Yet, I walked inside and took a seat far away from Liam, pretending not to worry about the woman I just drove to the hospital.
It wasn’t her. None of this was her, and yet…
I rubbed a hand across my eyes, trying to clock out the images. I had been so young, but Lizzy was not my mother. She wasn’t.
“Momma, what’s wrong?”
The image of me as a kid rushed through my mind, and I squeezed it to the dark recesses of my brain. But it refused to stay.
Curly blonde hair fell over her face as she bent over, gripping her large stomach. Screaming in pain, she gripped the sofa, trying to stay upright. The screaming was so loud it hurt my ears, and I had to put my hands over them to muffle the sound.
“JR, honey. Momma needs you to call for help.”
I ran away from her, searching for the phone, but it wasn’t on the cradle. “Momma! I can’t find the phone! Momma!”
A loud thump had me rushing back to the living room to find Momma laying on the floor. She wasn’t moving, and there was a puddle of something red and sticky underneath her.
“Momma?” I whispered.
But she didn’t answer.
“Momma?”
My head jerked up at the roar coming from the entrance of the ER, bringing me out of the past.
“Where is she?” Lizzy’s dad shouted, storming into the emergency room.
Liam reached him first, stopping him before he could rant at the staff. “She’s in the back.”
“Why? Why is she in the back? What the fuck is going on?”
I looked from Liam to his dad, and then to his mom. They were both clueless. Why hadn’t Lizzy told them?
But to make it all worse, Liam’s eyes flicked to mine, and that was the point they noticed me standing there.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, his eyes narrowing dangerously on me.
“I brought her in, sir.”
“What happened?”
“She was in pain.”
“She was in pain, so you rushed her to the ER?”
Any way I answered would only lead to more questions. This wasn’t my place to say a damn thing, but when I glanced at Liam, he just shook his head.
“Yes, sir.”
“What kind of pain? Did she injure herself?”
“I don’t know. She was carrying a tray and talking to me, and then?—”
“Pop, I think we should wait to hear what the doctor has to say,” Liam cut me off.
His eyes shot to his son, but he wasn’t stupid. He knew exactly what Liam was doing. “And then what?”
I stayed silent. It wasn’t my place to say a damn thing. And if I told him what happened, he would guess.
