The Last Second Chance by Lucy Score
28
Jax put in a full day on the farm and a full night in the brewery. He didn’t know whether to be grateful to or pissed off at Carter and Beckett for taking advantage of his current predicament by burying him in work. It kept him physically preoccupied, but his mind and his heart never wavered from Joey.
He trudged in the front door well after midnight and was greeted by Meatball’s soft “woof.” The dog’s white-tipped tail thumped a lazy rhythm against the floor.
“What are you still doing up, buddy?” Jax whispered, shucking off his coat and stuffing it in the closet.
The beagle slowly worked his way up to his feet and wandered over for scratches. “Come on. Let’s have a snack,” Jax said, leading the way back to the kitchen. He pulled his laptop out of his bag and set it on the island before peeking into the fridge. He grimaced at the disgusting tofu scramble leftovers that Carter and Summer had for dinner. Vegetarians, he thought with distaste.
He settled on a mixing bowl of cereal and shared some—minus the milk—with Meatball in his food dish. Jax settled on a barstool and reached into his bag for his charger, but his fingers brushed an envelope instead. He pulled out the folder that held the stack of his father’s short stories.
It seemed every time he read one of his father’s essays, some nugget of truth resonated with him. And he could really use his father’s words of wisdom now more than ever. Unwinding the red string, Jax slid the stack of stories out. He’d been slowly shuffling the essays he read to the bottom of the pile.
He paged through until his father’s still familiar handwriting scrawled across the paper caught his eye.
There was no title, only the opening line…
Today was the hardest day I’ve ever endured as a father.
Jax knew without a doubt what day his father was talking about, and guilt simmered in his gut. He and his dad had never spoke of what happened that day, and there was part of Jax that didn’t want to expose himself to his father’s take and pain on the accident.
But there was a louder part, the writer in him, who needed to know. Needed to peel back the layers to look at the whys. So he read on. It wasn’t a carefully crafted story like the rest of his father’s writings. This was a stream of consciousness, a purging.
Today was the hardest day I’ve ever endured as a father. A typical day was followed by a typical evening. Phoebe and I were washing up the dishes after a late dinner. Beckett was out with the girl-of-the-month, as we’d come to call his dates, and Jax was due back from his date with Joey any minute.
And then the phone rang.
Phoebe answered it with her cheerful “Hello, Pierces.”
And I saw the color leave her face in an instant.
I didn’t know which son it was. But I knew it was one of them. No other news delivered could make my wife’s heart stop like that.
Was it Carter in Afghanistan? His first deployment was a source of pride and terror. He’d been gone long enough that I’d stopped being afraid of the telephone ringing. But it all came back now.
“It’s Jax,” Phoebe said, her face white as the clean sheets she’d just put on his bed that afternoon.
The phone tumbled from her grip, and I took it. Who? What? Where? I peppered the police on the other end with rapid-fire questions.
Alive. Jax was alive. That’s all they would say, and they were even cagier on Joey’s condition. Yes, she was in the car. Yes, she was going to the hospital with Jax. But that’s all they could say.
We grabbed keys and were out the door in a heartbeat. Silence reigned in the car, but we’d known each other too long to not hear the unasked questions that echoed in the other’s head.
How badly were they hurt?
How had it happened?
What could we have done to prevent it?
What if… What if the one thing neither of us could bring ourselves to think happened? What if we lost him? What if we lost her?
At the hospital, Phoebe jumped out while I parked. The visitors lot felt like it was miles away. And that long walk under lonely streetlights and that full summer moon was an out-of-body experience.
In front of me, the glow of the Emergency Room sign. The answers I sought were through those glass doors. But I wasn’t sure I was ready for those answers. Wasn’t sure I could live with those answers if our son had been taken from us.
It’s funny the things you think of in moments like that. A whirl of chaos, a windmill of every nightmare imaginable, shows itself. I saw a funeral, a wedding, scars, and blood. I thought about Jax when he was seven and I taught him to drive the tractor. His mechanical aptitude had quickly surpassed either of his brothers’. His love of all things with engines. That car that he was so proud of, the one that the cops told me was now wrapped around a tree just past Diller’s pond.
I thought of the way he looked at Joey during their prom pictures. It had made me drag him outside for just a minute to remind him of the merits of being safe. He’d rolled his eyes at me then. “I know Dad. We’ve got big plans together. I’m not going to screw that up with some accidental pregnancy.”
I’d never put much stock in high school sweethearts. Until Jax and Joey. There was something about them that seemed older than time. Joey had been a part of the family since she and Jax met in kindergarten. And when they stopped tiptoeing around what everyone else already saw and started dating, I’d sent up a silent prayer that it wasn’t a huge mistake.
Because by that time, Joey was already the daughter of my heart. A serious little girl, she’d grown into a driven young woman. She would lend a hand whether it was in the fields or at the kitchen sink without anyone ever asking her to. She knew what she wanted—horses—and how she was going to get there before most others her age had their driver’s license.
