Over the Edge

-10-

Somehow – Crane wasn't sure how he managed it – Adam managed to catch Daniel before he hit the floor.

The next several minutes were chaotic. Adam was down on the floor with Daniel in his arms, calling his name in a frantic voice. Charlie Lewis commandeered a phone from the ER desk, calling someone to report that Guthrie was still missing. Tom Barrett kept apologizing to a white-faced Hannah and a fuming Brian, saying "I swear to you, we didn't realize Guthrie was up there!"

Crane stood there in the middle of the storm.

The hospital staff eased Daniel out of Adam's grasp and slid him onto a stretcher. Crane stepped forward to help Adam to his feet. He gripped Adam's arm tightly, feeling his trembling.

Or was it his own he was feeling?

In the middle of all this, a stout woman with steel-gray hair appeared. "I need the adult responsible for Ford McFadden and Evan McFadden to come with me," she said firmly.

Adam's eyes were wide and filled with anxiety. He opened his mouth but didn't say anything.

Crane drew in a deep breath, forced the fear, the tension, out of his mind and voice. He shot a quick glance at Brian, who nodded his head and stepped closer.

"You go on with her, Adam," he said. "Crane and I'll stay here with Hannah."

"But Daniel—" Adam started, staring after the stretcher as it disappeared behind the double doors.

"We'll be here for Daniel," Crane said through numb lips.

Then suddenly the room was quiet again.

"I'm going to head back to the accident site, look for Guthrie," Charlie said.

"I'll go with you," Tom announced. He shook his head. "I can't understand why nobody has seen him. That area is crawling with people – has been since we got the call. Why wouldn't Guthrie let somebody know he's there?" His eyes met Crane's. "Are we – is there anywhere else he could be? Maybe Daniel is just confused?"

Crane's heart leapt. Maybe so. Maybe Guthrie went home with another kid from the Blue Boy, maybe Eddie Barton was there…

But reality, cold and solid, crashed onto him. No way. There was no way Evan or Ford would have let someone else take Guthrie when they had promised Adam they would take care of him. And Daniel had said Guthrie was there, although Crane was confused as to how Guthrie ended up with Daniel. Was the youngest McFadden hurt? If he'd been in Ty McClain's car, how could he not be hurt?

Daniel said he left him in the Jeep. He had to mean our Jeep. So why didn't anyone see him there? And where did he go?

Where is Guthrie?

Adam was still somewhere else – filling out forms and signing paperwork, Crane assumed – when the ER doctor came out to talk to them about Daniel. She was reassuring. "We're monitoring him closely, he's shocky, a little hypothermic, but I don't think it's anything too serious. Sounds like he's had a rough night," she said, managing a smile.

"He passed out!" Brian was upset and as usual, it came out as pissed off about something.

The ER doctor – she had long dark hair and strong features, Crane tapped her as Native American. He'd taken a couple of Anthropology classes in college – he'd always been interested in it and if things in his life had been different he probably would have majored in it – and something about the shape of her nose made him think she was probably from one of the southwestern tribes. Maybe Apache? If so he gave her credit for her making it through medical school. Unlike the "civilized" tribes of the Midwest with their oil money and bingo parlors, Apache lived in a dirt poor existence on their reservations.

He was aware his thoughts were drifting from topic to topic, intellectualizing rather than letting the true horror of the night take hold of him. If he thought – if he let himself think too much about his younger brothers – Evan and Ford both now in surgery although they'd been assured Evan had been breathing on his own before they wheeled him upstairs; Daniel unconscious and Guthrie missing – he'd fall apart himself and he couldn't afford to do that. Crane had to stay strong, keep it together.

With that in mind, he gripped Brian by the shoulder, giving him a little shake until he backed down and stopped looming over the doctor. Not that she seemed intimidated, as a matter of fact she was holding her own with the hot-tempered McFadden brother, she actually seemed amused by him. Maybe when all this is over he'll ask her out for a date, Crane thought, and then shook his head. What was wrong with him? His thoughts were all over the place.

