I laugh. Kiara looks triumphant, like she knows exactly how much I need to laugh. For a brief flutter of a second, I want to tell her everything, pull her past all my walls and hold on to her friendship for life. But the thought is immediately followed by remembrances of being teased in high school. Friendships that couldn’t be maintained over distances after college graduation. Jeremy calling me Nutter and saying he doesn’t know how anyone puts up with me.
“So, how’s your murder mystery coming along?” I ask.
Kiara launches into telling me all about the latest developments in her book. The new character she wasn’t expecting. The idea she had for a plot twist at the midpoint. The quirk she gave her protagonist that’s going to drive her right into the arms of the love interest. Her eyes light up as she talks about it, and she’s practically buzzing with energy. Her fingers twitch at her side, like phantom attempts at typing across her thigh. It’s clear she loves this story.
I wish I felt the same about mine. One month. Somehow I have to find enough motivation to finish in one month. While Mom’s in the hospital.
Dread settles in my stomach, and I squeeze the handle of my bag, letting the rough fabric scratch my palm. Kiara heads off to her internship, and I get back in my car to return to the hospital. But I don’t leave. I sit there.
Sunshine pours through the windshield, warmingmy face. I’ve always loved spring in the Pacific Northwest. It’s so different from springtime in Florida, where I grew up. A pink dogwood is blooming in front of my parking spot, resplendent with new life. Another kind of hopeful invitation.
Over the last week, while Mom’s been in the hospital, spring slipped through the backdoor like a thief. The world moved steadily onward while we were trapped in that room. From inside the hospital, I couldn’t hear the birds chirping as they built their nests. I couldn’t feel the temperature warming. Flowers pushed past the winter’s chill without me noticing while I was stuck in a barren land of tile floors and fluorescent lights.
I want to be outside, to throw my arms around springtime, welcome her like a lover, and catch up to the forward ticking of the clock. I want to feel the season change, rather than the cold, dry hospital air conditioning on my face. I want to pretend that none of this is happening.
Even though it’s still a little too cold for it, I roll all the windows down as I drive back to the hospital and turn the music up enough to drown out my urge to run away.
Chapter Ten
The hospital garden barely qualifies as a garden. It’s really a courtyard with a few benches and a fountain in the middle. The best thing about it is the jasmine bushes. They’re scattered around the area, dotted with white flowers that smell like heaven.
I’ve always been sensitive to smells, and floral scents are my least favorite. But the smell of jasmine instantly relaxes me. Maybe it’s because there was a jasmine bush near my bedroom window growing up, or maybe it’s just a smell my body likes, I don’t know, but as soon as I step into the garden my shoulder’s release and I let out a sigh.
Then my phone buzzes, ruining it.
Ex-dad:
Why aren’t you answering your phone? Did you forget your charger again? I can have a new one sent to the hospital.
Call me, Nutter.
I wish he’d stop calling me that. He says it’s just a play on Mom’s Hazelnut nickname for me, but I remember the first time he used it. It’s one of my earliest memories.
I was maybe three or four, and I was afraid of the color green. I know it’s ridiculous, but I’d accidentally seen a zombie movie when my parents weren’t paying attention, and after that, the color green meant zombies. It also meant broccoli and puke and poison ivy. I didn’t just dislike green. I was terrified of it.
One day my dad took me to the mall, probably to give my mom a break, and he found this green sweatshirt that he thought would look adorable on me. Before I realized what was happening, he held it up to my chest, and I freaked out and ran away. He chased me, telling me I was being ridiculous.
I eventually crawled under a rack of clothing where he couldn’t reach me. He put the sweater back and tried to draw me out with promises of ice cream.
When I finally crawled from my hiding place, he said,‘You’re such a Nutter, you know that?’He claims he meant it in jest, but he was angry that day, and it stung. After that, he called me Nutter whenever he didn’t understand my actions or thought I was beingridiculous. For years he gave me one green item of clothing every birthday, as‘our little joke.’
I don’t run away screaming when something green touches me anymore, but I still don’t have a single item of green clothing in my wardrobe. And Jeremy still makes fun of me for it.
I ignore Jeremy and open my text chain with Aunt Joan. I send her a quick message, letting her know I’m going to get some writing done downstairs while she’s here, and asking her to text me if Mom needs anything. Then I find a spot on a bench, pull out my computer, and open the dreaded thesis file.
If there’s any hope of having it ready in time to be reviewed by a panel of my professors, most of whom are published authors, I need to work on it more than I have been. It doesn’t have to be perfect, just better than it is right now. I repeat this over and over to myself, but the blinking cursor doesn’t move. I don’t know where to start, how to make it better. Injecting it with heart, like my classmates recommended, seems impossible when my heart is constantly pulled to Mom’s bedside.
The novel is about a woman whose husband commits her to an asylum in the early 1920s after she finds out he’s cheating. It somehow feels too far away from my experience, while also being too close to it. I’m not sure how both can be true, but they are.
“You look like you’re waiting for your computer to bite you.” The deep voice draws me instantly. Cosmos stands a few feet away, wearing that annoyingly alluring grin.
My chest is a hornet’s nest of emotions. Anxious that I’ll fail out of my master’s program. Startled that I’m not alone. Terrified Cosmos will see the real me and run, but thrilled that he found me, that he’s here. Was he looking for me, or is this an accident?
I avoid making eye contact and look back at my computer. “More like hoping it’ll magically finish my novel for me.”
“Novel? You’re a writer?” He steps closer.
“Yes. No. Um… I’m trying.”
