"In the ICU. Visiting hours are only in the morning, but I talked to them earlier and asked them to make an exception when my sons arrived. We'll be able to go in, but not stay more than about five minutes," he warns, and Ethan nods.
Richard finally takes a moment to look at Charlie and me, and I hold out my hand to greet him.
"Hello, Mr. Clarke. I'm so sorry about all of this," I say, and he pulls me into a hug.
"Hey, kid. Thank you for bringing my son. Him driving with a hot head like this would have made me even more worried," he remarks, and I murmur that it was nothing. He then focuses his attention on the girl beside me. "And this must be the new resident of the apartment."
Charlie gives a contained smile.
"Yes, I'm Charlotte McCarthy, but call me Charlie, please," she asks, holding out her hand to him, but she's also pulled into a quick hug by the older man.
"Thank you for coming to support my Ethan too, Charlie," he says with honesty, and she nods.
Richard goes back to focusing on his son.
"Come on, I'll take you up there," he says at last and turns, walking into the hospital. We follow him in silence, going up in the elevator to the third floor and walking down a long hallway.
Heavens, why did hospitals always have to be so grim? The cold corridors, the white color covering all the walls, the too-bright light... Everything there seemed made to leave us even more apprehensive.
Finally, we stop in front of double doors with the ICU sign above them.
I watch Ethan wipe away his tears as he registers and gets a visitor's badge. I'd give anything to be able to go in there with him and give him support, but I know the safest thing was for Marta to have the fewest visitors and the least exposure to outside germs.
He can't even look at us before going through the doors with his dad, and all we can do is stand there, praying she recovers. Or it would destroy him.
Chapter 38
Charlotte
I was aware of my privileged life. My family always had money, my parents were so in love it bordered on sappy, they always encouraged our dreams and didn't even blink when I came out as bisexual. I got along with my brothers too. As the youngest of three, they were both my biggest supporters in anything and the ones who teased me the most as the baby of the family. In other words, perfect brothers.
However, what growing up like that resulted in is that I never had any major traumas in life. I lost an aunt when I was a kid and my paternal grandmother at the end of high school, but that was the full extent of the deep pain I knew until my mom got sick.
And even with the long years of the kidney disease, my hope that at some point all of this would pass was greater than anything, precisely because that's what my mom repeated to us all the time.
As a result, nothing prepared me for this exact moment.
After putting on the shoe covers, the hair cap, and a mask, plus thoroughly sterilizing my hands, my dad and I are cleared to enter the intensive care ward. The large room has a nurses' station right in the center and about twelve beds along the surrounding walls, separated only by curtains. I freeze in fear for a moment, like the air in the room is trying to crush me. My dad looks at me warily before taking my elbow and getting me walking again toward the beds. We pass several people hooked up to various kinds of machines until we reach where my mom is.
My heart finishes sinking in my chest when I see her.
Miss Marta was never a big person, but she looked even smaller lying in that hospital bed, covered up to her chest by a white sheet. A catheter had been inserted into her neck, connecting her to the machine I knew well as the one responsible for cleaning her blood the way a kidney would and returning it to her body. A cannula in her nose helps her breathe too.
I approach the bed slowly. Tears fall down my cheeks silently, blurring my vision. I hold her hand, which is cold, and I watch in horror how bruised and purple her arm is, like several IV lines had been put in and taken out.
Fuck.
Fuck.
Fuck.
I don't know if I can handle this. I'm barely keeping the strength in my legs looking at her in this state, let alone if I lost her.
No.
I refused to consider that possibility. My mom was strong. She was going to pull through this.
"Hi, Mom. It's Ethan, I'm right here with you and I'm not leaving, okay?" I say, hoping that on some level of the induced coma, she really can hear me. I squeeze her hand in mine while my dad strokes her hair. "Josh and Nathan are coming too. It'll be a full Clarke reunion even before Christmas. So you have to be strong, okay? For us. Be strong and wake up to yell at us for worrying so much and for driving at night."
