Lennon Reborn Page 3

  Nik sighed and rubbed his hand along his jaw, but then nodded in understanding. Somehow that burned worse than the bile. “I wanted to know if there was anything we could do during our downtime . . . together . . . you know to go visit her grave if she has one, or maybe—”

  “No.” That was all he had. If he said another word, he’d lose his shit.

  I can’t.

  It’ll break me.

  I don’t know where she is.

  Nik put his hands up in the universal sign of surrender. “I don’t know what to say to you because you’ve never told us all the details of what happened before you arrived at the group home, but . . .” Nik sighed and looked out of the window at the swirls of snow. “Fuck, Lennon. I just want to help. In some way. Ever since you mentioned a sister, my heart has fucking ached. And I want to do something, anything, so you’ll know I’m here for you.”

  Ignore the pain.

  You deserve it and worse.

  No.

  You don’t deserve anyone to be there for you.

  “Take your pity somewhere else, Nik.”

  One day he’d push them too far. Push them out of his life for good, he knew it.

  Just like he knew they’d give anything to have their original drummer, Adam, back. But Adam had committed suicide while at their group home, and when Lennon had inherited Adam’s room and his drum kit, he hadn’t realized he’d just agreed to spending the rest of his life chasing a fucking ghost.

  Fuck, his life sucked.

  He took a deep breath to slow the racing beat of his heart as anxiety tightened its hold and opened his notebook.

  A lifetime of second

  The power of first

  A choice to replace

  A blessing or curse?

  Occasionally he wondered what the point was of collecting chains of lyric ideas. Not a single word of any of their songs had been written by him. The guys had asked him if he wanted to collaborate, but he’d refused. If he cowrote, he’d get higher royalties, a bigger share of the profits that he wanted the others to have, but worse, he’d have to expose what he carried around inside himself, something he wasn’t ready for.

  He looked up to find Nik craning his neck toward the notebook. Lennon slammed it closed.

  “One day, I hope you’ll trust me enough. I wish you felt like you could share shit with me, instead of just blowing us off.” Nik glanced out of the window, and a look of utter horror came over his face. “Holy shit,” he yelled. “Hold on to something! Cover the kids.”

  A loud bang echoed through the bus, which began to move sideways, tipping as it went. Lennon’s seat began to crumple as easily as paper as a bright orange dump truck rammed into the side of the bus.

  Lennon’s heart lurched, adrenaline surging through him. Screams filled the cabin. Metal creaked and groaned. His seat finally crumpled under the pressure, the window shattering onto him as the truck pulverized the side of the bus. Nik slid to the end of the bench seat, and Lennon tried to follow, holding on to the table to get out of the truck’s path.

  Cries sounded all around him.

  “Jordan, the baby—”

  “No!”

  “Kendalee, no—”

  “Nik, help me—”

  Pixie screamed as she was thrown from her seat, falling forward and hitting her head on the corner of the table. She slumped to the floor.

  The bus continued to tip, now at a forty-five-degree angle. There was still a small chance it would stay upright, but if the truck didn’t stop, they were going over, and it still didn’t show any sign of slowing down.

  “Fuck!” Lennon reached desperately for something, anything, to hold onto. He tried to get to Pixie but he was thrown from his seat, smashing into Nik.

  “Pix! Fuck. Can you get to her, Jordan?” Panic filled Dred’s voice as he tried to cover Petal with his body but couldn’t hold the position.

  Jenny sobbed.

  “Arwen!”

  Elliott yelled out in pain.

  “I can’t get to her.”

  “We’re going to tip.”

  “Fuck, cover the baby.”

  Voices blurred together.

  The coach gave an ominous groan as it finally gave up fighting the truck and gravity and fell toward the blacktop.

  Time slowed as they were thrown from their seats. He felt weightless for a moment, and then a jarring thud to the ribs knocked the breath out of him. Darkness followed.

