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“Sorry about that,” I apologize sweetly. “I didn’t want to miss it.”
He laughs. “I could tell.”
“I’m going to see my mom,” I say, making small talk. “Minor injury, though, so no worries. What are you in for?”
His smile deepens. “A baby.” He laughs and shakes his head. “My wife is having a baby.”
Wah, wah, wah. I force a smile to my face as my stranger in an elevator fantasy bites the dust in spectacular fashion.
“Congratulations!” For the first time since I noticed how hot he was, I realize that he’s holding a very large stuffed animal. “The life-size stuffed elephant is suddenly making more sense.”
His smile deepens. “Thanks. It’s our first. Do you have kids?” I wince before I can stop myself, and he laughs. “Not a kid person?”
I shrug. “Not a responsibility person.”
He nods just at the elevator dings for my floor, and I turn to face the front as the door opens.
“Nice to meet you,” he finishes politely, so I glance over my shoulder to do the same.
His jawline flexes, and my sweet little vagina thumps her foot in protest. What a pity.
“Yeah, you too. Congrats again.”
The double doors the security guard spoke of are already open as someone else leaves, so I scoot right in and head for my mom’s room. The nurse in charge at the desk calls out to me, though, foiling my journey before it even gets started. I turn around and smile. “Oh, hey. Just heading to see my mom. She’s in 312.”
“You have to check in,” she states authoritatively, and I have to work not to roll my eyes.
“Right,” I agree. “I forgot that’s what Lurch said.”
“Lurch?”
“The gatekeeper downstairs. He’s bald. Grumpy. Name tag said Bill.”
Against all the odds, Nurse Ratched actually cracks a smile. “I just need you to put your name and arrival time. When you leave, stop back by to write your time out.”
“Okay.” I oblige, stepping up to the counter and scribbling on her “important” paper.
She takes the clipboard back behind the counter and points to my left. “Room 312 is around the corner and on the left-hand side.”
“Thanks.”
I hike my bags higher on my shoulders once again and follow the line on the tile floor around the corner and down the hall, looking at the number plaques on the side of each room as I go.
My mom’s is about halfway down, and the door is wide open. I step inside slowly, first finding an old woman with fluffy white hair sleeping so deeply that her snore sounds like a 747 engine.
“Mom?” I call out in a whisper-yell.
“Carly!” my mom answers from the other side of the mid-room curtain, not bothering to quiet her voice at all. “Yay! You’re here!”
I scoot past the sleeper and around the curtain with three jog steps and smile when I find my mom sitting up in bed and swiping makeup across her eyelid.
“Carly!” she yells again, dropping the eye shadow and brush in the bag in her lap and waving me over enthusiastically. “Get over here and give your momma a hug,” she instructs.
I do as she asks, dropping my bags unceremoniously on the ground and driving myself into her chest so she can wrap me in her arms. She smells pointedly like Elizabeth Taylor White Diamonds perfume, just like she always has, and despite the inconvenience of having to come take care of her while she heals, it feels so, so good to be home.
“I’m surprised you’re sitting upright,” I say from my position smushed against her chest. It muffles my words, but she obviously understands me as she sets me back at arm’s length and smiles.
“They’ve got me on one of those donut things that keeps your tailbone from touching the surface. Feels a little like I’m sitting on a cloud.”
I laugh. “Well, that’s pretty cool.”
She nods. “It’s no big deal, really. Like I told you on the phone, you didn’t need to come down here.”
“Mom, come on. You’re going to need help doing some stuff while you’re healing.”
She huffs, and I laugh. I can’t blame her. I don’t like having someone all in my business, telling me what to do either.
“What happened anyway?” I ask, rounding the bed to sit in the chair at its side. She picks up her eye shadow brush again and gets back to work, fluffing her shoulder-length golden-blond hair—which I know she keeps colored to avoid the whites and grays—in the compact’s mirror between strokes.
“My neighbor was just helping me…take some decorations down. And we fell.”
I shrug. It’s weird, but so is my mom. Hell, so am I. If there was a ladder involved, we should probably just be glad she didn’t hurt herself more than she did.
“Did your neighbor hurt herself, too?”
She looks at me out of the side of her eye, purses her lips, and then snaps the compact closed, once again dropping the stuff in her bag.
