Hold On To Me

by Taylor Holloway

  “Sounds like a runner’s high.” I remarked. All adrenaline. Soon it would wear off and she’d be exhausted. She’d be even more exhausted tomorrow as her body tried to replace what it had given away on stage.

  “Whatever it is,” she said, leaning up on her tiptoes so she was nose-to-nose with me, “it feels pretty good.” Her eyes glittered under the multicolored fairy lights that were strung around the patio. “I feel like I could fly.”

  I kissed her. It was the only logical thing to do. Rosie’s lips were soft and yielding under my own, and she pressed her body close. My heart started to pound. We needed to get out of here and back to my place, or hers. Or the car. But we needed to be alone. Immediately.

  There was still a lot we needed to say. Issues we needed to work out. We needed work if we were going to work. But at the moment, the only work I could think about was the labor of peeling Rosie out of her outfit and tossing her into my bed. We could figure out the rest later.

  The sound of commotion and shouting from the other room distracted us. Rebecca exploded out the door from the main room.

  “There’s a man having a heart attack! He’s unconscious. Is there a doctor out here? He needs a doctor.” Her voice was a desperate, plaintive noise that cut through the conversations around us and rendered the whole patio silent.

  She glanced my way and we exchanged a look that communicated volumes in the blink of an eye.

  Oh no. Anything but that.

  56

  Rosie

  When the surgeon came out into the waiting room, I knew it was going to be bad. The poor guy looked exhausted. I knew the feeling. Trina had my right hand, and Ryan had my left. I was holding them both in a death-grip.

  “He’s alive,” he said to start with. I let out the breath I’d been holding, and with it, a few tears escaped as well. I dashed them away with a relieved hand. “He’s alive,” the surgeon continued, “but we ended up having to do a double bypass instead of a single. The surgery took longer than we expected, and his heart was stopped for longer than I’d like. He’s very weak, but stable.”

  I looked up at Ryan in relief and he hugged me closer. We’d been in the waiting room for so long that I wasn’t sure what day it was anymore. It could have been twelve hours or twenty at this point.

  “Thank you,” I told the doctor. “Is he awake?” I asked next. “Can I see him?”

  Dr. Carter shook his head. “Not yet. He’s coming out of anesthesia now. I’ll have the nurse come and get you as soon as he’s ready for visitors. But no more than three visitors at a time, and only for a few minutes.”

  I nodded at him. “Ok. Thank you for saving his life.”

  The doctor smiled. “I can’t take credit. He must have a lot to live for, because his heart started right back up like clockwork. He’s probably back there fighting with the nurses right now.”

  “That sounds about right.” I sighed in relief. My laugh was half-hysterical. At least his personality was intact. If he was being a pain in the ass, he was going to pull through.

  I slumped down into my chair, utterly unable to process anything else. Ryan asked a bunch of questions that I was barely listening to, but I let the low, reassuring sound of his voice lull me. This experience had been a total nightmare.

  Seeing my dad lying lifeless on the ground had been utterly terrifying. I thought he was dead. Ryan had to hold me back because I utterly lost my shit. When they arrived, the paramedics had assured me that he was, in fact, alive, but the image would be with me forever.

  Rationally, everybody knows that their parents will one day die. It’s a fact of life. But no matter how much I understood the fact in theory, in practice it was a different thing entirely.

  Eventually, Ryan ran out of questions and the doctor left. He promised that the nurse would come and fetch us when my dad was ready for his five-minute visit. I still wasn’t sure what to say to him. Trina went to go grab a soda, and I turned to Ryan, feeling lost.

  “This is my fault,” I told him. “I shouldn’t have invited him to my show.”

  He shook his head. “You have to stop saying that. It wasn’t your fault. This was nobody’s fault.”

  It was hard to believe him when I knew that the shock that sent him to cardiac arrest was because of me. Rebecca had blamed herself, too, but it wasn’t her. She just happened to be nearest to him when it happened.