  Seconds, minutes—who the fuck knew?—passed before a burning pain flooded his body. He tried to focus on where he was. His legs were tangled on something, the strap of Nik’s laptop bag. And it felt as though the bus had landed on his chest. It was impossible to draw a breath through the excruciating agony.

  He tried to move his arm, but it felt like a thousand knives pressed deep into his skin. He vomited from the pain.

  Fuck.

  He looked to his arm and could see bone. The spins returned, and he was sick again.

  Fuck.

  Shudders racked his body.

  Voices filtered through.

  “Jenny, oh fuck, sweetheart. Stay still.”

  Nik.

  Lennon couldn’t see him properly. Everything was blurry.

  A child cried, but he couldn’t tell which.

  He gasped in another breath, wincing as his ribs fought against the movement.

  “Elliott’s leg is broken!” he heard Kendalee shout. From his position on the floor he could see Pixie. Her eyes were closed and she was still. Jordan held her hand tenderly.

  A cold sweat covered his skin, the bus suddenly frigid as air weaved its way toward him through the broken glass. He moved his gaze to the ceiling. Fuck, he could see the gray sky through the windows. What he wouldn’t give for just a moment of sunshine.

  What he wouldn’t give for someone to hold his hand.

  What he wouldn’t give to just be released from all of it.

  His breathing became harder, his heart rate slowing.

  The sun wasn’t going to come.

  And he was alone.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Holy shit.

  Georgia’s heart raced as she turned off the engine and leapt out of the car. The truck had missed her by only a few feet. Just a couple of seconds more into the drive, and she would have been killed.

  But she couldn’t dwell on that now. A bus was lying on its side, wheels still spinning, and screams were coming from inside. Years of training kicked in as she sprinted to the vehicle, thankful she hadn’t changed out of her scrubs. They’d give her instant credibility so she could assess injuries and triage.

  Two men got to the bus ahead of her and ran a full lap around the vehicle.

  “Is there a way in?” she shouted. “I’m a surgeon. I can help if I can get in there.”

  “I don’t see anything,” the man in the blue sweater called back. He turned to the other guy. “Give me a foot up onto the side of the bus. I’m going to see if I can get the door open. We can always lift people out through there.”

  A third man ran toward the dump truck. The engine was still revving.

  Precious time was passing. The stats played in her head. More than fifty percent of those who die due to traumatic brain injuries sustained in motor vehicle crashes did so within the first two hours of their injuries.

  Georgia ran back to her car. With trembling hands, she popped the trunk, tore the wrapping off her brother’s birthday present, and pulled the axe out of its custom-made leather sheath.

  She ran toward the bus, but slipped on the snow, smacking into the young man who stood closest to the vehicle.

  “Shit,” she gasped, and as she righted herself, she noticed the man’s phone. “Jesus Christ. Stop filming, and call nine one one!”

  The two men now stood atop the side of the vehicle, trying to force the door open. Georgia hurried to the actual roof. Most vehicles had either a sunroof or moonroof, and this bus was no exception. She could see feet kicking at it, but it was buckled and w
ouldn’t open.

  She knocked hard on the window of the sunroof. “Stand back!” she yelled. When it looked as though the person had moved out of the way, she swung the axe as hard as she could at the tempered glass. It shattered, leaving a rough hole. Someone attempted to climb out with a screaming young child in his arms. The girl’s face was covered with blood, but a quick look told Georgia that it was just a scalp wound that would need nothing more than stitches.

  “What’s your name, sir? How many people are inside?” she asked, putting the axe down by the door. She unzipped her coat and pulled her surgical pen flashlight from her top pocket, where she always kept it. She turned it on, lifted the child’s eyelid a little, and shone it into the toddler’s eyes. Good pupillary light reflex.

  “I’m Dred. My fiancée and baby are inside. Ten, I think. Never did the math.”

  Glad that the child’s two cranial nerves weren’t showing any effects of trauma, she was eager to now get inside the bus.