Brian seemed to finally realize that Crane still had a hand on his shoulder and he whirled around. "What?" he barked.

Brian's in-your-face attitude had stopped scaring Crane before he was three. He met his brother's eyes evenly. "You're not mad at the doctor," he pointed out.

Brian glared at him for a moment, then his face fell, the fear and the anguish clearly marked on it. He nodded and turned back to the woman. "I'm sorry for giving you a hard time," he told her.

"That's all right," she said soothingly. "I think you're entitled. But as far as Daniel is concerned, I'm sure he'll be fine."

Not if anything has happened to Guthrie. Crane knew Daniel almost as well as he knew himself. He tended to take responsibility for things that weren't his fault. But in this case – judging from what Daniel had said before he's scared the hell out of Crane by collapsing - Crane knew Daniel had done what he thought was best with Guthrie. Honestly, Crane would have probably done something similar. What else could they have done? Daniel had left Guthrie someplace he thought he would be safe. But that didn't change the fact that apparently Guthrie hadn't been safe there. It didn't change the fact that their baby brother was missing, alone, out there somewhere. And if something – if Guthrie was injured, if something had happened to him – no one in the McFadden family would ever be all right again. Especially not Daniel.

He became aware that the doctor was still talking. "We'll get him warm, hydrate him, and keep an eye on him for twelve to twenty four hours. He'll be going up to a regular room in an hour or so. One of you is welcome to stay with him until then." She gave them all a quick, professional smile and then left, disappearing behind the double doors.

"You should go be with him," Brian said. Crane looked up to realize that his older brother was staring at him with concern. "Are you all right?" Brian asked.

Crane nodded. "I'm fine." He remembered Ford coming home from high school the other day telling that old joke. I'm fine. I'm frustrated, insecure, neurotic and emotional. FINE!

Oh God, let him be okay. Please. Let them all be okay.

"I'm going to head out there, look for Guthrie," Brian announced.

"I'm going with you," Crane said.

Brian hesitated. "Are you sure?" he asked carefully. "You could stay with Daniel. You know how he gets. Adam's going to have his hands full."

Crane felt a brief, strong pull to go to Daniel now, to see him, to make sure he was all right and to assure him everything was going to be fine. But he knew where Daniel would want him to be now, and it wasn't here at the hospital.

"Daniel would want me to go look for Guthrie," he said quietly. "And Adam will manage."

He'd almost forgotten his sister-in-law was standing there until she said, "Adam will want to go look for Guthrie, too."

"He can't," Crane heard Brian echo his own words a second later.

"Why not?" Hannah asked. "You're both adults, too, couldn't one of you stay and –"

Crane was surprised she didn't understand, and then belatedly thought Well, why would she? Unlike her husband, Hannah had not spent the last ten years being a parent to six brothers.

"He's their legal guardian," he explained. "Ford and Evan's. Daniel's too, I mean, he's eighteen now but he's still in high school. If anything – if any decisions have to be made… he's the one who has to make them."

He could tell, looking at her face, that she'd never realized just what being the oldest in this family entailed. Her eyes widened. "I didn't think – I mean, I knew he was their guardian but – the two of you—"

"We helped," Brian said quietly. "But ultimately, it's all on Adam. Big burden to carry." He managed a smile. "But now he has you."

It was probably the nicest thing he'd said to Hannah since she joined the family. Crane saw her eyes fill with tears before she nodded, blinking rapidly. "But there are so many people out there already."

She was right. Crane had no doubt Charlie Lewis and Tom Barrett had summoned an army of people to help in the search. But none of them were McFaddens. None of them were Guthrie's big brothers.

