The look of uncertainty on her beautiful face made my gut twist. I nudged aside the sodas so I could lean in closer, recapturing her hands in mine. “Chloe,” I said gently. “Look at me, honey.”
Slowly, her face tilted back towards mine, finally meeting my gaze for the first time since she’d gone off on the baby tangent.
“This isn’t what I expected,” I began, squeezing her fingers. “At all. Not gonna deny that. The woman of my dreams walking onto a Greyhound and demanding the seat beside me?”
She laughed a little, blushing prettily.
“But you did,” I went on. “And yeah, the baby is an unexpected factor, but the bottom line is, he or she is part of you. And I’m crazy about you, Chloe. So one way or another, I’ll learn to be a parent. I … want to be a parent,” I added, as the realization settled over me. “It never occurred to me to think about kids, but with you … it’s just totally natural. It fits,” I said quietly, meaning it with everything in me. “It’s like … I don’t even have to question it or wonder about it. You fit perfectly in my life, Chloe and so does—”
“Alex!”
Both our heads jerked toward the sound of my shouted name. My eyes widened as David jogged straight into Malarky’s, a place I was sure he’d never set in before in his life, and made a beeline for our booth.
“David, what—”
“Dad went into the hospital 40 minutes ago. I’ve been calling your phone for an age!”
The ride to the hospital was a blur. David didn’t bother to tell me how he’d tracked me down. Chloe and I crammed into his stupid-small sports car, so tiny that she was practically in my lap, and we sped across town, somehow avoiding the usual traffic cops.
Then we were on the small hospital’s doorstep and I was sprinting toward the ER. Probably David and Chloe were following, but I was solely focused on Dad. It shocked me how concerned I was, when my dad and I had no relationship whatsoever. But I guess your father’s your father, no matter what.
“Leonard Reed,” I told the charge nurse. “He was just brought in?”
With a hospital this small and a family as notorious as mine, there was never any question about Dad’s identity. The nurse nodded immediately, without even checking her records.
“This way.” She led me down a yellow hallway, nowhere near as bleak as the walls that framed my usual workplace, and pulled back a curtain. To my immediate surprise, I spotted my father sitting up in bed, shirt off, his chest covered in electrodes, haranguing an intern.
Seeing me, he broke off and cursed in apparent relief. “Alexander. Finally. Will you tell this idiot that I require a full …” he waved his hand uncertainly. “Whatever it is you call it.”
“Workup,” the intern supplied, looking like he was trying not to roll his eyes. I was familiar with the feeling when it came to Dad. “I’ve been trying to explain to Mr. and Mrs. Reed—”
“Your mother is so distraught that she’s had one of her episodes,” Dad informed me.
“Mrs. Reed is being attended to,” the intern went on wearily. “As I was saying, we’ve ordered every recommended test…”
While he talked, I took the clipboard from him and half listened while studying the various studies they’d ordered, along with the notes on my father’s condition when he was brought in.
“They want me dead,” Dad howled with rage, as the intern wrapped up his narrative. “This town has been waiting for me to keel over for decades, in hopes of getting its hands on my money. Well, I’ll have you know—”
“You’re not dying, Dad,” I said dryly. “What it looks like you may have is some heartburn, courtesy of your shitty diet and total lack of exercise. They’re doing all the necessary tests to rule out any dangers, but those tests don’t happen in five minutes. I’m sure they’ve told you that you’ll be kept overnight.”
“I should be here for a week,” he snapped. “Heartburn! I knew that doctor training was an utter waste of my money.”
“It wasn’t your money,” I reminded him. “I got a full ride. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I should check on Mom …”
I stepped past David and wondered briefly where Chloe had vanished to, but my whole focus was momentarily on dealing with my family’s madness. She would understand, I was sure. That was the kind of person I already knew she was.
It wasn’t hard to find Mom. I could hear her histrionics halfway down the hall and just followed them until I walked into the room where she was hyperventilating, waving off every attempt by medical staff to calm her.
“Don’t give me sedatives! I’ll die in my sleep!”
It would be a miracle if the hospital didn’t poison both my parents’ IVs before the night was through. Shooting an apologetic look at the doctor who was just exiting the room, I joined my mother at her bedside.
“Hi, Mom.”
“Alex!” She grabbed my hand and dragged me close with a grip that no dying woman would ever be able to approximate. “This is my son. He’s a doctor. He’ll know how to care for me properly!”
“I don’t have the slightest idea how to do that,” I said bluntly, worn out by the sheer insanity that was my family. “Mom, you know you get these spells. You work yourself up and then they subside just as quickly as they begin.”
Indeed, the ‘spells’ dated back to the earliest days of my childhood. Whenever Mom was unhappy with my clothes, my choice of food, my grades, my date, even my athletic abilities, a swoon would conveniently occur.
“I need my medicine,” she said peremptorily, referring to some stupid vitamin or other that she’d started taking a decade back and was convinced held the cure to every ailment.
“You can’t bring outside medications into a hospital, Mom. If you need medicine, they’ll figure out exactly what and provide it.”
That set her off on a wild rant and all I could do was sink into a chair, lock eyes with a sympathetic nurse, and wait for it to end.