Holly aches to embrace him, to fall into his arms like she did so many years ago. She brushes her hair and robotically plaits it into a simple style, exchanges her lounge pants for a pair of jeans and liberally applies deodorant under the jersey. Its nearly formless shape is preferable to the more defining tops in the bag. What the hell was Beau thinking?
“Holly, are you alright?” Tristan knocks on the door. “I’m not leaving if that’s what you’re hoping for.”
She packs the bag, glances once more in the mirror, and resigns herself to leaving the solitude of the bathroom. Holly opens the door and practically walks into Tristan. He backs up allowing her to pass, regarding her appearance. “Sticking with the old jersey, I see.”
“Yeah, it’s comfortable.” Holly shrugs and tosses the duffel toward the corner.
“And the Pink pants weren’t?” Tristan arches an eyebrow at her.
“Not so much. They were a joke. A bad, bad joke.” Holly frowns.
“They were kinda cute on you.” Tristan grins at her.
“Just what every woman wants, the word ‘Pink’ across her ass,” Holly responds blandly. She takes a cup of coffee from the tray and drops into the chair next to her mom’s bed. “She looks so frail, Tristan.”
“There is nothing frail about that woman,” Tristan assures her. “She’ll wake up, Holly.”
“How can you know that?” Holly asks.
Tristan shrugs. “I just do. She’s not going to waste away in this hospital room. Your mother would never suffer such a thing.”
Holly’s mouth turns up at the corner at Tristan’s impersonation of her mom. “You still do the best impression of her.”
“How could I ever forget?” Tristan leans against the wall. “There were so many things she would not suffer through.”
“You’re right.” Holly nods. “Mom would hate the hospital gown and the hole in that blanket and the smell of the room and she would never forgive me if I let her go with her hair looking like that.”
They laugh together. Holly meets Tristan’s eye for a second but looks away quickly. She’s not ready to go down that road again, not now, not like this.
“Why don’t you get some sleep? I’ll watch over her and wake you if anything changes.”
She considers this and how good it would feel to truly sleep. Holly appreciates that he accepts her unwillingness to go home and leave her mom here alone. She remembers doing the same for him once. Tristan produces a blanket from somewhere and covers her with it, taking her coffee from her hands.
“You can have more later but you look exhausted, Hol. Get some sleep, even an hour or two will do you some good.”
Holly curls into the chair, pulling the blanket up to form a small pillow beneath her cheek and not caring that her feet peek out the bottom now. “Maybe just a little nap.”
“I’ll be right here, Holly,” Tristan assures her once more, his expression unreadable as he watches over her.
**
“Holly?” Tristan’s voice breaks into her dream. “Holly! Wake up!”
He’s shaking her lightly when she comes to.
“What?” Holly’s voice is heavy with sleep.
“Your mom’s awake.” Tristan backs out of her view so she can see her mom.
Holly shakes off the sleepiness. “Mom?”
“I sent for the nurse already,” Tristan moves aside so Holly can lean into her mom.
“Holly?” Carrie Chamberlain’s voice is raspy and weak but her eyes seem to focus on her daughter’s face. “What happened?”
“You had a heart attack, Mom,” Holly explains. “But you’re going to be okay. Take it easy.”
Nurse Cody walks into the room. “When did she wake?”
“Just a few minutes ago,” Tristan explains, “she’s talking and coherent.”
“Excellent.” Cody crosses to the bed. “Welcome back, Mrs. Chamberlain. I’m just going to check your vitals and we’ll get the doctor in here, okay?”
Carrie Chamberlain nods weakly. She turns her head toward Holly and mouths “he’s handsome,” in spite of her dry lips. Holly rolls her eyes. Of course that would be her Mom’s first thought upon waking.
“I’m going to go call the family, Mom.” Holly pats her shoulder.
“I’ll do that,” Tristan offers. “I have to be leaving anyway. If you give me their numbers, I’ll call them on my way home.”
Not really wanting to leave her Mom, Holly concedes and jots down the numbers from her phone.
“Thanks, Tristan.”
“Anytime, Hol.” Tristan bobs his head and bows out of the room.
“Your cousin seems invested in your well-being.” Cody emphasizes the word cousin and avoids eye contact.
Holly remembers how Beau got Tristan in to stay with her. “Yeah, we were really close growing up but we lost contact for a while and now he’s trying to make it up to me.”
“Mmhmm.” Cody taps some things into his tablet. “I’ll send the doctor in.” He spins on his heel and leaves without another word.
“What did you do to him?” Carrie rasps from her bed.
“Nothing, Mom.” Holly is just as confused as her Mom. “I didn’t do anything.”
Carrie shifts her head slightly, the disapproval apparent. Her eyes brim with tears. “I don’t want you to be alone.”
