The Heart of It All (HeartSick Series Book 1)

by Weston Mitchel

  Would this not make Mia her morally, ethically, and compassionately obligated to do the same? By simply pushing away one of those three destined to be in the path of her storm out of the way she could downgrade herself from a category 3 hurricane to a category 2. Sure Brian would most likely be the easiest and first to push away, not that she was playing favorites or anything but come on.

  One more push, this one harder to do and would need a stronger shove. Ashley was her best friend if she got down to brass tacks and named her for what she really was. Although she had been trying to push her away from the beginning, Ashley always found a way to deflect Mia’s wounds and barbs. Ashley was constantly vying to be her ride or die. If only Ashley knew to the extent of how true those words would become. Still, it may not be easy but forcing Ashley to move on now would downgrade her threat to a category 1 Tropical Storm.

  One last push, the most difficult and emotional yet. The hardest in order to gather the strength and courage to push, and the hardest to keep him at bay after the pushing was done would be Austin. She could already feel herself falling for him.

  Mia had never allowed herself to so much as begin to have feelings for anyone before. This had made her come off like a raging bitch at times, especially in high school, not giving anyone the time of day. If they would have only known it was for their sake and not hers maybe they would have understood, but even then she doubted it.

  Somehow Austin had needled his way through this stone wall she constructed around her heart by the time she was 12 years old. She blamed Ashley for most of it. She had been the first to soften the edges, slowly crumbling away the mortar with her insistent friendship, never letting Mia keep her at arms distance like she had with any other girl who wanted to become friendly.

  Now they were more than just friends, they were bffs, ugh.

  Ashley had followed her all the way from New York here to Texas so they could attend the same school. Ashley says it was her first choice too, but Mia felt that if she had chosen anywhere else, Ashley would be saying the same thing applying to be her roommate wherever Mia ended up.

  Now here she was at college, land of the open minded and self explorers. Maybe this added to letting her guard down so that when Austin came along with his cute, smart, and goofy ass, he was able to chip away even more.

  First, with little pinpricks of timid compliments, and even more timid eye contact and sarcastic jokes. Then moved on to using a small hammer and chisel of flowers and real dates and chivalry like she only saw in movies.

  Mia was sure that now Austin was able to see a tiny beam of light shining through the wall he was apt to take a bulldozer to it, demolishing the rest of the construction post haste.

  Doesn’t he know this wall meant to keep people out was for his own protection, not mine?

  If she waited much longer, the falling would come faster and farther until there was only one outcome… complete and utter destruction.

  If I could push him away…no. When I push him away, it will save more than his heart.

  Hurricane Mia would be downgraded once more to a Tropical Depression. She would then be nothing more than a warm summer rain, casting shade over a beach umbrella, leaving almost no destruction in her wake to speak of. Now all that was left was to actually do the damn thing, instead of just thinking about it.

  EavesDropping Izzy

  Isabelle was sitting at her desk trying to act busy playing an updated version of Marble Madness on her computer, and had been for a little over an hour now. When Austin left the lab earlier she thought she might be here all night running the protocols for the second round of experiments on his blood.

  That hadn’t been the case in the slightest, however. Dr. Greer apparently had no intention of letting Izzy touch this newest sample of blood, if not for this second round, then for this evening at least.

  The Doctor mentioned something about “just wanting to make sure the steps are followed precisely at this stage.” She sat at the counter running tests in Izzy’s place for only five minutes before moving everything into the clean room. Another move that Izzy didn’t really understand.

  If she really wanted to be left alone she could have just given me the damn night off, no real reason for me to even be here.

  So Izzy was bitter, to put it mildly, that not only was she covering for someone else again, but she was here for no reason other than to serve as the night gopher. Just as she was about to go let the not-so-good Doctor have an earful, the night shift girl barreled through the door hurriedly heading towards the doctor’s office, surprised to see Izzy staring back at her.

