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I give her a sad smile. “I’m going to miss Violet and B like crazy, but they’re only a four-hour drive away. Plus, they’ll have a spare bedroom now so I can stay over sometimes. As for my job—” There’s no way I’m telling her I got fired. She’ll freak out and want me to tell her what happened “—I was thinking about making a change, anyway. My boss was an asshole.”
She lets out a laugh and then wraps her arm around my shoulders, giving me a side hug. “I don’t want you moving here for me, but I won’t lie. I’ve really missed you.”
“I’ve missed you too, Paige.”
Before long, I decide to send her home with my car so that she can get some sleep. Mom hasn’t woken up yet, so there’s no need for both of us to sit here. I glance at my phone and almost subconsciously note that Archer hasn’t tried to get in touch with me. I’m not really surprised but my foolish heart had hoped. It’s nearing the end of the day and I want to see if there’s anyone in the case management office. The sooner I can try to get some information on the rehab programs, the better. Besides, I need to get a payment plan in place.
The case management office is really just a drab windowless room in the basement that houses four desks with one person clacking away at her computer. After the gruff middle-aged woman piles me up with pamphlets on local state run rehab programs, I broach the subject that makes me want to run screaming out of the building and never look back.
“I was wondering if you have some sort of payment plan for my mom’s stay here.” The woman gives me a small sympathetic smile and turns back to her computer screen.
“I’ll need her name, date of birth, and social security number if you have it,” she says while typing furiously on the keyboard in front of her. I rattle the information off to her sans the social—I mean really, who knows someone else’s social security number?—and wait for her to work her computer magic. She stops typing and looks back up at me with wide eyes. “Actually, Miss. Simmons, you have a zero balance. It appears her bill has been taken care of.”
“What?” I must not have heard her right, or maybe she’s looking at the wrong account. Yes, it’s got to be the wrong account. “That’s Simmons with two Ms,” I say, correcting the common mistake.
“I’ve got her information right here and her billing is being handled by a third party.”
I’m stunned for a moment but manage to ask, “Can you tell me who’s taking care of it?”
She’s shaking her head before I even finish the question. “Per HIPAA, since you’re neither the patient nor the person who has paid the bills, I can’t release that information to you.” She rattles that explanation off at me like she gives it several times a day.
I decide to drop it for now. They’ll figure out eventually that we owe them. Who ever heard of a hospital that forgot to get their money? As I’m approaching my mom’s room, I see an orderly has her on a gurney and is pushing her down the hallway towards me. Panic sharpens all my senses. I was only gone for twenty minutes. What happened?
“Excuse me, where are you taking my mother?”
The orderly looks up and gives me a smile. He seems to be about my age and doesn’t appear to be in any kind of hurry, so I relax a bit, figuring that he’s not rushing her into emergency surgery or something, so she must be okay.
“Regina Simmons is your mom?” he asks, waiting for my nod of confirmation before continuing. “I’ve got an order here that she needs to change rooms.”
“Let me grab my purse and I’ll go with you.” People get shuffled around in hospitals all the time, so it doesn’t even occur to me that there’s a problem until we enter her new room three floors up.
This room looks like it belongs in a hotel, not a hospital. The walls are covered with a welcoming geometric wallpaper and there is a sitting area that contains a couch, chairs, and a coffee table. The room is lit by lamps and not harsh fluorescent lights. There’s one hospital bed, and it’s covered with blankets and pillows that look much more comfortable than the ones downstairs.
“I’m sorry, there’s been a mistake,” I tell the orderly as a woman walks in and helps him transfer my mom to the much nicer hospital bed.
He grabs his clipboard from where it’s lying on the edge of the gurney and looks over whatever notes he has. “Nope, says right here, Regina Simmons needs to be moved to room 513.”
“But there’s no way we can afford this,” I try to explain, but this guy doesn’t seem to care.
“You’ll have to take it up with the duty nurse. The orders came from there, sorry.” He shrugs and scurries out of the room with the other orderly while I tentatively take my place in a leather chair next to her bed.
Who the hell can afford a room like this? The amount of money these cost must be obscene. Now that I’m finally sitting in a chair that’s not hard plastic, my lack of sleep catches up with me and it’s not long before my eyes are lured closed and I sink into the darkness.
Twenty-Four
archer
I decide not to call her. What I have to say needs to be said in person. No mere text or phone call can convey to her how much I’ve epically fucked up.
I don’t even realize I’ve neglected to change my clothes until I show up on Hollie’s doorstep thirty minutes later. I don’t see her little Camry parked in the driveway and take that as a bad sign. The car is so old it’s practically a death trap. I make a mental note to call a dealership and get her the safest car on the market. Even if she doesn’t forgive me, at least I’ll know that she’s safe driving around the city.
I call out her name as I pound my fist against the door. I probably should have stopped and gotten her flowers or something, but she’s not the type of person to be swayed by such frivolous things. If I’m wrong and she wants flowers, then I’ll buy them for her every day for the rest of her life. I’ll buy her the whole fucking store if that will make her happy and give me a second chance.
I knock again when nobody comes to the door. Unfortunately, I didn’t account for what I would do if she wasn’t home. I needed to get here and make things right or else I would regret it forever. The longer I left things like this between us, the more likely she was to close off from me permanently and that wasn’t an acceptable outcome.
After waiting five minutes, I reluctantly accept that nobody is home and weigh my options. I could either call her or go home and try again later. I don’t know where else she might be besides the office and I just came from there. Instead, I decide to take a seat on the cold cement of her front porch and lean back against the blue house siding. She has to come home at some point, I can wait her out.
I try to use this time to come up with exactly what I’m going to say to her but everything seems to fall short. It’s going to be a miracle if she gives me another chance. My back is hunched and my eyes are down, contemplating a bleak future without her when my thoughts are interrupted by an angry female voice.
