walking away is a thousand times worse.
Three weeks pass with no change and, crucially, no improvement. Gwyn spends more time with Carlos than she ever has before, and she hates that it’s her son being comatose that has brought the two of them closer. A tentative peace exists between her and Owen and she knows—truly, she knows—that the attack wasn’t his fault, that there was nothing that could have stopped it.
But she can’t help but be angry that, once again, her son was seriously hurt and she wasn’t around.
She takes Isaac to see TK once, when the worst of the bruises have faded a little. She worries that he’ll be scared, and he does seem to hesitate when they reach the room; in truth, Gwyn hadn’t wanted to bring him at all, but he’d kept asking about TK and she’d found herself helpless to do anything but acquiesce.
They still haven’t told him what’s going on. No-one knows how to. All Isaac knows is that TK is a little hurt and he needs rest, and even that knowledge seems to upset him.
Once he gets used to the sight, Isaac stretches his hands out to the bed. “TK,” he says simply, looking pleadingly up at Gwyn.
She hugs him close, trying to smile for him. “TK’s asleep, sweetie,” she explains. “He needs rest.”
“When wake up?”
“I don’t know, baby. I don’t know.”
Three weeks pass, and the doctors start talking about options and next steps . It’s obvious what that’s code for—they want to pull the plug. They’re told to take all the time they need to discuss it but, ultimately, the decision will be Carlos’s, as TK’s husband and next of kin.
Gwyn knows what choice he’s going to make; it’s the same one she, or anyone else in his position, would make.
That doesn’t make it any easier to bear, for any of them.
Gwyn finds him in the hallway, bent over with his head in his hands. She goes over and quietly sits in the chair next to him, placing a comforting hand on his back.
There’s a long silence before Carlos sniffs and turns to her, his face the picture of devastation. “I don’t know how I’m supposed to do this, Gwyn,” he whispers, voice cracking. “How am I supposed to just give up on him like that?”
She shakes her head. “You’re not giving up on him, Carlos. You’re letting him go.”
“I don’t know how to do that either.”
“None of us do.”
Silence again, but this time, it’s Gwyn that breaks it first. “Listen, Carlos, I know this is hard. God knows I wish none of us were even here. But we are, and we have to do what’s best for everyone, including TK.”
“I know that,” Carlos admits. “I just don’t want to lose him.” He closes his eyes and leans into Gwyn, allowing her to wrap him in a hug. “I wish we had more time.”
Gwyn’s heart breaks all over again, and she squeezes his shaking shoulders. “We’ve got time,” she says, though she knows that’s not what he meant. “As much as you need.”
The sob she’s answered with tells her there’s not enough time in the world for Carlos to say goodbye to TK.
The call comes in the middle of the night. Dread pools in Gwyn’s gut as she accepts it and lifts the phone to her ear, her hands trembling.
“Owen?”
“Gwyn. TK, he — he woke up. It was only for a few seconds, but he woke up, Gwyn. The doctors said it was a miracle; they think he might actually recover.”
Gwyn gasps, a sob crawling up her throat as the news sinks in. It’s everything she’s been praying for ever since that first call, and all she can think about now is getting to TK.
“I’ll be at the hospital in fifteen,” she says. She ends the calls and raises her hands to her face, wiping away the tears beginning to fall from her eyes.
Maybe this nightmare is finally coming to an end.
TK is off getting tests when Gwyn arrives, but she’s finally allowed back in the room an hour later, Carlos and Owen on her heels. The ventilator has been removed, replaced by a nasal cannula, and his eyes are open—barely to slits, but Gwyn doesn’t care. TK is awake and alive, and that’s all that matters.
As soon as she’s in the chair by the bed, she reaches out for him, her touch feather-light as she strokes his cheek. “My brave boy,” she whispers wetly. “My brave, brave boy.”
TK’s head rolls on the pillow so he’s facing her and he mumbles something that’s probably meant to be a greeting, but the words jumble together and come out as gibberish.
Gwyn thinks it’s the most beautiful sound she’s ever heard.
They’ve all been briefed about the risks of brain damage and all the potential lasting consequences which could impact the rest of TK’s life. But right now, as she holds TK’s hand with Carlos on his other side and Owen at her back, Gwyn chooses to take solace in the constant rise and fall of TK’s chest and the heart monitor beeping out a steady rhythm.
There’ll be enough time for worry later; for now, her son is alive, and Gwyn can’t think of anything else that’s more important.