Chapter 17

Trent heard the words the attending physician, Dr. Smythe, was saying, but they seemed like a foreign language. They wouldn’t compute in his brain.

Heart attack

Quadruple bypass

Won’t survive the surgery

Kidney failure

Ash sat next to him in Edward’s hospital room. Thea hadn’t arrived yet, and Phin and Lucy were too far away to come on short notice. Trent stared at his father, currently sedated and lying in a hospital bed, and he didn’t know how he was supposed to feel.

He should feel sad, shouldn’t he? But mostly he felt numb. It all felt like a bad dream. It felt just like when Bea had overdosed: a nightmare he’d wanted to claw his way out of, but he couldn’t even move.

Ash was grim, his jaw clenched. He kept tapping his foot, and Trent almost told his brother to be still. The tapping got faster, louder, and it was like a hammer in Trent’s temples.

“Can you not?” he finally said, not even looking at Ash.

Ash grunted and got up to pace instead.

Ash had always been the siblin