"If Guthrie is… confused," Crane said, carefully keeping his fears that Guthrie could be badly injured to himself. "He could be conscious but maybe hiding, he's got to be in shock too." Not to mention he's been out there for hours and it's so cold tonight…

"What Crane means is Guthrie might not answer if people he doesn't recognize call his name," Brian broke in. "But he knows my voice. And Crane's. If he hears us –"

Hannah nodded. Then a determined expression filled her face. She straightened her shoulders. "He knows my voice, too. I'm going with you."

"No, you're not," Brian said firmly. He gripped her shoulders, turned her so he was looking directly into her eyes. "Hannah, I know you want to help. But, you need to stay here. Go sit with Daniel." He looked up, and Crane could read the torment in his eyes as he said, his voice fading away, "If anything… if there's bad news about Evan or Ford… please, Hannah, you need to stay. Adam needs you to be here. With him."

7Bf7B

Brian gripped the steering well so tightly his fingers cramped. Consciously forcing himself to relax, he let out a long sigh. "We did the right thing, right?" he asked Crane. "Telling Hannah to stay there at the hospital."

"We did," Crane reassured him. "Adam needs her."

"Yeah," Brian breathed. He noticed he was clenching the steering wheel again. "If anything happens…" he couldn't finish the sentence.

"They're going to be fine. They have to be." Desperation coated Crane's voice.

Brian didn't say anything. What was there to say? They both knew that things didn't always work out the way you wanted them to. If anybody on Earth knew that, it was the McFadden boys. But surely God couldn't be this cruel. They'd lost enough. Hadn't they? Losing their parents when they were still kids themselves, wasn't that enough?

He had to stop thinking about Ford and Evan in surgery. Broken. Bleeding. A car wreck.

At least there wasn't a fire, a voice whispered in his head.

He shut that voice down firmly. He had to think of something else. Desperate, he suddenly blurted out the first thing that came to his mind.

"You remember, not too long after Hannah moved in, she went got it into her head to push Ford into inviting Cleo to the dance?"

Crane chuckled a little bit. "I remember the fight between them that night and that Adam ended up sleeping on the couch!"

Brian had to grin at that. He and Guthrie had sure ragged on poor Adam that night, too. But that wasn't what he wanted to talk about. He searched for the words carefully. "She was so mad at him. Especially since he was ragging on Evan at the same time about not quitting rodeo school."

"Yeah?"

"Well, but the thing is, Adam was right about Ford. He was right about both of them. Why didn't she see that?"

After a silence, Crane said, "I don't think I get what you're saying."

"Well, you know how Ford is. He's so shy. Remember when he first started school and he was scared to even get on the bus if Daniel and Evan weren't there? And how his teachers said he would talk in a whisper if he talked at all?"

"I remember that. But… he started school right after Mama and Dad—"

"I know," Brian interjected. "But he's still shy. Asking Cleo out, not to mention that whole thing about making out in the barn, that was probably like asking him to climb Everest. That's just not who he is. But Evan is different. Evan does have to be pushed. We all know that."

"We do. But really, how would Hannah know that then? Like you said, they'd just got married." Crane's tone lightened. "She was probably still trying to memorize our names!"

"Right. I'm not saying she should have known. I'm saying why didn't she realize Adam knew them better than she did?"

"I don't know," Crane admitted.

Silence fell between them. Finally Crane shattered it. "We're going to find him, right?"

Brian didn't hear the voice of his mature, college graduate brother next to him. He heard the voice of the frightened younger brother who was terrified life was falling apart and that he couldn't stop it. And he answered that voice the way he always had. "We'll find him," he said, his voice strong, sure.

We have to find him. Brian couldn't bring himself to even consider they might not.

7Bf7B

Hannah wandered restlessly around the large waiting room.

When her husband had appeared in the doorway of Daniel's cubicle to discover Crane and Brian had gone to join the search for Guthrie, he'd just nodded. He looked a wreck, red rimmed eyes and tousled hair. She'd moved to embrace him but he had stepped back. "They're going to move Daniel up into a regular room now," he had said. "I'll stay with him. The nurses said you would probably be more comfortable up in the waiting room outside surgery."

