Page 3 of The Weekend Crashers
Maggie settles into her seat, taking it all in and savoring the moment. Fashion journalists, photographers and fabulous people buzz all around, but quiet when the lights dim. Loud music fills the room: Rihanna’s sultry ballad “Love on the Brain.” And the first model saunters out, followed by another. They strut and sashay in crushed velvet dresses and quilted coats and cargo pants in sumptuous material.
And then there’s Piper. Her baby!
The moment is so overwhelming, Maggie’s eyes play a trick on her. Piper, wearing towering platform boots, seems on the verge of toppling over. An illusion, of course. But gasps in the audience tell her that this is real—this is happening.
Piper collapsed on the runway.
Chapter Three
The Weill Cornell Hospital waiting area is chaotic. Maggie is just thankful Piper’s location is still trackable on her phone or she wouldn’t have known where the ambulance took her. The thought makes her shudder.
Maggie hunkers down in an uncomfortable plastic seat waiting for an update on Piper’s condition from the medical staff. She wishes she had something to do with her hands, but she left her knitting bag at work. Usually she has it with her, but she didn’t want to schlep it to the fashion show.
It’s been at least a half hour since Piper was taken by ambulance to the emergency room. Even though she’s already texting Maggie, telling her she’s “fine,” Maggie won’t exhale until she gets to see for herself, to talk to her face-to-face.
“Mrs. Hodges?” A nurse in blue scrubs appears. “You may go back and see her now.”
Maggie is not a Mrs., but it’s an irritating assumption she’s been dealing with for twenty-three years now. No matter. The important thing is that she’s finally getting to see Piper.
A different member of the nursing staff shows her through two wide doors that require an electronic pass. Inside is a large pen buzzing with voices and the beeping of machines and curtained-off partitions. Behind one of these, she findsPiper sitting on a cot wearing a pale blue hospital gown. Her golden-blond hair is slicked back, her blue eyes rimmed with a shimmer of black shadow. The pronounced cleft in her chin and small bump in her nose give her face just enough character to go from blandly pretty to striking. She looks just like her father, a man Maggie hasn’t seen since the night Piper was conceived.
It’s a strange thing, having a beautiful daughter. Especially now, when the nurse looks at her skeptically when she declares she is, in fact, this young woman’s mother. Part of the reason it seems unlikely is how close they are in age. (Many of Maggie’s peers have children in elementary school.) But also, Maggie doesn’t look like Piper. She’s only medium height, with light brown hair (still no gray) she wears straight to her shoulders, passably slim though not without increasing effort. Still, she always felt attractive enough. She wants to believe all that stuff about beauty coming from the inside, and having a positive attitude, and eating right so her skin has a glow. But when she walks down the street next to her daughter, she knows it’s all nonsense. Some people are just born beautiful.
Maggie swoops in to hug Piper. She smells like antiseptic. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” Piper says, pulling back. “Just totally humiliated.”
“Piper?” a male voice calls from outside the curtain.
Maggie closes her eyes. She knows that voice. It’s Ethan Brandt, Piper’s boyfriend.
“In here!” Piper calls out. “Mom, can you get him?”
Maggie steps outside the curtain and waves him over. Ethan is tall, taller than Piper, and he bends down to give her a hug as she rises awkwardly to meet his embrace.
“Thanks for holding down the fort,” he says, turning to Maggie. “I got here as soon as I could. I thought an Uber would be faster than the subway but the traffic...”
He frowns, his brows furrowed, his big brown eyes concerned. Ethan has glossy brown hair and cheekbones Maggie herself would kill for. He’s adorable. She can’t blame her daughter for falling for him. After all, she’d fallen for a gorgeous guy once. Once, and never again.Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
“You didn’t have to rush down here,” she says, fighting her annoyance. She likes Ethan, but at the same time she thinks her daughter is too young—and has too much going for her—to be tied down in a serious relationship. Maggie learned the hard way that nothing could derail a career like the distraction of a romance. And she’d been younger than Piper when she learned it.
“Of course I rushed down here.” His face is pinched with worry. “So what happened? Are you sure you just fainted?”
That was more information than Piper had given Maggie, and this hurts her feelings. It’s irrational, she knows that. But it’s difficult to be the parent of a grown child. It’s cruelly ironic that for the first eighteen years of Piper’s life she was the most important person in it: She was the authority, the point person. Now, suddenly she’s an afterthought. Extraneous. And it’s a painful adjustment.
“We’re still waiting to hear what the doctor has to say,” Maggie says.
An older man in a white coat steps into the little area.
“Piper, you’re just fine,” he tells her. Maggie has questions and doesn’t hesitate to jump in. She’s aware that Ethan is waiting to say something, but she doesn’t bother including him in the conversation. He’s crowding her.
“People faint,” the doctor says. “The room might have been overheated, her clothing might have restricted her breathing. Maybe she was light-headed from not eating all day?”
“My daughter eats! She’s naturally thin.”
“Mom,” Piper says. “I’mfine.”
“I know you’re concerned, Mrs. Hodges,” the doctor says. She resists the urge to correct him: Mrs. Hodges is her mother, the last person she wants to think about at that moment. “The best thing you can do is take your daughter home, make sure she keeps that ankle elevated tonight. If she experiences nausea or a headache, call us.”
