It was nearing dinner time when the door of the room opened again. Ethan glanced up, anticipating a candy-striper with the meal menu, and nearly dropped his phone in shock.
“Mr. Poole!” He jumped to his feet. “Mrs. Poole!”
“Have you forgotten that you agreed to call me Dad?” Philip drawled, sounding so much like Max that Ethan questioned reality.
“No! I mean, yes! Er, Dad. What are you doing here?” he asked, pained at how stupid he must sound.
“Your mother called us,” Marcela said with a tight smile. She was dressed in a flowery silk dress that had come straight from the Med. It was incongruously bright and festive in the stark white of the hospital room. “The flight was fourteen hours. Nearly intolerable, but it could have been worse. We could have flown commercial.”
“Fourteen...” Ethan had trouble understanding what was happening. He looked helplessly to Max, who was doing a better job of hiding his shock, but only barely.
“Father,” he said after clearing his throat. “Mother. This is unexpected.”
“We were informed that our son was injured,” Philip said with a small uptick of his chin. “What parent wouldn’t be concerned?”
But you flew fourteen hours from Barcelona by private jet, Ethan thought at him, incredulous. He didn’t know if the Pooles owned their own jet or if they’d rented one. Out of curiosity and just for fun, he’d looked up prices for booking a jet when he and Max were researching the trip to Greece. He’d nearly had a heart attack when he’d learned that a seat typically cost around fifteen thousand dollars an hour. And the Pooles had just flown for fourteen...
Ethan was stunned for all the right reasons. He stood. “I’ll just—uh, I’ll go visit the nurses’ station, see what flavor of Jell-O is on tonight’s menu.”
Exchanging a quick, bemused look with Max, Ethan began to leave.
Philip Poole stepped in front of him.
“Ethan,” he murmured. After an awkward pause, he held out his arms.
Ethan could only stare. Was he reading this right? A glance at Max showed that Max had lost the battle with his expression. He looked like he’d been sucker punched.
When Philip Poole began to look pained, Ethan gambled on being wrong and stepped up and embraced him. The older man was stiff just as he had been in Barcelona. It was like hugging a scarecrow in an expensive suit, but it was a hug. A real, unprompted hug from Philip Poole. Ethan yearned to relax into it, but he was just too confused.
After a tense two seconds, Philip stepped back and Ethan quickly mirrored him. He looked to Marcela, whose smile was wan but determined. Ethan dared to hug her, too, and miraculously, she didn’t shove him away. In fact, her arms tightened around him alarmingly before she quickly released him and moved away, avoiding his gaze.
Two terrible hugs, but Ethan was heartened by them. His step was light as he went in search of the nurses.
~~~~~
Maxmillian didn’t believe himself the type to be swayed by public displays of affection, but witnessing his parents hugging Ethan of their own volition moved something inside him. When he spoke, his voice came out hoarsely.
“Why are you here?”
There were kinder, more welcoming words he could have uttered, but he was reminded of the expensive coats his father had sent and of his mother’s pressure to move the wedding to Europe against the needs of Ethan’s parents. He couldn’t completely overcome the suspicion which had lived behind his breastbone since he was a child. Every act his parents committed ultimately served their own desires.
“Why do you think we’re here?” Philip Poole countered, his tone painfully neutral, as though he feared his embrace of Ethan had revealed an inner weakness. He was dressed casually in linen trousers and a blue, seersucker shirt. He and Max’s mother looked as though they’d been plucked from the middle of a vacation. But his bearing was stiff as he led Marcela to Max’s bedside. “We were concerned. We hadn’t been informed of your condition directly.”
Max let the mild censure flow down his back. “If I had felt you needed to be notified, I would have. But my injury isn’t a cause for your concern. Certainly not for the steps you have taken to get here.”
His father shrugged. “It didn’t require much effort.”
Max nearly choked on the understatement. “Ignoring the expense of the flight, you obtained ESTAs for you and Mother in less than twenty-four hours. How was that possible?”
“What is the point of accumulating wealth and connections if not to use them in an emergency?” Philip retorted.
“The US visa waiver program isn’t a suggestion that can be ignored because it’s inconvenient.”
“Do you truly require the details or will it suffice that your mother and I are here?” his father snapped.
Max subsided. Why were they fighting? He didn’t know what had gotten into him. “You’re right. You’re here. However, I can’t pretend I’m not astonished that you are.”
“How rude, Maxmillian,” Marcela said with a wave of her hand. Despite the dismissive action, every inch of her strained with tension as though a taut spring in her spine stretched back to Barcelona. “Parents are supposed to be concerned when their only child is grievously injured.”
“I wasn’t grievously injured.”
But something bright and manic flared in her eyes and suddenly, he understood. He wished at once that his initial reflex hadn’t been to question their presence here.
“I’m sorry to worry you,” he said with more care. “My injuries sounded worse than they are. A few sutures only. I’ll be discharged shortly without lingering issues.”
“You could have died,” his mother said in a weirdly monotone voice while her eyes continued to burn.
“No, Mother,” he said quietly. “I was never in that danger. Ethan acted quickly and ensured I received immediate medical attention.”
“You could have died,” she repeated before she collapsed upon his chest. Her shoulders shook with sobs that rang out loudly and raggedly in the small room. “Don’t die, Maxmillian. You can’t die!”
God, Max thought. Horrified, he raised his eyes above his mother’s head as Philip drew nearer. The older man rested a hand on Marcela’s shoulder.
“She wouldn’t relent,” he told Max with the remnants of old grief darkening his eyes. “Once she learned that you’d been hurt—she would have stolen and piloted a jet by herself if that had been required of her.”
Max hesitantly closed his arms around his mother’s shaking form. He couldn’t remember a time in his life when either of them offered each other physical comfort. A part of him expected her to fling him off.
“Someone stabbed my son,” she sobbed against his chest. “He stabbed my only child. My only child!”
Her reaction was so intense that for an awful second Max doubted that it was genuine. But he quickly banished his cynicism. His mother was good at hiding her feelings, not projecting them. Her behavior now was too raw and visceral to be faked.
And it shocked him. It was one thing to learn in Barcelona how traumatized she’d been by his childhood mishap on the train tracks. To actually experience the depths of her feelings was something else. A great sadness welled in him. What a terrible waste all these years have been, Mother. You’ve denied us this for too long.