Free Apocalypse Unleashed by Mel Odom Page A

back,” Jenny said.
    The nurse laughed. “Well, I appreciate that. Just promise me you’ll help somebody in the future. With everything that’s going on in the world, I’m starting to think that’s the only thing that matters. So me helping you today? I’m already one good deed down the road.”
    The nurse’s good humor and smile were infectious. Jenny couldn’t help smiling back. She took the lock and the keys.
    “Help yourself to a locker.” The nurse pointed at the wall. “There appear to be quite a few of them these days.”
    Jenny stashed her stuff while the nurse dashed out.

    Local Time 0710 Hours

    Jackson McGrath looked small and sickly lying in the hospital bed in the intensive care unit. He was at least twenty pounds under his best weight. Several days’ growth of beard stubble, all black and gray, covered his face. His hair was too long and uneven from bad haircuts he’d given himself. Yellow tinged his skin.
    Jenny knew her father was that color because his liver was trying to fail. Once it did, death was right around the corner.
    The doctors had already examined Jackson McGrath’s liver and said it was a miracle he’d lived as long as he had. Both legs and one arm were in casts from the single-car collision that had landed him here. He’d been drunk when he drove off the street and hit a tree. Bruises still showed on his pallid, too-thin chest where the seat belt had cut into him.
    Seated in the chair beside her father’s bed, Jenny stared at him, recalling numerous memories of him drunk and sober. None of it was pleasant. Jackson McGrath had never been a happy man. For a long time, he’d blamed his unhappiness on Jenny, telling her that raising a daughter by himself was too hard. At least, too hard to do sober.
    Truthfully, though, Jenny had been forced to learn how to raise her father. And he’d fought her at every turn.
    “How are you doing this morning, kiddo?” Katie Lang, one of the morning ICU nurses, filled out the chart at the foot of Jackson McGrath’s bed. She was in her late thirties, a heavyset woman with a quick smile and an even quicker comeback. Patients learned early not to give any guff to Nurse Lang.
    “Doing okay,” Jenny said.
    “You look pretty this morning.”
    “Thanks. Ester said the nurses got me the new outfits.”
    “You deserve them.”
    “I appreciate them, that’s for sure.”
    “We were happy to get them for you.”
    “Has there been any change with my father?”
    Katie took in a deep breath and let it out. Then she shook her head. “Not yet. I’m sorry.”
    Despair swallowed some of Jenny’s good mood. “The longer he stays in a coma, the less chance there is of him recovering.”
    “Don’t give up on him,” Katie advised. “I’ve been a nurse for a long time, and I can tell you right now, I’ve seen some of the most audacious things happen that you wouldn’t believe.”
    Jenny nodded, not because she believed what the woman was saying but because she knew it was expected. Everyone talked about miracles in the hospital like it was a requirement or something. But she knew that not many people believed.
    “If you give up on him,” Katie whispered, “he might give up on himself. Just because they don’t respond to you doesn’t mean they’re not listening.”
    That was something else Jenny had heard a lot about. She made it a point to talk to her father every day. Sometimes she read stories she thought he might like from the newspaper. Other times she created a make-believe horse race and reimagined it for her father. She embellished the race and the names of the horses and jockeys. In addition to alcohol, gambling was also a problem for her father. She felt bad about feeding that addiction, but she didn’t know what else to talk to him about that he would have found interesting.
    “I know,” she said to Nurse Lang, and she felt guilty at once. Before coming to the hospital, when she first heard that her father was in bad shape,