It was a teaching hospital. That’s what Lily had heard over and over as she moved through the corridors at the U of H hospital. “Teaching” meant patients would have to be, well, patient. It meant IVs got inserted correctly, eventually, and that the bruises on their hands and near their blown veins would have to be considered “necessary risks” when you went in for a checkup.
The hallways were thick with people milling around the ER and into the corridors that led to the other departments where various injuries and ailments were treated. There were large waiting areas that joined the differing departments and Lily wandered around, tugging a small bag on wheels behind her, looking for the light blue scrubs, what the interns wore if memory served, that might lead her to Zinnia.
Her stomach coiled and she tasted a hint of bile rising as she passed the ICU doors, locked and warning that visitors would be limited. Lily knew the drill. She’d spent two full days, forty-eight hours leaning against those doors when visitors were banned and the rest of her time inside the small room filled with machines and monitors that helped to keep Liam alive. She tried not to look as she passed. She tried reminding herself that Liam wasn’t there. Nothing in that place could haunt her. So why was breathing difficult? Why did she increase each step as she hurried by those doors?
Memories. They were everywhere. They moved alongside Lily as she followed two small girls in light blue robes barreling in front of her.
“I call dibs on Reynolds,” one of them was saying, jogging next to her friend. From the way they moved, Lily half-expected her to shove an elbow into her friend’s ribs.
“No way. You got him last time. You aren’t sticking me with Hickman again. He doesn’t let anyone assist. Egomaniac.”
They went on arguing, their pace faster than Lily’s, but she kept her attention on them, minding which way they went as she followed behind. The hospital had been painted. The walls were a split of cream and gray now, with blond wood trim and mahogany handrails in the center that Lily touched to straighten herself and the heavy bag on her shoulder before she continued toward the jogging, arguing interns.
She’d run through these corridors before too. Once when her mother’s white blood cell counts became nonexistent, the other time when Randell and some hospital worker led her toward the ICU to see her dying brother.
Lily shook off the memories, not willing to recall them with too much detail. It had always been hard for her to return after Liam died. There were too many wounds that sharpened and bit into her heart when she got here. Too many of those promises that got forgotten. Now she’d come to see Zee; see her and do her best to convince her not to throw away everything she’d worked so hard to do for herself. Not for some guy. Not for a stranger she barely knew.
At the end of the corridor, Lily came to a large receptionist’s area. There were nurses passing over charts and doctors in dark blue scrubs, some in black, scribbling into folders and moving everywhere away from the desk, toward the open doors of the rooms that flanked the area. It reminded Lily of a ballet—how the activity collided and bustled, how these people moved with a choreography that helped and hindered. There was plenty of both from her vantage point. It was midday, on a Saturday, and it seemed Friday’s patients were still being handled; there were families hovering around those open doors and interns from what Lily knew of Zee’s colleagues that traded tasks—lab work and blood drawing, from the bickering she heard and the odd bribe of laundry duties and scutwork trade for chances to assist in surgery.
“Dog-eat-dog, Lil,” Zinnia had once explained to Lily when she asked her niece about how she landed surgeries. She wanted to specialize in cardiovascular work, but had bragged about a gallstone surgery she got to sit in on and two liver transplants. “Those fools always try to bet me I can’t get through my scut fast enough, or they’ll swear to do my laundry if I run labs for them so they can be ready when rounds happen and our chief resident hands out assignments.”
“And how do you manage to win those bets and land the surgeries so often?” Lily had asked her.
“Easy. I ran track in high school, remember? So I can maneuver the hallways in under five minutes flat. Also, I do my laundry when I can’t sleep and, God I can’t ever sleep. Besides, I don’t bother with underwear most of the time. Laundry’s not complicated for me.”
Lily watched for several minutes, seeing the activity as some sort of fascination that reminded her of watching a trapeze artist flying through the air. There were so many people doing so many different things that for a moment she forgot why she was there, standing in the center of the chaos. But then she heard an intake of breath to her right, and a familiar, loud squeal that might have been her name and, before Lily understood what happened, Zinnia ran toward her and Lily turned just in time to catch her niece as she jumped at her, arms and legs tangling around her as though Zee was a tiny four-year-old and not the grown woman with long legs she was.
