I cup his cheek. “What?”
“Disneyland. We need to take Portia,” he wheezes out.
“Yes, yes.” I bite my lower lip hard, but it’s no use, so I let the tears flow, my body shuddering and crying with joy.
“You’ll have to leave now.” The nurse enters the room. “He needs to rest.”
I stroke his beautiful thick, black hair. “I’ll be back later.”
CHERYL
Christmas Day/Afternoon
“Yeah, well, I don’t care what you say, I’m not staying in this hospital.” I hear Nick’s impatient voice as I push through the door to his room. “It’s my first Christmas with my baby girl, and I’m gonna be home.”
“Your wife just had a baby?”
“Nah, my little girl is ten, but she hasn’t been in my life until now, and it’s our first Christmas together as a family. I promised her I’d spend it with her, and I’m not letting her down.”
I smile at his words and feel sorry for the nurse at the same time. When Nick wants something, he isn’t subtle, and saying no usually doesn’t work. If anything, it makes him fight harder.
“Let me talk to your doctor, Mr. Sinclair, and we’ll see what we can do, but I really don’t think leaving the hospital so soon after your splenectomy is the sensible thing to do.”
“Then it’s the perfect solution.” I enter the room and give the nurse a sympathetic smile. “I’ve known Mr. Sinclair for many years, and he’s never been known to do the sensible thing.”
The nurse and I exchange a look before she leaves, then I sit on the edge of Nick’s bed and stroke his hand. “You have to be patient.”
“Yeah, right, babe, when has that ever happened. I rested all day yesterday. Bad enough I missed Christmas Eve, but I’m not missing Christmas too.”
“It’s only been a day and a half since your surgery.”
Yeah, and I looked it up on my phone. It says you can go home in two to three days if you’re in good health.” He waves his hand over his body. “And I’m in good health.”
“Yes, but you also lost a considerable amount of blood.”
I sit on the edge of his bed and he squeezes my hand. “I just wanna be home with you and Portia.”
“We can celebrate Christmas tomorrow.”
“How fuckin’ lame is that. You gonna make the poor kid wait till tomorrow to open her presents?”
“I’m just saying that?—”
“What the hell, fucker? You gonna lay around in bed all day?” Samson strolls in the room with a smirky grin. “Shit, aren’t you goin’ into Wicked today?”
“All right, wiseass.”
Samson flanks the other side of the bed, and we exchange a smile.
“When Frank told me what happened, I was fuckin’ worried, man.”
“I was way past worried.” I bite my lower lip, remembering how I collapsed into my father’s arms when he told me.
Thankfully, Izzy was there to soften the blow and stay with Portia while my father and I sped to the hospital. I’d been around some form of violence all my life, but seeing Nick so pale and weak last night hit me in a way I didn’t expect.
“Don’t you know by now he’s too stubborn to let getting stabbed in the gut take him down?” Samson jokes, but his face was just as ashen as mine last night as we sat in thehospital waiting room anticipating the doctor’s news after Nick’s surgery.
“Did you forget I’ve been slashed on the Brooklyn docks, beaten to shit by a New York cop, and took a bullet in Miami?”
