Page 16 of Below the Shadow of the City

CHAPTER 16

WEDNESDAY, EARLY OCTOBER

Hi Sigrid,

I am so glad you got back to me. We’re excited to have you join this project, you’ll make a great addition among our other featured creators.

Attached is our contract, by agreeing to this you’re agreeing to submit eight recipes to us on or before December 1st. I think I’d mentioned this previously, but you are welcome to include recipes you’ve previously made on your account.

I will say though, the team would love to see some new ideas from our participants.

I look forward to working with you!

Billie

I sit and stare at the email. I’ve opened the PDF attachment, read it, and then closed it multiple times since it popped into my inbox. The contract would bind me to this project. I should be excited, right? I shouldn’t be hesitating like I am? My toes tap nervously while I mutter “fuck it” under my breath and skim through the contract. The legal jargon goes over my head. I pick up on enough information to understand what I’m getting myself into. Just when I send the signed contract back, my phone buzzes on my desk.

“Mom?” I answer it with more surprise than I intend to. Her calling me is unexpected, her calling me midday on a Thursday even more so. There’s a breath, as though she’s about to plunge underwater. I’ve never been on the receiving end of this kind of call, but instantly I know what it has to be. I haven’t heard my mom’s voice in weeks, not since she’d called to ask how to log into Netflix. I’d planned on mentioning the cookbook opportunity to her, it’s just that my mind has been elsewhere.

“Siggy,” she utters the nickname only she and my dad have ever used, “it’s your dad he—” A sob chokes out before she can finish. I go straight to worst case scenarios, I imagine attending my own father’s funeral and the eulogy I’d write. I picture a world where he’s not the one dancing with me at my wedding. The silence on her end of the line expands like a balloon about to pop.

“He what, mom?” I ask, desperate and panicked and about to vomit onto my desk.

“He had a heart attack,” I hear her gasp for air with a shaky inhale. “He’s okay, they’re about to take him in for surgery.”

“He’s alright?” My voice sounds so childish when I ask.

“Barely,” her breathing has grown less rapid, “he’s not out of the woods, but they’re optimistic.” Suddenly the hypotheticals rewind and place themselves neatly away into a box for another time.

“What hospital?”

“Huntington—” She starts

“Okay,” I cut her off and begin searching for train times, my shaking free hand hardly able to type. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“Honey you don’t have to?—”

“Yes. I do, mom, I’m not letting you wait at the hospital alone. I’ll let you know when I’m on my way.” She chokes out an ‘I love you’ and a goodbye and I’m thrust back into the present where I’m at my desk barely halfway through the work day.

My fingers are trembling too much to text, so I go into an empty conference room and call Maddox without thinking first. I could run to Margo’s desk, I know she’d help me without a single question.

For some reason, my knee jerk reaction instead tells me to instead call someone I’m currently in a few week-long situationship with. In the days since our “official” second date any avoidance I’d tried to show was entirely ignored by him. His charm is a difficult thing to ignore, and we’d text throughout our days and have phone calls at night. Always initiated by him, but never resisted by me. Something is building between us that is getting more and more difficult to tear down.

Which is precisely why I’m not going to ghost him right now, despite every cell and nerve in my body sending me panic signals telling me to disappear into the abyss and hope he’ll forget about me in four days. I can’t let myself do it.

When he answers the phone a high-pitched, shaky voice comes out of me when I greet him. It’s small, vulnerable, and foreign sounding.

“Sigrid?” His voice sounds more hushed and deeper than when he’s called before. For a moment I’m not sure why I called him, other than to hear his voice .

“I don’t want to completely bail and disappear on you, so I’m telling you I’ll be at the hospital and my parents’ place.”

“The hospital?” He asks rhetorically. “Is everything alright?”

“Yes—well, no. My dad had a heart attack. He’s okay. I think he’s okay. I don’t know. There’s a lot I don’t know, so I’m just going to go and be there for my mom.”

“I’ll take you.”

“Maddox, no, I’m not making you drive out to Long Island. It’s too much of a risk for you, and it’s fine, I can finagle the train ride.” Until now I forgot that he even had the ability to drive in the first place, I didn’t call to guilt him into blowing his cover. Besides, I’d taken the train countless times, it’s not a terrible ride, and the Uber from the train station to the hospital wouldn’t be that much of a blow to my wallet.

“You’re not going to do that,” he nearly growls at me. It’s the first hint of any negative emotion I’ve seen from him, I’m taken aback by it, my skin forms goosebumps under my sweater.

“It’s seriously fine,” I refuse to be an inconvenience to anyone, especially him. He can’t give me more than I can reciprocate, and what he’s offering to do far surpasses the expectations I should have for someone I barely know. Already I’m regretting bringing this situation up to him.

“Meet me outside your building in…two hours. I’ll be in the black SUV with the very, very tinted windows.” I reluctantly agree, thinking it best to not argue with a creature that could rip me in half.

