Uncapping the bottle of Jameson I snagged from the pantry when I returned home, I guzzled the liquid, my throat burning.
This time,Iwas over it.Iwas disappearing.
For hours, I watched Coast Guard boats as they patrolled the waters off the harbor, sipping Irish whiskey and shivering while I kept my fingers wrapped around her scarf. In the distance, I heard my phone ringing over and over until the throbbing in my head synchronized with the obnoxious chime, but I knew it wasn’t Lauren. Turning away from the sound, I dropped into dark, fitful sleep.
Later, I barely registered the footsteps around me. Brightness filled the room, and Riley’s voice was in my ear. “Gotta get up, buddy. We have a problem on our hands.”
*
“If you vomiton me, I will be punching you in the throat,” Sam said. I grunted in acknowledgement and angled away from him, only to feel the hard plastic armrest gouging my leg.
Bracing my arms on my thighs, I leaned forward and held my head between my hands to dodge the overhead lights. My stomach swayed and pitched like it was on the high seas, and the scent of hospital disinfectant was not helping. I watched Patrick’s feet as he paced the silent corridor, and for a minute, the rhythm of his steps lulled me to sleep.
It was quiet there, in my dreams, and I had a long, uninterrupted stretch of jogging trail ahead of me and engineering problems popping up every few feet. It was the perfect place to hide until my sister yanked me up by the ear and dragged me across the hall.
“Shan-nonnnn,” I wailed.
“Would you shut up?” she hissed. “Get your shit together and shut the fuck up.”
Resting against a wall, I rubbed my eyes and watched a blurry version of Nick stride toward us. He looked different in scrubs, his breast pocket filled with pens and instruments, his lighthearted smirk replaced with a sober expression. He was Dr. Acevedo now.
He stopped in front of us, his hands fisted on his hips, and said, “I want you to prepare yourselves. Your father experienced a ischemic stroke. His brain was deprived of oxygen for a period of time, and the longer the oxygen is cut off, the more brain cells die. We’re still running tests to determine how the stroke impacted his brain, and will know more in a few hours. We have him sedated right now, in a medically-induced coma.”
Standing required too much energy, and I slid down the wall to the floor. My ass hit the ground, and I discovered I was still wearing soggy track pants. They continued talking about Angus and his issues—the old bastard was kind enough to have his stroke in the main hallway, front and center, so the poor cleaning lady could find his miserable ass when she scaled the snow banks this morning—but I didn’t care. There wasn’t a shred of concern in my cells for Angus, and even in the darkest corners of my mind, I recognized that as one of the cornerstones of major fucked-uppedness.
“What is your deal?” Nick kicked my foot, squatted in front of me, and studied the eggplant-sized bruise on my jaw. It had faded to a gross palette of yellow and purple in the weeks since our last interaction with Angus, and I slapped Nick away.
“He’s still drunk,” Riley said. “I found him with an empty bottle of whiskey.”
“Why is he wet?” Nick grabbed my wrist and pressed his fingers over my pulse. “Please tell me you didn’t piss yourself.”
“I did a couple miles last night,” I said. “There was some snow.”
He angled my chin and beamed his penlight in my eyes, and I was ready to rip that hand off and beat him with it. “You’re being a little bitch,” he whispered, and stood to face the group. “Let’s bring y’all up to ICU. You can go in for five or ten—”
“Won’t be necessary,” Patrick said.
Nick studied us, waiting for someone to show a glimmer of sadness over Angus’s condition, and when he finally found none, he nodded to himself. “You need to know this is serious. He might not come out of it, and if he does, he could have extensive complications. Loss of speech, paralysis, memory loss.”
“I might prefer those options,” I said.
“That sounds sensational to me. He’s said everything he needs to say,” Sam added.
“You don’t have to see him, but you should,” Nick said. “At the very least, we’re getting some fluids into Matt, so sit tight.”
“That’s fine,” Patrick said. “Let’s run through the properties. I want status reports, and I want to figure out where we need crews this morning. Be ready in five minutes.”
*
From: Matthew Walsh
To: Erin Walsh
Date: November 26 at 13:01 EDT
Subject: Angus had a stroke
Call me when you get this.
