“You heard it here, folks.She Blooms at Duskis out now, wherever books are sold. Pour yourself a cup of hot tea, find a blanket, and enjoy.”
And then, just like that, it was over.
“You did great,” Amelia assured him, beaming, after the segment was done. “Very charming. I think you’ll win over Lana’s audience for sure.”
“Yeah?” he said. He felt unsettled. Lana was known for skirting the edges of her guests’ comfort zones, and today she’d done just that. He needed to tell Jo, except she was currently at the benefit having a very critical conversation with Ezra Adelman and he didn’t want to add to her plate. Besides, she would probably be thrilled to be featured on Lana Porter’s show, if only briefly. Likely be delighted that he’d been invited on in the first place. He would never have said yes to something like this before her influence. When Jo wanted something, she seized it, and now he was doing the same. After all, once-in-a-lifetime opportunities were exactly that: they came once.
The burst of productivity Mal fostered after this revelation could’ve been bottled and sold. His empty page became ten filled ones. He worked so diligently and for so long that he forgot to eat dinner, forgot to use the bathroom, forgot to turn on a light after the sun set and shrouded his room in darkness. His few breaks were short—reading a text from Jo (about Ezra, who predictably was not behaving himself), a five-minute call with Kieran and Kelechi debriefing his interview. He would probably have kept working until dawn if Jo hadn’t called.
“Hey,” Mal said, picking up on the first ring. It had felt wrong to text her that he’d just been on theLana Porter Show, but now that he had her on the line, he couldn’t wait to spill the beans. “You headed home?”
“No, actually,” Jo said. Her voice sounded restricted, nasal, like she’d been crying, and Mal’s smile dropped. “Um, I’m headed to the hospital.”
“What?” Mal said, immediately making to stand. “What happened? Are you okay? Which hospital are you headed to—”
“Sorry, sorry, I didn’t think about how that would sound. I’m fine,” Jo said. “Um. It’s my mother. I just found out she’s admitted at Featherstone and... I’m going to see her. Just wanted you to know, in case I’m... a little weird after.”
“Oh,” Mal said, stunned. “Oh shit.”
“Yeah,” Jo said numbly.
“Do you want me to come?” Mal said. He searched for Featherstone on Google Maps. “I can drive over.”
“No,” Jo said. “It’s okay, I—”
A voice interrupted her, familiar, raspy.
“I think that’s the entrance,” Ezra said in the background.
“Okay,” Jo said. Then, to Mal: “I’m fine for tonight. But maybe come see me tomorrow? And bring ice cream? I think I’ll need it.”
“Will do,” Mal said. “Do you want strawberry cheesecake again? Or something new?”
“You remembered,” Jo said, sounding, despite everything, just a bit pleased.
“I try.” There was a heartbeat of silence between them, potent, like they both were deciding what to say next. But what was there to say to this, aside fromSorry I’m not there?
“I have to go,” Jo said, breaking it. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”
When she hung up, Mal slouched in his chair and wondered how it was possible for him to be more relieved that Jo was not alone than he was jealous that he was not the one beside her.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Jo
“You didn’t have to come with me, really,” I told Ezra, when we arrived at the lobby of Featherstone General. I looked out of place enough in my floor-length gown, but with a six-foot-two, TV-handsome Prince Eric look-alike trailing behind me, I had no chance at blending in. When we approached the hospital registration desk, the woman behind it took one look at Ezra and gaped.
“I know this is strange, but has anyone ever told you that you look like an actor?” she asked him as we checked in.
“No,” Ezra said, reaching for a mask from across her desk. When we made it up the elevators to the fourth floor, where my mother was apparently admitted, he looked down at me. “I’m not going anywhere, so stop saying that.”
“Okay,” I said.
I didn’t have the energy nor the desire to fight. In truth, I was glad Ezra was here. His presence made the experience less surreal. With Ezra walking down the long hospital halls by my side, I couldn’t pretend that this was all a dream. My mother really was on this hospital floor, only yards and minutes away. I really was going from an opulent ballroom to her sickbed within an hour. Dr. Hosseini had filled me in on her condition during the drive up to Featherstone, and I’d found myself slipping back into the skin that I’d worn as a resident, the one that allowed me to take a step back and see my patients as cases and not people. When Dr. Hosseini told me that my mother had initially come in with a “myocardial infarction” and was “in cardiogenic shock,” I’d questioned her like she was my intern, asking her things like whether she’d required mechanical support and what inotropes they’d put her on. When she told me about the blood clot that had formed in her heart and shot into her brain, about the neurology procedure to extract it that had not succeeded in bringing back her voice, I asked questions about whether they could safely start blood thinners.
“I know this must be hard for you,” Dr.Hosseini had said, attempting to interject some humanity into my interrogation. I could hear the pity in her voice, and, even knowing it was appropriate, I resented it.Don’t try to guess what I’m feeling, I wanted to snap, but instead I apologized for my truancy and told her that I would see her soon.
It had been five years since I’d last come to Featherstone, but muscle memory guided me to the locked double doors of the cardiac intensive care unit. I hit the intercom, gave my name, then stepped back as the doors opened for us. It being after midnight, the hospital lights were dimmed. The memories of my old ICU night shifts hit me like a wave: the churning in my stomach as I awaited pages, the way my ears were attuned to the cranks and beeps and honks of the various ventilators and dialysis machines and BiPAP units distributed throughout the floor. A nurse shivered at her station, wrapped in a blanket I imagined she snuck from the warmer, while another carted an armful of supplies into a patient’s room. She gave Ezra and me a curious look.