  “What are you doing here? Thought you weren’t comin in tonight?” Izzy asked, wanting to hurl several key cusswords in Spanish at her, but refrained.

  “Yeah, still not, where’s the doc?” the girl responded, seeing the disdain in her counterpart’s eyes, and clearly not giving two shits.

  “She’s back there in the clean room, we got donor boy’s sample a few hours ago, she-“

  “Yeah, I know that already, thanks.”

  With a curt smile Ashley passed by Izzy not gracing her with another glance. Ashley passed the sporadically arranged empty desks, and dusty computers sitting on them, to the small hallway that leads to the back portion of their laboratory facilities.

  Izzy couldn’t help herself any longer, as the night shift girl got mere feet passed her she mumbled under breath the string of words she had been dying to say out loud for some time now. The girl, if she heard, paid no attention to this either and opened the door to the makeshift dressing room.

  Ashley closed the door behind her, then sat down on the bench sliding off her high heels and began to put on the ugly, mundane, white leather clean room shoes. Since she was still in costume, basically lingerie, all she had to do was take off her jacket and throw the light plastic-ish Tyvek overall suit on over top. This would be the most comfortable she had ever been in one of these suits, no real clothes underneath it to bunch up and sweat through.

  I should come to work like this more often, she chuckled to herself, like I actually come to work and do anything anyway. That’s for the poor suckers like Iz out there who actually have to work for living.

  Now, all that remained to put on was the white papery hair net.

  Ugh screw it, I am not messing my shit up just to go in there, she’ll just have to deal.

  Ashley then crumpled up the hair net and mask that she already grabbed out of the cardboard dispenser and threw it on top of her jacket that was bunched up into a ball over her heels.

  She wasn’t able to get any further than opening the door to the clean room. If she had, she most likely would have been turned to a pillar of salt just by the pent up anger unleashed from the Doctor’s eyes. Right now was not the time to throw proper protocol out of the window, not when the Doc was quite possibly working on the most important discovery to the world since the Germ theory, maybe ever.

  The door to the clean room, hissed like an angry cobra, opening inside the small foyer knocking into Ashley almost shoving her to the ground, while she herself was reaching for the handle to open it. Dr. Greer noticed the door pushing back against her a tad and peered around the slab of the door.

  As this was going on in the dressing room Izzy had become curious about what was so important that would make night shift girl actually show up. She wouldn’t be able to hear any conversation going on in the clean room, what with the air circulators humming and machines doing the lab’s bidding.

  You could, however, hear almost everything being said in the dressing room from outside the hollow core door in the hallway. Right now though, leaning against the wall a foot or two from the doorjamb, Izzy could hear every word spoken and virtually every movement the two made inside with their paper suits on.

  “Ashley? What are you doing here? I thought you had a p-“, before she could finish her query, Ashley cut her off.

  “Mom! Why haven’t you been answering your phone? I’ve been trying to get a hol
d of you for the last hour?” Ashley spoke in a nearly whiny voice, the normal teenage slant when talking to moms.

  “Ashley, calm down,” grabbing her daughter lightly by the wrist, making her look into her stern eyes she continued “and not so loud, Isabelle is right out front. I left my cell in the office to not have any distractions. Now, tell me, what’s so damn important?”

  Outside the door Isabelle’s muscles tightened at the thought of being caught eavesdropping, but it was too good to pass up.

  Did she just call the doctor, mom? No friggin wonder, puta.

  “Mom! Mia has gotten worse, an ambulance had to take her to the hospital just now,” Ashley exclaimed in a hushed, hoarse shout.

  “What? Why? What’s wrong?” Dr. Greer blurted out the four words so fast that almost came out as one long word.

  Izzy could hear the Doctor rip off the paper suit and thought she might come bounding out the door any second, in a panic over this Mia person. Izzy backed down the short hallway quickly, but quietly on her tip-toes taking long, wide strides.

  “I don’t know, we just barely got to the party, and before I knew it she fainted. Her boyfriend, Austin, was right beside her and was able to catch her, or who kno-“

  “Enough. How is she doing now? Is she ok?”