  “I shouldn’t have invited him to the show,” I repeated for probably the twentieth time. I’d just wanted him to understand me. I thought maybe if he saw for himself how happy I was… but clearly that hadn’t worked. He couldn’t handle the shock.

  Ryan wrapped his arms around me and dragged me out of my chair and onto his lap. “You didn’t cause this.” He sighed. “Deep down, you know I’m right.”

  Maybe when this was all over, I could admit that he was right. Maybe I’d feel differently when I saw my dad. But for the moment, I felt like the worst daughter on the planet.

  My phone pinged with a new email and I opened it up to find that my grandparents had written me back. In English! I devoured their words, desperate for anything that could distract me from the wait over my dad.

  Dearest Granddaughter,

  You can’t know how happy we are that you wrote us an email. We’ve both gotten much better at our English since the last time we saw you but it’s still a work in progress. Still, your grandmother insisted that we write this response in English, so if we make any mistakes, blame her. Your second cousin read the email and said she didn’t find any mistakes, but she’s only eight.

  I blinked in shock. My grandfather had not only written me a letter in English, but he used an emoji in the first paragraph. Was there a chance that my eighty-five-year-old grandfather was more with it than my parents? It definitely seemed that way. Apparently, Seoul really was ten years in the future.

  Auntie Soon Yi’s funeral was lovely. She was extremely traditional, so we did everything like she would have wanted. Hopefully she liked it and won’t come back to haunt us. I wouldn’t put it past her, she always liked playing practical jokes.

  We both remember that trip to the zoo when you were a little girl very clearly. You were such a sweet and wonderful little girl—a bit quick tempered, but you get that from your mother. Your grandmother says that she has pictures of you crying in the goat pen after getting knocked down by that one foul-tempered Billy goat. Let us know if you want us to send them. They’re hilarious. You wouldn’t even pet the rabbits after that.

  It was always obvious to us that you were a special little girl. We know you’re going to do great things with your life, and we can’t wait to see what that will be. Even though you might be having trouble with your parents, you should know that we love you very much, and will always be here to help if we can.

  We’re sad to hear that you and your mom aren’t getting along. Maybe it would help for you to go and visit her. Being away from family is so difficult, and sometimes it’s easier to let things fester when you can just hang up the phone.

  Don’t tell her we said so, but your mom has always been a bit peculiar. She doesn’t see the world the same way most people do. It makes it harder for her in a lot of ways, and she suffers because of it. She just doesn’t realize how her words and actions affect other people. It’s like she doesn’t see other people’s emotions, even when it seems like it ought to be obvious. But if you tell her that you are hurt, or angry, it might help. That’s what we do. We just pretend like she’s blind, so if we’re looking sad it doesn’t matter. We have to say, ‘I’m sad’.

  We never met your father. Your mom divorced him before we even knew they were married. We’d like to meet him one day though. Maybe someday you two can visit us in Seoul. We have a guest room and would love for you to stay with us and meet the rest of the family. You have several cousins that are about your age. We don’t like to travel abroad anymore, though. We’re too old and set in our ways.

  Please write to us again, and soon. We can’t wait to
hear from you! We have lots of pictures of you when you were little, but no recent ones. Will you send us some pictures? What school are you attending? Do you like your studies? What is Texas like? Lots of cowboys like in the movies? We have so many questions for you, Rosie. We’ve wondered so much about you and can’t wait to get better acquainted.

  Love,

  Your grandparents

  PS. Maybe you can try to write to us in Korean, and we can write to you in English. That way we can both practice!

  My eyes welled up with tears. They were so nice! I’m not sure why I didn’t expect that, but I didn’t.

  Something about the way they described my mom, too, resonated with me. She really didn’t recognize other people’s emotions. I should visit her. I should try to make her understand how her behavior made me feel. I should at least try. Maybe it would work. Or maybe it wouldn’t. Either way, I owed it to myself, and to her, to try.