She'd protested but he'd held firm. So now she found herself all alone in this giant space. Well, not all alone. There were a couple of children asleep on one of the sofas; their father – at least she assumed it was their father – sat in a chair nearby staring blankly into space. She briefly wondered where the mother was, if she was the one in surgery, before she looked away. It seemed wrong to watch them, to intrude on their fear, when she was barely managing her own.

She thought, again, of going back down to ER and joining Adam, or finding where they'd moved him to. But one of the nurses down there had said something to her. "Daniel will probably be waking up soon. Your husband needs to be with him. And he needs you to be close to the other two boys."

Which did make some sense, but Hannah wanted – needed to be with Adam. Needed to feel his arms around her, reassuring her everything was all right. But that wasn't what Adam needed right now. Adam needed her to be strong. Strong enough for him to lean on her.

There was a nurse – or maybe she was a volunteer, although she doubted volunteers came in this early – sitting at the large desk at one end of the room, in front of the double doors that probably led into the operating suites. Hannah thought briefly of going over and asking her if there was any news about Evan or Ford, but she had introduced herself to the nurse earlier and surely she would have let Hannah know if there was anything to know.

A plaque on the wall next to the banks of elevators proudly announced the waiting room had been recently redecorated and refurbished with a grant from "The Waller Family Trust." Hannah didn't know who the Waller family was, but she didn't like their choice of color palette – or more likely their decorator's choice of color palette – at all.

The whole waiting room was done in monochromatic gray. The soft chairs and sofas were a light gray while the carpets and window dressings were darker, almost charcoal. The cube-shaped tables scattered about were stark white, like the walls. One whole wall of tinted windows looking down at the parking lot added to the chilly effect. The only artwork were large photographs of the hospital in various stages of existence and development. The photos were, of course, black and white. The whole room seemed cold and unwelcoming.

She remembered the fast tour of the house Adam had taken her on on their wedding day. Yes, it had been a mess, with clothes and musical instruments lying about everywhere, and laundry overflowing the small laundry room, and dust on every surface, but still… something about it said home that day, and every day since. Her home.

Large TVs were mounted close to the ceiling in three corners of the waiting room. Each one was turned to a different channel, and all muted. One appeared to be some kind of all-news channel, one showed an old black and white movie, and the third one, the one closest to the little family in the corner, showed what seemed to be a really long commercial on endless loop. Something about kitchen knives, apparently.

She had to smile. She hadn't watched much television since getting married. That was so different for her. From the time her father had died and her mom had moved them to Denver, the television had been her closest friend, a voice to keep her company the long nights when she was alone in their small apartment, her mom out on a date or at a class or at work. Those two years she'd been in college, living first in a dorm and then in a sorority house, the TV had been playing constantly, even when she was in bed. She'd learned to need that noise to rest properly. When she had decided to quit college and travel around, the first thing she'd bought for her tiny trailer – before even pots and pans or toiletries – had been a television and one of those new VCRs.

Both were still in the trailer, parked out back behind the barn at the ranch. When she'd first moved in, she and Adam had talked about bringing them into the house, maybe setting them on top of the old cabinet TV in the living room, the one that apparently hadn't worked in years. But it never seemed important. There was a small portable in their bedroom, that got two clear channels and three fuzzy ones, and whenever one of the boys had to watch something for school, they'd camp out there. The only one who ever asked to watch more was Daniel, who liked to watch the music award shows, the occasional variety program if there was a singer he liked guesting. She'd heard him complain that he never got watch that new channel, MTV, that had music videos and programs on twenty-four seven, but it was a cable channel and if cable even went out as far as the ranch, it wasn't something she could see Crane or Adam going for.

