CHAPTER SEVEN
Kyle must break some kind of land speed record as we hurtle through the crosstown traffic to my place. Along the way, he has an EMT team dispatched from Cedars to my house, and somehow, through my piteous whimpering, I tell them where I hide the spare key so they can let themselves in. When the paramedics call us back, telling us they’ve found Dad outside the bathroom, face down in a puddle of diarrhea and blood-streaked vomit, Kyle coolly rattles off the names of the hospital’s head oncology nurse, the admin nurse on the surgery floor, even the hospital administrator whose name was on the treatment invoice he received in the mail. Then, as he swings the car away from the typical driving-Sarah-home route and towards Cedars-Sinai, I instruct the EMTs on where to find the packed overnight bag I keep in Dad’s closet for situations like these.
“Make sure there are some street clothes in there,” Kyle growls. “For when it’s time for him to come home.”
His words make my stomach turn because I didn’t pack anything like that. Because I always assumed, when Dad finally went to the hospital, that it was going to be for the last time.
But my man is moving in a blur. As soon as he’s satisfied Dad will be at Cedars before we arrive, he punches up another number on his dash-mounted iPhone. I immediately recognize the name. Jim Selkirk is the bone specialist scheduled to operate on my father. But that’s not supposed to be for another month still, which Kyle swore was as early as humanly possible.
A voice on the other end of the line stifles a laugh at something someone said wherever he is, before he says, “Hello?”
“Jim. Kyle Channing.”
“Cranny! Hey, we missed you at the symphony ball last week. We were all hoping to meet this mystery woman you keep -”
“Jim, I really don’t have time. The woman you were just talking about. You know her dad? The one you’re seeing on the 24th?”
“How could I forget? It’s not the craziest pre-surgery story I’ve ever heard, but it’s close.”
“Well, he’s taken a turn for the worse. Like, bad. EMTs are taking him in right now. Jim, we gotta jump the line on this. You have to see him today.”
I find myself fighting back last night’s dinner as Dr. Selkirk heaves a sigh. “Kyle, you know there are protocols in place. If we start playing favorites with patients, the AMA’s gonna be on us so fast you -”
“This isn’t about playing favorites, Jim. It’s about prioritizing an emergency. Ralph Endicott has got to be seen today. He’s gotta get that surgery today, Jim. I’m not kidding.”
“Look, man, I know you got a thing for the daughter. But I’m here with my kids, we’re heading down to the Laguna house for a long weekend. If it’s as bad as you’re saying, I’m sure they’ll call me, but -”
“I’m in love with her! Do you hear me? I do not just have a ‘thing’ for this woman. I’m in love with her!
My jaw drops. Neither Kyle or I have exchanged any type of promises or vows. And yet, now he’s declaring himself? On a car phone no less? But he’s not hiding it from my ears either. Even with the panic and terror jolting through every fiber of my being like electricity at this moment, the thrill of hearing this man say he loves me, and knowing I love him too, cuts through the fear like a beam of light.
But at that moment, Kyle’s every atom is fixated on Jim Selkirk. “Now I know you love your kids, and your Laguna house, and your goddamn symphony ball. But I swear, if I don’t get to Cedars and find you scrubbing up, I will go to the AMA and tell them you turned away a dying man ‘cause you wanted to go to the fucking beach!”
Kyle clicks off the call, closing his eyes as he struggles to pull himself together. He opens them again when he feels my fingers curling around his free hand.
“You okay?” he asks me, giving my hand a squeeze of his own.
“Yes,” I murmur. “I’ll be okay.”
He glances at me out of the corner of his eye, not really sure how I feel about what I just heard.
“You know, that’s not...really how I wanted to tell you I -” he stammers. For once, the big man is at a loss for words.
“I know,” I reassure him. “But I’ll take it.”
And at that moment, there are two things that are certain.
One, the doctor will be prepped and ready for surgery before we arrive at the oncology waiting area.
And two…Kyle was wrong.
He is a miracle worker.
I just hope Jim Selkirk is, too.
* * * * *
I’m so anxious by the time we arrive at the oncology department waiting area that I don’t even have time to fret about what the nurses must think of me, barreling up to their desk in last night’s dress, with bed-head, probably reeking of sex, to check in as Ralph Endicott’s next of kin. They probably think I’m the worst, most neglectful daughter alive.
If he doesn’t make it out of this, I’ll probably agree with them. Because oh god, I was having sex while my dad was dying? He was leaving me a desperate voicemail while Kyle and I enjoyed each other’s bodies on the ship?
But there’s no time to feel terrible. That’s for later. Dr. Selkirk comes out to see us, letting us know that unfortunately, we won’t be able to see Dad before they begin. His respiratory levels, pulse rate, and blood work have convinced the doctor of what Kyle tried to tell him: This surgery is not going to wait.
