Page 24 of This Might Hurt

ANDREW

“Look.” I fasten the top button of my black blazer over an open-necked white shirt and take a step back on the sidewalk. Grant watches from behind mirrored sunglasses as I spread my hands and turn in a circle. “Alright?”

He gives a single approving nod. “You look good, sir. Do you want me to come in?”

“No. Stay with the car.” Craning my neck, I squint up at the gently curved facade of Vassar Brothers Medical Center, with all its windows blazing in the afternoon sun. “I don’t know how long I’ll be.”

“Text me when you’re headed down.” Even with his eyes hidden, I can sense the man’s unease as he puts the black Mercedes into gear. Rumors are flying everywhere at the estate; all our staff can sense the danger in the air as the family’s status quo shifts like tectonic plates.

“I’m fine,” I say tightly, gathering my notebook and a fresh-smelling bouquet off the back seat and gesturing him toward the parking garage.

The man is security, not a driver, but he likes to volunteer so he can keep tabs on me when he’s supposed to be off-duty.

I act annoyed with his hovering, but I can’t pretend it’s not a comfort.

It’s brutally warm for May, with heat radiating off every concrete surface and the humidity sitting in my lungs like water. If this keeps up, the mood at Carrick House will go from strained to murderous by the end of the weekend.

I barely get three feet past the sliding doors before a red-haired woman with an iPad balanced on one arm clicks across the air-conditioned lobby on tall beige heels.

“Mr. Andrew Innes, correct?” She offers me a hand and a wary smile, like she’s waiting to see which of my family’s unhinged personalities was handed down to me.

“I’m Lillian, the VIP services coordinator.

Right this way, please. Can I get you anything to eat or drink? ”

“No, thank you.” I follow her around the corner to a private elevator, where she swipes her badge.

A slightly awkward silence falls as the doors close behind us.

I fidget with the purple and pink bundle of heather, thistle, bluebell and wild roses I foraged from the garden this morning.

Carla helped me wrap the stems with a tidy bit of brown paper and string.

“How is he?” I ask finally, to fill the void.

Her nails click against the iPad screen as she checks her records.

“I’m sorry, sir, but it looks like Margaret Innes is your grandfather’s medical power of attorney and the only one with HIPAA authorization, so I’m unable to discuss his condition.

” It strikes me as fascinating that in the end, the last and only person my grandfather felt he could trust was the daughter he never forgave for being a woman.

Lillian sounds almost proud as she explains, like she thinks I was testing her so I could get her fired for messing up. She must have met my uncles.

The doors open to reveal a surprisingly large upscale lounge with white leather couches, televisions, a buffet of healthy snacks, and a dedicated reception desk where a nurse is typing away with one eye on a bank of monitor screens.

It’s so hushed up here that I swear Lillian must be able to hear my heart thudding as I follow her to a set of large oak doors.

“He’s just through here, sir. If either of you need anything at all, please press the green button by the bed. ”

Swallowing around my frozen tongue, I try to figure out the least clumsy-looking way to hold the bouquet as I step into Hugh Innes’ expansive, brightly lit suite.

I gasp in spite of myself—not at the bed, but at the floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall view of the Hudson River and, beyond it, the silver-green haze of the Catskills.

Crossing the room, I rest my hand against the glass and wish I could swim across the river and just keep walking forever into those hills.

I can feel a familiar, keen gaze on my back as I study the scenery in awe. “Do you remember when we hiked to Kaaterskill Falls and met that black bear?” I ask, without turning around.

Under the hum and beep of medical equipment I catch a labored breath, then a low cough. “You threw your sandwich at it,” he observes drily, his voice hoarse but stronger than I expected.

“Grant almost had to wrestle it.” I turn toward the wide-shouldered man, sturdy and tanned with thick gray hair and rugged creases lining his face.

He’s propped up in bed, dressed in a flannel robe and black silk pajamas.

The bulky high-flow cannula hooked around his face, the pulse monitor on his finger, the leads and lines snaking from under the blankets to various machines and IV drips—it all feels absurd, as if he could wave a hand and it would scatter like a swarm of flies.