Her seriousness focused Jax, who would rather party with the lacrosse team than work on a history paper. The semester they started dating, his GPA went up, and he made the honor roll for the first time ever. And in return, he gave her the fun and silliness that she’d always seemed to be on the outside of looking in. He carved out a place of belonging for her.
They balanced each other, and I hoped that it could stay that way without anyone getting hurt. Only now someone had.
I walked into those hospital doors not knowing if I’d lost family and future.
Phoebe is a woman you want on your side in a crisis. She was waiting for me by the desk. Joey’s parents, April and Forrest, came in behind me and, before anyone said a word, Phoebe was dragging us back through a set of doors marked Do Not Enter. She’d found them, she said. Her face was grim, and I knew the news wasn’t good.
She marched us through the chaotic maze of a busy emergency room. Past families facing the worst night of their lives. Past relieved parents who were just told good news. Past exhausted nurses who were long over the end of their shift.
“They’re in there,” she said, stopping at a curtained-off corner.
Forrest pushed past us and yanked open the curtain. When I saw Jax standing on his own two feet, I went weak in the knees. When he turned to face us, and I saw the blood…
There is nothing like being a parent. A piece of you is walking around the earth maybe with your eyes and your wife’s smile. And that piece of you has to grow up and build his or her own life, feel the pain of that life, and find the joy in that life. When you see that piece of you hurt and scared, it is a horrible, helpless feeling. Because you just want to fix it, swoop in and take over and solve the problems and protect them from this hurt.
But you can’t. Because they aren’t just a piece of you. They are a human being learning how to survive and thrive in this world. And if you clean up every mess and bandage every scrape and shield them from every hurt, you take that self-reliance away from them. And that is what turns children into good men and women.
Jax was holding gauze on his forehead with one hand while gripping Joey’s hand in the other. His t-shirt was missing, and I had a sick feeling it had to do with the blood that was drying on his chest and torso. Blood that wasn’t his.
Joey’s eyes were closed. Her face whiter than the sheet under her head. Her right arm was being worked on by two women in scrubs. A bag of blood hung from her IV pole.
“My little girl.” Forrest stared down brokenly at his daughter.
April was crying silent tears at the foot of her bed, and Phoebe, my rock, had her arm around her as if to keep her from dissolving.
“I’m sorry Dad,” Jax said, not daring to take his eyes off of Joey’s face.
“It’s not your fault. Everything is going to be okay.”
“She hasn’t woken up yet,” he said. His thumb stroked hers over and over again, silently willing her to wake up.
Forrest pressed too close to the doctor and nurse and was ordered back.
“She’s my daughter. I’ve more of a right to be here than him,” he said, pointing at my son. Jax gave no reaction to the words.
The doctor, a woman in her early thirties, placed the last suture in Joey’s arm before turning around on her stool to face him.
“I understand that you’re upset, but now is not the time.” Her voice was calm and cool, and I could see why she was in emergency medicine. The voice of reason in a world of chaos.
“Is she going to be okay?” April’s whisper of a voice asked the one question we all needed the answer to.
“Are you her mother?” the doctor asked, stripping off her gloves and tossing them in a bin on the floor.
“Yes.”
“Joey’s lost a lot of blood. But Jax here did a good job with a makeshift tourniquet at the accident. Without it, I don’t know if she would have made it. She’s going to have a couple of transfusions, and I think once she has that blood in her she’s going to wake up. Recovery will take a while, but she will recover.”
I saw Forrest working hard to swallow some of the emotion that must have been choking him. Felt the wave of hope and relief that crashed over all of us at the news. All of us, except Jax. There was no sign that he was even hearing our conversation, his attention never wavering from Joey as if he was willing her to wake up.
“Graduation is in five days…” April trailed off.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s out of here and walking across that stage,” the doctor said, laying a cool hand on April’s shoulder.
“She’ll… she’ll wake up then?” Forrest asked, still staring at his daughter’s ghost white face.
The doctor turned back to him. “She will.”
Forrest bent from the waist to catch his breath with a relief so strong it nearly swept him off his feet. In that moment, we shared something that could never be put into words. We’d come within millimeters of losing something irreplaceable, and the knowledge that everything could go back to normal was like a summer rain after weeks of drought. Being faced with the thing you didn’t have any control over and then rewarded with normal? It was a humbling experience. Unfortunately not for all.
With Joey stitched up, the doctor finally convinced Jax to let her take a look at his forehead. He sat in a chair, never releasing Joey’s hand while the doctor made quick work of the cuts on his head and hands.
With the good news, Forrest channeled his energy into attack mode.
I can’t remember all that was said, in the heat of the moment, but voices—including mine—were raised, and Forrest was one second away from demanding that security remove Jax from Joey’s bedside.
April was in tears again, and Phoebe was spitting fire.
