There was a crick in her neck and her eyes burned like someone had been rubbing rock salt into them. Nearby someone was snoring. The dry overly air-conditioned air and slight antiseptic smell made her nose twitch with the need to sneeze and reminded Marcy where she was, even before she opened her eyes.
Riverside County Hospital. Waiting for news.
They would have woken her if anything had happened, wouldn’t they? She jerked awake, her body pulled upright into a sitting position by the sudden fear that they would have let her sleep.
“It’s okay. No news yet.”
Miranda—of all people—sat across from her on one of the narrow couches in the waiting room. It was Miranda who had spoken, continuing, “I posted an intern in the hall outside his room. If there are any developments, we’ll hear about them as fast as possible.”
Marcy nodded, rubbing a hand over her face, trying to scrub away some of the sleep and tear-tracks. “What time is it?”
“Just after seven in the morning. Your mother and sisters found some space in another waiting room one floor down. Daniel’s with them. He’s been bringing them coffee and looking after them.”
“Thank you,” Marcy said, then realized it was Daniel she should be thanking, but she wasn’t ready to see him. The snoring beside her faded into a snort and then started up again.
Craig was asleep sitting up at one end of her couch, his head flopped back to rest against the wall, mouth wide open—the source of both the snoring and the crick in her neck since she’d been sleeping with his thigh as a pillow.
Craig had looked after her. Daniel had taken care of her family. “Where’s Darius?”
“He may still be at the hotel. I’m not sure anyone told him.”
Marcy nodded, her brain processing everything slowly, as if too much of her brainpower was dedicated to worrying about her father and little was left for completing basic tasks, like breathing and speech.
“I’ll call LA as soon as it’s a decent hour,” Miranda continued. “We’ll put the show on hold for a few days, until your father is doing better.”
Marcy wasn’t sure whether to be pleased by Miranda’s positive thinking or annoyed by her assumption. And what if he isn’t doing better? part of her wanted to demand, but the words would require too much effort. Energy she didn’t have.
“Would you like some coffee?” Miranda asked. “The machine in here is watery crap, but there’s an espresso machine in the cafeteria.”
Coffee sounded like heaven. “That would be amazing.”
Miranda nodded, brisk, satisfied to have a task. “I’ll just be a minute.”
She stepped out into the hallway, but the door caught on something on the floor and didn’t close all the way, so Marcy could still hear her, clear as a bell, when Miranda said, “Darius. When did you get here?”
“Just now,” came his deep, clear voice. “What’s going on? Is there any news?”
“Not yet,” Miranda replied. “It’s still wait and see.”
“What does that mean for the show? I mean, are we still having the Elimination Ceremony tonight?”
Marcy glowered toward the door. She couldn’t have heard him right.
“Marcy’s father is in the hospital,” Miranda said, as if explaining the situation to a small child. “She’s in no condition for an Elimination Ceremony. The show is on hold.”
“Yeah, but for how long? Are we just supposed to wait around indefinitely—”
Marcy was on her feet and bursting through the not-quite-closed waiting room door before thought caught up to instinct. But she didn’t need thought. Darius broke off at the sight of her, eyes going wide as he realized he was busted.
“You know what, Darius,” she snapped, everything in her burning righteous and clean, “let me make it easier for you. You don’t have to wait around indefinitely to find out whether my father—the man you spent the day with just two days ago—is going to live. You can go home right now. And I hope I never fucking see you again. There. Elimination Ceremony complete. Happy?”
Darius gaped. “Are you serious?” he sputtered.
“I think she is,” Miranda said when Marcy didn’t have the words. Her little speech to Darius seemed to have exhausted her verbal reservoirs and she was back in shell-shock mode. “Goodbye, Darius,” Miranda said for her. “We’ll arrange your flight back to Atlanta for this afternoon and see you at the reunion show taping. Go on now.” She made a shooing gesture.
The big man looked back and forth between the two of them, opening his mouth to say something, but Miranda held her hand up, eyes narrowed behind her glasses. She was small, but with that look in her eye, no one naysayed her. “Stop. Just go.”
