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“A likely hypertensive episode,” she said, as if that word bolstered her argument instead of mine. “You heard the EMT people.”
“That means you’re not fine! You could have had a stroke!”
“Keep your voice down.” She looked around at the other patients apologetically.
I hated that so much. The little gestures of hers that showed how warped her priorities were. How low her own well-bein
g fell on that list. I was so pissed off at her. I couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a checkup.
Whenever I’d pestered her about her health, the answer was always the same. I can’t afford to see a doctor. She’d let years of aches and pains build up in her body, untreated, and now an actual life-threatening issue had settled in there, claiming squatters’ rights.
Like we can afford THIS! I wanted to shout at her. She was so worried about money? How much did she think it cost to ride an ambulance to the hospital at night for an emergency? Like any amount of nickel and diming would make up for the incoming bill. My mother might have been willing to gamble with her health, but she didn’t understand the basic rules of the game.
“See?” she said, holding up her arm and flexing it. “I thought I hurt my wrist, but it’s completely fine now. And they wouldn’t put me in my own room because I had no bad signs once we arrived. This is a big fuss over nothing.”
Before I could launch into a fresh tirade, Quentin burst in through the doors, clearing a path for my father behind him. Dad was breathing heavily, and I had a brief panic that I would see both of my parents collapse this day. But he was a normal color and his posture was as upright as any of the models on the outdoor magazines laid out on the table. I reminded myself that he worked at a gym, and if anything was now fitter than most people his age.
“What happened?” he said. “Somebody tell me what happened.”
Before Quentin or I could respond, my mother cut us off. “Could you give me a moment alone with him?” she said to us.
Him. There was no emphasis on the word, and no insult behind it. My mother had the habit of continuing conversations with my father as if zero time had passed since they last spoke, whether it was hours or months. For an outsider, it would have been impossible to tell that anything had transpired between them. Which was probably the way they liked it.
“You’d better let us catch up,” Dad said.
It was good that he was here to sub in for me. A few more minutes and I would have blown up at her and caused the scene she was so afraid of. But I let Quentin pull me away by the elbow so that Mom could see that it was taking their combined efforts to keep me from arguing with her.
Quentin and I went into the hallway. It needed maintenance. The glow of a Coke machine provided the majority of the light, and the water fountain push bar was pushed in and stuck, causing a wasteful, continuous drip. I had the feeling if I walked down the hall, the surroundings would scroll by me infinitely like an old cartoon with no budget.
“Your dad’s going to think I’m bad luck,” Quentin muttered, semi-seriously. “I don’t see him that much, and then all of a sudden I’m telling him your mom’s in the hospital.”
Unlikely. On the day I introduced them, at a nice cafe in the city, Quentin had charmed my dad as much as he had my mom. Over shots of espresso and six-dollar slices of hazelnut toast, the two had a raucous conversation in Chinese that was so loud you would have thought they were old army comrades. I had to remind them repeatedly to keep it down, and by the end of the afternoon, Dad was already dreaming about playing catch with his grandkids.
“You did fine,” I said. “You passed.”
Quentin blinked. “Passed what?”
The Test. Being There. Seeing the worst, weakest part of me and not flinching. Wasn’t that supposed to be the ultimate boyfriend move? Being a rock-solid presence in an emergency? I didn’t know, really. I had very little to go on.
His puzzled face was as cute as a dog tilting its head. Despite how inappropriate the timing was, or maybe because of it, I wanted nothing more than to shove him into the dusty recess next to the hand sanitizer dispenser and finish what we started in my room before Yunie caught us. If there wasn’t enough space, maybe we could shrink, him and me together again. I wouldn’t have to think about the bigger world.
Luckily for my dignity, we were interrupted by another presence, warm and comforting, that pushed away the medicinal sterility of the hospital.
Guanyin was here. All would be well.
The washed-out lighting only made her look more angelic. She reached out and put her hand on my shoulder.
“You acted pretty quick,” I said, smiling.
“I keep an extra eye out for the people close to you,” the goddess said. “I know your priorities.”
“So she’s going to be okay.” I slumped against the wall in relief. “Thank you for fixing her.”
The silence that came from Guanyin didn’t feel like an acknowledgment. It wasn’t a good enough silence. I straightened back up.
“You didn’t fix her?” I said. “You didn’t make her okay?”
“Genie . . .” Guanyin searched for the right way to put something that would never be right by me. “I can’t make her okay. Sure, I healed her wrist on the way over. And I stabilized her heart. This time. But if you’re asking me to make sure this kind of incident never happens again, I can’t do that.”
