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I need to walk and clear my head.
* * *
It’s night. I forgot how late it was when I spoke to the Parkers. Checking the time was the last thing on my mind when I sat them down in my office. Caffeine is the only thing that will keep me going through the rest of my night shift now after that shattering conversation.
I pour myself a cup from the communal staff coffee pot, and I try my best not to immediately spit it out. It’s the one constant in this hospital I can rely on: the absolutely crap coffee.
This stuff will make you sick enough to require your own bed at this hospital.
I take my cup and walk.
The hospital hallways are quiet at nighttime. The bare minimum staff are on, so you might never see another living person at all as you walk down these endless hallways. The flickering fluorescent lighting gives this building its own feeling that is so different from the hustle and bustle of daytime in the city hospital.
I pass by a mirror hanging on the back of a door. I catch my reflection in it, and I pause to inspect closer.
My blue eyes stare back at me.Damn, I look tired. It has been a long day. My parted brown hair is uncharacteristically messy – the result of running my hands through it too many times this evening due to stress. Despite how exhausted and strained I look; I can still see those famous Penmayne traits shining through – those lucky genetics I was born with as the son of a silver fox billionaire media mogul and a supermodel-looking mother. Square, sharp cheekbones. Square jaw. That natural wide physique that has come naturally to all seven of my brothers.
Sometimes I see myself dressed in my medical scrubs and still can’t believe I am actually here, as a doctor in this busy hospital, with many lives in my hands. What was written about in that damn newspaper interview is true - I was accelerated through medical school in my early twenties by my good grades and work ethic. That’s proof enough that this whole thing has come as a natural skill to me. This doctor's life fits me like a well-worn familiar glove, even when everything else in my life is nonexistent. Sure, I have had to study like hell for years and years and years to even get the chance to do this profession, but I can’t deny that it’s been something that I can do well.
The only thing in this vocation that doesn’t come easy is sitting parents down and delivering them the worst news they will ever receive.
I won’t ever forget the look on Nate and Vicky’s faces...
I turn from the mirror and my haggard reflection. I can hear something. There is music playing, I swear.
And it’s coming from within the hospital. Somewhere nearby.
No one plays music at this time of night. Especially not in a place like this.
I recognize the sound. A classical piece. I do not need my private and incredibly expensive Penmayne education in order to detect that it is the main and most famous song from Swan Lake - my mother’s favorite ballet. Tchaikovsky.
The sound of the orchestra playing those notes that echo down the hospital hallways instantly takes me back in time – to a time when I was just a hopeless teenage boy and there was this beautiful daughter of a maid who worked at my family home who also loved Swan Lake…
In the present day, I walk towards the source of the music, damn curious.
Who really would be playing that music? Here?
It’s coming from a dark room. There should be no patients in there, and certainly no music.
I lean my ear against the door. As sure as anything, Swan Lake is coming from within this very room.
What the…
I push open the door.
I see the music playing on a small portable speaker.
And, like it’s ripped straight out of a dream – or a nightmare – I seeher.
I am not imagining this. It’s not a dream.
It really can’t be...
But it really is her.
And she isdancing. Ballet. Swan Lake.
She’s all grown up.
