by Noir, Roxie
“Scared,” she says. “Freaked out. Climbing the walls. I think he’s glad I’m almost there so he doesn’t have to deal with my dad by himself any more.”
We drive through city, then through a tunnel under the Chesapeake Bay. I swear it’s ten miles long, and by the end of it, my palms are sweating on the steering wheel from the thought of being surrounded by that much water.
Finally, we pull into the parking lot of Randolph General. Thalia grabs her backpack, pulls it onto her lap.
“You can just let me out by the doors if you want,” she says.
I almost don’t dignify it with a response, but then she looks over at me as I keep driving.
“I didn’t take this road trip to just push you out of the car and drive away,” I tell her. “I’ll walk you in.”
That gets half a smile, even as her hands twist in the straps of her backpack.
I park. We get out. She puts her backpack on, looks toward the looming hospital. Then she looks at me, and I hold my hand out.
She takes it, and we walk toward the hospital doors.
“They’re in the fourth floor family waiting area,” she says, looking at her phone. “In the north wing.”
The closer we get, the tighter she holds onto my hand until finally, we’re standing in front of two big white double doors, a red-lit keypad on the wall next to them. Thalia looks down at her phone.
“Bossy’s gonna come let me in,” she says.
“I’ll wait,” I tell her.
Thalia turns to me.
“Did I say thank you yet?” she asks.
“I think you did,” I say.
“Thank you,” she says, and her eyes fill with tears again before she turns away, dashing them away with the back of her hand. “Thank you for the ride, and thank you for keeping me company, and thanks for taking my mind off this a little bit, and —”
She stops, takes a deep breath.
“Sorry,” she says, shaking her head. “Thank you for everything, Caleb. No, wait.”
Thalia lets my hand go, then reaches up and very, very gently, lifts my glasses from my face, pushes them until they’re resting on top of my head.
“Now you’re Caleb,” she says, her hands still gently resting on the frame of my glasses. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” I say, and my whole body feels like a neon sign that’s just been switched on because suddenly I’m aware of her nearness, of the way her lips are just barely parted, of the fact that my blood is pumping through my veins so hard they must be able to hear it in North Carolina.
I know what’s going to happen a second before it does. I have a second to stop it, to back away, to leave and preserve myself.
I don’t take it.
Thalia kisses me. She winds her fingers through my hair, stand on her toes, pulls me down to her. She kisses me and I kiss her back, one arm around her waist, one hand cupping her face, and it feels like something inside me unravels, something I didn’t even know was knotted.
It’s a fierce kiss. It’s needy, tinged with desperation. There’s a manic energy to it that presses her teeth against my lip, makes her pull my hair a little too hard, but I don’t mind. I savor it all the same, knowing I should pull away, trying to memorize every second of her lips on mine.
Finally, she ends it. She keeps her hands on my face, her eyes searching mine, and we stand there, locked in the moment.
Then door opens, and we both turn toward someone who looks like Thalia but taller and wider and male.
“Ollie!” he says, and then he’s wrapped Thalia in a huge hug and she’s crying again and he’s squeezing her so tight that I get a little worried, but I step back, out of the scene.
“What’s happening?” she gasps when he finally lets her go. “Is there anything new yet?”
“They just wheeled her out of surgery,” another voice says from the doorway, older, deeper. “We can see her once she wakes up.”
“Dad,” Thalia breathes, and then she’s in his arms, in another tight hug.
“I’m glad you made it,” he says into her hair.
“Me too,” she says, her voice muffled.
Quietly, I take a step back, not wanting to intrude. Still holding the door open, Thalia’s dad releases her, then looks at me.
It’s an appraising, not-particularly-kind look. Thalia clears her throat.
“Sorry, this is Caleb,” she says, holding one hand out to me. “Caleb, this is Bastien, my brother, and Captain Lopez, my father.”
Her father holds out his hand, and I shake it.
“Thank you for giving Thalia a ride all the way here,” he says, looking me dead in the eye.
“My pleasure, sir,” I say, and I think I see Thalia almost smile at sir.
I turn, shake Bastien’s hand.
“Thanks,” he says.
“No problem,” I say.
Then her dad is opening the door wider, motioning Thalia and Bastien through.
“Thank you,” she says, one last time, and I wave.
She leaves. The door shuts behind her.
It’s almost two o’clock in the morning, and I’m almost three hundred miles from home.
But Thalia’s mom made it through surgery. Thalia’s here, with most of her family.
And I can still feel her on my lips. It’s the last thing I should be feeling. I should be feeling relieved, that her mom is out of surgery and the worst is over. I should be feeling guilty that I kissed her back, that I wanted it so badly, that among the thousand things I considered doing, ending the kiss wasn’t one of them.
I should be feeling concerned that her brother and father saw us, that now someone knows something.
But I’m not. I walk out of the hospital and back into the parking lot, toward my car under the orange lights, and all I feel is elated.
Chapter Eighteen
Thalia
“How long until she wakes up?” I ask, and my voice echoes through the nearly-empty beige hallway.