  “What’s wrong, Rosie?” Ryan asked, noticing me sniffling. “Did you get more bad news?”

  I shook my head. “No. It’s good news actually.” I showed him the email.

  He hugged me closer. “See,” he said, “things are looking up already.”

  A nurse cleared her throat, and we both looked up in surprise. We’d been so absorbed in our conversation that we hadn’t seen her approaching.

  “Your dad is awake,” she said. “You can see him now.”

  57

  Ryan

  The moment Rosie and I got into the room, Calvin Ross was furious at me. “You aren’t just fired. You’re a dead man, Conroe.” He was glaring at me like he wanted to leap from the hospital bed and throttle me. “I am literally going to murder you and make it look like an accident.”

  The man had just almost died, been carted to the hospital, had his chest cracked open and his heart re-organized by a team of specialists with scalpels, and now he was threatening me. He just couldn’t give it a rest. Calvin Ross was officially insane.

  His first impulse should be to hug his daughter and reassure her. To make her sure that he was ok. She was his only child, and as far as I knew, the only person to actually care about him.

  Rosie had just spent the last few hours not knowing if she was going to have a father tomorrow, and he was using his first opportunity to berate me. I knew he was going to be unhappy when he found out about us, and about what I’d done, but this was just excessive.

  After my accident in college, I absolutely hated hospitals. The smell, the frigid air, the fake-concern of the staff, it all grated at me and made me feel weak. I couldn’t wait to leave. But I’d stayed, for Rosie. I’d do anything for her. The fact that her father couldn’t put aside his own bullshit for five seconds to reassure her made me hate him. It was all I could do not to reach across and finish the job his heart attack had started.

  “I’ll go wait outside,” I said to Rosie, turning to leave. Despite my anger, one look at Rosie reminded me that I didn’t really want to cause Calvin Ross to relapse right in front of me. He seemed ready to have a second heart attack.

  Rosie shook her head. “If he’s well enough to throw around death threats, your presence won’t kill him,” she said, loud enough for him to hear.

  Something had shifted in her as she read the letter from her grandparents. Maybe just knowing that she had some normal family out there had reinvigorated her. She’d gone from guilt-stricken and sobbing back to the Rosie I knew. She was standing up straighter and the fire was back in her eyes.

  “She’s right,” Ross said. He straightened his blankets like his bed was a boardroom. His tone was awfully snide and superior for someone that probably had a catheter shoved up his dick right now because he couldn’t piss for himself. “I want you to stay in here so I can fire you. How dare you do the opposite of what I told you to do?”

  “I’m right here you know,” Rosie said. She waved. “Right here! Please don’t talk about me like I’m not in the room.”

  I sighed and looked at the frail-seeming man in the hospital bed. His body might be clinging to life, but his eyes said that he’d crawl out of his grave just to yell at me. If the reason that he wasn’t dead was because he wanted to go off on me, I was fine with that. At least Rosie wouldn’t lose her dad today. Still…

  “You can’t fire me,” I told him. “I quit. I should have quit as soon as you told me what you wanted me to do with Rosie, but I’m quitting now.” I was attempting to keep a reasonable tone, but in reality, it felt pretty damn good to say those words.

  Ross rolled his eyes. “Even better. That way I don’t have to pay you severance. Don’t list me as a reference unless you want me to tell future employers that you’ll wreck their daughter’s life.”

  “Excuse me!” Rosie interjected. “Nobody wrecked me. Can we please talk about literally anything else right now?” Rosie asked. She was pinging her gaze between the two of us.

  “No!” Ross snapped. “I just had a heart attack. You two both have to do what I say. You have to listen to me.”

  Rosie blinked. “Alright,” she said, sitting down next to his bed. “I’m listening. You have my full, undivided attention.”

  Between these two living firecrackers, I was bound to get burned. Still, there was no escape. I sat down next to Rosie and nodded.