  This time the mother had done the interrupting. Ashley purposefully leaving out the part about how she was too busy arguing with her on-again, off-again boyfriend to being paying attention to what was happening with Mia.

  Her mom had just about blown a gasket when she found out about her first real boyfriend two years ago back in New York. She wasn’t about to have that happen again. She would only feed her mother the information that she craved, and nothing more. Even though there was nothing more she had wanted to do at times than to throw in her face all the things she had done with her new boyfriend just to see her head explode.

  At the same time, though, she knew her mom only cared about Mia anymore, and would only laugh it off to spite in return then ask her questions about what Mia was up to just to twist the blade in further.

  “I had to drop your name with the head nurse to get anywhere, but yeah, she is awake now, and has been since the ambulance apparently. They have her on a drip, planning to keep her overnight just for safety measures. But they aren’t letting anyone in to see her.”

  “Ok, I’ll take care of that. I’ll call Debby first thing and tell her to let you in to see her. You need to be there for her, she needs to know she can trust you.”

  “I know mom! I am trying, sheesh,” Again this was said in the whiny, know it all voice of a tried and true teenager.

  “Well try harder damn it. I am not going to let you screw this up for me. Not after everything we’ve been through.” The quiet anger came seething out in between her gritted teeth with each flying flare of spittle. Catherine managed to stay just calm enough as to not get loud enough for Izzy to overhear at her desk.

  She raised her hand to the doorknob, then changed her mind, and her stance. Crossing her arms in front of her, turning back to Ashley, glaring at her with an inquisitive eyebrow she asked “What about this boyfriend? You never mentioned him before.”

  “It’s nothing, mom.” Ashley crossed her arms in front of her as well in a show of insolence and added “I didn’t think it was important, he’s just some guy she met a while back.”

  Ashley knew her mom would flip if she knew the extent of the relationship Mia and Austin had. She would triple flip if she knew what she and Brian were up to seven days out of eleven. Ashley felt that their love lives weren’t any of her nosy mom’s business anyway and would only use that detail if it could benefit her somehow.

  “I need to know everything Ashley, so yeah a boyfriend is kind of important, and you know that,” she said letting out a long frustrated sigh, Dr. Greer had to keep her emotions in check. She had known for going on two months now, that Mia had a boyfriend, almost from the beginning. She had also known Ashley herself had been keeping a boyfriend secret from her. She gave her countless times over the last two months to tell her so, but every time she thought Ashley was close to telling her everything, she would bring her wall up again and change the subject back to Mia.

  Catherine Greer gathered herself once more, thinking she might push the issue a bit more, giving her daughter more rope to either hang herself, or use it to pull herself out of the fire and asked “So tell me, where is this… what did you say his name was?”

  “His name is Austin,” Ashley was looking at the tops of her shoes thinking how the clean room shoes wouldn’t go with her costume, so she wasn’t able to see her mom’s stilted reaction at the sound of the boyfriend’s name. “Don’t worry, he’s one of the good ones, he is at the hospital now waiting on Mia.”

  “And where does this Austin think you are right now?”

  “I told him,” again leaving out the part about Brian being there as well, “I was going to look for the chapel, needed some alone time. Luckily they took her to State right across the street so I was able to sneak over here to tell you, but I need to get back before they go looking for me.”

  “They?” Dr. Greer asked her daughter. So she finally broke and told me about Austin, let’s see if she tells me about her beau.

  “Huh?”

  “You just said before they go looking for you, who is they?” She asked again this time not able to hide the accusatory tone in her voice. Come on, Ash, let your secret out, tell me. She steadied her nerves and her eyes once more, waiting.

  “Oh, I just meant Mia and Austin, sheesh. Trust much?”

  “Don’t you dare start with me young lady, not with everything else going on, you don’t.”

  Catherine opened the door ushering her daughter out into the hallway forcefully, but quietly adding “Now go, be there for her.”

