I lie back and close my eyes, as her hair brushes over the skin she’s just marked.
~
We’re planning the wedding, not wanting to wait too long, just in case we can’t find a heart for Marcus.
We’re having our rehearsal dinner tonight, and I never thought I’d be excited about it.
We’ll all meet at the church to rehearse everything we need to know for the ceremony. Afterwards, we’re all heading to the nice Italian place just down the road. It has an intimate feel, and the food is great.
When we stop outside the church, both Mia and I can’t keep the huge smiles off our faces. I take her hand, and as we walk inside the church, I think about how the next time we’re here, she’ll become my wife.
We greet Pastor Bowen, and when everyone is here, he talks us through the whole process.
Mia and Rhett walk to the back of the church, and I watch as he throws an arm around her shoulders, ruffling her hair.
“Rhett!” she shrieks, and it makes us all laugh.
Jax is standing next to me, followed by Marcus and Carter.
I smile at Pastor Bowen as he leans closer, and whispers, “Wait until she walks up the aisle on your wedding day. You won’t be smiling then. You’ll be crying like a baby.”
I let out a burst of nervous laughter, which makes the rest of the guys laugh. “Can we come?” Rhett hollers from down the aisle, and it makes us laugh louder.
“Just don’t yell like that on the wedding day,” Pastor Bowen yells back.
“Marcus!” Jax shouts, and it changes the entire atmosphere in the building from happy to panic.
Jax catches Marcus as he goes down. Carter stands shocked as Mia and Rhett run up the aisle. Mia grabs her bag and gets her phone out, hopefully to calling 911.
There are moments Marcus comes to, and during those moments, he doesn’t take his eyes off Jax. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you.” It’s all Jax says over and over.
“I’ve got you.”
~
We’re all sitting in the waiting room.
“Jax,” Carter waits for him to look up from where he’s sitting, his head hanging heavy in his hands. “Are you going to tell us what’s going on?”
Jax shakes his head, gets up, and stalks out of the waiting room.
Mia gets up, grabbing Carter’s arm when he wants to go after him. “Let him go. I’ll tell you.”
“You know?” Carter sits back down as she nods.
Mia sits down next to me and I take her hand, ready to jump in if she can’t tell them.
She looks up at the ceiling and swallows hard.
“When they removed the bullet from his chest, they missed some fragments.”
She takes a deep breath and seeing how hard it is for her, I take over.
“He has lead poisoning. They caught it too late. The fragments have embedded themselves in his heart, and it’s causing infection on top of the poisoning. He’s too weak to survive them going in to remove the fragments.”
I clear my throat. Saying it out loud like that is devastating.
“Marcus is dying,” Mia whispers. She gets up, unable to sit still. “We’ve been trying to get him moved up the donor list. He had a good chance of surviving a heart transplant, but that was last month. Marcus is dying,” she says as she breaks down.