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Lo turns to me. “Take a good look, Paul. Maybe you’ll understand what it means to wait.”
Oof, right to the nuts. Not exactly the jugular, but it definitely hurt something.
Thought I earned a Donnelly and not a Paul from Xander’s dad, but I fucked that up in less than a half-hour. “I’m looking,” I say seriously, but he still seems peeved.
Even on my way to the ICU with Farrow, the heat of Lo’s scolding still stings. I dig in my pocket for cigarettes that aren’t there. “I probably deserved that.”
“You had sex. No one knew about that until now, and the threat of your family was the whole point of waiting. Most of your family is already in jail.” He swipes his medical ID at the glass ICU entrance. “He’s only upset about you lying to him.”
The doors slide open. “Feels like I keep putting myself in positions where I have to.”
“Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” Farrow says like it’s so easy.
“You read that life lesson over a toilet?” I quip. “Was it framed or what?” It’s my first joke in a while. I’m happy she’s awake, but the tensed side-eye from Farrow starts to strain my muscles and puncture the humor.
“This way.” He leads me through the ICU. Most doors are shut, curtains drawn over glass walls, but his head careens to a door labeled B2.
“Is that Luna’s room?”
Farrow slips me a warning glance. “Don’t think about it.”
I am thinking about visiting Luna and not during visiting hours. I’ve breached the locked ICU doors where only medical personnel have ventured through in a long while. Her room is in sight. She’s awake.
She’s right there.
Once he flags down a nurse, I’m seated in a desk-chair in the ICU’s hall, and she’s tapping at the veins on my forearm.
“Donnelly.” Farrow catches me eyeing Luna’s room again.
I frown. “You don’t think she’d want to see me?”
“Man, it’s not that—”
“Dr. Hale!” a white coat calls from down the hall. I also spot Dr. Keene, Farrow’s dad, peeking out of the same room, waving his son over to them. Must be where Lily is.
Farrow is quick to leave and disappear into Lily’s room.
Patience maybe isn’t my strong suit anymore. Waiting might just eat away at my heart. Now with Farrow gone, the young brunette nurse scrutinizes me with apparent disdain.
I stiffen. “Something wrong?”
She flicks my vein. “No. You should be used to this.”
I know what she’s insinuating. Needles. Syringes. Shooting up. “I don’t get my blood drawn on the regular,” I say lightly, eyeing the B2 door. Luna. Racing after her is the only thing that makes sense to me.
“I meant the needle,” she states, wielding a needle.
I’m taken aback by how forward she is. “Not used to those either, Nurse Becky—fuck,” I curse as she stabs me outside the vein.
“Sorry, and it’s Macy.” Apologies aren’t on her face.
“You sure it’s not Ratched?” Bad joke, considering she’s the one poking at my vein. I grit through another missed attempt to draw blood.
“Oops,” she states. “You have really small veins. Sorry. That might bruise tomorrow.” She thinks I’m evil, but maybe she should look in the mirror.
“You want a go at the other arm too?” I ask. “I have plenty more veins for you to stab.”
She bristles. “Maybe you should see Lily Calloway later. See what you’ve done—”
“That wasn’t me.” Whatever you read in the news, it’s not true. I have no phone. Can’t even check the internet to see what’s been posted.
Macy humphs, skeptical, and after finally drawing a test tube of blood, she smacks a bandage aggressively on my forearm.
“I got it.” I stand up, ripping out of her hold.
“Take care.” Her words are brittle. I watch her vanish behind the nurses’ station, and with a quick sweep up and down the ICU hall, I realize no one is in the vicinity. Coast is clear, and in four steps, I reach the door labeled B2.
I knock first, then hear, “Come in.”
Her soft voice almost sends me straight to the moon.
It does send me right to her.
27
LUNA HALE
I’ve opened a large plastic baggie with my belongings—what I guess I carried or wore tonight. Farrow attached a sticky note on my phone.
Don’t look at the internet.
(You said you wouldn’t.)
x Farrow
I trust that Farrow is telling the truth, and I do remember fragments of our conversation. Him advising me not to check the internet. Me saying…yeah? Or maybe I said, I won’t.
It’s a little hazy, but I set my phone on the hospital bed and sift through clothes: jean shorts, sneakers, fishnets. It all seems familiar, except for a plain black watch.
A knock raps the door.
“Come in,” I call out and pull the watch from the baggie. Does it even work? I tap the watch-face, the hands stuck on three a.m. Why would I wear an old broken watch? Maybe I bought it with Tom and Eliot at a thrift store.
