“Call me if you need anything,” Faith says to me. “Anything, babe. Promise me.”
I nod, walking backward away from her black Charger—her pride and joy. When I step up on the curb, I slap a hand over my heart. “Promise.”
“Love you.”
“Love you, too.” My smile is tight and sad, and when I spin to face my fear—the tall white building that became my second home before I hid away on a mountain—the air leaves my lungs.
“I’m an hour away, and I love to drive,” Faith reminds me, but she sounds distant.
In fact, everything sounds distant as I stare at the hospital with my heart a weight too heavy in my chest. It anchors me to the spot. Dread makes each beat a painful thud against my sternum.
“Drive safe,” I tell her without a backward glance.
My best friend says more, but I don’t hear it over the rush of blood in my ears. Someone pushes by me. I murmur an apology for blocking the entrance, but I can’t move. Not yet. I’m still frozen to this spot, unable to face my dying father after pretending everything was fine for sixteen days.
But it’s not okay. It never was fine, and I need to make the journey back to reality alone, one step at a time.
Literally.
I have to put one foot in front of the other.
Disoriented, I tread into the hospital. Through the automatic doors, with the pungent stench of antibacterial products so strong, I can’t clear my head. The hospital is a private facility. I have to pass through three security checkpoints to get a visitor’s picture tag: a metal detector, a rapid virus test, and a photo ID station.
Then I’m off, crossing the stark lobby to reach the escalator that leads to the second floor. This central section is slightly more inviting, with its drag landscape paintings to help lessen the corridor’s severity.
Inside the crowded elevator, everyone has their face directed toward their phones as I squeeze my way inside. Someone is wearing far too much perfume. Or maybe not. Perhaps everything is an assault on my senses, from the closeness of the other occupants to the harsh fluorescent lighting. And when I punch the fourth-floor button, my heart feels like it drops to my feet as the cab shoots me upward.
The double metal doors slide open, and I nearly trip on my way out, gasping for fresh air—only to be met with more of the acidic stink of cleaning products.
What I want—what Ineed—is open space.
I need trees, sunshine, and my little rock collection I accidentally left at the Death Star.
I don’t want to be here, in this hospital on the fourth floor, where down the hall is the intensive care unit.
But my feet move as if on their own because it seems they remember the way. They carry me past the familiar waiting room with its ugly and uncomfortable chairs. And past the nurses’ station and the private rooms where patients, resting behind glass doors, are only half-hidden behind privacy curtains.
I’m shaking, worrying my hands raw as I reach room 407. I stop and face the closed door. See my mother sitting in the chair beside my dad’s bed, her bun drooping as she reads from a book open on her lap. The longer I watch her, I notice that she doesn’t turn the page. She stares at the words in a trance, looking through the book rather than at it.
I open the door and step inside, and when I do, Grace Ward whips her head up, sees me, and her wail of relief has me choking back tears. “Hi, Mom.”
I want to say more, but…that’s all I’ve got. I’ll shatter like glass if I try to say more.
“My baby.” And that’s all she’s got, but it says everything.
We fall into each other’s arms and just…hold each other.
And cry.
Cry for our shared anguish for the man fighting for his life a few feet from us. Cry away our fear at how close I came to being killed. Most of all, we cry out our fury at the tragedy Patricia caused our family.
I bury my face in my mother’s messy blonde bun and inhale its floral shampoo scent. This woman is…home…because my mother may have pushed me relentlessly when I was a child, but she’s always been my haven. “I missed you so much.”
“I missed you, too, Jellybean.” She kisses the side of my head. “Do you know Jester has been here every day? Him and the other one. They let me know you were okay.”
“Other one?” I gently detangle myself from her embrace. “Who?”
Grace clicks her tongue. “The talky one. Discord.”
