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“I’m coming. I’ll get there as fast as I can. Do you want to talk while I drive?”
“The nurse just came back in to take vitals. I should go.”
“Okay. I’ll be there soon. I love you.”
“I love you too.”
Those four words fill me with hope, with happiness. I’ve been worried about what’s going on all day, but he said he loves me and needs me. All that other stuff doesn’t matter. When faced with the fact that he’s in the hospital, I know what’s important, and I believe Troy knows it too. We’re gonna be okay. I’ll make damn sure of it.
I drive too fast, break way too many laws following my navigation directions to the hospital. It feels like it takes three hours rather than thirty minutes to get there. My whole body is shaking, heart thudding, lungs almost too tight to breathe. It doesn’t matter that he said he’s okay. What if he’s not? What if something happens to him?
Visions of police officers coming to the door about Mom flash through my head, making a wave of nausea hit me, but I do my best to shove all those thoughts away.
This is different.
Troy will be fine.
My wheels skid when I jerk my car into the hospital lot.
I park, then run toward the building. My breath is coming out too fast, too shallow, as I go through the sliding glass doors. The moment I’m there, it hits me that I don’t know where he is—the ER or a room?
“Atlas! Oh, thank God you’re here!” Ellie says, coming through the doors herself.
“Where is he? I don’t know…” Why can’t I finish a sentence? My eyes are darting around, heart feeling like it’s about to explode.
“Breathe. You’re okay. Just breathe,” she tells me, rubbing my back…the way a mom would.
“I can’t… I don’t know what I would do…” I try to stop the words, but there’s no way I can. They just…fall from my mouth. “I can’t lose him.”
Her brows draw together like she’s surprised at the emotion in my words, and I know I should reel it in, but I don’t know how. Not in this situation.
“He’ll be okay. Let’s go find him, okay?”
I nod, and she leads me to the counter, where a security guard sits. “I’m looking for Troy Locklear.”
“Are you family?”
“Yes, he’s my son, and this is his brother.”
I’m not his brother. I’m…his…and he’s mine.
The man looks it up in the computer, gives us two stickers that sayguestwith Troy’s name on them, and tell us what room to go to.
I try to keep it together as we go to the elevator…as it rises too slowly for comfort. Ellie keeps glancing my direction with a confused look on her face. It’s normal to be concerned about my stepbrother, of course it is, but after our conversation, I’m scared I’m being too obvious. That she can see straight through my fear and knows that Troy is who I told her about earlier.
Finally, the elevator opens, and I practically stumble out of it. We head straight to his room, and I skid to a stop, unable to move, scared to go inside.
Like he can sense me there, Troy’s gaze snaps up, meeting mine. He looks smaller in the hospital bed, though I know that doesn’t make sense.
He frowns. “Atlas?”
Before I can respond, Ellie is going into the room, making me realize I’d left her behind when I got off the elevator. She doesn’t seem to have the same frozen moment as me, going straight to Troy, hugging him, crying and fussing over him.
“What happened?” she manages to get out between tears.
Troy looks at me over her shoulder like he doesn’t want to say, doesn’t know what to do.
“I’m fine, Mom. They only admitted me for observation.”
