Ready to Die by Lisa Jackson

Author:Lisa Jackson
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: USA
ISBN: 9781420118513
Publisher: Zebra Books
Published: 2013-07-15T22:00:00+00:00

Dan was the same.

Still in ICU.

Still in a coma.

Still under guard.

Still hooked up to machines, monitors, and tubes, his head bandaged.

Come on, brother, you can pull through this.

Cade stared down at the man he’d looked up to all of his life and willed him to get better.

He’d been here for nearly an hour, but if he’d hoped to see any small sign of improvement, he’d been disappointed. There was one more bed occupied now, a teenaged girl who, he’d heard, had been in a car accident that had taken the life of her boyfriend. She, too, was comatose, didn’t even know yet that he was dead.

The place was depressing and Cade was struggling to be patient. When he’d first asked, and then demanded, answers of the nursing staff and a doctor who the nurse had called in, he’d found out little more.

The platitudes hadn’t helped. No soft smiles or understanding looks could make him feel the slightest bit better.

He’d heard: “Your brother is doing as well as can be expected.” “He hasn’t been under care all that long.” “We’ll know more in the next few days.”

But no one had been able to give him the assurances he needed. At an intellectual level, he understood, but at a pure, raw, gut-emotional level, he was frustrated and scared as hell.

The truth of the matter seemed to be that there was no real prognosis, that every day Dan survived was a good sign, and that, for now, his condition was on a wait-and-see mode. No more surgery was scheduled and, Cade guessed, they were in for the long haul.

“I’ll see ya, Dan,” he said, and walked out of the big, sterile building where his brother clung to life.

He told himself to suck it up. Deal with the situation. He’d lived on a ranch most of his thirty-eight years. He knew about accidents and life and death. But he couldn’t convince himself to just let things take their course, that Dan was in the best medical facility in the area, that, by the hands of skilled surgeons and the grace of God, his brother would pull through.

Cade needed to do something, anything to help. As he drove away from Missoula, the lights of the town appearing in his rearview mirror, before the snow and distance extinguished them, he thought about all the times Dan had come to his rescue. From the time Dan had dived into the swift river to pull his nearly drowned brother Cade to safety when he’d been ten, to keeping his mouth shut when Cade had snuck out as a teenager, Dan had always been Cade’s savior. Hell, Dan had even taken the blame for a fender bender that would have canceled Cade’s insurance when he’d just started driving. Even as adults, Dan had tried to hold his younger brother’s rash, impulsive streak down. Hadn’t he counseled Cade against pursuing Hattie? Hadn’t Dan wrestled him down, put him in a choke hold, and told him that chasing Hattie while she

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