Page 34 of The Cruelest Kind of Hate
I don’t know what to say to her. I don’t know how to make any of this better. All I want to do is hold her and tell her that everything’s going to be okay. But the worst part of it all is that I never knew how hard her life really was. She’s had to take care of her sick mother and younger brother for years. No person should have to bear that much responsibility.
After my brother’s death, my parents were so grief-stricken that they began to shower me with materialistic shit, as if that would somehow make up for the love I’d lost over the years. From there on out, they chose to stay together and give me everything I could’ve ever wanted. I flunked a test and wanted to go on an impromptu vacation? My mom would have a private jet ready for me within the hour. I needed a job over the summer but wasn’t qualified for any? My dad would get me an internship at his business, or he’d pull strings with other business owners to hire me.
I haven’t really spoken to my parents since I entered the NHL. I’m cordial with them, sure, but I don’t rely on them foranything. I don’twantto be around them. And when I’m older, I don’t want my wife and kids to be around them either. Forgiveness is something I’m working toward, but it’s hard when a person’s sincerity is so weak it’s questionable. My parents regretted their decision (or lack thereof) because the worst possible outcome came true. If the outcome had been a simple dip in my brother’s health, they wouldn’t have felt an ounce of guilt for not giving him the attention he needed. Now I wish they hadn’t done shit for me—I wish I had grown a backbone and refused all their lavish gifts.
I never had to work for anything—aside from hockey. But Cali…Cali’s had to work foreverything. She’s running a dance studio, looking after her mother and brother, and looking after herself (barely). It’s no wonder she didn’t like me at first. We’re complete opposites. I was the self-conceited asshole with the flashy car who blocked her in because I was feeling petty. She was the struggling sister who needed an open spot to pick up her brother.
This girl teaches who knows how many dance classes a day, has to drop off and pick up Teague from hockey practice, then has to go home and take care of her mother. She doesn’t get any time to herself. And that’s just based on the information I know; she probably has so much more on her plate that she’ll never tell me.
The waiting room is completely silent. Well, aside from the occasional hacking cough. We’re crammed in a twenty square-foot area, and an endless line of hideous chairs wrap around the perimeter while the rest remains back-to-back in the center of the room. There’re no TVs or magazines. Just a fuckton of chairs. Flimsy chairs with hard, wooden armrests, backrests with gaudy geometric patterns, and cushions that are the nastiest shade of shit brown. The only pop of color in this depressing landscape is a green snake plant in the corner, and even that dude doesn’tlook like he wants to be here. The accompanying glug of the water dispenser goes off every few minutes, as does the tick of the clock hanging directly above us. The waiting is excruciating. The distance, however, is going to kill me.
I gently rub Cali’s arm, fearful of startling her but hoping that she’ll give me a glimpse of her beautiful face. My hoodie is giant on her, turning her figure into a shapeless pile of cotton.
“It’s not your fault, Calista,” I whisper, working past a swallow in my shredded throat, my heart beating a slow, sluggish tune akin to the beeping of a vital signs monitor attached to a heavily sedated patient.
She bristles under my touch, but she doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t turn to face me. Her body remains in the same position it has for the last hour—half-fetal, so incredibly small that it’s almost as if she’s punishing herself for taking up too much space.
I hate seeing her like this—so helpless. I don’t know how to help without overstepping boundaries. All I want to do is hold her, but I can tell that’s the last thing she wants right now. Does she even want me here?
I know I’m going to regret it, but I try filling the empty space with words of consolation—to show her that I’m here if she needs me, and that I’m not going anywhere. “Your mom’s going to be okay. I’ll stay here with you for as long as you want.”
Involuntarily, my hand reaches out to scrounge for skin-to-skin contact, but she’s deprived me of that as well. I am lucky enough, however, to receive more than her usual grunt of acknowledgment. She turns the slightest bit toward me, only enough so I can catch a sliver of her face.
“I hate hospitals,” she murmurs, displeasure crunching her brow and a frown fastened to her lips. “It feels like I’ve spent half my life in them.”
Hospitals. I can work with that.
“I hate them too,” I offer, notching my thumbnail into the woodgrain of the chair’s armrest. “My brother was really sick when I was younger. He practically lived at the hospital. I knew every corridor by the back of my hand.”
Cali’s gaze crawls over to me, analyzing my face in search of grief. “Was?”
I press my bitten nail into the chipped wood, folding the keratin. “He’s…not here anymore,” I confess, unable to halt the grinding thoughts in my head about my late brother. About how sickly and malnourished he looked in the end. About how, despite frequenting the hospital, he never received the treatment he deserved.
“Oh, Gage. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay. I just…don’t want to get into it right now.”
Cali seems to sink further into her seat. “Right. Yeah. If you ever do, though, I’ll be here to listen.”
I want to say thank you, but the words turn to sludge in my mouth, and I don’t have the energy to force them into the world. So, I carefully extricate myself from the conversation and focus on my own silence, on the air entering through my nose and the deep breaths exiting through my mouth. I focus on the acidic burn in my eyes from keeping them open for so long. I focus on the creaky discomfort of my hip from the subpar guest chairs. I focus on the faint gnaw of hunger in my belly since I skipped dinner.
Cali said that Teague was at a playdate when everything happened, and that he’s being driven over to the hospital as we speak. Teague’s just a fucking kid. A great kid who’s dealing with the worst possible thing the world could have thrown at him. Cali and her family are the last people in the world that deserve this kind of heartache. If I could switch my life with hers, if I could bear the weight of her pain, I would do it in a heartbeat.
I don’t know how to describe it, but it feels like there’s thisinvisible thread connecting me and Cali. Everything she feels and projects into the world—I feel it too. Maybe not to the degree she does, but I feel it in aftershocks.
As exhausted as I am, I’m not going to sleep until Cali does. I need to watch over her, to make sure she’s okay, and I can’t do that if my head’s dangling halfway off the armrest. I’m about to reach out and try my luck at starting another less morbid conversation when my stomach grabs my attention with a monstrous rumble.
The only thing worse than hospitals themselves? The food. And not just hospital cafeteria food, but vending machine food.
I don’t want to leave Cali’s side for too long, but I’m starving. And if I’m starving, then she has to be too. So, I internally debate with myself on what I should do, all while the continuous rumbling refuses to cease, and I eventually stand up for the first time in two straight hours.
My joints creak, and my knees pop. “I’m going to get some food for us, okay? I’ll just be around the corner.”
“Okay.”
I shuffle into the hall with my useless hip, drag myself in front of the dilapidated vending machine, and stare into the clouded, tempered glass illuminated by spurts of blue light. The glass is covered in scratches and oily fingerprints, but the clarity of it doesn’t seem to matter as there’s barely any product inside. A few lone bags of chips, a single chocolate bar, and a package of corn nuts.
Great. Awesome.
