Page 16 of Run Omega Run
"That would be..." Heather's voice caught slightly. "Thank you. That would help a lot."
As Cole disappeared back into the hospital's inner workings, I found myself studying Heather's profile again. The defensive wariness had softened, replaced by something that looked almost like hope. She was letting people help her, finally, after what had clearly been a long period of carrying impossible burdens alone.
"Thank you," she said quietly, not looking at me directly. "For helping us get here. For staying."
"You don't have to thank me," I said, and meant it completely. "This is what we do for each other." Her brow furrowed at the word ‘we’, but she smiled and nodded all the same.
Though even as I said it, I knew it was more than that. This was what our pack did for each other. This was what you did for the person whose scent called to something fundamental in your chest, whose strength and determination made you want to be worthy of standing beside her.
This was what you did when you finally found the person you'd been looking for without realizing you'd been searching at all.
Chapter 7
Heather
The waiting room chairs were designed by someone who'd never spent more than five minutes sitting in one. Hard plastic molded into shapes that promised comfort but only delivered the kind of ache that settled deep into bones already worn thin by months of sleepless nights. I squirmed in the chair, hunting for some angle where my vertebrae wouldn't stack like crushed poker chips, but those damn ceiling lights droned on like a hive of electric insects that somehow crawled behind my eyelids even when I tried to shut them out.
Each breath carried the sting of antiseptic through my nostrils—that particular chemical sharpness hospitals used like a warning sign: fragile humans under repair, success not guaranteed.
My hands shook as I tried to fill out the latest form, black ink smearing slightly where my palm dragged across the paper. Insurance information. Emergency contacts. Medical history going back three generations, as if my grandmother's arthritis had any bearing on why my mom was currently drowning in her own lungs. Each signature felt like signing away pieces of a life I couldn't afford to lose, adding numbers to a debt that was already impossible to contemplate.
The financial counselor had been kind but brutally honest about what this would cost. Emergency admission, chest X-rays, blood work, IV fluids, monitoring equipment that beeped, clicked and measured the precise degree to which everything was falling apart. The numbers she'd quoted made my vision blur at the edges, made my chest tight with the kind of panic that threatened to steal what little breath I had left.
"Sign here for the radiology charges," the admissions clerk said, her voice gentle but tired in the way that suggested she'd delivered this same speech dozens of times already today. "And here for the emergency consultation fee."
Another signature. Another line item in a bill that would probably exceed what the orphanage saw in donations over six months. I tried not to think about what that meant, about the choices I'd have to make between keeping the children fed and keeping my mother alive. Both were necessities. Both were impossible to sacrifice. Both were slipping away from me with each stroke of black ink across white paper.
The smell hit me first—coffee and antiseptic soap, mixed with something that reminded me of winter mornings and sharp clarity. Then Dr. Patterson appeared beside my chair, a thin woman with graying hair and eyes that had seen too much to offer false comfort. She carried a manila folder thick with test results, and the expression on her face made something cold settle in my stomach.
"Heather?" I nodded, and she settled into the chair beside me, positioning herself so we could speak without the entire waiting room overhearing. "I have your mother's X-ray results."
I set down the pen, my signature half-finished on a form I could no longer focus on. "How bad is it?"
"There's significant fluid accumulation in both lungs," she said, opening the folder to reveal images that looked like storm clouds trapped inside a ribcage. "It's putting tremendous strainon her heart and making it increasingly difficult for her to get adequate oxygen."
The medical terms washed over me like a foreign language, but the meaning underneath was clear enough. Drowning. My mother was drowning from the inside, her lungs filling with fluid that belonged somewhere else, somewhere that wouldn't steal her ability to breathe.
"Can you fix it?" The question came out smaller than I'd intended, the voice of a frightened child instead of the responsible adult I'd been forced to become.
Dr. Patterson's pause lasted exactly long enough for hope to die and acceptance to take its place. "We can make her more comfortable. Medications to reduce the fluid buildup, stronger pain management for when breathing becomes more difficult." I nodded, and she handed me a bunch more forms to complete.
Consent for medications I couldn't pronounce, acknowledgment that I understood the prognosis, and financial responsibility agreements, that made my hands shake harder as I signed my name over and over again. Each signature was another small surrender, another admission that the woman who'd raised me was dying and there wasn't enough money in the world to change that fact.
I was halfway through signing something about hospice consultation when a new scent cut through the antiseptic air like a blade through fog. Peppermint, sharp and clean, with undertones of something that made every nerve in my body suddenly come alive. My hand froze on the paper, the pen suspended between letters as my head turned involuntarily toward the source.
