Hold On To Me
Page 24
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” He picked at his IV and something beeped in anger behind him. He jumped and then left it alone.
“It means that if you continue to push Rosie away, the next time you have a heart attack, you’ll wake up alone in the hospital, that is, if you wake up at all. She loves you, not that you deserve it. She wants to have a relationship with you. But all you do is push her away.” I frowned at him. “You’re going to regret it if you push her too far.”
“It’s my job to help her grow into the person she’s meant to be.”
“She is the person she’s meant to be!” I shook my head at him. “Do what you want, Ross. Hate me. Punish Rosie for going after her dreams. Wreck your life.” I got up. “We don’t need the whole two minutes. We’re done.”
“Does she love you back?”
I froze from my position at the door. My hand was already on the handle. I smiled.
“Yeah. She does.”
I saw the shock on his face just before the door swung shut.
60
Rosie
“You never did realize how much I wanted this, did you?” I asked my dad. We’d been sitting in silence for a few minutes since I returned to his hospital room.
Ryan had come out into the hallway, kissed me fiercely, shook his head in apparent frustration, and told me to go back in. Now my dad was looking at me like I’d murdered his perfect daughter and was wearing her skin like a costume. I shook my head at him. “Did you really think an elaborate plot to discourage me was going to work?”
“I’m only looking out for your best interests. That’s my job as your father.” Each word was bitten out like it was a sentence of its own.
“It was when I was a kid, but now I’m an adult. I have to look out for my own best interests.” I frowned. “I have to figure out my own best interests.”
My dad shook his head furiously. He was still that awful shade of purple that he’d been when he was lying unconscious. “You’re so much like your mother that sometimes I don’t know what to do with you, Rosie.”
“Because I don’t want to be controlled?” My mom and I might not see eye to eye on much, but I understood why she left. “Because I picked Ryan?”
My dad just shook his head at me. “Because you’re irrational. You won’t listen. You just plunge ahead with whatever it is that you want, and you don’t care about the consequences.”
“I’m listening. I’ve always been listening. I just don’t agree.” I squared my shoulders. “I have to live my own life. Not the one you picked for me. I’ll live with the consequences.”
“Those consequences could be deadly. Did Ryan tell you what happened to old girlfriend? You could end just up like her. Dead before twenty.”
“Or I could end up like Jason Kane, as an international superstar. I’m smart. I’ll get good advice, I won’t take dumb risks… I’m a big girl.”
“I can’t stand by and watch you destroy yourself.”
“I’m a singer, not a heroin addict.”
He shook his head. “Why won’t you listen?” He looked at me like I was a lost cause.
“Well then feel free to cut me out of your life. Because I’m going to do what I’m going to do. I have to live my life. You can be a part of it, or not.”
My dad’s lips parted in surprise. I saw the moment when he started to believe me, and like the air being expelled from a deflating balloon, something in my dad shrunk. He sighed and then coughed.
“I don’t want to lose you,” I told him. “I really want to figure out a way for this to work. But I need for you to meet me halfway and accept that I’m able to make my own choices and pick my own boyfriends. I won’t ask you to agree with everything I do. I won’t ask you to support me financially anymore.” I shook my head. “Believe it or not, I have a record deal now. I’m actually doing what I said I was going to do.”
“What did you think gave me the heart attack?” he asked. He still hadn’t given me an answer, but a small smile was fighting to break loose on his face.
I blinked in shock and confusion. “I thought it was learning about me and Ryan.”
He shook his head. “No. Ryan just told me about that when you were out of the room.”
My mouth dropped open in shock. “What?”
“So, you’re dating Ryan, huh?”
I couldn’t muster the strength to make words. I replayed the past few hours in my head… it was plausible. He didn’t know.
“Yes,” I stuttered after a moment. “Yes, I’m dating Ryan.”
He frowned. “I can’t say that I like that.”
“Dad,” I told him. “I need to know if you can respect the boundaries I’m asking for. Do we have a deal or not?”
“I really should have played the frail old man card,” he said. Now he was just equivocating. He’d taught me how to make a deal, so I recognized the strategy.
“Dad,” I repeated, “do we have a deal or not?”
He sighed and nodded. “You’ve out negotiated me, Rosie.” The light was coming back to his eyes and it lifted my spirits. “I suppose we have a deal.”
Epilogue
Rosie
“Goodbye Mr. Ross,” said the head nurse, Faith, as she wheeled my dad toward the elevators with Ryan and I in tow. Her relief was evident. “Don’t come back to visit us, now.”
“I can promise you that I won’t,” my dad replied. “This has been the longest six weeks of my life. I’ll be the healthiest man in the world from here on out.”
“From your lips to god’s ears.”
My dad stayed in the hospital for much longer than expected. It would have been a lot shorter, but he refused to comply with half the instructions he’d be given and kept pushing himself too hard, eating the wrong things, and generally being a nightmare patient. Poor Faith was run ragged trying to take care of him.