Sure enough, a massive black SUV with windows definitely past the legal tint rolls up in front of my building two hours later. I’d packed to stay for the weekend, already securing tomorrow and Friday off because I couldn’t bear to leave my mom for those few days. Her trembling voice and even the thought of losing my dad rattled me back into a child-like state. Any ambivalence I’ve ever held towards them immediately vanished when I got off the call.

I had more time to pack than I’d expected. I had stepped out of the conference room and Margo caught a glimpse of me from her desk.

“What happened?” She asked as she rushed over and pulled me aside.

“My dad had a heart attack.” It was the second time I’d said it aloud. It still felt like an impossibility. “I need to go to the hospital.”

“Go. Now. I’ll tell Ralph and HR.” Her voice was firm, and I left at her command.

Maddox is barely recognizable in the driver's seat, he has a large black hoodie pulled up over his head and dark sunglasses. Passersby across the street probably wouldn’t think twice about seeing him at a first glance. Upon a closer look, the dark fur on his face and hands, and the horns peeking from his hood are a dead giveaway that he’s very much not human. There’s a weird warmth in my core at the thought, like he’s a secret that only I get to know.

I look something not human either when I catch sight of my reflection in the passenger window. It had been a little over two hours since my mom had called, but I look like I’ve aged about a decade. My entire face is swollen and red, my eyes have remaining smudges of mascara around the lids, and my short bob is pulled back the best I could manage. I’d changed into a hoodie and leggings when I got home from work. I had picked up the sweatshirt I stole from Maddox and considered wearing it. When I held it to my chest the faintest reminders of his scent soothed me, and I shivered at the feeling crashing over me. I have to avoid this attachment, and any potential questioning from my mom when I show up. There’s zero dancing around a sweatshirt that would be easily three times my size.

Maddox had seen me roughed up and fresh in the morning, this is far worse. Hardly what someone should look like on an unofficial third date. He’s entirely unrattled, instead throwing his car into park, running onto the sidewalk and swiping my bags from my hands. Outside in the fresh air he appears utterly massive while he dwarves the skinny trees planted in the sidewalk.

“Get in,” he says with the urgency of someone carjacking me, and tosses my things into the back seat. I slide into the car and am taken aback briefly by how luxurious it is. I’d sold my first car when I moved to the city to help cover my first month of rent, and that was a beat up Honda Civic I got $800 for. This is a brand new top-of-the-line SUV with leather heated seats.

It’s a clear marker of his wealth, something I tend to forget about him. The status of the car is dwarfed by how intensely it smells like him. He’s a massive presence in the driver’s seat, and every air molecule in here smells like Maddox. He’s silent as he pulls back onto the road, glancing to make sure I’ve buckled my seatbelt.

A few moments later he thrusts his phone into my hand, “type in the address.” Goosebumps bloom on my forearms when the tips of his claws brush against my palm. I forget what I’m supposed to be doing.

After regaining my bearings, I search the hospital address and start the directions, placing his phone back on the wireless charging pad. With traffic the drive is just over an hour and a half, and I’m already tapping my foot anxiously as my fingers tremble.

“Thank you. You really didn’t have to do this,” I whisper.

“I did, though,” he replies. His expression difficult to dissect from the sunglasses and hood covering a good portion of his face. He remains fixated on the road. His response seems final, and any words I try to piece together in a retort are nonsensical.

I have far too much on my mind to even begin to unpack verbally, especially when we’re trapped together for the foreseeable future. I face the street ahead as well, narrowing my eyes at the blinking brake lights of the cars in front of us as we slow in traffic.

Music fills the space between us, and I recognize a few songs from the playlist he’d given me. He hums along to the song playing quietly.

The devil on my shoulder pops up, he’s good, Sigrid. Too good for you. Dropping everything and driving you to the hospital? Surely you don’t deserve that sort of treatment.

His mouth twitches when we pull up to the hospital, sunglasses still hiding his eyes though it had grown dark now. It isn’t fair that he needs to sneak around the world like he’s some cryptid or ghost. He knows it’s not fair, yet takes it all in perfect stride.

The car lurches into park, like he’s stopped it a hair too quickly. I sit for a second then realize I’m supposed to get out and face whatever awaits me in the hospital. Quickly, I gather my purse and phone and turn to Maddox, who’d rested an elbow on the window and is rubbing his temple.

“Can I give you some gas money for the ride, at least? To drive all this way just to turn around?—”

He cuts me off. “I’ll stay around here.”

“B-but where will you go?” It’s the first thing I think to ask, he can’t come into the hospital with me. Monstrous form aside, he’s not family. My mom doesn’t know he exists, I can’t even begin to fathom dropping that I’m maybe, possibly seeing someone right now. And that this particular someone is a fur-covered and horned monster.

“I know some places,” he’s uncharacteristically short with me. We’d hardly spoken the entire drive. I had assumed he’d fill every bit of silence with a joke or commentary and assumed incorrectly. Aside from his humming he was solemn. Save for a quick squeeze on my thigh that he recanted immediately, it was like he was little more than a cab driver .

“I’m gonna be here a few days,” I reply meekly.

“What’s your parents’ address? At the very least I’ll pick up some groceries for them.”

