Chapter 21
Carla
“Cream or sugar?”
I stood at the condiment table while mom sat a few tables away in the empty hospital cafeteria. She looked bad, her hair slept on, no makeup and an inappropriately short sundress on under a dowdy pink sweater. Her socks didn’t match. She looked back at me with a fake expression, and then somehow managed to summon a dry chuckle.
“Has it been that long since you’ve made me coffee?”
I chuckled, reflecting on the six years since I’d left tiny Siesta Key to make a name for myself in South Beach. “I guess it has,” I murmured, wriggling the container of generic powdered creamer for emphasis.
“Cream and sugar,” Mom said, turning back to stare at the silent cell phone in front of her. She’d given her number to every nurse, orderly and janitor who happened to walk by my stepfather Roy’s room six floors above us in the ICU. Now, a mere five minutes since we’d left the Intensive Care Unit, she apparently expected them to text or call with miraculous news.
I finished making our coffee and tried to convince myself that her sudden and shocking appearance had everything to do with her husband’s massive stroke and nothing to do with the fact that I hadn’t seen her in six years—or that those years hadn’t been very good to her. Beyond the frumpy sweater and mismatched socks, Mom looked tired, nervous and flighty. She’d always been a strong woman, but now she looked beaten down in more ways than one.
I returned to the table with our coffees, sliding hers quietly in front of her so as not to jolt her out of her cell phone vigil. She looked up anyway, and offered a week smile. “Thanks honey,” she said, patting my hand absently. “And thanks for getting down here so fast.”
I shrugged, figuring now was not the time to tell her about my failing business, crumbling dreams and murderous thoughts of revenge. “I only wish I’d known sooner, Mom.”
She sighed and picked up her coffee cup, only to put it back down again without tasting it. “Me too, dear. I’ve been bugging Roy to get his annual checkup for years. Apparently his blood pressure has been high for quite some time.”
I shook my head, figuring I could teach my stubborn stepfather a thing or two about blood pressure at the moment. “How did it happen, Mom? The stroke I mean.”
She seemed to shiver at the memory as she began to recount it. “I was in the kitchen, making him eggs over medium, the way he likes them when he sputtered and coughed. I thought maybe his coffee was too hot and had burned his tongue, and was turning around to check on him when his chair hit the ground with a terrible crash. He hit his head on the corner of the table going down and there was blood everywhere. I tried to clean it up as best I could, honey, but there still might be some mess there…”
I chuckled humorlessly. “I think a little blood stain in the breakfast nook is the least of our worries right now, Mom.”
She nodded, taking her eyes away from her precious cell phone to smile at me unconvincingly. “Isn’t that the truth?” she said, taking me right back to my childhood—it was one of her favorite sayings.
I covered her hand with my own, feeling her skin cold and papery beneath my palm. She was only 57, but looked a good ten years older—and that was being generous.
“Are you okay Mom? I don’t just mean about Roy and a stroke, I mean in general?”
She snorted, avoiding my eyes and dragging her hands out from underneath mine to finally take a sip of her coffee. “Is anybody?” she huffed. “Are you?”
I smiled noncommittally, realizing it was a rhetorical question and knowing Mom was too distracted for any type of real conversation at the moment. For now, all I could do was be here if she needed me, handle her affairs as best I could and lend a shoulder to cry on if it came to that.
The nurses hadn’t said much, not with Mom hovering around the entire time, but it was clear that Roy’s situation was grave and that even if he recovered, it would take months, maybe even years, of intensive physical therapy to get him back on his feet.
South Beach seemed a million miles away as I gritted my teeth and settled in for the long haul. “That’s it!” Mom announced, standing up abruptly from the table and snatching her cell phone in her cold little hands. “This feels too far away from Roy to be doing him any good. Do you mind if I go back up to ICU and wait for news, honey?”
I smiled to think she knew me so little as to even ask. “Of course not, Mom. It’s just that they only allow one visitor a time. Maybe… maybe I can swing by the house, get settled and clean it up for when you’re ready to come home? Then come back in the morning when visiting hours start up again?”
She was halfway to the bank of elevators just beyond where we sat in the cafeteria. “That’s a good idea honey,” she said distractedly, making me think she had no idea what I’d just said.
“Will you be okay without me for a few hours?” I asked as she tapped relentlessly on the glowing red elevator button.
“Of course I will dear,” she said with the slightest tone of bitterness. “I’ve been fine these last few years haven’t I?”
Just then, the elevator doors opened and she walked in, tapping the buttons inside as furiously as she had the one on the outside. Our eyes met briefly as the doors began to shut and at last she offered me a reassuring smile just before they slid together.
I sighed and reached for my coffee just as my own cell phone skittered across the table with an incoming call.
“Kellan!” I exclaimed, grateful for his timing. “I’m so glad to hear your voice.”
“Me too babe,” he exclaimed, the vague sound of static and wind in the background. “How you holding up?”
“I’ll be a lot better once you get here,” I confessed.
He had texted me not long after I left him there, lying naked and unaware in my king size bed. After learning of the reason for my late—night escape, he promised to hop in his car and follow me down, if for nothing else than the moral support.
“Yeah, about that…” he murmured. “I’m running a little behind…”
I bit my lip, suppressing my disappointment. “No worries babe,” I said as brightly as possible. “Get here when you can, okay?”
“Sure thing,” he said as brightly as ever, as if we were planning a night out on the town and not my stepfather’s grueling recovery—that is, if he ever recovered at all.
“Shouldn’t be more than a few hours,” he promised unconvincingly. “I just got a late start, that’s all. Where will you be?”
I stood from the cafeteria table, tossing my empty coffee cup and Mom’s full one away before approaching the main lobby doors. “I thought I’d head home to Mom’s and get the lay of the land before heading back here in a few hours. But don’t worry about me. Just drive safely and I’ll see you when I see you, okay?”
“Sure thing,” he chirped, brightening a little. “Hey, look out for the planter!”