Page 83 of Play With Me
Not if this is their only chance to say goodbye.
Mick freezes, his already sickly pallor turning more gray as the petite woman sizes him up with a frown. “What areyoudoing here? You are not her family! You have no right!”
“Ma’am, I know we got off on the wrong foot?—”
“The wrong foot? ¡Hombre estúpido! Foot, leg, torso—the whole body is wrong! You are a very bad man!” Letitia shakes a finger at him, preparing to charge, when Geo grasps her shoulders to hold her back.
“Lettie, what’s all the commotion out here for, love?” he asks, looking at me before fixing Mick with a stern regard.
“Sir, if we could just talk for a moment,” Mick starts, his voice taking on that tone I never liked—the one that says he thinks he’s better than you, and because of that, you need to listen to him.
However, he doesn’t get to complete his sentence because Carmela’s machines start beeping loudly, their wailing reverberating throughout the room and into the hall.
“What’s happening?” Maya shrieks from her chair next to the bed.
A nurse rushes toward the room as a voice over the speaker system calls a code blue. Letitia and Geo are too shocked to do anything but move out of the way of the nurse, leaving me to retrieve Maya. She tries to fight against me as I pull her from the room. “We have to let them do their jobs, Maya,” I explain, even though she already knows.
She tucks her head against my chest as she cries. Mick and I lock eyes over her head. From the look on his face, it obviously pains him to see his daughtertreating me like a parent even though I’ve only been in her life for a few weeks.
I herd everyone over to the waiting room, my limbs starting to ache from all the tension I’m carrying. “It’s gonna be okay, little one,” I whisper as Maya curls into my side, crying into my chest.
Letitia and Geo sit across from us, whispering prayers with their heads bent together.
Mick paces the hall, furiously typing on his phone.
And we wait.
The smell of overpriced, burnt coffee and artificial sweetener floods my senses as it drains from the machine into a white paper cup, juxtaposed with the sharp antiseptic smell of the hospital.
As the sun rises, butter-yellow light pierces the glass walls next to the vending machines—too bright and optimistic for our melancholy group.
Cara’s been stable since last night, but no one could bring themselves to leave the hospital for a chance at a decent sleep. Everyone is on edge. Stiff with worry and unresolved anger.
Placing a to-go lid on the cup of overly-sweetened sludge for Maya, I sip my bitter black cup and start on a hot chocolate for Letitia. Distant footstepspound down the hall—probably another doctor on the way to another emergency.
“Anders!” I hear Geo’s cry echo from down the corridor. My chest constricts sharply as I turn toward the sound. “Anders! She’s awake!” he cries again as soon as he rounds the corner and sees me.
Forgetting the coffee, I rush down the hall, passing him by as I race back to Carmela’s room.
Just as I approach, a young nurse emerges from the dark room, leaving the door cracked open behind her. She holds up her hand with a stern look. “One at a time. She doesn’t need to be overwhelmed right now.”
Glancing behind me, I notice Maya and her grandmother are still waiting in the hall, matching frustrated scowls on their faces.
Fucking Mick.
“Why did you let him in there instead of her family?” I demand.
“He’s her emergency contact and power of attorney,” the nurse says in a tone that denotes how much she’s not in the mood to deal with any shit.
Well, fuck.
I can’t argue with that.
Carmela
“I’ve taken care of it.” Mick’s words don’t comfort me.
Nothing is comforting right now. Each breath elicits a sharp pain in my chest, and each word is a struggle. Even staying awake is proving to be a battle, and the last person I want to see when I wake up is the only one sitting beside my bed.