It was that moment that Joey decided to return to this world. She opened her eyes with a flutter and told everyone to keep it down. She held Jax’s hand in one of her own and her father’s in the other. And once again helplessness was redirected into relief.
It was the middle of the night before Jax was officially released and Joey was admitted. We stayed on to see her moved to a room, and something happened in those hours between heartbreak and hope that changed the course of our family.
I was returning with hot, stale vending machine coffee for all when I saw Forrest and Jax having a heated discussion in the doorway of an empty waiting room. I walked in on the word “lawsuit.”
He laid it out for us. If Jax didn’t leave Blue Moon, Forrest would file a lawsuit against us. And to make sure his daughter stayed away from Jax, he wouldn’t pay for her to go to Centenary with him. Anything to keep them apart.
I thought it was just the hurt and scared talking. But Jax saw something else. He saw Joey’s dreams dashed. He saw a drawn-out legal battle for his family. He saw only one way out.
I tried to talk him out of it. We would figure it out, I told him. Leaving everything he’d worked for, everyone he loved was an unfair punishment for something that wasn’t his fault. But Jax was adamant. I saw that it was his moment, his choice, and he was doing what he thought was best for the people he loved.
In that moment, I saw my son clearly standing on his own two feet taking—too much—responsibility for his life. If I stepped in, discounted his feelings, and tried to protect him by sweeping up the mess, it could do even more damage. If Forrest did sue, if he won, how responsible would Jax feel then for the outcome? How would Jax and Joey survive with their families so bitterly divided? He’d already thought of these things and weighed them unacceptable. He’d rather face the unknown of starting over on his own than taking his family into a battle that he didn’t want us to fight.
I was proud and devastated. The profound concern for others beyond his eighteen-year-old self was a side his mother and I had only caught glimpses of. But now, stripped and raw, he was ready to take this burden on himself for the good of us all.
I didn’t tell Phoebe, and that I know I’ll come to regret. When we drove home, the air was heavy with unspoken words. Phoebe gave Jax a long hug and told him she loved him before she went upstairs to bed. Jax went upstairs to pack. I waited for him in the kitchen second-, third-, and fourth-guessing myself.
I wanted to tell him not to go. That I didn’t want him to go. I had been prepared for the separation of college in the fall, not the sudden and life-altering separation that was about to happen tonight. But then a quiet voice whispered deep inside. Jax could get out. Unburdened from any expectation and responsibility, Jax could build a life of freedom.
Over the years, I had faced nights where I wondered quietly what would be different if I hadn’t started this farm? If I wasn’t carrying the weight and burden of this place? What would my life look like had I just driven south or west? Would it be easier? Better? Brighter?
I never pondered these thoughts too long. I was married to this land. I had a wife to love and a family to provide for, to enjoy, to watch grow as if they too were crops to be harvested. I loved it. But it is hard. Harder than I ever could have imagined. Balancing, juggling, hoping, influencing, sweating, challenging Mother Nature to a duel year after year.
But Jax could start over. He wouldn’t be the Jackson Pierce whose story and family everyone knows. Whose eighteen years were well documented and expectations pinned on him from birth. He wouldn’t be the other half of a couple, at least not yet. It was one of the dangers of love so young. Being half of a couple often comes before being a whole person.
Maybe it was selfish of me to let him go. To let him do what I never had the guts to do. To drive him to that bus station, wrap him in a hug so tight I thought we were almost the same person. I tucked what he and his brothers had affectionately dubbed the “oh shit fund” money into his hand. And when he tried to give it back, I told him that if he was starting over, he was doing it with an investment from me. Because I believed in him. And I did.
I sit here in the dark of the kitchen waiting for Phoebe to wake up and read the note Jax left her. I don’t know if she’ll forgive me, and I’m not sure how much of my role I can confess to her and still live to see noon. My heart hurts for me, for them, for Joey, and for Jax. But it’s also soaring for him because I know that this is just the beginning for him and he will be back. And I’ll be all the prouder for it.
The piecesof that night that Jax hadn’t known he’d lost came rushing back as he rested his head in his hands. The relief on his parents’ faces when they pulled back the curtain and it wasn’t him in the bed. The overwhelming feelings that swamped him when Joey’s beautiful brown eyes opened, disoriented and hurt but alive. And that sick slide into guilt, knowing he’d put her in that bed, knowing he’d put his family in danger of losing it all.
To read his father’s take on it all was a painful and beautiful kind of therapy. His dad had never blamed him like Jax had feared he had. He’d been proud. Since that night there had been a nagging question in the back of his mind about why his father had let him go. And now he knew. And knowing meant healing.
A plan began to form in Jax’s mind and with it, hope in his heart. He scanned a copy of his father’s story with his phone and sent it to the printer upstairs. He fired off a middle-of-the-night email to Ellery. Then he opened his screenplay and got to work.