“Lil! Oh God, Lily, you’re here!” This Zinnia shouted against Lily’s neck as she squeezed her in a vice-like hug. “I can’t believe it. I cannot…” She went on and on that way for several minutes until Lily recognized the quake of her words and how her voice shook.
“Zee, you gotta let me breathe,” she tried, laughing when her niece reluctantly released her, staring back at Lily with her face blotched and damp from her tears. “Let me see you,” she said, holding the girl’s face still. No bruises, no dark circles or bags under her eyes, despite the schedule Lily knew she kept. “You’ve lost weight.” Lily moved Zee’s face to the left and right, not liking how thin she’d gotten or how pale she seemed. “Do you ever get to the beach? You look like a real haole.”
“Look who’s talking,” Zinnia said through a laugh, dragging the back of her hand against her wet face. “I know for a fact there are lakes and rivers in Louisiana and here you are looking like Casper.” She watched Lily closely then, her gaze shifting over her face as though she didn’t quite believe she was really there, standing in front of her. “Oh, hell, I don’t care if you’re all pasty and white. You’re here! God, you’re here.”
“I am,” Lily said, unable to keep herself from hugging Zinnia again; not caring that they stood in the middle of all that medical bedlam hugging and crying like idiots. “God, I’ve missed you.”
“I’ve missed you, too.” Zee broke away from Lily, keeping hold of her hands as she tilted her head, eyes sharp and curious. “Did I freak you out? With my message, I mean? Is that why you’re here?”
Lily wanted to tell her everything, right then and there. She wanted to warn her that she’d hopped a plane with the hope of talking some sense into her niece. She wanted to explain why she’d been asked to take a vacation from the firm, but didn’t think it was the time or place for that.
“I’m here to see you,” Lily answered Zee, squeezing her hand back. “When do you get off? I want to take you out for dinner if I can.”
“Another hour, but Lil, I’m exhausted. I’m off tomorrow though, and Ano and I were going to go check out some spots on Mokuleia Beach for the wedding.” When Lily only nodded, a small gesture that was barely a movement at all, Zinnia lowered her shoulders, as though she knew Lily didn’t approve. “What?” She stepped back, dropping her aunt’s hand. “Shit, Lily, please don’t tell me you came all the way here just to try to convince me not to get married.”
“I…I didn’t.”
Her niece folded her arms, head tilting to the side as though she needed a minute to examine Lily’s posture and what it said about the things she kept to herself. “Bullshit.”
The curse word came out loud enough that a few of the nurses and doctors stopped their conversations to stare at Lily and Zinnia. The attention was unwelcomed and Lily cleared her throat, masking her irritation with her best lawyer’s impassive veneer. The smile was forced, a little unfriendly, and Lily knew Zee would know it meant they should table the impending argument.
“I’d like to have a discussion with you, if you don’t mind. Tonight, if you can stay awake long enough and in the morning, you and your boyfriend…”
“Fiancé.”
“Fine. You and your fiancé, can come by and pick me up at my hotel and we’ll have breakfast.”
Something changed in Zinnia’s expression then and it shifted her mild irritation immediately. “You’re staying at a hotel?”
“Of course I am…why?” Lily didn’t like the feeling she had just then, exposed a little and something else. Something that was off, a little warning that prickled the hairs on the back of her neck.
Zinnia didn’t notice and seemed, in fact, to forget her minor irritation at her aunt, moving closer enough to pull Lily out of the way when two interns shoved by pushing a patient on a gurney. She took to fiddling with Lily’s collar, brushing the braid of hair off her shoulder. “I just figured you’d stay with me…with us.”
That hair-prickling feeling stopped, replaced by something that made Lily’s stomach tense. “Us? You’re…you’re living together?”
“Lil, please.” The eye roll was exaggerated and reminded Lily of a younger Zinnia, one that was convinced her aunt hadn’t a single brain cell in her head. “I’m not a teenager anymore and I’m engaged. Ano and I—”
“Is he loaded?”
“What?”