“Now this could take anywhere from twelve to thirty-eight hours,” warns the physician. I’m sure the nurses already have your contact number if you have to step out for -”
“They won’t need it,” I say. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Familiar fingers grip my shoulder. I feel Kyle’s massive presence behind me, that safe, stable bulwark. “Neither am I.”
Dr. Selkirk was wrong. It takes forty-three hours. And for that entire time, I don’t eat, I don’t nap, I barely even sit. My now-ridiculous-seeming heels practically wear a crease in the linoleum as I pace from the seating area to the water fountain I only use when Kyle forces me to take a drink. And he just sits and watches me. He doesn’t take any calls about business. He never picks up a magazine. Every hour or so, he offers to get me something to eat, to bring me a blanket, or something. I refuse, usually with just a shake of the head.
As the surgery stretches into the second half of its second day, I slowly realize what I’m feeling, that gnawing blackness in the pit of my stomach. It’s not just sadness, or worry for my dad, or anger at cancer, or even sheer exhaustion.
It’s guilt.
I keep thinking about where I was, and what I was doing, when my father fell, when my father called, when my father needed me. The man who brought me into this world might be on his way out, and when I had to step up and be the caregiver, the nurturer I’ve pretended to be all this time, I was on a yacht with a pulsing cock down my throat.
I slump down into the seat next to Kyle, burying my face in my hands. I can still smell his musk on my fingers. I can’t look him in the eye.
“They gotta be close,” he says.
“Mm.”
“You sure you don’t want anything?”
I nod, not lifting my head. There’s a moment of cavernous silence. Then Kyle asks:
“Do you think you should maybe try to call your mom?”
Oh my God. I hadn’t even thought about my mom since I got Dad’s voicemail. She and I haven’t spoken in well over a year, and all I know of her life at this moment is that she’s living in Amsterdam. I don’t know if knows anything about what’s going on back here. I don’t know if she knows Dad’s sick.
And if she did, I don’t know if she’d even care.
Before I can reply to Kyle’s question, Dr. Selkirk steps through the swinging doors leading back to the O/R. Though his gloves are off, there’s still some blood on his smock, and he looks, after nearly two straight days of surgery, nearly as spent as I feel.
“Ms. Endicott?”
I rise like a phantom from the chair. Somehow, the fact that he referred to me so formally is all I need to know.
He barely gets the words “I’m sorry” out of his mouth before I’m plunging into a bottomless abyss. I collapse against the wall, a primordial wail ripping from my chest. Kyle races to my side, but as soon as I catch sight of those glassy black eyes, I whip into a spiraling frenzy of fists, pounding his forearms, his chest, barely missing the side of his head, driving him back, desperate to keep him from touching me.
Kyle blocks my blows with one hand while waving off the security guard making his way for us with the other. “Sarah, Jesus! What are you -”
“You! You asshole! You knew this would happen! You knew this surgery wouldn’t do any good, but you saw a chance to bang one more chick, and you jumped on it!”
“No, Sarah, listen, it’s worked for other people. Your dad was -”
“He was what, Kyle? Too sick to know a con artist when he saw one? I wasn’t too sick, but I just wanted this so bad, I went out on a limb, and I fell for your lies, and I let you use me. I let you use me, and then, when you got what you wanted, you let him die!”
Kyle lets a tear or two of his own slip loose. “Sarah, I could never. My father was…”
“Your father, I’m guessing, was someone you got to be there for when he needed you. And my dad died alone because you couldn’t keep it in your pants for one more night!”
My words don’t make sense, but I don’t care. I slump back against the nurse’s station, sobs wracking my body like tidal waves. Kyle reaches for my forearm, gripping it with the lightest touch I’ve ever felt from a man.
“Baby…”
“Don’t you fucking ‘baby’ me again!” I grab a paperweight from the nurse’s station and hurl it through the glass top of the waiting area’s coffee table. Every person in the room jumps, and even I flinch as the pane shatters, magazines and a fake-fern planter scattering to the floor with the broken glass.
The security guard’s not waiting to see any more. He takes me by the elbow. “Okay, ma’am, let’s step outside and have a chat here.”
I shake off his hand. “I’m going!” In a heavy daze, barely conscious of what I’m now doing, I stumble across the floor and snatch my bag from the chair where I’d been sitting. As I leave, I catch the admin nurse staring at me in shock, clutching a file folder to her chest, hands trembling in terror.
“Don’t worry,” I snarl, waving a furious hand at the coffee table, then at Kyle. “He’s good for it. Haven’t you heard? He’s KC Cash!”
This last word echoes through the dead-silent room as I storm out.
I collapse in tears again before I even reach the elevator.
When I fell asleep in Kyle’s arms back on his yacht, I felt like I finally knew what my life was going to be once my father was gone. Now, in the space of just a few moments, I’ve lost the only two men who mattered to me. And looking out at future, there’s nothing there, only the dark grey-black of utter solitude.