  “I’m going to need you to stay outside so I can go look. We should get her to the hospital for stitches, but let me check the others first.”

  The man was clearly torn between being outside with the little girl and going back in. Neither wore coats, and both were shivering, so she tossed the man her keys. “That’s my car over there. Go sit in it so you don’t freeze.”

  He gripped her hand, the look in his eyes telling her that he’d lose everything if everyone left on board didn’t come through this. “Please get my baby out. Get all of them out.”

  A woman with strawberry blonde hair crawled out of the bus, and two people rushed to the door to help her. The woman held her neck and nursed her ribs. “Did you bang your head?” Georgia asked her. “Were you unconscious? Any dizziness?”

  “No,” she cried, “but my fiancé, Elliott, I think he broke his leg.” The woman looked back toward the shattered opening as, with Herculean effort, a man pulled himself along on his stomach and out through the sunroof, his foot bent at an awkward angle. Shit, they needed to get these people to the hospital.

  As if hearing her prayer, the sound of sirens grew louder. Backup was on its way, but she didn’t want to wait.

  “We need paramedics in here!” somebody yelled from inside. “Where the fuck are emergency services?”

  Without waiting further, she squeezed through the sunroof into the bus. “I’m Dr. Georgia Starr,” she said. Inside, mangled personal items were scattered across the floor of shattered glass windows. A baby’s rattle and a notebook lay by her knees.

  Quickly, she crawled over to a woman with a shock of purple hair who lay next to a large bearded man who kept turning between the woman on the floor and the screaming baby in the car seat he’d obviously detached and placed next to him. “Are you all right?” she asked loudly, pinching the woman’s earlobe to try and rouse her. She didn’t want to shake her, in case there was spinal cord damage. Georgia checked for a pulse. Never assume lack of consciousness—or death.

  She placed her hand on the woman’s forehead and tilted her head back, looking for signs of normal breathing—chest movement, breath on the back of her hand. Next, she put her ear to her chest, but without a stethoscope she couldn’t tell whether there was any gurgling in her lungs. As much as she wanted to stay with the woman, she couldn’t. She looked to the bearded man who was trying to comfort the baby.

  “How do we know if she’s okay?” he asked quietly. “I mean, how do we know nothing happened to Arwen, to her brain?”

  The screaming and the car seat were enough to make her move along. “We’ll check at the hospital, but the car seat probably saved her life. Are you okay?”

  “My legs took a bit of a hit, but don’t worry about me. Go check on Jenny and Lennon,” he said, tipping his chin toward the back of the bus.

  “Keep an eye on her breathing. If it changes, tell me.” Georgia ignored the bloody mess her knees were becoming as she hurried to where a man with long black hair clasped a woman’s hand to his chest. She repeated the checks she’d done on the little girl outside and tried to ignore the screams of the baby. Screams were good. Noise was good. They showed consciousness.

  “I try to move, and my back hurts,” the woman said, tears in her eyes.

  “Stay where you are,” Georgia said. “We need a board to move you. And you?” she said to the man with her. “You okay?” Some people might think it was a waste of time to pose this question to someone upright and talking, but head injuries weren’t always that obvious.

  “I’m fine, please . . . just help her.”

  She could feel the pain vibrating through the man, but she needed to be a surgeon. “The best thing you can do for your friend is to leave her and get out so the paramedics can get in quickly to treat those who need it. From the sound of the sirens, they’re almost here.”

  “I can’t leave her, she—”

  “Pix!” The man who’d been first off the bus, Dred, was trying to crawl back in.

  “Get off the bus and give the medics room,” she snapped.

  The man with black hair gently kissed the woman, murmuring something to her softly. There was something deeply intimate about the gesture, but Georgia couldn’t let emotions get in the way of creating space in the bus for the emergency-services team. Finally, he let go of the woman and crawled toward Dred. The ambulance’s lights flashed through the sunroof. “Come on, man. Let the medics get in.”

