Page 42 of What You left in Me
“Eat anyway.” He hands me a fork. “You need fuel. And water. Gallons. Your mother is going to drain you today.”
“That sounds vampiric.”
“She is a very well-dressed vampire,” he says, straight-faced. He pours coffee, just the right amount of cream, no sugar. “We’ll go to the hospital after. I’ll talk to the nurse manager about visiting blocks. We’ll make a schedule so you’re not sitting there for twelve hours and hating yourself for needing a shower.”
He is perfect. He is so perfect it makes something in me itch. The perfection has edges today though, brittle, like a glass sculpture you admire with your hands behind your back because you know one wrong move and you’re picking shards out of your fingers for a month.
“I appreciate you, you know?” I tell him, because I do. I don’t deserve him. “And the eggs.”
“Consider it step one in my campaign to keep you from collapsing.” He kisses my temple and then his phone buzzes andhe glances at it with that particular focus I recognize as a donor in distress. He silences it.
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We drive to the hospital with more coffee in travel mugs. I lean my forehead against the window for a second and watch trees blur by in a dizzying haze. I’m seized by both a yearning to be by my stepfather’s side and trepidation over it.
Once we get there, we find Richard’s floor awake with the endless racket of machines. While she refused to leave the hospital, she had supplies brought to her last night. Julian stepped away after sex to take things to her. Now, she is sitting in a corner with a legal pad, two pens, and a perfectly straight spine. Her makeup is perfect.
“Darling,” she says, seeing me and standing at the same time because she does not greet sitting down. She kisses the air near my cheek. “How are you?”
“Fine,” I lie, because I’d rather not be admonished for having emotions in front of Julian right now. “How is he?”
“Resting,” she says. Her voice is porcelain. “The doctor will update us again at ten, he said. He really is exceptional. Top of his field. I’ve already called the board to expedite the specialty consult. We’re not waiting on red tape.”
Julian kisses her cheek with appropriate delicacy. “You look… well,” he attempts, then pivots to safer ground. “I spoke to Senator Kline. He sends his love and says anything you need.”
“I need him to mind his own business,” she says, and there, there’s the hairline crack, quick and real. She snaps it shut. “Thank him, of course.”
“I will.” He slips a hand to the back of my neck, thumb gentle at the base of my skull. It’s a very nice touch. I want it to be enough to calm the small Rovio bird of panic that’s been ricocheting between my ribs since last night.
We scrub into CCU. The smell hits, bleach and a metallic scent I refuse to label, and I nearly lose that breakfast Julian made me. Richard is there under the thin hospital blanket, smaller than he has been since I met him. His skin is the color of paper left in a desk drawer too long, his lashes rest on his cheeks like tired commas. Tubes, lines, numbers. The monitor ticks off his heart’s geography with merciless calm. The ventilator exhales and inhales in a rhythm that is its own quiet tyranny.
I take his hand because I can’t do anything else that feels like doing. It’s cool, but his fingers twitch when I curl mine.
“Hi,” I whisper, and my voice comes out like I just learned how to use it. “You promised me Sunday pancakes, remember? I’ve been very patient. This is me calling in my debt. Again.”
Mom stands on the other side of the bed, nodding. Turns out, I’ve said something appropriate for the setting, then she pivots to the nurse with the voice she reserves for vendors and people who don’t know her last name.
“We will not be doing any press updates on the floor,” she says. “All statements go through me. If any media attempt to…”
“Mom,” I say, soft. Not a scold. Not today. She’s a shark who swims or drowns. Let her circle the boat. “Not now.”
Her eyes flash, then soften a fraction when she really looks at me. The fraction is a mercy, and it makes me want to cry into the crook of her neck like I used to do when I fell off my bike and opened my knee on gravel.
She squeezes Richard’s shoulder as if she can push him back into his body by force.
“Come back to me,” she whispers to him, and it’s the most human she’s sounded in two days.
Julian hovers at the foot of the bed in that way he has, useful and ready, presence dialed to comforting. He murmurs logistics: shifts, calls, food. I nod at all the right places. I watch the rise and fall of Richard’s chest the way I used to watch Saturday morning cartoons, rapt, hoping for magic.
After a while, when the nurse raises her eyebrows in that “two at a time isn’t a suggestion” way, Mom volunteers to step out.
“I’ll talk to the reporter from the Chronicle,” she says. “Can’t have them speculating.” Her eyes are set. Her shoes click away, steady as a metronome.
I bend closer to Richard. The ventilator whirs, the monitor paints green mountains I can’t climb. I feel ridiculous and desperate and sixteen, so I do the thing that saved me then: I speak in poems. “Do not go gentle into that good night,” I whisper, because if Dylan Thomas can’t get through, nothing will. “Rage, rage against the dying of… okay, you know the line. You hate when I get preachy. Fine.” My throat tightens and I clear it. “Remember when you tried to skip stones and one bounced off your shoe and you swore and made me promise not to tell Mom? Consider this me calling in a favor.”
His hand twitches again. It’s probably a reflex. I take it anyway.
“Hey,” Julian says softly, thumb smoothing over the knuckle of my other hand. “He hears you.” He believes it. He’s very good at staying optimistic. It looks good on him.