She was surprised to realize she hadn't missed the television. Not at all. Even during the weekdays when the younger boys were all in school and the older ones out on the ranch, there was always plenty to do. She rarely got lonely. When she did miss "girl talk" she could always go over to their neighbor Sophie Barton's, or into town to chat with Marie at the diner. She was always careful not to complain about family things to either one of them, though. Even if she just needed to blow off steam about Adam sometimes, she would call one of her cousins rather than say anything to someone Adam bump into on any given day. Both of her cousins insisted on her hanging up and then they would call back, absorbing the long distance charges. But she didn't do that very often.

She finally dropped into one of the shapeless chairs and stared, unseeing, in front of her. She hated this waiting. She'd rather have gone with Brian and Crane to look for Guthrie. At least then she'd be doing something, feel like she was helping somehow, not just sitting here.

How had everything gone so wrong, so quickly? Just hours ago they'd been all together, well, except for Daniel, enjoying the game and each other's companionship. She loved watching Adam when he didn't know she was looking. His face had been lit up with happiness and a fierce pride as he watched Evan play basketball. She saw that same look a lot when he watched his younger brothers, even Brian or Crane, do well at something, or just enjoy themselves.

It had never hit her quite as hard as it had tonight. Adam was more than a big brother to Brian, Crane, Daniel, Evan, Ford and Guthrie. He was essentially their father. He had been for ten years. In Ford and Guthrie's case, maybe even Evan's, he was the only father they'd really ever known.

She was embarrassed now to remember how she'd acted back then, especially that time about Ford asking out Cleo. She had basically told her husband he didn't know what he was doing, that without her the house had been a mess and his brothers were a bunch of ignorant heathens. No wonder he was so mad. Okay so the house had been messy but no one could fault – should fault – the way Adam had raised his brothers. He had turned them into fine men. And maybe, just maybe, he did know them better than she did. After all, he'd known them their entire lives.

She couldn't be sorry about pushing Ford toward Cleo though. The two of them were so cute together and Ford did seem to have more self-confidence now. But still, she should have handled it differently. She still shook a little when she remembered not knowing where Ford had vanished to that night.

Ford.

It was no use, she couldn't distract herself from worrying over what was going on now. Ford. Evan. Both in surgery. She knew how serious Ford's head injury could be. He'd been unconscious for hours. What if he never woke up? What if he did wake up and he wasn't Ford anymore? And Evan. Evan who loved rodeo and riding and basketball. Evan who was so high-energy just watching him made her tired. How would he adjust if he was paralyzed, confined to a wheelchair his whole life?

And then there was Guthrie. Baby of the family. Sweetest kid she'd ever met. He'd accepted her right off as a friend, as a sister. He'd welcomed her and included her in his world while his brothers were still regarding her warily. He was the pivot around which all of his older brothers seemed to gather. Nobody ever seemed to get angry with him, or yell at him. And now he was lost out there, alone, maybe hurt.

She clenched her hands into fists so tightly she could feel her nails cut into the skin. How could this have happened? Had they been drinking? She couldn't believe that about Evan or Ford. She'd been so shocked when she'd first arrived at the ranch and realized Adam let his underage brothers drink beer. But the rule was very strict: no alcohol away from the ranch. And in the months she'd lived there the rule never seemed to be broken. Even Daniel, who spent almost every weekend singing in a bar or a club, never came home with the smell of alcohol on his breath. And when they had Guthrie with them? No, she didn't think either Evan or Ford would even look at a drink under those circumstances. But what about the other boy, the boy that had been driving? Ty. Maybe he'd been drinking. But would Evan get into a car with him if that was true? Would Evan let Ford or Guthrie ride with Ty if he'd been drinking?

If the other boy had been drunk… she was filled with red rage at the very thought. How could he? How dare he? It was bad enough to risk his own life, but to endanger Hannah's family…

And then with the shock of ice water pouring over her she realized, again, that Ty was dead. He was dead. Being angry at him did nothing, because he was no longer around, and his parents had lost their son.

Salty tears ran down her face.

To be continued...