  58

  Rosie

  Unexpectedly, my dad didn’t say anything for a long moment. Instead, he sighed.

  “Rosie, you’re my only daughter, and I love you.”

  I blinked. “I love you too, dad.”

  “I really want to talk to you, but first, I need a word alone with Ryan. Can you please step outside?”

  I frowned into the tension around me. “No. Anything you want to say, you ought to be able to say in front of me.”

  “Please, Rosie.” My dad looked at me with an expression that I wasn’t sure how to interpret. Then his eyes slid off me and over to Ryan. The two men exchanged an unblinking gaze.

  “You know you can’t stare each other to death, right?” I looked from one to the other. “That’s not how things work.”

  They were like two cats sizing each other up before lunging. Considering that Ryan had several inches on my dad, in addition to probably thirty pounds of muscle and a lot of youth, I hoped my dad wasn’t dumb enough to resort to violence in his weakened state. My dad was pretty old and physically weak, even when he wasn’t recovering from open heart surgery. Ryan might hurt him by accident.

  For his part, Ryan looked like he was suppressing a smirk over the whole standoff. “Maybe it would be a good idea for me and your dad to talk things through for a second.”

  No way. I wasn’t going to go sit in time-out while they talked about me. “I’m not going anywhere.” I turned to look at my dad. “Are you really going to fire Ryan? Because I’ll never speak to you again if you do that.”

  I wasn’t the type to make ultimatums. I don’t like them. That was more of my mom’s thing, and my dad knew it. This was the only trump card that I had, however, so it was time to play it.

  My dad’s gaze wavered from Ryan at last. He met my eyes for a moment, just a moment, but it was enough to tell me that I had his attention. “I didn’t want you to find out about any of this from Rebecca or anyone but me.” I sighed. “But please don’t take out your anger on Ryan. He doesn’t deserve it. Be angry at me if you want to be angry at anyone. I’m the one that threw the wrench into your scheme to make me want to go to law school.”

  My dad took a deep breath and shifted uncomfortably. He rubbed his arm like it was painful. “Rosie, you don’t understand.”

  For once, he didn’t look disappointed in me—it was more of a horrified confusion that I saw in his expression. But when he looked at Ryan, his eyes were as hard and angry as I’d ever seen them. It was hard to know what was going on in my dad’s mind, but I was pretty sure the soundtrack was either death metal or white noise.

  “I think I understand just fine,” I told him. “You assigned Ryan to convince me to go to la
w school. He did pretty much the exact opposite of that. So you’re angry.”

  “Please, Rosie,” my dad asked again. “Two minutes, that’s all I ask.”

  I sighed, shook my head, and stood up.

  “Two minutes,” I repeated, looking at my watch. “That’s it.”

  59

  Ryan

  The door closed softly behind Rosie. I knew that we had exactly one hundred and twenty seconds before she’d be coming right back in. I had to get to the point.

  “Before you lay into me,” I told Ross, “you should know that I love her.”

  His lips opened in shock and then he shook his head dismissively. “I don’t believe you.”

  Typical. “Ok. Well that doesn’t mean it’s not true.”

  “You completely disobeyed my instructions.” The fact that he would segue from me confessing my love for Rosie to my insubordination didn’t bode well for this little talk.

  I shrugged my shoulders at him. “Yes, I did. And I don’t regret it. Not even the tiniest bit. I love her.”

  “You realize that she’s nineteen years old, don’t you?” He could try and make me feel like a pervert, but it wasn’t going to work.

  I resisted the urge to roll my eyes at him. If he’d be any other father, I’d have the good graces to look guilty, but the truth was that I felt anything but. “It was in the file, yeah. Last time I checked, that’s a legal adult. Capable of making her own choices about who she spends her time with.”

  “You realize that she’s my only daughter, too?” His tone was so snide and conceited that I really, really wanted to smack him.

  “Do you?” I fired back. The nerve of this man was astounding.