“That depends,” my dad says, walking along efficiently. “Her doctor said anywhere from thirty minutes to two hours.”
As long as she wakes up, I think. I know people don’t, always, especially when it’s emergency surgery and there’s a lot of bleeding and possible brain injuries —
He turns sharply, into a small waiting room lined with cushioned chairs and side tables covered in old issues of People magazine.
Instantly, I can tell that this is the special waiting room. The overhead lights are off, and the room is lit by floor lamps, making it slightly more welcoming than most waiting rooms.
I stop in the door, looking in, thinking this is the nice waiting room where they put families before they tell them someone is dead.
“Move your butt,” Bastien says behind me.
“Don’t tell me to move my butt,” I say, stepping into the room. “I’ll move my butt when I want to. There, I just wanted to.”
“You moved your butt as you were told,” Bastien says, but neither of us really have our hearts in this dumb sibling argument, so I let it drop and take my backpack off, put it on one of the padded benches.
My dad and Bastien look at each other.
“Come sit by me,” my dad says, easing into one of the chairs.
I sit next to him. The fabric is the same fabric as every doctor’s waiting room: stiff, plasticky, clearly waterproof. A single wooden armrest separates the two seats, and Bastien sits on my other side, his elbows on his knees.
They look tired. I think Bastien’s been crying. My father looks like he’s aged twenty years, and he leans forward, rubs his hands together, his gold wedding band glinting in the low light.
“Your mother was t-boned making a left turn on a green arrow,” he says. “The force of the initial impact on the passenger side spun her car around, and the car coming after her didn’t stop in time and hit the driver’s side rear.”
I just nod. There are already tears pouring down my face, and Bastien puts one arm around me, p
ulls me into his shoulder.
“She had an open forearm fracture, broken ribs, and a collapsed lung,” my dad goes on, his tone still clipped, formal, even though I can feel the blood drain from my face. “The surgery seems to have gone well, but we’ll also need to see how the next day or so goes. It’s possible that her oxygen levels could dip and that would require further intervention.”
I take a deep, deep breath, and stare at the dark beige flecks in the light beige floor tiles.
“But she’s out, right?” I whisper. “She made it through surgery? She’s gonna wake up?”
“She made it through,” he says, tone still grave, slightly formal. But then again, he’s always sounded slightly formal. “And the doctors say they have every reason to believe that other than a possible concussion, she has no brain damage.”
Bastien hugs me tighter as I breathe in, then breathe out, trying to control myself. I want to collapse into the floor and sob with a mixture of sadness and relief and anxiety, but I don’t.
Suddenly, there’s something on my hand. I look down to see my father, taking my hand in his, then holding it tightly.
I look at him. He nods once, his mouth a tight line, his jaw flexing.
“Thanks,” I whisper.
* * *
A while later — I don’t know how long — the door to our waiting room opens, and a woman in scrubs leans in, nods at us.
“She’s awake and wants to see you,” she says.
Silently, we follow her through the brightly lit beige hallway, past nurses at stations, past closed door after closed door. Finally, she stops in front of an open door, the inside curtain drawn around it.
For a moment, I wonder why all hospital rooms have a curtain inside the door. Why not just a door or just a curtain?
“Paloma?” she calls, softly. “Your husband and children are here.”
“Come in,” responds my mother’s voice. It’s hoarse and froggy, but it’s her.
My heart thumps. I have to remind myself to breathe, and before I pull the curtain back I hesitate for a second because I’m afraid of what I’m going to see.
Then I do it anyway, and there she is. She’s propped up on pillows, and she looks terrible, but when I come into her room she smiles at me through cracked, swollen lips.
“Ollie, Bossy,” she says, as Bastien and I come in, one on each side of her bed. “Hi. Did you get my voicemail?”
Bastien and I glance at each other, over her bed.
“The anesthesia is still wearing off,” the nurse says, checking something off on a clipboard. “She might be a little loopy for a while yet.”
“Of course, that’s why we came,” Bastien tells her, shrugging at me.
“Good,” my mom says, and she sounds relieved. “You shouldn’t get the tiramisu from D’Agostino’s, they’ve started — “
She breaks off, looking past us, and we turn.
“Javi?” she whispers.
My father, standing at the foot of the bed, clears his throat, his face practically set in stone.
“It’s me, Paloma,” he says.
She blinks, like she’s trying to see through a haze.
“Of course, Raul,” she says. “I’m sorry.”
He steps forward, next to me, and takes her hand in his.
“How are you feeling?” he asks, and my mom closes her eyes, settles back on the pillow.
“Like shit,” she murmurs.
* * *
“You’re getting the big one?” Bastien asks, looking over at the paper cup in my hand.
“Yup,” I say, already pouring coffee into it.
“That’s a lot of caffeine.”
“Good. I’m also going to pour a shitload of cream and sugar into it, and I’m getting a donut. And Froot Loops. And chocolate milk. And a package of M&Ms! And you can’t have any!”
I stop pouring coffee into my very large cup and grab a handful of creamers.
