I waited two painful seconds before he finally told me.
35
The phone at the nurses’station kept ringing. Over and over again. Even when they’d answer it, a few seconds later, it would start up again. I leaned my elbows on my thighs, hands grasped in front of me as another ear-splitting trill of the phone blared to life.
Everything smelled like disinfectant anddeath.
I’d been in enough hospitals to last a lifetime. It never got easier to be the person sitting in the waiting room. Desperately clinging to hope that the next doctor to waltz out from behind those double doors would be the one giving you the news you wanted to hear. My head popped up when they opened. Heart kicking up a notch. It flatlined when a pair of nurses wearing grey scrubs appeared, smiling and talking in soft voices.
My knee bounced as I fixed my gaze back on a spot on the faded blue carpet. Unconsciously, my fingers rubbed at my palms, trying to scrub away the phantom echo of my father’s chest beneath them. His face was pale when I fell to my knees beside him. His phone resting limply in his hand.With his last breath, knowing something was wrong, he’d tried to call me.
I hadn’t fucking answered. Too wrapped up in my own bullshit.
I twisted my hands together. I’d already washed them three times since we’d entered the hospital. It wasn’t enough.
I called the paramedics and immediately started chest compressions. For the first time in a long time, I prayed. Begged any god in the universe to fucking do something. Save him. I couldn’t go through this again. As fucking selfish as that was to think. I couldn’t watch another parent die.
When the paramedics arrived, they took over. Calmly working their magic whilst I hovered, running my hands through my hair as I waited. Hearing that first beep of a rhythm on the monitor as they sent an electrical current through his body had my body falling backwards in relief.
They’d taken him into surgery straight away, the doctors pushing me out of the way and shunting me into the waiting room. In the chaos, I’d left my phone in my car, which was still outside Dad’s as I rode in the ambulance with him. So, I used the hospital phone to call Oliver.
He and Fallon arrived an hour or so ago. I wasn’t even sure what the time was or how much of it was slipping through my fingers as I stared blankly at the floor.
How could things get so messy, so quickly? Everything had been perfect less than a week ago. I finally had Rosie, chipped through that ice wall she kept erected around her heart and let myself foolishly believe that that was it. That this thing between us would start growing into something more.
A week away from that bliss, and everything starts coming apart at the seams.
I’d gone to call her after I let Oliver know. But I didn’t have her number memorised. A flash of anger zippedthrough me at that realisation. I wanted to know everything about her, and I didn’t even know her fucking number?
Even if I had known it, what would I say?
I need you.
You’re the only thing I want.
I love you.
How could I ask her to drop her life and come here when I didn’t even know where we stood with each other? It felt selfish. Needing her this way, needingher presence, when she had no obligation to do that for me, felt—wrong.
‘Here.’ A paper cup of brown liquid that looked like mud came into my vision. The smell had the faint aroma of coffee with a side of burnt toast.
Oliver lowered himself to the seat beside me, taking a sip of his own cup.
I held the warm drink in my hands.
He smothered a cough, swiftly plucking the coffee back out of my hand.
‘Jesus, don’t drink that. It’s sewage. Fucking hell.’ He put them on the seat next to him, making a disgusted noise.
My throat worked, trying to get words out, but nothing would come.
Oliver placed a hand on my shoulder. ‘It’s gonna be okay, man.’
I shook my head. ‘He was so fucking pale.’ My voice croaked. The image of Dad on the floor of his living room, phone in hand, utterly lifeless, would be etched on my memory for the rest of my life. My shoulders drooped, head falling as I lifted my hands to cradle my head.
I need Rosie.
Fuck, I’d do anything to be near her right now. My eyes pinched closed as I tamped down the urge to ask Oliver for his phone to call her.
