Last night out? And then I remember that it’s August, that she’s a student, that she seems like the kind of woman to take her studies seriously. “Of course. The semester’s starting soon.”
She opens her mouth, as if she’s about to say something, correct me maybe, but then she presses her lips together and nods instead.
I take her hand and raise the back of it to my lips. It wouldn’t be right taking a real kiss before I dash off—something about it feels sleazy, even to me—but this, well, I can’t resist this. The silky brush of her skin against my lips, the smell of something light and floral. Roses, maybe.
Fuck.
Fuck.
It really hits me that this is the last time I might ever see this woman, the one woman I’ve met in years that I desperately want to see more of, and there’s nothing I can do about it. She’s too young and she’s not offering me any way to contact her anyway—and I have to get the fuck out of here and up to the hospital.
I drop her hand with more reluctance than I’ve ever felt over anything in my life, and I take a step back.
“It was nice to meet you, Mary.”
Her expression is conflicted as she says, “It was nice to meet you too, Sean.”
I turn, feeling something yank in my stomach as I do, as if my body is tethered to hers and begging me to turn back, but my mind and my heart are already racing ahead to the hospital. To the emergency room which I know far too well.
“Whatever it is,” Mary calls out from behind me, “I’ll pray for you.”
I look at her over my shoulder, alone on the dance floor, surrounded by city lights, draped in silk, her face that intriguing combination of wise and young, confident and vulnerable. I memorize her, every line and swell of her, and then I say, “Thank you,” and leave her to the glittering lights and relentless cicadas.
I don’t say what I really want to say as I leave, but I’m thinking it all the way to the valet stand, bitterly repeating it in my mind as I roar up the road to the hospital.
Don’t bother with that praying shit, Mary. It doesn’t work anyway.
Chapter 2
I used to believe in God like I believed in cancer. That is, I knew both existed in a kind of distant, academic sense, but they were concepts that applied to other people; they were personally irrelevant to Sean Bell’s life.
Then cancer tore through my family with wind and knives and teeth, thundering and massive, and it ceased to be academic, it stopped being distant. It became real and terrible, more vengeful and omnipresent than any deity, and our lives became reoriented around its rituals, its communion of morphine lollipops and anti-nausea meds, its hymns of vaporizers and daytime television.
We were baptized into the Church of Cancer, and I was as zealous as any new convert, going to every doctor’s appointment, researching every new trial, using every connection I had in this city to make sure my mother got the best of everything.
So yes. I believe in cancer now.
It’s too late for me to believe in God.
I pull into the hospital parking garage, park the Audi, and then jog through the emergency room doors, ignoring the looks I’m getting in my tuxedo. I go right to the triage desk, and just my luck, it’s a nurse I fucked a few weeks back during Mom’s last stint in the hospital. Mackenzie or Makayla or McKenna or something like that. Her mouth twists into a bitter smile when she sees me, and I know I’m in for it.
“Well, if it isn’t Sean Bell,” she says, tilting her head up and narrowing her eyes at me. I’m suddenly grateful for the glass barrier between us, otherwise I think I might be in danger of actual bodily harm. For me, it was a desperate, needy escape stolen during long hours in the waiting room, a momentary distraction with a pretty, available body—but it had been clear after she gave me her number and her schedule that it had been more than just an escape for her.
“Hey, so my mom is here and I need to see her. It’s Carolyn Bell, and I think she got in not too long ago.”
The nurse with the M-name gives me a slow, insolent blink, and then turns even more slowly to her computer screen. Click goes an irritated press of her finger on the mouse. Click. Click.
Goddammit.
Godfuckingdammit. If she moved any slower, she’d be a painting. A statue. Isn’t there some kind of fucking rule about nurses doing their job no matter what former fucks were involved? Surely she’s breaking some kind of nursely oath? There’s a part of me that wants to go full Sean Bell on her, and either charm or threaten my way through this, but both of those things take fucking time, and I don’t have time.
“Look, I’m sorry I didn’t call,” I say.
She doesn’t even look at me. “Sure.”
Oookayyy. My entire body is screaming at me to get to Mom, my chest is still tight with memories of a girl pretending to be named Mary, and now I’ve got this pissy nurse between me and where I need to go—and this is exactly why I’ve steered clear of entanglements my entire fucking life. Feelings and fucking do not mix, and Mackenzie/Makayla/McKenna is living proof of my theory.
Honesty, Mary’s voice echoes in my memories. Try the honest guy thing.
I let out a long, silent sigh, knowing I need to fix this somehow. Mom’s more important than your pride, fucker. Just apologize for real so you can get to her.
“Look,” I say, leaning forward so that I can lower my voice and spare the rest of the waiting room my humiliation. “You’re right. It was shitty of me to take your number when I didn’t plan on calling, and it was shitty of me to fuck you without making it clear that a screw was all I wanted. You deserved better than that, and I’m sorry.”
The nurse doesn’t soften, exactly, but her clicking on the mouse speeds up, and finally she looks up to me. “Room thirteen,” she says, the flat bitterness in her voice slightly blunted now. “Through those doors and to the left.”
“Thank you,” I say.
“And just so you know,” she says, still looking at me, “you treat women like shit. If you’ve got any decency left inside you, you’ll spare the next woman you meet the headache.”
“I’ll take it under consideration,” I lie, and then I’m striding back to Mom’s room, my dress shoes bouncing reflections of cheap hospital lights across the walls as I go.
Two hours later, I’m in a surgical waiting room with my phone pressed to my ear. I’m alone because I sent Dad home to grab some things for Mom, and thank God he listened to me when I asked him to do it.
First lesson in the Church of Cancer catechism? Thou Shalt Give Dad Something to Do. The waiting, the bleary uncertainty, the hours of nothing-time—all of it just amplifies his fear and his agitation, and eventually he becomes a mess and no help to anyone. But as long as he feels useful, well, then, he’s fine. And he’s not stressing Mom and me out.
Second lesson in the catechism—text threads are sacred. After I got Dad sorted, I got the family thread updated, and now I’m in the waiting room talking to my brother Tyler.
“I thought they already fixed the bowel obstruction,” he’s saying in a tired voice. I glance at my watch—almost midnight on the East Coast, and knowing my brother and his wife Poppy, I’m sure they were fucking like bunnies all evening.