“I don’t know what it’s called, Addy, just that they were discussing it earlier.”
Shaking my head rapidly, I felt the panic hitting me again. “I don’t do medication, Marcus. I-I don’t touch the stuff.”
A tap to my hand with the IV in it brought my attention to Jackson. “Why don’t you take medication, Addy?”
Rolling my lips together, I sighed and told him the story.
“Jesus Christ,” he clipped, running his hand through his hair and looking up at his twin. “You know about this shit?” Marcus nodded his head once. “Fuck’s sake. What’s wrong with people.”
“I woke up hours later in the hospital, not remembering much aside from some blips here and there.”
“And you don’t take medications because of that?”
“I’m scared of not having control over myself,” I whispered, staring down at my hands as I fiddled with the blanket covering me.
Marcus sat down next to my thigh and pulled the hand nearest him into his lap, softly running his fingers up and down my arm. “Do you take Ibuprofen and Tylenol?”
“When I have to. I know they won’t affect me badly.”
“Then we’ll let the doctors know that’s what you can take and make sure they understand why.”
He always made things so easy. Truth be told, I dreaded the day I hurt myself bad enough to need something stronger.
Like he was reading my mind, Jackson winced. “What are you going to do when y’all have kids? Sadie wanted every drug in the hospital. As a witness to Bronte being born, I’d have been the same way. Did you know—”
“Enough,” Marcus barked, looking paler than he had seconds before. “I thought we agreed never to discuss it again.”
“You agreed. I didn’t say anything.”
Looking between them, I felt a smile twitching. “What did you supposedly agree on?”
Rubbing his hands together gleefully, Jackson leaned in.
“Well, after the birth, this one thought it was a beautiful and awesome miracle of life, so he decided to watch a video about the birthing process. It ended up not being so beautiful, because he passed out and hit his head, and then got stonking blotto and rang me up crying.”
Leaning forward, Marcus hissed, “I wasn’t crying, you clown. I was just speechless, and it affected my voice.”
“You bawled like the baby you watched being pushed out of a vagina,” Jackson drawled back, smirking at his brother. “Tell me, how’s the whole jelly and jello thing going?”
Marcus gagged, pressing his fist against his mouth.
Before Jackson could taunt him further, the door opened, and a deep voice clipped, “What did we tell you about getting into strangers’ cars, Addy? Jesus, even Adia remembers that lesson.”
I was so shocked by who it was and so flipping glad he was home, I began crying again. It wasn’t just my brother who’d turned up, but Adia and Nonna came back, Marcus’s brothers and their wives arrived, and even his parents walked in, just in time to see me wiping my nose on the first thing I could get my hands on—the hem of Jackson’s t-shirt.
It wasn’t how I’d have chosen to meet Ronnie and Wyatt Townsend-Rossi. Given that my parents hadn’t arrived yet, the hug his mom gave me and the way she snapped at Jackson to bring his t-shirt back until they could get some tissues went a long way to helping me through it.
And my brother was home safe. No words would ever be able to describe how that felt. How big the relief was that he was okay, and how much I hadn’t known I needed him—even though I hadn’t been awake long enough to think about it.
That was until one pissed off Malaysian mama bear stormed through the door, yelling in Bahasa and flinging her arms around while Dad did the same in Italian.
Instead of running out the door and heading for cover or hiding Marcus from the insanity of the Valtolina family, the Townsend-Rossis all stood there, nodding along and agreeing.
And, no, they didn’t have a clue what was being said.
As far as first meetings went, it was better than I could have hoped for.
Over the next two days, I had tests run on me and was monitored closely by the doctors, but they never once went beyond Tylenol and Ibuprofen after Marcus explained the problem to them.
For those two days, I was fine. Maybe I was too focused on my health, and what the hospital were doing, I don’t know, but I was kind of proud of myself for coping so well.
It wasn’t until I got home that the real side effects of what’d happened made themselves known when we’d gotten into bed, and Marcus turned the light out. I doubt it was even a minute later that the panic attack hit, and I began freaking the hell out, struggling to even inhale through how tight my throat was.