Chapter Thirty-Three
Darla
The waiting room is my new home away from home. I haven’t left in the three days since Stella was airlifted here. She made it through the first surgery. No telling how many more she has to go. She still has all her fingers and toes, and she’s still fighting for her life. If it weren’t for the tube down her throat and IVs in her arms, I would think she was in a deep sleep. I try pretending that she’s all better and that in a few days, she’ll be back to her old chipper self, riding her pink, heart-covered bicycle up and down the driveway. But I wake up to live the nightmare another day.
A piece of me died two days ago when the doctor confirmed that Stella does indeed have flesh-eating bacteria. He cultured group A Strep from her wounds, and today, he started her on corticosteroids along with target antibiotics. Maybe today will be better, and she won’t need any more surgeries.
I convince Diane to catch a flight back to California. When she’s not in control, she makes my life miserable. I can’t handle that right now, and with Isaac and Shelby here, I have enough mothering. She means well, but I need her to go home for now. She would stay as long as I wanted, but right now, it’s best if she tries to get back to her normal life.
I would like Theo to do some comforting, but he’s in the far corner, staring at his shoes, as usual.
Diane pivots around to face me before she leaves the waiting room. “I can stay. Say the word.”
“No. You go home. No one knows how long this is going to last. I may need you later.”
“You say the word, and I’ll be here as fast as the plane can get me here.”
She wraps me in a big hug. We’ve never been touchy-feely sisters, but I need this right now. “I’m so sorry.”
“Stop saying that. You have nothing to be sorry for.”
“Well, one thing’s for sure. The next time I take Stella anywhere, you’re going too.”
“Is that a promise?”
“Me too?” Isaac asks.
She rolls her eyes. “California is not big enough for your personality.” She kisses me on the cheek and wipes my tears. “And it won’t be too long from now either. You have to believe that.”
I nod and bite my lip to keep another round of tears from flowing.
“I hope things work out with you and Theo,” she whispers in my ear.
“Me too. We have to try for Stella’s sake.”
She gives Isaac and me a final hug and Shelby an air-kiss before she leaves. Next, I need to tackle trying to get Shelby to go home. There’s nothing more she can do here but climb the walls, and I’m sure she’ll start getting on my nerves soon. If it weren’t for Yeti, Isaac would be here day and night.
I escort Shelby and Isaac out of the waiting room. “You two need to go too.”
“I feel like you don’t need me anymore,” Isaac pouts.
I hug him. “I need you most of all. We’re not doing anything here except waiting. You need to go back to work and wait there.”
“Okay, but you’ll call me with every update, right?”
“Of course I will. Thanks for the clean clothes. Will you bring me another change of clothes and my toothbrush? My teeth feel fuzzy.”
“Ick. Too much information. Kiss kiss.”
I hug him again, but he avoids my funky breath.
Shelby kisses me on the cheek. “We’ll be back later this afternoon. Please call if you need anything. Promise?” She gives me another squeeze and leaves.
The Reverend and Mrs. Edwards exit Stella’s room with tears in their eyes. Theo jumps up to meet them halfway. His arm brushes against mine. Mrs. Edwards hugs Theo before she focuses on me. We haven’t had a moment together since this whole nightmare started, so I don’t know where I stand with her. This could be her chance to slap me or chew me out for what I’ve done to her son.
Instead, she pulls me into a hug. “I love my little Stella. She’s an exact duplicate of this one when he was that age.” She jerks her thumb toward Theo. “How did you know my name?”
I move away and wipe my eyes. Theo shrugs.
“Well, when I met Theo, he had broken his insulin pump, and he mentioned that Stella was going to be mad at him. It was the only connection I had to him.” I stare at him. “He told me his name was Romeo.”
Mrs. Edwards pokes him in the ribs.
He rolls his eyes. “Hey, to be fair, she told me her name was Juliet.”
His mother howls with laughter. She touches my cheek before leading me away from Theo. “He loves you,” she whispers in my ear. “He’s hurt right now. Give him time.”
I nod, and she kisses me again.
Reverend Edwards brings Theo and me close. He puts my hand in Theo’s. It’s as if I’m holding a cold, dead fish. What once felt like energy at the slightest touch has transformed into lifeless flesh. His sad eyes focus on his shoes.
The Reverend puts one hand on top of my head and his other hand on top of Theo’s. He bows his head and says a silent prayer. I feel a peace overcome me that I cannot explain. It’s as though I know Stella is going to be okay. Or if not, I know I will be able to handle whatever happens. He kisses me on the cheek and hugs Theo.
“Call me if there is any change. I’ll be back tonight.”
“Thanks, Dad,” Theo says.
And with that, all his family and all my friends leave the hospital. Theo and I stare at each other. It’s easy to avoid one another when there’s a crowd, when other people initiate conversations and try to keep us occupied and keep us from having to spend any time together. But now, with everyone gone, he cannot avoid me.
“When’s the last time you ate?” I ask.
He shrugs. “I don’t remember. I’m not hungry.” He starts to leave.
“When’s the last time you checked your sugar?”
He glances at me over his shoulder. “I don’t need another mother. Leave me alone.”
He exits the waiting room. I follow him. Perhaps he doesn’t need me, but I need him. He makes his way out of the building into the open courtyard. He sits in the sun on a park bench and rests his head against the wall. His eyes are mostly closed, a posture that clearly signals, “do not disturb.”