  Blood made its way toward her from the back of the bus. A lot of blood. She’d been so focused on the front of the bus that she hadn’t noticed anybody in the rear. Georgia hurried along the windows, glass crunching beneath her shoes, until she found a man with masses of blond curls lying on the floor, eyes wide open, looking at the ceiling, unshed tears glistening in his eyes.

  Quiet ones worried her.

  As did his arm, which was trapped between the metal holding the bench in place and the fractured material of the side of the bus. As soon as the firefighters could free him, he needed to be off the bus and on the way to a hospital. His bones were shattered, and his arm was within a whisker of being severed. Vascular surgery wasn’t her field of specialty, but she knew enough to doubt that arterial reconstruction would work. Even the greatest surgeon would struggle to put it back together.

  His eyes, a warm hazel with a rich brown ring around the iris, flicked to hers. “Save the others first,” he whispered fiercely through gritted teeth as his body shook. Hypovolemic shock was a real possibility. With so much blood loss, he was certainly at risk.

  She grabbed a large sports bag and placed it under his legs. They should be elevated even higher, but that would do for now. She looked around and found a shirt tossed in the corner. Using the sleeve, she tightened a tourniquet around his bicep.

  He groaned in agony.

  “The others are all going to be okay,” she said, but cast a glance down to where the bearded man was still holding his hand an inch above the purple-haired woman’s nose, checking her respiration as if his life depended on it.

  Georgia ripped off her coat and tucked it around the man of the floor. The air was sharp against her skin. Without thinking, she used her hand to move the stray hairs from across his face, and the man gasped. She checked his pulse and could tell the blood loss was getting dangerous.

  “What’s your name?” she asked as she shone her light in his eyes. The tightness in her gut relaxed a little when they responded as they should.

  The man hissed in a breath. “Lennon.”

  “Do you know what day it is?” she asked.

  “April . . . fucking . . . Fool’s . . . day.”

  “Well, Lennon,” she said calmly, “the paramedics are almost here, and we’ll get you out of here soon.” She reached for his uninjured hand and squeezed it between hers. There was a spark of static between them, white and powerful. His life force. The thought was overwhelming.

  “Let me go . . .”

  She released his clammy hand immediately. “I’m sorry, I was just trying to
give you some comfort. I—”

  He reached for her hand, gasping. His fingers were large against hers. “No . . . you should . . . let . . . me . . . go.”

  His eyes rolled closed.

  No! She wouldn’t let him die. She tapped the side of his face until his eyes opened. “Wake up. I am not letting you go anywhere,” she said, knowing that any semblance of the professionalism to which she usually clung was slipping away. She believed patients’ stories about tunnels of white light, and seeing loved ones, and auras dimming. And she knew everyone needed to be allowed to leave if they really felt it was their time. But there was something so different about Lennon. She could feel his life force vibrate from his hand into hers, as if she taken hold of an electric fence. The energy was slipping away from him, and she would do anything to put it back in him.

  He tugged her down toward him, so his lips could brush against her ear. “I’m . . . tired . . . of my life. Just . . . let me . . . go.”

  His eyes closed, again.

  She rested her forehead on his. “Your work here on Earth isn’t done, Lennon,” she said, tears burning her eyes. “And I am not going to let you go.”

  * * *

  “I’m hungry, Jennifer,” he complained, tightening his hands around his stomach and curling into a little ball to ease the ache.

  Jennifer took something out of her mouth. She handed the sticky brown mess through the bars of his crib, and he put it in his mouth. Sweetness flooded his taste buds, and he drooled as he chewed.

  “I found it under the cushion of the sofa. It’s a caramel. She’ll never notice. I only chewed it a little bit because I couldn’t bite it in half to share with you.”

  Lennon’s heart pounded. “You’ll make Momma m-mad.” Just like last time, when she’d screamed about how he shouldn’t have been out of his crib, and that the food they’d taken from the cooler was meant to last three days.