“Mom, I’m not alone.” Holly leans forward. “Don’t worry about me.”
“I always worry,” Carrie whispers, barely enough sound to make the words audible.
“Don’t, Mom.” Holly strokes her Mom’s arm. “Just rest. You will have plenty of time to play matchmaker when you are all better.”
Her mom opens her mouth to answer but is interrupted by the doctor, a new one. She’s tall and slender with bright red hair with a face full of freckles and sharp lines.
“Hello, I’m Dr. Alexander.”
Dr. Alexander launches into a highly technical discussion of what exactly is wrong with Carrie Chamberlain’s heart and how long they expect her to need rehabilitation. Holly tries to pay attention but she can’t help watching her mom, grateful she’s awake and coherent. It could have been so much worse.
“Here are a list of suggested facilities.” Dr. Alexander gestures for Cody to hand a sheet of paper to Holly. He doesn’t meet her eye, leaving Holly to grasp for the paper in his outstretched hand. “We’d like to keep her for another day or so for observation but that should give you time to make the arrangements.”
Holly nods. “Is there anything else I need to know?” Not that she’d heard much of what was said before.
“Not unless you have questions.” Dr. Alexander smiles the fake, plastic kind of smile that they probably taught her in medical school.
“I don’t.” Holly nudges her mom’s arm. “Do you have any questions, Mom?”
“When can I go home?” Carrie Chamberlain whispers. “I hate hospitals.”
“I’m afraid I cannot advise you returning home, Mrs. Chamberlain. You will need some rehab.” Dr. Alexander pauses patiently when she sees Carrie trying to cut her off.
“No. I want to go home,” Carrie Chamberlain says clearly, her voice a little stronger.
“You would need to hire a personal medical team, Mrs. Chamberlain,” Dr. Alexander explains, “and your insurance will not cover that.”
“Mom, let me make some calls and see what I can find for you, okay?” Holly soothes, knowing full well they could not afford private home care. “Just give me a chance.”
“I will leave you two to discuss it.” Dr. Alexander excuses herself and Cody follows leaving Holly alone with her Mom.
“I want to go home,” her mom pleads with her.
“I know, Mom.” Holly strokes her arm soothingly. “I just don’t know how we can afford it. Let me talk to everybody and see what I can work out, okay?”
Carrie Chamberlain blinks at her daughter and nods her head just a little. “Thank you.”
**
“She wants to go home.” Ho
lly states evenly. She’s been on the phone all day trying to figure out plans for her Mom. None of the options seem very good and now her brothers want to just ship her off to the first one that has space. The problem with that is their mom’s continued insistence that she go home, especially after they tried moving her to a semi-private room. It took a lot of work to get her into a private room in hopes of temporarily appeasing her.
“I know, but we don’t have the kind of money it takes to make that happen,” Beau argues. “Even if we all pooled our resources, it’s just not enough.”
“Mom and Dad gave us everything. There has to be something we can do for her,” Holly argues.
Beau and Chad exchange a look. Chad nods and Beau answers, clearly they know something she doesn’t.
“Hol, there’s nothing left.”
“What do you mean there’s nothing left?” Holly blanches.
“I mean, there’s nothing left. Mom’s almost broke,” Chad explains. “When Dad died, we paid off all of their debt so that Mom wouldn’t have to worry about anything. You saw how she was, there was no way she was going back to work. So we did what we thought was best and took care of Mom. The only thing she has is the house.”
“Can we draw against the house? Offer it as collateral for a loan?” Holly grasps at straws, she doesn’t know anything about finances.
“Not really, Hol.” Beau shakes his head.
“So we’re stuck.” Holly begins to pace the hall. “How is this possible?”
“Dad didn’t leave much for Mom and Mom didn’t have enough credits to collect retirement. There’s a lot more to it, but that’s basically what happened,” Chad adds. “Dad gave a lot of money to all of us and,” he pauses and stops Holly in her tracks, “he made arrangements for your school loans to be paid off.”
Holly gasps and backs away. “What?”
“We weren’t supposed to tell you until graduation,” Beau tells her. “Mom and Dad had it all worked out. They wanted it to be a surprise, they wanted you to start fresh without the loans hanging over your head.”
“Use it for Mom,” Holly says automatically.
“We can’t, Holly,” Beau argues. “We can’t touch it until you graduate. It’s in a trust. Besides, Mom would never forgive you.”
“She will never forgive me if we put her in a nursing home.”
“Holly, we can’t,” Beau repeats. “We don’t have a choice. We’re going to have to take her to one of those facilities. She can get mad at us after she recovers.”
“At me, you mean,” Holly mumbles. “It will be my fault.”
“No, it won’t,” Chad soothes. “C’mon, Hol. It will be fine. Some of those places are nice and with her insurances we can make it work.”
