Page 11 of Need You to Choose Me

Skylar reaches out and pats my hand. She doesn’t know the details of my family dynamics, but she knows I’m not very close with my father compared to my mother and brother. “I’m sorry. Would lunch help? It’s on me. This mama needs some food, and I promised Danny I’d pick him up something since he’s with Bentley today.”

I lost my appetite when I saw Alex’s text. Now my stomach is in knots instead of the butterflies that used to flutter there.

But if I tell her no or make some lame excuse about forgetting I had other plans, she’d know something is up. So I say, “I could go for a good burger.”

CHAPTER FOUR

Alex

My skin itchesas I sit in the waiting room for somebody to come get me. I absentmindedly stare at the TV hanging in the corner that’s playing some daytime drama. It’s a soap opera that I recognize from my childhood. Mom would tune into it every afternoon with a cup of tea and a TV dinner that I heated up for her in the microwave.

But as soon as I cram myself in the abnormally narrow chair, one of the receptionists changes it to ESPN with a wink in my direction.

Secretly, I’m grateful. Those afternoons in the living room brought back memories I really don’t want to remember. I can practically smell the salty meatloaf that she would fling off her lap whenever one of her moods would strike. I’m pretty sure I still have a little white scar in the middle of my palm for dumbly trying to catch the steak knife that had been thrown too.

I’d caught it, all right.

And instead of going to the emergency room for stitches, I cleaned myself up using the first aid kit in the bathroom and superglued the skin back together using glue I’d found in the garage from when Dad lived at home. I never thought twice about the germs that could have been on the applicator when I dragged it across the deep slice. But hindsight and all that.

Peeling my gaze away from the mindless discussion that the anchors are having about some pro football player’s relationship with a pop star, I pull my phone out to see if Olive decided to finally text me back. Her number is one of the few I memorizedover the years, so it was the first I programmed into my new phone after my last one suffered an unfortunate accident that involved me possibly throwing it a little harder than I meant.

My eye twitches when I see my last message left on delivered. I know she had to have seen it because she was quick to assume I was Sebastian.

It’s been over an hour.

Not wanting to sulk over a girl ghosting me, I look out the window at the clear blue sky. Barely any clouds are in sight. There’s no breeze moving the tree limbs. When I walked into the hospital, it’d been a tolerable temperature that I knew was going to become unbearable thanks to the blazing late-spring sun.

“Alexander,” someone calls, snapping my attention to a middle-aged woman wearing colorful scrubs. I slide my phone back into my pocket and head toward her warm smile.

She looks like she could be my mother’s age. Maybe a little younger. Pamela, according to the nametag that’s clipped to the pocket of her shirt, sticks her hand out. “It’s nice to meet you. I’m the new head nurse here at Logan’s and was assigned to your mother. We’ve spoken on the phone about her care and the goals you have for her here. Your mother talks fondly of you.”

I feel the prickle of embarrassment against the back of my neck as I shake her hand once and drop it. “How is she?”

This is the third time I’ve been to Logan’s Psychiatric Hospital; a new establishment on the outskirts of Philadelphia that already has a positive reputation based on the extensive research I did before gathering the nerve to call them.

Her smile grows. “Colleen has been adjusting well. Better than some people I’ve worked with. She’s been telling everybody who will listen that you’re coming to see her today. She was sad we wouldn’t allow visitors last week, so today has been one she’s looked forward to.”

While I understand they need to stay true to the consequences of the patients who don’t follow the rules here, I’m still angry I couldn’t come see her last week when I’d moved my schedule around specifically to make the trip. No amount of sweet talking I did changed their minds.

She scans her badge and pulls the door open once it buzzes and unlocks. “You remember the rules from last time we spoke, right?”

Pressing my lips together, I nod again.

We make our way down a long hallway, but my eyes don’t focus on anything because my brain is too wrapped around the woman who acted like I betrayed her the day I pulled up to the front entrance of the building. She threw a fit even though we’d talked about this extensively on our way here. I should have known she was going to fight me when I put the car into park. The conversation about her admission here had been too easy when we’d had it back in Lindon, as if she hadn’t believed me when I told her there was a spot for her to get treatment.

It triggered another episode that left her swinging her arms and shouting at the top of her lungs until two beefed up guys came jogging out of the building looking ready to intervene. I hadn’t let them, despite somebody calling for security to get her under control.

Mom wasn’t a criminal. She was sick.

Issick.

Physical force and violence are never the answer, so I made them butt out until I could handle it. Handleher. I’d gotten down to eye level with the five-foot-one woman who birthed me and talked her into going inside after fifteen minutes of her begging me to take her home.

To her, home is in the middle of nowhere in upstate New York where there are few options for somebody like her getting real help. Part of my deal with Pittsburgh Penguins was gettingconnected with the top hospital system, so I could bring her with me to get the help she needs while being close by. Thanks to the advance I got after signing with the rising NHL team, I was able to pay for Logan’s high-end care. They didn’t have a spot open for her until my first year was over, so I hired the best nurses to check on her as much as they could back home before I got her here.

Logan’s is still four and a half hours away from my apartment, but it was better than the seven and a half hours it would be if I left her behind for an at-home caretaker to deal with. From the daily reports I got, she fought the aids tooth and nail before. Two of them quit, one of them I had to fire, and the last one made it through the brutal manic episode my mother had suffered with for months. She’d just broken out of it and started sounding like herself again when Logan’s called, and I came to get her.

One thing is certain; Mom needs me, and I’m not going to let her down. Not like Dad did. Not like her parents did when they cut her off after she got divorced. If they are as catholic as they said, they would have been there for their daughter; helped her through the hard times like families do. But they didn’t, and neither did my father’s side when shit got real. So, like always, it’s up to me to be the person who fights for my mother.

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