“Maddox, you don’t?—”

“I do. Please, let me do this,” he says with a resigned exhale as he rubs his fingers on the bridge of his nose. His sunglasses pop up and I get a quick flash of his blue eyes. They’re rimmed in red.

I send him the address and he pulls off onto the street with practically screeching tires. As I stand under the carport of the hospital, I realize I didn’t have the foresight to even kiss him goodbye.

My phone buzzes as I walk into the hospital, and my fingers fumble for it hoping that it’s Maddox, though I haven’t a clue what he would even want to say to me right now that couldn’t have been said in the car.

Instead a familiar name pops up.

Perrie:

I’m in town, could we talk?

Fucking hell. I swipe the message away and I tuck my phone back into my pocket. My dad’s in the hospital for fuck’s sake, I shouldn’t be thinking about whatever is going on with Maddox, let alone whatever Perrie wants from me. The universe has a disturbing sense of humor with its timing.

Winding up and down the hospital corridors I finally find the room my dad’s staying in. When I enter they both look so much older than they did when I saw them a few months back. They live in a snow globe in my mind, never aging in a house that never changes. Right now, it feels like the snowglobe has been shaken up and I’m waiting for the flakes to finally settle.

My dad seems old and frail with his crinkling eyes and bald head, and my mom’s hair has grown out and is tied into a messy gray bun atop her head. I pause in the doorway before they notice me, my eyes involuntarily well up with tears at the sight of them alone. Surely it hasn’t been that long, right?

When I cough away the sobs my dad glances up with brightened eyes, “Siggy!” His excitement attempts to mask any weakness still remaining, but his voice is soft and hoarse. My mom’s eyes follow, and I notice how red and swollen they are, she’d been alone here for hours. I’m their only child, her siblings live halfway across the country, her parents are gone. It’s just her, my dad, and I. My chest tightens thinking about her having to call 911 and get my dad to the hospital on her own.

“Hi guys,” I mumble. Without any reasoning, I feel itchy in my skin. The smell of the hospital creeps into my brain and the fluorescent lights are already giving me a headache. My mom doesn’t move from her chair, and I stiffly embrace my dad while leaning over the various wires he’s hooked up to. My entire life I’d never seen him in anything besides t-shirts, his work polos, or his favorite Yankees sweatshirt. The neck of the hospital gown hangs loosely around his collarbone. He looks so small, so fragile.

I wrap my arms around my mom next, taking in the scent of the shampoo she’s used for as long as I can remember.

I search for somewhere to settle, once I realize there’s nowhere to go I stand beside her. “Oh,” she says like her mind is elsewhere. “We can probably get you a chair from another room.” Even in the midst of such a crisis, she goes into “mom mode.” Always making sure others are taken care of before herself.

Her eyes dart around before I take matters into my own hands and leave and talk to a nurse. I pull up a borrowed chair beside her, it’s hard plastic and uncomfortable and the minutes stretch out into hours. The last time I’d been in a hospital was when I broke my arm as a kid. I wasn’t acutely aware of the dry air, scent of antiseptics and chemical cleaners, and the sounds of machines and monitors then. It wasn’t lost on me that I was lucky to not be familiar with this environment.

None of the three of us know what to say to each other. My mom rattles off the treatments and surgery my dad had, while he comments on how cold he is and how stiff the bed feels. I sense he’s feeling far more jovial than my mom is but is forcing himself to show some restraint. Every so often our eyes meet and he gives me a little reassuring wink. Something to say, “it’ll all be fine.”

I think back to what my mom said, insisting I don’t come. This entire experience feels like I’m on an alien planet, but I had to be here. I had to look at my dad and make sure he was okay, I had to see my mom and make sure she wouldn’t be going through this alone.

“How’d you get here, hon?” My mom quietly asks, pushing through the hospital talk to bring up something else to detract from reciting my dad’s medical records.

“A friend,” I say stoically. “He was nice enough to bring me. I’ll take the train back on Sunday.” I speak of staying the next three nights and realize I’ve left my bag in Maddox’s car. Bothering him about it feels cruel, I already made him make the drive, I’m not going to make him turn around and come back. I could always wear whatever is left in my drawers at my parents’ place and stop at a store for some other essentials.

He’d been so adamant about bringing me, even though we hardly knew one another at this point. We’d gone on two dates, and obviously slept together, that’s not commitment. He certainly seems to want it to be, though. Each time our nightly phone calls trailed in that direction I’d change the subject. Just because two dates is more than I’ve had with anyone in months doesn’t mean I’m offering him anything that resembles real commitment.

Despite that, he’d still done more good than I deserved and driven me out here without thinking.

My phone burns a hole in my pocket. I’ve never been the type to overly rely on the device but between Perrie’s text and whatever happened when Maddox and I parted, my fingers are twitching.

Margo had sent me a litany of texts checking in. When she asked if I was okay I had to remember she only knew about my dad’s heart attack, not Maddox or Perrie’s reemergence. I’m actively pushing away a guy I genuinely like but am afraid of committing to and keeping half my life hidden from my best friend. My fortress has grown stories tall. I’m steadily drowning in a pool of my own making.