Page 26 of What You left in Me

Her head snaps toward me, an icy scowl paired with that fake, tight smile making her look vaguely constipated. “That is not helpful, Finn.”

“Wasn’t trying to be,” I scoff and then look back to the doctor. “Can we see him?”

“Briefly,” he allows, stern. “You can go in two at a time. Keep it short and don’t try to keep him awake long. He will be weak and groggy.”

His gaze softens an inch when it lands on Ariane. It’s understandable. She looks like a wounded puppy. I can’t blame him for adding, “He’ll know you’re there, even if he seems asleep,” for her.

Ariane swallows hard and nods meekly. Her lips move around a barely audible thanks.

She’s gray at the edges, mascara smudged, hair pinned back like it’s the only thing holding her upright.

I look at her and think about the teenage version who hid in hallways with a book too big for her hands, and then I think about last night, water and bare skin and heat, and I want to break something because the timing is a sick joke the universe keeps telling.

“I’ll go first,” Eleanor announces. She turns to Ariane. “You can come with me.”

Ariane doesn’t argue, just shoots me a look, an unnecessary apology in her big, wet eyes.

Julian squeezes her shoulder, voice low and practiced. “I’ll be right here.”

Yeah, you will,I think, and the thought tastes like metal.What the fuck are you doing here, exactly, besides branding yourself to the tragedy?

The doctor gestures. Eleanor glides toward the doors like she’s walking into a reception line. Ariane follows, spine straight, shoes silent. Within seconds, the doors swallow them.

The corridor deflates. The quartet in my head, which has been sawing at one note since the lawn, stops long enough for me to hear my own breath. I rub a hand over my jaw. My knuckles ache, though I haven’t hit anything—yet.

Julian takes his seat again, going right back to checking his phone. He looks shifty when he puts it face down, once he catches me glaring his way.

He offers me a tight smile that’s about as genuine as Eleanor’s.

“He’s a fighter,” he says, like that empty platitude is something I’m going to want to have printed on a fucking t-shirt.

“Touching, thanks,” I say.

He studies me, weighing the risk of an addition. “Ariane needs optimism.”

“All I’ve got is the truth, man,” I say, shrugging. He’s a fucking moron. “She can decide what to do with it.”

Julian just stares at me, unimpressed. I stare back. It’s him who looks away first. That small victory shouldn’t make me feel better, but it kind of does.

In the corner, a television scrolls a sports score nobody cares about at this hour.

A nurse’s laugh spills down the hall, brash and human. The sound of joy feels like a crime to me. How dare the world keep spinning madly on?

###

I don’t know how much time has passed by the time the doors open again. Ariane steps out first, her hands cupped around each other like she’s borrowed a piece of warmth from the room and is trying not to spill it. Her eyes still shine, but at least she looks farther from bursting into tears than she did before.

Eleanor’s right behind her daughter, with her features smoothed into a mask so thin you can see the cracks under it.

“You can go in now, Finn,” she says to me, like I was waiting on her to grant me permission. “But keep it brief.”

“I’ll be fucking concise,” I sigh, refusing to waste my breath arguing with her.

I just brush past them before she can scold my language like I’m seventeen.

Scrubbing my hands with the sanitizer from the pump by the door, I push through it and follow the nurse to a curtained bay where machines beep along.

I’ve never seen my father look small. Hospital beds do that, I guess. They shrink people, steal their edges. That’s what’s happened. He’s a patient with ghostly pallor, with an oxygen cannula feeding air in through his nose. His chest rises and falls weakly beneath the thin, standard hospital-issue blanket in a rhythm the monitor documents studiously. His left hand is taped up around a line, and the skin there looks like crumpled paper.