She turned her back on him, ushering Marcy back inside the waiting room. “I know this sounds bad, but I wish we’d gotten that on tape.”
Marcy frowned, looking around and realizing for the first time that there were no cameras around. She’d somehow thought with Miranda here that they would be filming everything, but there wasn’t a recording device in sight.
“Do you need it on tape?” she asked, back to feeling like her brain was on slow motion and she was trying to play catch up with the world around her.
“We’ll have Pendleton do a nice little explanatory fireside chat. Not to worry. Now. Would you still like that coffee?”
Marcy nodded dazedly. The producer bustled out of the room, making sure the door shut all the way this time, and Marcy stared after her. The show really was on hold. No more Romancing Miss Right. Snoring came from her right. Craig was still here.
She didn’t have the mental energy right now to wonder what that meant.
#
Miranda turned her cell phone on when she hit the lobby on her way to the cafeteria and it rang almost instantly. The caller-ID showed the network offices, but gave her no clue which of the Big Wigs was calling to rip her a new one.
“Hello?”
“Why weren’t we informed there was a crisis with the Romancing Miss Right filming?”
Wallace’s bark. She’d know it anywhere.
“Obviously you were informed since you’re calling me about it at four-thirty in the morning,” she said, after some quick time zone math. “I was waiting until a civilized hour to let you know there had been a snag and the filming would need to be placed temporarily on hold.”
“Do you know how expensive putting a show on hold is?”
“Since I approve the budget reports for each week of filming and know exactly how much it costs to keep a crew around for a single day in which they aren’t working—yes, as a matter of fact, I do. But I’m not sure what you expect me to do about it. Miss Right’s father is in the hospital—during Meet the In-Laws week, I might add—and he may not recover. She’s in no state to be frolicking with Suitors.”
“All the travel arrangements for the Overnight Dates will have to be rescheduled if we delay—”
“I’m aware of that, Wallace. I’m also aware that Miss Right can barely form two coherent sentences at the moment. If you won’t think of her, think of the optics. How would it look if we forced her to run off to some exotic destination and roll around in the sand with a Suitor while her father is lying in a hospital bed, possibly dying?”
“Fine, put it on hold, but the show can’t end this way.”
“It won’t.”
“It had better not. You’d better have a plan in place to get her back on the horse and excited about filming the last few episodes if her father kicks it.”
Miranda flinched. “You’re a real asshole, you know that, Wallace?”
“I do know that. I’m also the asshole who will replace you if you make the call not to film the final episode while Daddy is still alive and Miss Right decides she isn’t emotionally able to film it later. Understand?”
“I think I got it.” Asshole.
“Good.”
He didn’t say goodbye. But then, she hadn’t been expecting him to.
Miranda turned off her phone—ignoring the dozen flashing messages from the production crew asking for instructions—and continued toward the cafeteria and the espresso machine of the gods. Right now she needed a caffeine fix almost as much as Marcy did.
Fifteen minutes later, with a latte in each hand, she’d come to one conclusion—maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad thing if she got fired.
She liked her job—most days. She was good at her job—every day. But what kind of legacy was she leaving behind? What kind of person was she becoming, exploiting the emotions of others day after day in a quest for ratings glory?
Was that really who she wanted to be?
She wasn’t religious, but for a moment, she’d almost found herself praying for Marcy’s father to live—just to make the continuation of the show easier. And then the shame of that almost-prayer had smashed into her like a wrecking ball. No, losing the job might not be a bad thing at all.
But what would she do if she wasn’t that person anymore? A ball busting, Machiavellian reality TV producer was the only person she knew how to be. What was left of her if she took that away?
She didn’t have a family. Her friends were almost all colleagues. Her love life was non-existent.
Without the job, she was just a bossy woman with a God complex and no one to act it out on. But maybe that wasn’t all she could be. Maybe she could be more than this. Maybe she could be a human being too.
Miranda shoved open the door to the waiting room. “One caramel latte, no whip.”