Lily shrugged, leaning against the counter as the manic activity around them continued. “Honolulu is expensive. Only very old families and rich tourists can afford property here. Unless he’s in Kaimuki or one of the other suburbs. So either your man is loaded, he lives in our hometown, or you live in a tent on state lands.” Lily waited, watching her niece for a reaction. She knew Zee was too much of a princess to sleep on the ground or in a makeshift hovel because she couldn’t afford rent. Lily also knew Zinnia’s type. She’d never put up with a man that expected her to live out in the wilds of Hawaii. “In either case, I wouldn’t want to get in anyone’s way or take up too much space.”
“He’s not loaded, but we don’t live in a tent.” She shook her head, smiling when Lily grinned at her. Lily knew Zee better than anyone. She knew her mind, but this? Being so consumed so quickly? That she didn’t understand. “He used to do security at the airport, but started his own auto body shop last year. He’s a mechanic, he does custom work, and we live at one of his family’s cottages in Kaimuki. They own several. His older cousin offered it up to him a few years back, and I moved in a month ago. It’s small but there’s plenty of room for you.”
“Cousin?” Lily teased, waggling her eyebrows. “So he’s not loaded but his family is?”
“Very funny. Actually, his uncle is the one that introduced us. Dr. K. He’s a cardio attending here.”
They moved away from the crowd, near the end of the receptionist desk and Lily let Zinnia link her arm, directing her toward a large door with “Attendings Only” in heavy silver letters emblazoned above a large handle. The crowd was thinner here, with only a few nurses paying any attention to the women as they talked.
“Ano got into a wreck and I was wrapping up my ER service for the month. I took care of him. He had a busted ankle and needed stitches above his eyebrow. I gave them to him.”
When she spoke, a slow, happy grin moved across Zinnia’s face. It made her look younger, her face lighter, and Lily couldn’t help but tease her niece. “How romantic.”
A quick jab of her finger in Lily’s side and the girl continued. “Then Dr. K, comes jogging in, acting like a boy, cracking jokes and then I guess he saw something in Ano’s eyes. He went out of his way to make sure we both knew each of us was single.” Zee stood in front of Lily, leaning a shoulder on the wall as she spoke. “When Ano kept coming by to ‘see his cousin,’ and Dr. K kept pestering me about how interested in me Ano was, well, I decided to let him take me out.”
Lily pushed a mock frown onto her mouth, tisking a little to keep the mood light. “Because he’s related to your boss?” Mainly she wanted to distract herself from her own worry and the things that had urged her back to the island.
“Because,” Zinnia said, emphasizing the word with a tilt of her head, “he’s funny and very sweet and kind and ridiculously gorgeous and related to my boss, who is also kind and funny and sweet.”
“But not gorgeous?” Lily said, laughing at her niece’s frown.
“See for yourself.” Zee nodded to something over Lily’s shoulder and those odd prickles returned, shooting an unusual warmth through her limbs.
Lily hadn’t worried about who her niece mentioned or why he hovered next to them, but when Lily shot a quick glance over her shoulder to follow Zinnia’s gaze, something sharp and heavy seemed to crash into the center of her chest.
She reverted just then, blocking out the noise of the room and the activity that surrounded her. Zinnia’s presence got forgotten and the weary fatigued Lily had spent an hour ignoring melted away when she caught sight of the man standing behind her.
He was still tall and broad. That dark skin was still line-free and his hair was shorter, cropped around his ears and a little long on top. Lily wondered, fleetingly, as she watched recognition shift his features, drop his mouth open, if he still tasted sweet. She moved the thought from her mind almost as quickly as it had been born. And when he came closer, Lily forgot how to form words and make them move off her tongue.
“Lily.”
It wasn’t a question. The name sounded, in fact, like a long-held answer, something sweet, something he’d put in the back of his mind but was happy to find again.
He stood in front of her, arms at his side, expression sharp, but his eyes widened and his mouth closed, twisted up into a sweet smile. Lily couldn’t do more than watch him, wondering what he’d say, wondering if after all this time, that look, the stretching grin was just common courtesy.
Before he could say another word, Lily exhaled, turning around fully to face him, wishing she could remember how to breathe. Wishing she understood why her heart felt like it might leap from her chest.
“Hello, Keilen.”