  Ashley slid past her through the doorway trying hard to not brush against her. She headed to her desk in the corner where she kept a change of clothes in the bottom drawer, then realized when she got into the hall that she couldn’t change or Brian and Austin would know she hadn’t been at the chapel.

  “I forgot my jacket,” she said sliding back by her mom, silently praying that she would either go back in to the clean room or her office so she wouldn’t see what she had on under the suit of paper.

  Of course she was old enough to wear whatever the hell she wanted, but she didn’t want to spark another fight with her mom, at least not right now. For a second it looked as if her mom/boss was about to do just that when she turned back around and asked her a weird question.

  “Her boyfriend, Austin. His last name wouldn’t happen to be Kyle would it?”

  “Uh, yeah it is, how did you know that?”

  “Oh you know, I have my ways.”

  And once again, you let me down.

  She gave her daughter a playful wink as to not clue her in on her disappointment, then turned and went back to her office, leaving Ashley alone in the room to tear off her own suit and put her jacket back on in private.

  Isabelle, who had been safely at her desk since the mention of her own name, obviously hadn’t heard any of this last part. Minimizing the test results from earlier experiments after the Doctor, and then Ashley a minute later, passed her desk without a single word, she went back to playing Marble Madness acting as if she was none the wiser.

  “Izzy?” Dr. Greer called out from her office.

  Isabelle jerked from the calling out like a mouse eating a piece of cheese who caught the scent of a cat just around the corner, more out of habit than anything knowing her boss couldn’t see her screen from her office.

  “Yes ma’am?” she returned the volley just as a dutiful maid was expected to, scurrying from her desk to the doorway of the Doctor’s Office.

  “Before Ashley came in and ran my train of thought right off the tracks, I was actually coming to tell you that there really is no need for you to be here the rest of the night. I got this covered. Why don’t you go get some r and r, dear?”<
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  “Uh, yes ma’am,” Izzy was struck dumbfounded once again as she had been earlier when she showed up with a mocha frap, her favorite, while waiting on Austin to show up, “I think I just might take you up on that, thank you.”

  It was surprising to her how such normally small considerations like just grabbing an extra drink, or sending someone home early could be seen as major rewards. The Doctor was all work, and no play, desperately trying to make Jill a dull girl.

  Simple gestures such as these could be compared to getting a few drops of water from a torturous prison guard. Something so small that should have been, and probably would be, a given in other places of society was a much sought after and rare gift here.

  Mia's Re-emergence

  Mia had been officially released from the hospital an hour before she actually got up out of her bed and left, just minutes before one of the nurses was about to forcefully demand it because they needed the room. Since she hadn’t allowed anyone to see her through the night, nobody was able to bring her a change of clothes so she was forced to put the costume from the night before back on minus the glasses and sweater vest.

  She had also kept her phone turned off throughout her stay to not be inundated with questions or concerns from the rest of the quartet. As she slid her phone into her pocket she was hoping that the three of them had gone home for the night and weren’t currently waiting outside the wing for her, which of course they were.

  Mia refused to be pushed out in a wheelchair, she would be damned if they saw her rolling out in one of those. The nurse gave in quite easily, mostly because she needed Mia out. The nurse however was kind enough to open the double doors leading out to the waiting room by pushing the handicap button. This automatically opened the doors with a loud motorized hum and clank. The entire waiting room was now staring at her as she stood in the center of the doorway clutching the vest and glasses tightly to her chest.

  Austin was slowly arousing from his comatose state in the chair, rubbing the weariness, and the eye boogers, out of his eyes. When he saw Mia standing just on the other side of the room, any notion of tiredness was ejected from his mind as he jumped out of his seat and raced across the room toward her. He realized he may have stood up a bit too fast, blood rushed into his head giving him a sense of momentary dizziness, and racked his shin into Brian’s chair. This jarred Brian awake with an extremely loud one word phrase “What-in-the-holy-fuck?”