by Starla Night
“Bella!”
Tonight’s floor nurse was a grandmotherly angel who clasped Bella’s cold hands with familiarity. “He’s been waiting for you all day. How are you doing, hon?”
“Better now. You’ve been such a support in this difficult time.”
The sweet nurse pshawed her. “I do what I can.”
“I appreciate it.” Bella watched the nurse’s smile widen. She needed to be the favorite visitor so everyone would love her patient. “How’s Jonah?”
“No big changes.” She patted Bella’s hands and then passed over the visitor sheet. “He still hasn’t opened his present.”
“I’ll hurry in. Thanks so much.”
“You bet, hon.”
Bella signed in and entered the familiar women’s locker room, stowed her crumpled work suit in her locker, showered, and ripped off the tags of today’s “hospital outfit”: a new, unworn blouse and slacks torn straight from the plastic.
Jonah’s room was the last plastic bubble on the floor. Her heart grew heavy and her palms sweated as she made the nightly walk.
Her purification routine was more extreme than other visitors’, but she didn’t trust the air of the New York subway system; the germs, like the rats, were vicious survivors.
At Jonah’s plastic-covered doorway, she dumped an entire container of alcohol sanitizer into her hands and smeared it over every exposed bit of skin. She doused her cell phone and crammed it, still damp, into a Ziploc bag. Then, she unzipped the door.
A fan blew the air of the room outward, cleansing her in a cool wind.
Inside the aperture, the yellow visitor gown hid her body in a hospital burqa with headscarf and veil. She selected an envelope off the shelf and tore open the paper, unearthing her specially fitted face mask and plastic gloves. Bella tugged them on and checked for stray hairs in the mirror.
She looked like a scuba diver. Plastic covered almost every inch of her body. A bit of speckled skin showed around her eyes.
Now she was sterile. She hoped.
Bella zipped up the external door, opened the second, interior plastic door, and entered her son’s room.
It was dark. The TV displayed monotonous, flickering cartoons; the volume was too low to hear over the fans.
Jonah’s lumpy shape shadowed the flat, hard bed.
She moved his stuffed bear out of the hard plastic seat next to his bed and let herself sink.
His eyelids twitched. He didn’t awaken.
Fans muffled the sounds of the room like ocean waves crashing against implacable cliffs.
On the table, nurses had left his birthday card, a drawing of a cake with ten candles, and the Nintendo Switch she’d bought weeks ago to sterilize it.
The present was still neatly wrapped. He’d waited for her.
A hard lump formed in Bella’s throat.
She’d always made Jonah wait. Just one more client, just one more project, just one more marketing campaign.
Just one more email. Then they’d go to the park. Just one more phone call. Then they’d go out to dinner. Just one more workday scrambling to pay bills and keep the medical insurance while they waited for a miraculous cure. Then he could open his birthday present.
The sun had gone down, the restaurant had closed, and Jonah’s birthday present was unopened. He had always waited.
Bella tilted back in the chair and rested her head against the hard wall. But there was no rest for the wicked. She pressed her phone to her ear.
First message. Work? Debt? Chaz?
“Bella, your latest brand redesign proposal has notes.”
Work.
“The company likes how you glossed over the wars they started, pollution charges, extortion scandal, and child slavery allegations. ‘Progress: It’s A Process’ is a good campaign slogan for them.” Her boss’s voice dipped into the tone where she knew she was asking for something unreasonable and she still expected Bella to comply. “They complained that you didn’t play up a ‘clean energy’ angle. They once bought a wind farm.”
And dismantled it.
“And dismantled it,” her boss conceded, reading her mind on the voice message, “but they still want ‘clean energy’ in the television spot. Can you stay late tonight?…Looks like I missed you. Come in early tomorrow. If we pull all-nighters all week, we should finish by the deadline.”
Bella pulled the phone away from her ear to check the time. Tomorrow was a Saturday.
“Don’t make me give away another client. Your portfolio’s slim. The sick kid isn’t forever, okay? Your career is your future. Call me when you get this.”
Bella did not call her boss and listened to the next message.
“This is the Collections Agency calling again about your outstanding medical bills at—”
Skip.
“Bella, you won’t believe this. The company just got nailed for bribing congressmen. It’s on the late night news. We have to switch out half the images. On the plus side, there’s more room for ‘clean energy.’ Call me.”
She reviewed the client proposal on her tiny phone screen while the next message played. Softly, so it couldn’t project over the fans.
“Hi, Bella, this is Dannika from MerMatch, trying to schedule a meeting with our handsome, eligible marine warrior, Balim.”
The strange compulsion returned. This is your salvation. Certainty filled her veins. Hairs on the back of her neck lifted and goose bumps tingled down her arms. Her heart thudded, hard, and awareness tugged her nipples into hard peaks against her braless new blouse.
“I think Balim is the only one you haven’t met! Ironic, isn’t it? After the hours you’ve spent with us, it’s so funny how life works out. Balim is eager to meet you, and I just know you’ll be great together.”
Bella paused the messages.