But when I take a few steps closer, I can hear the thick rattle in his chest when he breathes and see the unhealthy pallor of his skin.

Fumbling the flowers a little, I hold them out so he can see. “I picked them from the Scottish garden this morning.”

He studies them for a moment, then taps the call button without a word. When the nurse sticks her head in, he gestures to the bouquet. “Get a vase for these.”

While we wait for her to come back, he nods to one of the heavy armchairs against the wall.

I push it alongside the bed, listening to the slow pattern of a deep breath, followed by a hiss of oxygen, then an unnerving pause, over and over.

“How are you?” I ask as I unbutton my blazer and sit, my voice less sure than I intended.

He picks up a glass mug of tea from the over-bed table and brings it to his lips with a shaking hand, then grimaces and coughs again.

The nurse reappears with the flowers in a simple glass vase and places them carefully on a shelf alongside a row of store-bought ones.

Grandfather examines them briefly, his face as unreadable as it's always been. When he looks at me, I feel that familiar, cold rush of confusion and power mixed together—the knowledge that he’s had a thousand chances to replace me as heir, but for some reason never has.

“I heard that you disappeared a few weeks ago.” He pauses briefly for breath between each sentence. “That’s not like you.”

Looking down at the notebook on my lap, I trace the edges with my finger.

I stayed up pretty much all night rereading every page and trying to figure out how to do this.

“I’ve been…” I almost say struggling. Before that day by the river, I never imagined how much pain one body could hold.

Instead, I shake my head. “I was taking some space to think about myself, about life.”

He doesn’t move or try to speak, just watches me with flat, keen eyes that always remind me of a bird of prey.

I square my shoulders and lift my head to face him.

My voice isn’t strong, but it’s clear. “I have a request, sir. I know I haven’t met anyone’s expectations of me.

You’re using Archie and Colin and Daxton to prop up what I can’t carry on my own.

I’m going to work on myself and try to become what this family needs. But…”

The longer he sits there, giving me absolutely nothing, the more I start to ramble and mix up all the different versions of this speech I practiced.

“That proposal you turned down last year—I’ve been working on it, and I think I figured it out.

It’s because ethics and sustainability aren’t marketable enough, right?

But they’re the future, and we need to be leading from the front.

So I thought of this whole social media component, where we make one of a kind pieces that go viral.

People will pay unreal amounts for that, and then you roll the money back into improving your supply chains. ”

He holds up one gnarled hand—something, finally—and when I stumble to a halt, I realize I’m death-gripping Jude’s lighter in my pocket.

My fingers have memorized every facet, from the dent on the bottom left corner to the way the hinge for the lid wobbles.

I crush it tight against my palm as I watch Hugh cough and wheeze into his elbow, hard enough to shake the whole bed.

Right when I’m about to call the nurse, he manages to stop and pull in a few deep breaths of the oxygen.

“Andrew, what the hell are you talking about?” Of all the possibilities I tried to anticipate, the genuine confusion in his voice wasn’t one of them.

I blink at him, thrown off-kilter, then rest the notebook on the edge of his bed and try to flip through it without scattering papers everywhere.

“The sustainable branch I pitched to you in September. I have projections here, contracts with factories, designers I scouted, and I found this great marketing firm—”

The troubled wrinkles in his forehead get deeper as he ignores my attempt to hand him the book. “I don’t understand. Why did you do this? What’s the point?”

“I, um…” Just as I’m about to compulsively circle back around and start all over again, searching for the one word that will save me, I catch myself.

I didn’t come here to beg. “I’m trying to say, sir, that I will do my best to become the heir you chose me to be if you tell Archie to back down and greenlight this project. ”

The man stops with his weak hand extended halfway to the mug of tea.

For the first time I can remember, he looks not through me, or around me, but right at me.

Something cold squeezes my spine, a warning.

“I—” He lets out another ragged, phlegm-filled cough, then tries again.

“I thought you figured out your position years ago.”

I’ve lost. Somehow I know it, beyond a doubt. But I don’t understand how or why. “What do you mean?”

“Ask me.” He sits back and crosses his arms, looking me up and down. “You have one question, don’t you? You’re the only person who’s never asked me. So do it.”