“I don’t know. I just don’t see this working out very well for any of us,” Holly grumbles as they head back to their Mom’s room.
“Just be patient, Holly, we’ll figure this all out.” Chad puts his arm around her shoulder in a half hug. “We’re family, it’s what we do.”
They file into their mother’s room, ready to have the tough conversation with her. Carrie Chamberlain is propped up on pillows eating jello and talking to Tristan. She’s smiling, her eyes bright for the first time since waking up.
“Oh, Tristan, you have not changed a bit.”
“I assure you, I’ve changed a lot,” Tristan beams.
“You have gotten taller, and filled out finally.” Carrie practically coos at him.
“Ahem.” Beau clears his throat. “Mom?”
“Oh!” Carrie smiles at her children. “You all remember Tristan, right?”
“Yeah, Mom.” Chad crosses the room and shakes hands with Tristan. “Good to see you, man. It’s been a long time.”
Tristan smiles at Chad. “Good to be back.”
“Where you been?” Chad probes. “I thought Holly was going to have a breakdown when you stopped writing.”
A pained expression passes Tristan’s face but he recovers quickly. “It’s a really long story. But I’m back now and I hope to make it up to Holly.” His eyes flick toward her. Holly’s jaw tightens.
“Do you think you could give us a few minutes with our mom?” Beau asks.
“Yes, of course,” Tristan agrees, “I’ll just go get some coffee.”
They wait for him to leave the room and settle around their mom’s bed.
“Mom,” Beau starts, but then, he always does, “we called around to the places the doctors gave us.”
Carrie Chamberlain’s face changes, her jaw sets. “I want to go home.”
“Mom, we can’t afford to,” Chad coaxes. “We wish we could but we just can’t.”
“So you’re going to ship me off to some old folks home to wither away?” Carrie Chamberlain challenges.
“You aren’t going to wither away, Mom.” Beau sounds exasperated. “Seriously, you did not used to be this melodramatic.”
Carrie Chamberlain lays back against her pillows. “Just go home to your families.”
“Mom,” Holly begins, “we’ve done everything we could.”
“Just leave me here then,” their mom mutters and refuses to look at any of them.
Holly nods to her brothers to leave and takes up her post in the room’s only chair. She watches her mom in silence. Her mom doesn’t acknowledge her presence, though. Tristan appears in the doorway moments after her brothers leave. He gestures for her to join him but she shakes her head, unwilling to forgo her vigil.
She thinks for a moment that he’s going to argue, but he simply nods, sets the coffee down, and leaves. Guilt sits on Holly’s shoulders as she sinks into the chair. It’s terribly uncomfortable and all she can think about is how many more of these chairs she’ll have to sit in if they can’t just take her mom home. Holly dozes off.
CHAPTER 13
“I don’t understand how that’s possible.”
Holly wakes to a room full of people. Her brothers look confused and her mother seems pleased, fully dressed and seated on the edge of her hospital bed.
“Mr. Chamberlain, all I know is that your mother is being discharged to home and appropriate care has been arranged for her.” A nurse is talking with her brothers.
“What’s goin’ on?” Holly mumbles as she stretches out of the chair.
Beau answers without even looking at her. “Somebody has paid for Mom to have full time care at home.”
“What? Who?” Holly rubs at her eyes and licks her dry lips.
“They won’t tell us,” Chad scowls.
“Confidentiality prevents us from…” the nurse starts her spiel but Beau interrupts.
“Yeah, yeah, we heard you the first ten times. You can’t tell us.” Beau’s face is as red as a cherry tomato as he purses his lips. “Can’t you at least tell our mom who her mysterious benefactor is? She is the patient after all.”
The poor nurse looks helplessly from one person to the next. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Holly assures her, “I’ll handle them. Go ahead and do what you have to do.”
“I’m done here; your mom is free to go.” The nurse, Candace according to her name plate, backs toward the door as if afraid to turn her back on Holly’s brothers. Holly doesn’t blame her, they look like caged lions ready to pounce.
“Guys, let’s just get Mom home and we can sort this out later. The poor woman probably didn’t even know who paid for it.” Holly pops out of the chair and helps her mom into the wheelchair beside the bed. “Seriously, you will have better luck asking the people who show up at the house to actually perform the services. What the hell is wrong with you two?”
“Why so surly, Hol?” Chad asks. “We just wanted to make sure it was a done deal before getting Mom home to find out it was a mistake.”
“That poor nurse looked like a deer in headlights,” Holly counters. “Now who’s driving, cuz I don’t have a car here.”
“I brought the minivan,” Beau mutters grudgingly.
“Great.
You push Mom, I’ll grab my bag.” Holly tosses her bag over her shoulder and leads the way out of the room. “Where’d ya park.”
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