Sweet Nothing(73)

And then, they’d slowly crept back to me. Not close enough to tarnish their image, of course. But close enough—just close enough—to make claims like I lived in her building—I always knew there was something off with that family or Those girls had the best of everything; maybe now they’ll understand what it’s like to have nothing. Close enough to give interviews, to be quoted in all the major newspapers. Close enough to have front row seats to the destruction.

“Miss? Here we are,” grunts the driver as he slows at the front entrance to the hospital.

I fish a wad of bills from my purse and slip them through the partition.

“Keep the change.” I stare up at the hospital. On the other side of one of these tiny yellow squares of light is my sister. Clinging to life in a hospital bed. What if she decides to let go? I can’t see her like this. I don’t know how to see her like this. I have the sudden urge to tell the driver to go back to La Guardia. But then what? I can’t return to Miami. There’s nothing more for me there. Not Luke, and once the Allford parents find out about me, not a job. I have nothing. If Aria dies, I belong to no one.

“Miss?” The cab driver prompts me with an irritated glance in his rearview.

“Sorry. I’m—sorry.” I gather my suitcase and purse and stumble onto the curb. The cold air is like shattered glass filling my lungs. I drag my bags through the gaping entrance, weaving past nurses in scrubs and a mother snapping at a crying child.

A bored-looking woman at the information desk directs me to Aria’s floor, and soon I’m standing in a nearly empty waiting room. The overhead lights are sterile; blinding. My head spins with the sounds of doctors being paged and phones ringing and two political pundits screaming at each other on the television in the corner.

I leave my suitcase next to an empty seat, then find my way across the dirty linoleum floor to the woman behind the nurse’s station. It takes too long for her to pull her gaze from the blue light of her computer screen

She blinks. “Can I help you?”

“Yes.” The word leaks out as a whisper, and I clear my throat. It takes everything I have to keep the tears contained inside me. “Um, yes. My sister tried to—Aria Halloran? She’s… here?”

The woman’s kohl-lined eyes spark with recognition, but she’s smart enough to keep her mouth shut. “Visiting hours are over,” she informs me in a clipped, cold tone. “Your mother just left. Why don’t you come back with her tomorrow?”

Anger churns at my core. I want to lunge across the counter and slap her. My sister is dying, you bitch. My fucking sister is dying because I wasn’t there.

“I’ll wait,” I tell her.

She shakes her head. “Visiting hours are over until tomorrow. You’ll have to come back then.”

“She might be dead by then,” I say loudly. The woman’s eyes widen as the others in the waiting room turn to watch. “Is someone going to call my cell and let me know if my sister dies in the middle of the night, or should I just come back tomorrow and check?”

She shrinks away from me. “Miss, I’ll have to ask you to—”

“To what?” I can’t stop the tears any longer. “To calm down? To be rational about the fact that the only person I have left in the universe might not make it through the night? Is that what you fucking want from me?”

“No, I—”

“Let me tell you what I want.” I can’t stop. Desperation and anger and fear pours from within, a tidal wave of emotion that threatens to drown me. “What I want is to see my baby sister and hold her hand. I want to make sure she has a blanket to stay warm, and to brush the hair from her face and to whisper how sorry I am and how much I love her and what I want most of all is to know that if she dies tonight, she won’t die alone.” I grip the edge of the counter to stay upright. “And if you tell me that that’s too much to ask, I will stand here and ask you again and again and again until someone drags me out of this hospital. And after that, I will come back. So fuck you and your fucking rules. I want to see my goddamned sister.”

The waiting room is silent, except for the screaming politicians. I close my eyes to stop the room from spinning. When I open them, the woman’s brow is furrowed, her eyes glassy. She gives me a small nod. “Give me a few minutes. I’ll see what I can do.”

“Thank you.” I press my the heels of my hands into my eyes, trying to stop the tears. It’s amazing that there are any left. I turn and head back to my seat. It’s possible that my mother walked these same steps, just a few minutes before me. I’m relieved that I missed her. And I want her here. I want her to hold me so tight I can’t breathe. Because at the end of the day, she is my mother. When it’s dark out and my sister is dying, she is my mother.