Page 75 of My Favorite Bad Decision
“This isn’t done, Kit,” he whispers as he releases me. “Get through whatever is going on up there and then come back to me because this isn’t done. I can’t fucking stand for it to end here.”
His eyes are burning, pleading with me to agree, and my stomach sinks. I can’t stand for it to end here either, but I’m not sure what option I have. I slide out of the car and take one last glance backward, committing him to memory, before I shut the door behind me.
Inside, they direct me to my mother’s floor. I’m surprised to discover she’s not in the ICU, and the nurse who leads me back to her room is cheerful and has no sense of urgency. I’ve spent enough time in hospitals to know the staff isn’t normally super upbeat when a patient’s life is on the line.
She opens a door and there my mother is, sitting up in bed, hooked to a blood pressure cuff but nothing else. I see no leads for an EKG, and she and Maren are both scrolling on their phones as if this is Starbucks and they’re waiting on friends.
What the fuck?
I drop my bag on the ground. “What’s…going on?” I demand of Maren. “The messages you sent made it sound like?—”
Maren raises wounded eyes to mine. I guess my tone was abrasive, but she has no idea what I gave up to get here. “Mom thought she was having a heart attack,” she says, “but now they think it was just a panic attack.”
“Did they do an echocardiogram?”
My mother looks blankly at Maren, and Maren looks at her. “They did some tests?” my mom says. “But I was already feeling better by the time I got here.”
I squeeze my eyes shut, praying for patience. If it was only a panic attack, she wouldn’t still be in the hospital, and if it was somethingworsethan that, she should damn well be monitored in more ways than she currently is.
Air whooshes out of me. “Did it not occur to anyone to tell me they thought it was a panic attack?”
My mom shrugs. “We assumed you were on a plane by then.”
Wow.I’m not at the point where I think they set the whole thing up, but their decision to just not update me wasabsolutelypunitive. “So you’re saying it was a panic attack and that you felt better by the time you arrived this morning. Then why are you still here?”
“We don’t really know,” says Maren. “They haven’t told us anything.”
I look around me. “Where’s Roger? Is he finding a doctor?”
My mother shakes her head. “The hospital dinner was awful, so he’s getting us carry-out.”
I walk to the wall and hit the button for a nurse, who comes in at the leisurely pace of someone who knows there’s nothing wrong with my mother—not that I fault her because that certainly appears to be the case.
“I’d like to take a look at any tests my mother’s had today,” I tell her.
“Oh,” she says, her mouth forming a cartoon-like circle. “I’ll need to check with the doctor.”
This irks me—my mother doesn’t need a doctor’s permission to see her own fucking test results—but I let it go because Roger and Charlie are entering the room, and Charlie will definitely ridicule me later for starting a fight with the staff.
“There’s our little runaway bride,” he says, loping over to wrap an arm around my shoulders.
I shrug him off. “Were you with your dad just now or were you off with a hot nurse in an empty room?”
“They have no empty rooms at the moment,” he says. “Regrettably.”
I roll my eyes. “That makes it evenmoreconfusing that Mom is staying overnight when it appears she shouldn’t be.”
“We knew you’d come in and clear it all up for us, Kitty Cat,” he says with a grin. “Though I’ve got to say, for someone who’s normally so on top of everything, you’ve certainly been a little messy of late yourself, haven’t you?”
I silence a twinge of guilt. He couldn’t possibly know I was with Miller—my dad is a bit of a shit-stirrer, but he couldn’t out us without admitting his own role.
Besides,hehas no idea how far it went.
The doctor enters the room with the weariness of someone who’s been dealing with my mother for several hours in a row and raises a brow at Mom’s carry-out container.
“We don’t normally suggest people who’ve entered the hospital with a possible cardiac issue dine on red meat and potatoes,” he says.
She bats her lashes at him. “I was starving. The dinner was so abysmal.”