I visited him every day, usually with Ryan. Our strategy was to acclimate him to seeing us together. It seemed to be working.
“So, dad,” I said casually as we descended down from the eighth floor in the too-quiet elevator, “do you want to come to my show tonight? I’m playing Stubbs.”
Rebecca had me playing a lot of local venues over the next couple of months. She said it was ‘tour practice’, although I hadn’t even begun recording my first album yet. At this point though, I was just happy to play. Every show I played felt like a step forward.
“Rosie’s a part of her first sold-out show tonight,” Ryan added. “It’s a New Year’s Eve show, and Rosie’s playing the midnight set. That’s the best one.” He was looking at me with a mixture of pride, affection, and attraction that didn’t seem like it would ever get old. I reached for his hand and he held it.
“That’s lovely,” my dad said. His voice was sarcastic, but I could deal with it. He was trying. I didn’t expect him to suddenly embrace my vision for my life. I’d settle for him tolerating it, and he seemed to be doing that.
“So, do you want to come?” I asked. “You can sit in the VIP area where you’ll be more comfortable.”
“Actually,” Faith chimed in, “Mr. Ross needs to spend the rest of the day resting. I don’t think he’ll be ready for outings this week. Especially at night. He’s still very weak.”
“Bullshit,” my dad replied. “I’m as healthy as a horse.” He looked up at me belligerently. “I’ll be at your show, Rosie. Front row. Dancing.”
I looked over at Faith, but she merely winked at me as we walked through the lobby and I realized what had just transpired. She’d reverse psychology’d him into coming to my show. I smiled back at her. She was a master of perception and smooth manipulation, which I guess was a necessity in her line of work. The only thing she didn’t seem to grasp was that my dad’s young, handsome doctor, Dr. Carter, had an enormous crush on her.
“Thank you,” I mouthed. I was really going to miss Faith. She was like a crazy-person whisperer. I’d learned more than a few good tricks from her. They were even working on my mom.
“Finally,” he groused, standing up and glaring at Faith who smiled serenely back at him. “I’m ready for things to go back to normal.”
Ryan and I exchanged a glance. While he’d been out sick, my dad’s firm had decided it was time for him to retire. In fact, they were making a number of changes, including investing heavily in Rebecca’s new venture, Bat City Records. When they found out that my dad had fired Ryan, they made him a counteroffer: senior partner. He agreed to stay on, but only if he no longer reported to my dad, and only if he could continue to support Rebecca. But all of that could wait.
“Normal?” I asked, sliding into the passenger seat of the Bat City Records car that now carried me around wherever I wanted to go. I’d lost my apartment, met the man of my dreams, lost my virginity, got my big break, signed a record deal, dealt with a sick parent, reunited with an estranged parent, quit the university, signed a record deal, and started writing an album all in the past two months. “What’s that?”
Epilogue
Eric
“He’s gone,” Faith told me. Her voice was an eager, unintentionally sexy, throaty whisper. She was grinning excitedly in a way that made my heart pound, and the hand she placed on my shoulder sent shivers down my spine. “The nightmare is over. He was just discharged.”
“Calvin Ross was discharged?” I could barely believe it. Operating on his heart had been easy enough, but the moment he woke up, the man became the hardest patient I’d ever treated. Calvin Ross had been the patient from hell. Belligerent. Rude. Condescending. Demanding. Unreasonable. He was an absolute asshole to everyone that deigned to interact with him. The whole cardiac unit had suffered under his reign of unpleasantness. He was so bad we had to call in a ringer: Faith.
“Yes! Calvin Ross is gone!” She giggled and did a goofy little happy dance that riveted my gaze to her tits in a way that was totally inappropriate and totally irresistible. It was all I could do not to sweep her up off her feet in a frantic embrace. “Now I can go back where I belong!”
My heart sank. I knew that Faith didn’t want to be on this floor, working with me, at all. She wanted to be down in Obstetrics, delivering babies. She was only up here because we’d had a sudden onslaught of complex patients and she was one of the best people-managers that had ever lived.
Faith could make even the most unpleasant patient compliant. I attributed the skill partly to her kind, clever personality and partly to her movie-star good looks. Especially now, as I watched her traipse around the nursing station with the other staff in some kind of bizarre nursing victory dance, I couldn’t take my eyes off her. But even when she wasn’t dancing, Faith had the ability to compel people. Including me. Especially me.
But I wasn’t supposed to fraternize with the nurses. Resident rule 101, right after not killing patients, was not sleeping with coworkers. Which was why I would spend this New Year’s Eve alone, because if I couldn’t have Faith, I didn’t want anyone.
My pager beeped, and across the room, I saw Faith jump as hers did the same. We exchanged a look, and I felt the familiar electricity pass between us again. Then the second passed and we both headed toward the double doors at the end of the hallway. Somebody’s heart needed fixing, and that was our job. But our hearts? They weren’t important at all.