“I’ll just steal some when you’re not looking,” Bastien says.
“I know,” I grumble.
I grab all my sugar items, and then we head to the register, where I pay with the twenty dollar bill that my dad handed me for breakfast before he went back to the house to get some things for Mom.
Just because I’m an adult doesn’t mean I’m grown, I guess. I didn’t argue with him.
Bastien and I take our trays full of caffeine, sugar, and one banana to a booth by the wall and sink into it, exhausted. My eyes are so dry that they feel like they’re made of sandpaper, and if I weren’t still a mess of nerves and anxiety, I think I could fall asleep right here at this table.
After we’d been with my mom for a few minutes, a doctor came in and proceeded to practically drown us in medical information: what had happened, what could happen, what else could happen, what decisions would need to be made. The moment she left, another doctor came in and did the exact same thing, only with completely different information, somehow.
Then, finally, the nurse kicked us out so she could rest and Bastien and I came downstairs, to the hospital cafeteria, because we didn’t feel like going anywhere else.
But she’s awake. She’s not out of the woods yet — bleeding could restart, something could rupture, there could be an infection — but the worst is over and I can eat junk food with my brother.
“So,” he says, peeling the banana.
“So,” I agree, biting into the donut. It’s not a good donut. It’s stale, probably from yesterday, but it’s sugary and it’s food and I’m not really particular right now.
“Mom’s not gonna forgive him, is she?” he asks.
“I don’t think so,” I say, wiping frosting from my bottom lip.
“Yeah,” he sighs, then bites into his banana, looking off at the far wall of the cafeteria. There are only a few other people in here, and they look like they’re having the same kind of day that we are.
“You haven’t heard from him, have you?” I ask, already knowing the answer.
Bastien snaps his fingers and gasps.
“Oh, that’s right,” he says, in mock-surprise. “I found Javier and he moved into my dorm room with me and my roommate and I signed him up for crew team, he’s doing really great. Totally forgot to tell you, sorry!”
“All right, then I won’t make conversation,” I say, grumpily.
“You don’t think the second I knew something I’d tell you?” he huffs.
“You need a nap.”
“You need to not ask dumb questions.”
“You need to…” I trail off, because my brain is refusing to come up with an end to that sentence. “Shut your dumb face,” I finally say, shoving the rest of the donut in my mouth.
Bastien just laughs, his mouth full of banana.
“How’s school?” I ask, changing the subject. “Have you taken a single class for your engineering major yet?”
“Technically, yes,” he says, lifting his coffee cup to his lips. “I’ve fulfilled most of the general education requirements.”
“And zero of the engineering ones,” I finish.
Then I rub my knuckles against my forehead, brutally aware of what an obnoxious older sister I sound like.
“Something like that,” he says.
“Just tell them,” I say. “They’re going to figure it out when you graduate with a B.A. In Comparative Literature instead of the B.S. In Engineering they were expecting, just tell them now.”
“I know,” he says. “I just… I haven’t yet.”
I look across the table at my little brother, though little is the wrong word because he’s been taller than me since the moment he hit puberty. Objectively, I’m pretty sure he’s handsome, though subjectively, he’s my brother so ew.
“New topic,” he says, leaning back in the booth. “Tell me about Caleb.”
I clear my throat and look down at my tray.
“What about Caleb?”
Bastien looks at me like I’m an idiot.
“What do you think I want
to know about him, Ollie?” he says. “You show up at two in the morning with an honest-to-God hunk on your arm and you think there’s not going to be questions?”
“He’s a friend,” I say.
“You have hot friends, then,” he goes on. “Who apparently play full-contact rugby in suits, judging by the grass stains he had on him. He straight?”
“Yes,” I say, a little too quickly. “I mean, I think so.”
Bastien grins.
“He questioning? I’d be happy to provide some answers.”
It is very, very weird to realize that you and your little brother have the same taste in men.
“I haven’t asked whether he’s settled in his sexuality,” I say, primly taking a sip of coffee.
“And he hasn’t given you any clues?”
I’m blushing, my face bright red, and I know it. I also can’t look directly at Bastien right now or I might accidentally tell him everything.
“We’re just friends and we’re going to stay that way,” I say. “It wouldn’t work out, so we’re just friends. For reasons.”
Bastien gives me a long, thoughtful look.
“He’s really into Insane Clown Posse,” he guesses.
I roll my eyes.
“He legitimately thought that Suicide Squad was a good movie,” he says.
“You think I’m that much of a snob? They’re good reasons, okay?”
“He’s married.”
I nearly spit out my coffee, because that escalated quickly.
“No!” I say, coughing. “God, Bossy, no he’s not married. Are you insane? Of course he’s not married. I would never —”
I pause as words fail me for a moment. Bastien is just looking at me, uncertainty written all over his face.
“ — Take up with a married man,” I hiss, leaning across the table.
“Is he married?” he says, leaning forward, his voice hushed, horrified.
“No!” I whisper-shout.
He doesn’t say anything for a long moment. Then he swallows, frowning at me, giving me a look I’ve never really seen from him before.