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On Wednesday November 1st, Barbara Ann Copeland, my grandmother, was admitted to Gulf Memorial hospital after exhibiting signs of a stroke.
The 9-1-1 call was placed by Mr. Frank Desmond, the Fortuna Casino & Resort employee who hurried down to the lobby after he spotted her via security feed as she re-entered the resort through automatic doors of the front lobby. It was immediately apparent that something was wrong—her speech slurred, her manner agitated, and her balance uneven.
That was a summary of the report from emergency services that I’d received a couple hours after Vinh came into my hospital room.
Forty-eight hours post-accident, I was already feeling much better. There was still enough pain from the few patches of second-degree burns down my back and legs that the tiny punctures and cuts from the glass barely registered in comparison.
I was hoping to be discharged today, and the only thing I wanted more than to hole up in the cottage with Vinh and Liem—and eventually Cody—was answers.
Answers that I would probably never get.
I was able to get into a wheelchair with Vinh’s help, though I was self-conscious about the hospital gown the entire time. Luckily, Liem had dropped me off some underwear and other essentials before taking Cody’s truck to pick up its owner in Mobile, so at least I had some coverage. Vinh wheeled me down the hallway alongside Monny, whose mischievous smile warmed my heart as he asked, “Wanna race, girlfriend?”
Mrs. Lott smacked the smile right off him before I could answer.
The mood turned serious again when we reached Grandmother’s room. Vinh’s parents waited outside the door for us as we entered.
The nurse was the only other person in the room and was standing at Grandmother’s bedside, adjusting some of her IVs. “She’s sleeping soundly,” he assured, finishing up his task. “I have her belongings in a bag here if you’d like to take them with you for safekeeping. It’s all the things Ms. Copeland was brought in with.”
He walked over to the small closet in the corner, pulled out a bag, and handed it to me. It was heavier than I expected, and Vinh reached down and took it from me quickly.
“Sorry, I should have warned you,” the nurse said, averting his gaze from Vinh’s unimpressed stare. “I’ll give you both some privacy.”
Vinh pushed me a bit further into the room, and I stared at the person lying in the bed. The one who looked nothing like my grandmother.
Her eyes were closed, her hair a mess, and one side of her face noticeably slacker then the other. A chill ran up my spine, at complete odds with the healing burns. Vinh grasped my shoulder lightly, easily avoiding any of my injuries that he probably knew better than I did.
He bent down and kissed me on the cheek before pulling up a chair beside me. There were deep purple smudges under his eyes, and his hair had never been messier.
He was still the most beautiful man I’d ever seen.
We held each other's gazes as he grabbed my hand and kissed my knuckles, softly repeating the best words ever spoken. “I love you.”
“I love you,” I said with equal softness, turning his hand to kiss his knuckles in turn before resting our joined hands in my lap and turning my attention to Grandmother. “Can I see the bag?”
He nodded, picking it up from the floor and placing it gingerly in my lap.
“She’s living her worst nightmare right now and doesn’t even know it. Laid out in a hospital bed, her things passed around without her consent.” I sighed, gripping the handles of the plastic bag. “I don’t think I can look through her things. It feels like a violation, and they probably already looked through here to get her ID when she was brought in.”
Vinh nodded. “Probably. Do whatever you think is right.”
“I’d like to tell her goodbye. I’ll call in to get updates, but I think… I think I need some distance from this. And time.”
“I think that’s a good call.”
I put the bag beside myself on the wheelchair seat. “Help me up?”
Vinh was there in an instant, his hands placed precisely to help me out of the chair with minimal pain. I blew out a breath as I rose, willing the pain to fade. I took a step forward too quickly and hit the footrest, cursing viciously as the movement sent Grandmother’s bag of belongings to the floor. Vinh quickly settled me back into the chair and moved around the room, grabbing Grandmother’s things. He looked so frantic that I covered my eyes with my uninjured hand and started to laugh, quietly at first, but when I peeked through my hand to see Vinh halfway under Grandmother’s hospital bed I lost it.
So much for being respectful of her things.
The clatter of Vinh gathering things up stopped, and I lowered my hand to find him standing in front of me, a hesitant smile on his face as he watched me. “What?” I said defensively. “I’m having a moment.”
Vinh held up a panty-hose canister. “Why does your grandmother have so many balls in her purse?”
I snorted. “That’s an age-old question.”
He looked around the room for anything he might’ve missed, and something shiny by the closet caught my eye. I pointed at it. “Could you grab that?”
