Jane gasped.
But Eddie didn’t even glance at her. I don’t think he knew she was there. Or Velvet. He just stared at me with the most horrific look of shock pasted on his face. I’d never seen him look like that. All confidence completely erased. There was nothing there. No pride.
Nothing.
Had being arrested really torn him up like this? What the hell?
“What are you doing here?” I asked as he just stared and stared at me like some kind of soulless alien in a suit. “Why are you dressed like that? Is this an airport car? Did you just get into town? Where’s Dad?”
He opened his mouth and nothing came out. Then he swallowed visibly and tried again. “I’m supposed to come get you. Papa’s in the hospital. He had a heart attack on the private jet on the flight from Los Angeles to the lake. He’s in surgery at the hospital outside of town. They don’t know if he’s going to make it.”
Was this a joke?
“What the fuck is the matter with you?” I ran toward him and shoved him as hard as I could. Knocked him backward into the car. His back hit metal, and he grunted and doubled up in pain. “Are you sick in the head? Why would you say that?”
A sob wrenched out of Eddie—so horrible and guttural, I felt it inside my own chest.
I suddenly felt very cold.
He wasn’t joking.
“Oh my God,” Jane said behind us.
Eddie crouched at my feet and wept, curling up into a ball. “I fucked up, and he came to help me, and then he collapsed on the plane, and one of the pilots used a defibrillator on him. He almost died. He might still die!”
“Where’s Mama?”
“Headed to the hospital with the twins,” Eddie said, crying. “She sent me here to get you. I’m a screwup. This is my fault, Fen. I’mso sorry.”
I didn’t know what to say or feel. There was only numbness and instinct.
I crouched down with Eddie, put my arms around his shoulders, and I wept with him.
Track [25] “Make It Right”/BTS
Jane
Hospitals are places that forceyou to embrace change. The kind of change you don’t want or need. The kind you can’t escape. A couple years ago, that change was speech problems after my fall. But before that, the change was my mother dying.
I remember the hospital more than I remember her: the drinking fountain, the purple bands on the walls, the tiny Christmas tree on the nurse’s station. Anchors that helped to weigh me down during the emotional storm of trauma.
After it was over, we retreated to our places in the staff quarters of Mad Dog’s house in Bel Air. Dad went back to work, and I was shuffled off to Velvet’s nanny. That’s when the long, hard work began. The hard work lasted for years. Sometimes I think it’s still happening.
Maybe it never ends.
I sat in the half-empty Condor Medical Center lobby with Velvet in the wee hours of the morning, waiting to find out if Serj Sarafian was going to live. No purple bands on the wall at this hospital, but I was sure Fen had found his own anchors while he sat with his family and waited for news. They had their ownprivate family lounge, which wasn’t far from us. I just didn’t have the courage to go in there and check on Fen.
Not with Eddie around. I couldn’t face him right now. Or maybe ever. Every decision I’d made over the last few weeks had ballooned inside my head, and I…
Wished that life weren’t so messy right now.
My phone buzzed with a text from my dad. He knew I was here with Velvet and was letting me know that Mad Dog and Rosa were up now, and that they’d be on their way soon. The hospital was only a half hour from the lake. I wished they wouldn’t come. It made me feel like it was sealing the deal on Serj’s life. If Mad Dog stayed at the lake, then Serj’s condition was no big deal; if he drove out here, then things weren’t looking good.
“Any update?” Velvet said, groggy and hoarse as she huddled inside a coat on the waiting room chair.
“No,” I told her. “That was just my dad. He’s bringing your parents.”
“Shit,” she murmured. “Do I look trashed?”