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Prologue – Eric
I sprinted full-tilt down the hospital corridor. People were smart enough to get out of the way of the big guy in the white coat, but if they hadn’t been, I’d have gone right on through them. I always obeyed the siren call of my pager, but this was no ordinary page. This was a page that required sprinting. A man whose heart had been arrhythmically skipping as it struggled supply his vital organs with oxygen for the past hour as we prepared him for surgery, had just gone into cardiac arrest. I was almost at his room when I first heard it echoing down a hallway:
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
and never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
and auld lang syne?
Like most people, I barely understand a word of that damn song (is that even English?), but I knew what it meant. It meant that it was New Years’ Eve, aka the very most depressing time of the year to be single. At least on Valentine’s day, you can hate the commercialism and manipulativeness of Valentine’s day. But New Year’s is different. There’s an extra special, existential loneliness about spending New Year’s alone and knowing the next year might be as lonely as the past one.
Luckily, maybe, I didn’t have time to dwell on my inability to find a relationship worth having. People were dying all around me. Well, it’s a hospital so that’s normal, but one person in particular wasn’t allowed to die. Mr. Ochoa. Grandfather of eight, husband of Agnes Ochoa, nearly blind, diabetic, age eighty-two.
“Doctor, he’s gone,” the nurse assistant told me. Her eyes were focused on the clock over my shoulder, waiting for me to call a time of death. I bit back a rude reply. The guy was practically still breathing. I wouldn’t want anyone to give up on me that easy.
“No, no he’s not, Lucy.” Not until I fucking said so, at least. “Get the paddles.”
Lucy nodded and went to work. Mr. Ochoa shouldn’t have to die while listening to Auld Lang Syne. Not on my watch.
He was only mostly dead. I’d seen the Princess Bride a time or two. I’d also been to medical school. I knew that mostly dead could be a reversible condition. Sometimes. I hoped it would be today.
“Faith, what’s his pulse ox?” I asked, looking around for the nurse who’d sprinted down the hallway by my side. “Faith?”
Faith had actually beat me to the door, but now she was nowhere to be found.
“She’s in the hallway, stopping the patient’s wife from coming in here,” Lucy replied. “Pulse ox is forty,” she added. I nodded. Grimaced.
Forty was a bad number. It should be at least double that. Hypoxemia would kill him—properly, permanently—within minutes. His cells were starving and literally beginning to die and decay while his heart was still beating, albeit weakly. The most messed up thing about death, at least to me, was how long and drawn out a process it could be. Parts of the body die off at different rates. Mr. Ochoa was, in my estimation, at least sixty percent dead already. And now I was going to have to fix him without Faith’s help.
I couldn’t spare more than a moment’s thought on Faith, but what I did spare, was pure gratitude. The last thing poor Mrs. Ochoa needed to see was her husband dying on a table. If any nurse could deal with that situation with equal amounts compassion and effectiveness, it was Faith. Satisfied that situation was under control, I rolled up my proverbial sleeves (scrubs don’t really roll, and you wouldn’t want them to) and got to work.
When I work, I barely even register what happens around me. The distractions recede into a dull, washed-out tapestry of light and color. Only the task in front of me stays real. All I saw for the next hour was Mr. Ochoa’s life, slipping away in front of me, slipping right through my grasping, empty hands. That wouldn’t do. I grabbed onto the pieces of the situation I could control and pulled, correcting the arrhythmia with a series of electric pulses, forcing oxygen down into his lungs, shooting a ton of different chemicals down his bloodstream, and hoping—no, insisting—that it would be enough.
“Once the doctor is sure it won’t endanger your husband more for you to be in that room, and your husband is resting, of course you can see him,” her voice was saying from beyond the doorway. Her light, melodic soprano tone was honey-sweet and soothing. “He’s working very hard right now to make sure of that.”
Faith always talked so nicely about me in front of the patients. You’d think I was the greatest doctor ever. I was disappointed to learn that she did that for all the doctors, though. Actually, most nurses did. It was kind of a thing. So, it was with the knowledge that Faith didn’t like me nearly as much as she was pretending to, that I poked my head out.
Mrs. Ochoa was sobbing inconsolably in Faith’s delicate arms. Her eyes were closed tightly as Faith continued to reassure the frail, older woman that she’d see her husband again soon. Faith met my eyes over her shoulder. Electricity shot through me. Faith’s eyes were a deep, chocolatey brown and every time I looked into them, I felt like she could see far more of me than I was comfortable with. She had to know that I was crazy about her. I pushed the thought away. I needed to be professional.
“He’s sleeping,” I told Mrs. Ochoa, touching her on the arm to get her attention. “But if you want to go sit with him, you’re welcome to.”
The woman blinked up at me, teary eyed and obviously grateful. She didn’t seem to know what to say, so she merely nodded, got up with as much dignity as she could and passed by me into the room. Once she was out of earshot, Faith sighed, stretched, and shook out her long black braid.