In the nearest restroom, I change out of my three-day-old grungy clothes into clean ones. I’m still grubby, but at least with clean clothes and some deodorant, I won’t offend as many people. As I fold up my dirty jeans, the slip of paper from the Hangman game falls out of the pocket. I had almost forgotten about that. It’s not the most important issue right now with everything else happening, so I pick it up and shove it in the pocket of my clean pants. I roll up the dirty clothes, cram them into my bag, and head out the door to see if Theo is still outside. He hasn’t moved. He appears either dead or asleep. If he feels anything like I do, he cannot sleep and wishes he were dead.
I stride up to him. My footsteps scraping across the bricks announce my arrival. He peels one eye open.
“Can we talk? This is the first moment we’ve had alone, and I need to explain—”
“Nope.”
“Theo, please. Let’s talk.”
“I said no.”
I sit next to him at the picnic table. “Please let me say this.”
He abruptly stands, startling me. He grabs my arm and ushers me to a more secluded place in the courtyard. He peers around to see how much of an audience we have before speaking. “Me first. How could you?”
“Theo, I—”
“How could you keep something like this from me? When were you going to tell me? When she got married? Never?” His voice cracks, and his hands tremble. He paces around in a circle. “I need food.” He marches toward a door to the hospital. “I bet you can’t even guarantee she’s mine.”
Oh, he did not say that. I rush toward him and push him onto the nearest park bench. I don’t care how many people overhear our conversation.
“Now you shut up. I know without a doubt that she’s yours. And you do too, you, you…” I can’t think of anything bad enough to call him. Minding my every word around a child has deleted the curse words from my vocabulary faster than the southern sun could have zapped my energy. “You doodie head.”
He cocks his head to the side. “What?”
“You’re a jerk.” I storm away.
“Oh, I’m the jerk. I’m not the one who kept a child a secret for almost seven years.”
I get back in his face. “We graduated. I didn’t know I was pregnant until late that summer. What was I supposed to do, Romeo?” I put my hands on my hips. “And for the record, I thought I did tell you, but you didn’t waste any time before hooking up with someone else, did you? It sounds to me like you used me for a good time.”
His mouth drops open. “Oh, so that was your justification? That you thought I was a player? I had to be. Why else would I be attracted to you? Do you have no confidence in yourself?”
He crosses his arms. His eyes are narrowed to angry slits. I’ve never seen this side of him. I think he could tear my head off if he had the energy. I throw the Hangman paper at him. He unfolds it and groans.
“So, I was only another game, right?” I ask.
He lets out a guffaw. “Games are supposed to be fun.”
I reel back. Even he seems shocked at his choice of words. All this time, I thought he loved me. He said he loved me, but now he’s telling me that his time with me was nothing more than a chore, like doing the dishes or cleaning out the gutters. And the saddest part is that I believed every word he said—everything from “do you believe in love at first sight” to the “love is patient, love is kind” stuff.
I wait for a physician to pass us and get out of earshot. “How many points would you have scored if we had slept together this week?”
“We’ll never know.” He stares off and swallows hard. “It was letters, not points, by the way.”
“Well, excuse me.”
“It doesn’t ‘excuse’ you from not telling me.”
I turn to leave. Under my breath, I mumble, “You should have stayed at Johns Hopkins.”
He grabs my arm. “What did you say?”
I shake him off. “Nothing. Never mind.”
I’m almost to the door that leads back into the hospital, when he grabs me by the arm.
He swings me around. “No, no, no. I never told you I was at Johns Hopkins. How did you know?”
I scan the ground.
He squeezes my shoulders. “Answer me, dammit.”
“Okay. I knew where you were. I was about six months pregnant. Mallory emailed me a picture. She said you were the one. She was going to marry a doctor. I didn’t know what to do.”
He backpedals. “You bitch. You didn’t want me to know anything about my own kid.”
“It wasn’t like that. Let me finish.”
“You didn’t tell me on purpose.” He laughs a terrible, evil chortle. “And you told my sister, for Christ’s sake.”
I close my eyes, count to ten, and take a calming breath. “It’s not like that.”
He sneers at me. “Did you tell Tommy?”
I stare at him and swallow.
“Jesus. You told Tommy? You had the guts to tell Tommy but not me.”
“Let me explain.”
“Whatever.”
“I’m not trying to justify anything. I’m telling you the truth. Do you think I wanted to go through having a child by myself? I had nobody! I had no one to help me through nighttime feedings, and fevers, and ear infections. And I had no one there to share the big moments with—when she smiled the first time, or rolled over, or took her first step, or when I had to leave her on her first day of school.”
I can’t believe I have the courage to say these things. He stares off, taking it.
I can’t stop the tears. “I had nobody. So don’t tell me anything about not having confidence, because I didn’t have time to care about that.”
He sits down on the bench and buries his face in his hands. Deep, guttural sobs bubble up from his chest.
“And you know what else? You can think I’m selfish, evil, and that I deserve a lonely, shallow, pathetic life. I think those things too, and much worse, but you have no idea what I’ve been through the last seven years. So hate me if you want.”
From my wallet, I remove the picture of Stella on her first day of school and drop it in his lap. “But don’t take it out on her. She deserves to have you in her life. So for her sake, do the right thing, at least until she’s well. After that, you can go back to hating me.”
“Please leave.” His voice is so hoarse, I can barely understand his words.
When I get to the door of the hospital, I look back at him sitting on the park bench. His head hangs low as he stares at her picture, overcome with sorrow. I wipe my face and rush back into the ICU waiting room.