“I’ll take care of your parents,” I said, “but don’t thinkIwon’t be the one orbiting you. Understood?”
chaptertwenty-four
Sunny
Today’s Special:
Vanilla-Scented Stew of Shuffles and Stumbles
I heardthem before I saw them, which was not unusual. My dad was a little deaf and a lot loud and my mother, permanently exasperated from decades of him misunderstanding everything she said, yelled as a means of self-preservation. They loved each other very much though you could only see it up close.
“My daughter was brought here,” she said as if she was ordering a half pound of ham at a busy deli. “Someone, please, where can I find my daughter? Sunny Du Jardin?”
I pulled Beck closer. “Things are about to get very real in here.”
He brushed some hair off my forehead, his lips firming into a hard line. The fine serif brackets at the corner of his mouth appeared as he gave a single, small shake of his head. “Let me worry about that. Please. It will give me something to do.”
The curtain flew open and my parents gusted toward the gurney, yell-talking over each other.
“My god, Sunny. What have you done now?” My mother threw her tote bag down and rushed toward me, hands held open. “How did this happen?”
“Have you seen the neurology attending?” Dad drummed his fingers against his belt, ready for action. “What’s their name? I’ll have them paged. We need an update right now.”
Mom flattened a hand to her chest. “What did ortho say about your arm? Will you need surgery?”
“Have they run an EEG?” Dad asked.
“If they didn’t, they’re going to very soon,” Mom said.
My parents had a habit of approaching my epilepsy with a frustrated kind of concern that leaned toward indignance. It was like they’d received a broken teapot in the mail one day and had never stopped asking for an explanation about this teapot, all while trying to boil water and pour tea from it. They’d gesture to the places where the tea leaked down the sides as if someone would know why it was like that and give them the secret to making the pieces fit back together. Even after all these years, they hadn’t accepted that the teapot didn’t function the way most teapots did, but that it could do so many other things if only they allowed themselves to see past the cracks. I knew they just wanted answers about their strange, shattered package.
“Where is the damn doctor?” Dad stepped outside, swung a gaze up and down the hall.
“You didn’t have them paged, Edouard,” Mom shouted.
“Are they treating the pain?” Dad asked.
A pinched frown pulled at Mom’s face. “We’re going to need fresh aloe for all those cuts and scrapes. Your poor cheeks.”
The throb in my head forced me to slow-blink my way through this reunion. They hadn’t even noticed Beckett standing beside me, and that was quite remarkable seeing as he was the size of a wind turbine and had his hand on my shoulder.
“Obviously, we’ll be here to nurse you back to health,” Mom said. “We’re not going anywhere for averylong time.”
Fighting words, those were.
“Okay, well, let’s not rush into any plans,” I said, the words coming in wobbles and slurs. “All the doctors and nurses have been here, and they’re feelin’ good about putting Humpty Dumpty back together again. So, we’re good. All good.”
Beck snorted out a quick laugh saying, “Oh, storm cloud,” under his breath. He gave my shoulder a light squeeze. “You just missed one of the doctors,” he said to my parents. “They’ve diagnosed a concussion—”
“Not another concussion,” Mom panted, her hand clutched to her chest.
“—and they’re monitoring Sunny for a bit but expect to discharge her later today. I’ll be taking her home and keeping a close watch on her.”
As if they’d just realized he was in this sliver of a room, my parents fully shifted their attention to Beck.
“Who’s this guy?” Dad asked. “When did he get here?”
“Beckett Loew,” he said, completely unfazed by the riot in my father’s tone.