The tattooed warriors were hot. She’d never met Balim, but cozying up to Faier, Ciran, and Pelan between coaching sessions hadn’t pained her.
Sadly, their elixir hadn’t cured Jonah. But while she’d been trading skills and wooing it away from the mermen, she’d learned the ripped, honest, powerful males’ future brides would be well-satiated ladies.
She could be one of them…
Balim. What kind of a warrior was Balim? Bossy like serious Ciran, awkwardly hopeful like Pelan, steady and powerful like scarred Faier? Or any of the other warriors she’d worked with all those weeks ago?
He could hold her in his bulging biceps, lay her across a rose-petal-strewn bench, press one muscular thigh between her legs. Give her nights of pleasure while he wooed her to drink that same elixir, gain the powers to shift into a mermaid, and travel to the sunken mer city of Atlantis.
And as a mermaid, she’d keep her figure. The half-fish thing was a fable. Only her toes would extend into fins. The warriors were human-shaped from the tops of their dominant heads to the heels of their feet—and indisputably male.
She could be his queen.
The fantasy deepened as she imagined tracing this mysterious Balim’s tattoos with her tongue. He would sweep her away from this life, and they would escape together into the deep blue—
Jonah jutted a bony, pajama-clad leg out of the sheet and sighed.
Bella ran a soothing, glove-clad index finger along Jonah’s leg to let him know she was here. He didn’t react.
His pajama flannel must be soft. The plastic gloves blocked all sensation.
Bella tugged the thin hospital blanket over Jonah’s exposed leg and tucked it in, smoothing the fabric.
Then she erased Dannika’s message and the merman fantasies that accompanied it. She would not be happy for one moment until Jonah was healthy. Hear that, God? Not a single moment.
She listened to the next message.
“Bel— Guess you only call when you want something.”
Acid tainted with powdered cheese burned the back of her throat.
Her ex-husband, Chaz, dripped scorn with self-righteous indignation. “You can’t demand my bone marrow just
because you never asked for alimony or child support. The answer is no, and you can go to hell for asking. Do you know how big that needle is? It looks painful. Don’t call me again.”
Bella stopped the messages, clenched her phone, and swallowed.
Chaz thought the procedure looked painful?
Did he understand how many times Jonah had been through it?
How dare Chaz—
Jonah moaned and opened his eyes.
She composed herself and put on a soft, welcoming smile. “Hey, Jo-jo.”
He fixed on her. In the jittery TV light, bruised rings and hollow, sunken cheekbones looked like a skull. His dry, cracked lips tugged into the ghost of a smile. “Mom.”
“Happy birthday.” She put on her best enthusiastic voice. “Did the nurses remember? They promised to sing.”
He nodded slowly. Every movement took a heavy effort.
“I asked them to blend up your birthday cake and put it in the IV. Can you taste it?”
His light-colored brows drew together, and he frowned at the clear dangling bag of liquid. Didn’t he remember this was their joke? She used to joke all the time about injecting his favorite snacks and meals into the IV when he couldn’t keep anything down. His illness was making his brain fuzzy.
Her throat closed and her chin wrinkled.
She rubbed her chin and made her voice extra bright to disguise her feelings. “Can you just taste the cake? It’s Funfetti, your favorite.”
His brow smoothed, and he tried to smile again. He remembered. “Yeah.”
Even when he was feeling so bad that he probably had forgotten what birthday cake tasted like, he humored her to make her feel better.
She cleared her throat. “This is a pretty sucky birthday, huh?”
He nodded with more feeling.
“Where do you want to go next year? We could have a huge party with all your friends, and we could go to Ninja Warrior House or Luna Park or even, you know, Disney World…”
He thought about all his options and then said, “Home.”
Her throat closed again. She cleared it once more. “Next year for your birthday, you just want to go home?”
He nodded.
She gently rested her hand on his blanket-covered leg, nodding because she couldn’t trust her voice. “Okay. That’ll be…that’ll be great for us. It will be so much fun. We’ll have a big party, dress up in our best, have your favorite lasagna and salmon rolls and daal, and play games at home.”
He smiled tiredly. His eyelids drooped half-closed. Her window of time with him was closing.
“Right.” Bella pulled herself together, turned to the bedside table, and picked up the unwrapped present. “Did you want to open your…”
His eyes had closed.
While she’d been looking away, he’d gone back to sleep.
Bella rested the present on her lap, crinkling the paper, and then returned it to the table.
Jonah used to sneak in late at night while she was working, and she’d pretend she didn’t see him. He’d fall asleep at the end of her desk, snoring softly, until she finished her work and carried him back to his bed.
She should have noticed he was sick. She should have protected him.
Hadn’t she been selfish long enough?
A wave of sadness crushed her in its fist. She closed her eyes.
She’d been so scared he’d never reach his tenth birthday. And here they were.
Will he reach his eleventh birthday?
She choked on the stabbing pain. This could not be endured. She could not endure.
The clock beeped. Midnight.
Her boss wanted her to come in early on a Saturday to redesign the client proposal to redeem a company she very much doubted could be redeemed, but her job was to do the impossible. Advertisers controlled the narrative. The company wanted to tell its lies. In her hands, a lie would become “truth.”
