Winners by Danielle Steel Read Free Book Online Page B

but now she didn’t know what to say. It was too much for her. None of it made sense. How could he die from being hit by a car? Jimmy had survived it. Why hadn’t he? She knew none of the details, but they didn’t matter. All that mattered was that Tim was dead. It was unthinkable as she looked into her children’s eyes and started to cry.
    “Something terrible happened last night. I don’t know how it happened.” She looked at Jimmy as she said it, and pulled him onto her lap. He sat there and clung to her. “Daddy was killed.” She sobbed the words, and all three of the other children put their arms around her and hugged each other and began to cry. It made no sense. It couldn’t be true, but it was. She always worried about Chris driving at night, but not Tim. She had assumed he would be there forever. She had never thought something would happen to him. They sat in the kitchen, crying and holding each other for a long time.
    And then she called Ben and told him and asked him to come to the morgue with her. The police said she had to identify him, but Ben did it for her—she didn’t want to see him like that. She wanted to see him and touch him and hold him, but she didn’t want to remember him dead. She couldn’t bear it. She couldn’t believe he would never come home again.
    They went to the funeral parlor and made the arrangements, and then Ben took her home. He told her not to worry about Lily Thomas, that he would go back to the hospital and check on her and cover for Jessie—she should stay home with her kids. But Jessie was too responsible to let him do that, and said she would go to the hospital with him. She owed it to her patient and her father. Ben said he’d pick her up, and at five o’clock she left the children and told them she’d be back soon. Chris’s girlfriend had come over, and two of Heather’s friends. Adam was playing a video game, unwilling to believe what had happened, and Jimmy was asleep in his parents’ bed. Jessie had been lying next to him before she left the house again with Ben.
    When they got to the hospital, Lily had been moved from the recovery room to the ICU. The breathing tube was out, and she was sedated, but she was awake. And medically she was doing well. Her father had been in to see her, and the nurse with Lily said he had gone to the cafeteria to get something to eat. Jessie checked Lily’s chart and prescribed several medications. She was satisfied with her progress, and Ben promised to check on her again that night.
    They were just leaving, when Lily’s father stepped out of the elevator and looked at them both with a distraught expression, but he spoke to Jessie, not Ben.
    “I don’t believe what you told me this morning,” he told her firmly. “You may have gone as far as your capabilities, but that doesn’t mean that someone else, with greater skill, can’t repair the damage that was done.” For a moment Jessie didn’t answer, and then she nodded. She was willing to let it go at that. She knew full well that no doctor was going to be able to restore full function to Lily, but Bill Thomas wasn’t ready to accept that yet. In time he would—he would have no other choice. “I’m lining up consultations with other doctors in London and New York. I heard about a neurosurgeon in Zurich who specializes in spinal cord injuries. And I want to take her to Harvard.”
    “I understand,” Jessie said with a nod. “I probably would too. Dr. Steinberg will come back to see her later.” He saw that Jessie looked vague and distracted, and he interpreted it as fear of the other consultations and what they would say.
    “And what about you? You’re not coming back tonight?” He looked outraged, and Jessie was apologetic.
    “I’m sorry, I can’t. I’ll come back tomorrow.”
    “Don’t you think that as her neurosurgeon, you should see her tonight too?” He was instantly hostile and aggressive.
    “If she has a problem, I will,” Jessie assured