So Jonah could keep his health insurance. So they could search for a new cure. So he could stay alive.
She rested both hands on his bedside. Silent prayers raced through her head.
I will save you. I don’t know how. But I will bend heaven and earth to find a cure. I will not enjoy one single moment of happiness until you’re healthy and well once again.
And if God won’t answer, I’ll chase down the devil.
Jonah slept, his chest rising and falling.
Bella rose and whispered, “Good night.” She did not kiss his cheek before she left, not even through the plastic.
Her kiss could be poison.
Outside his plastic-encased room, she peeled off her gown. Gloves and mask went in the trash, gown and fabrics went in the linen bin for sterilization. She stormed down the hall to her locker, changed, and dropped the used outfit into the donation bin on her way out the door.
A deep breath of dark fall air emptied her lungs of the hospital stench. She checked the subway schedule. Should she go into work now and start the redesign?
An unknown number rang.
She swiped her schedule and accidentally answered the call.
“Bella Taylor.” A weirdly feminine, possibly distorted voice spoke through phone interference. “You have been selected for a one-on-one date with the merman Balim.”
God, dating sites were aggressive these days.
She ran a hand through her limp red hair. “Yes, thanks so much. Tell Dannika I need to cancel.”
“You can’t cancel.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry. Now’s not a good time.”
“But don’t you know the mermen have drugs that could cure your son?”
What?
Her brain pinged, and the pebble dropped.
No dating site would call her after midnight on a weekend.
She pulled the phone away and double-checked her recording app. Yes, it was recording.
Bella put the phone back to her ear and donned her client voice. “May I have the pleasure of asking who this is and how you know about that?”
“I know a lot about you,” the distorted voice replied, smug. “As for you, you can call me ‘Herc.’”
“Okay, Herc.” Bella paced. Working closely with the mermen had taught her a few things. Including their enemies. “It’s thrilling to meet you. Your name wouldn’t be short for ‘Sons of Hercules,’ would it?”
“Well…”
“You’re famous. If it weren’t for you taking a stand against mermen despite your busy finals, the world would be a very different place.” She gave a pause that she hoped would let him bask in her almost-compliment. “And you’re so dedicated. Inventive. Really ingenious. I doubt anyone knows I got selected for that one-on-one with Balim…unless the employees have been talking?”
“Oh, they’ve been talking, all right. They don’t know I’ve been listening.”
How very helpful.
“And I should go on this date to get their medicine,” she continued, using her favorite strategy to pull information out of a client. “But I heard they don’t have it to give out.”
“They have tons. A whole aquarium full in their plague-infested ‘hospital’ building.”
“Ew, I can’t give my son used aquarium water.”
“No, no. They have more in vats. They make it all the time.”
“Well, I’m so impressed you know these secrets, Herc. Nobody can get into the mermen’s hospital building. It must have been so hard.”
“It was easy until they moved. But we’ll get in again. We have to drive the monsters back to the ocean trenches before they steal our women.”
“Wow. You’re so set up. Why are you calling me?”
“Of course, you can’t imagine,” the distorted voice continued, smug. “Because I haven’t told you.”
“That’s true.”
She let the silence elongate, testing his ability to withstand subtle negotiation pressure.
“So I’ll tell you.” He raced to fill her silence. “The mermen are keeping a flower from their underwater Life
Tree in an aquarium behind their reception desk. You’re going to steal it.”
She coughed. “You want me to walk into the merman office alone and steal the only Life Tree blossom on the surface of the planet? Okay. What’s your plan?”
“You’ll figure it out.”
So, he had no plan.
“And why would I accept this extremely dangerous task?” she asked pleasantly.
“Because you’re not helping your son, Jonah, by pacing on those steps. Especially if you slip on those slimy leaves and break your neck.”
She halted, the tips of her boots on the edge of the pile of autumn leaves. Her heart beat hard in her throat.
Few people walked on the street, heads down, occupied. Even at midnight, visitors climbed the steps of the hospital or rushed into the emergency room.
“Now I have your attention, call the monster office back and accept the date. You will wear our necklace, and—”
“Your necklace? I’m sorry. You’re giving me a necklace?”
“Yeah, so when the monster’s back is turned, you stick the flower inside the necklace to steal it.”
She envisioned some kind of water-filled locket. Not exactly subtle. “Hmm.”
“And if you tell anyone about this, you will be sorry.”
“Sorry? I’ll be sorry?”
“You’ll be very sorry.”
Right.
An off-duty police officer she recognized exited the hospital. Bella flew down the steps and hiked to the subway station a few strides behind the officer. “What if the necklace doesn’t match my dress?”
“You’re not taking me seriously.”
“Oh, no. I’m taking a threat against my life very seriously. I would hate to have to give the recording of this call to the very nice officer I’m following to the subway station.”
“Recording?”
“New York being a one-party consent state, I record my business calls, and I can’t possibly do business with someone who made me fear for my life. But I’m sure the implied threat was a misunderstanding…?”