“Oh, well, you’re still the best. If there were like nine, you’d be the best one.”
“Nice save. You should go work in hostage negotiation,” Britt joked. “Hey, let me know if you hear anything about Fitzsimmons, okay?”
“Sure thing, babe. Lunch?”
“Yeah, sure.”
Britt was busily working on her spreadsheet for the insurance submission when her phone lit up. Thank goodness. She had been waiting for that call all morning.
“Dad out of surg. Went well,” Jack messaged her.
Breathing a sigh of relief, Britt replied.
“So glad. How ru holding up?”
“Rough but relieved.”
“Miss u.”
“Me 2.”
“I love u, she texted, holding her breath for a reply. They’d only just said that for the first time on the previous night, so it felt new, fragile even. She hoped he could feel that in her message, the power and intensity behind her text.
Britt waited a while but heard no answer from him. She reasoned that he might have been admitted to recovery to visit his dad in post-op. Or his father might be on some sophisticated life support machine that required all cell phones to be shut off so their frequency didn’t interfere with essential functions. Or perhaps he was too wrapped up in his family tragedy to worry about reassuring his girlfriend; and that was completely understandable. No matter which it was, she was aching to go to him, to hold his hand and not have to wonder what was going on or exactly what he meant by ‘rough’ when she’d asked how he was holding up.
It was hard to concentrate and work when she was so worried for Jack’s dad, her boss. She was also concerned about Jack and how he was holding up. She wished he would call and give her an update. Britt went home after work and read a book.
“Starving,” Jack finally texted.
“Go get something to eat,” she texted back.
“Hate the hospital food here.”
She ventured that he probably hadn’t eaten much. She decided further that she was the one to rectify that. Not that she had an herb garden on a roof just yet—or any cooking skills—but she had the will to do something nice to try and make things just a tiny bit better. Thinking back to the twice they’d eaten out together, she settled on a steak sandwich for each of them and called in a takeout order from Tamarind, the restaurant where they’d first met. She changed to a sundress and picked up the order, which awaited her in one black shopping bag. She staked out a table in the hospital cafeteria, and then called Jack.
“Hey, secret lover, meet me in the cafeteria. I brought you dinner,” she said.
“It’s so good to hear your voice. And thank you. I’ll be right down.”
She fussed with the arrangements of things, opening the plastic containers of salad, bread, the steak sandwiches and fries, trying to make the table look as presentable as possible. A smiling cafeteria worker came over and handed her a plastic vase of equally plastic purple carnations from the information table outside the cafeteria. Britt thanked her and used it as a make shift centerpiece. She was smiling at her handiwork as he came in the cafeteria.
“This looks wonderful,” Jack said.
Jack looked rougher than the last time she’d seen him only hours before. While she had been at work typing away beneath fluorescent lights, he looked to have been struggling through a blizzard under the most demoralizing conditions. Haggard and pale, he slumped a bit in his jeans and t-shirt, hands stuffed in his pockets. Seeing him made her eyes well up with tears. She could feel how afraid, how frustrated he was by the situation, by having to face his dad being in the hospital again, having more surgery when less than a year before he’d been in the same circumstance. The difference, she meant to show him, was that now she was there to support him.
Chapter 2
Without a moment’s hesitation, Britt ran to him, throwing her arms around his neck. His arms closed around her possessively and he dropped his head onto her shoulder. Britt stroked his dark hair and whispered words of love to him.
“I’ve missed you,” he managed, his voice thick with emotion.
“I missed you, too. I stayed away because I didn’t want to intrude. Has your brother come?”
“No. He isn’t likely to do so, either. It’s not dire, thank God, but it isn’t as though he were going to hurry back from Australia to sit in the hospital waiting room,” Jack mused sourly.
“You’re so the good son,” Britt teased.
“Yes, I am, despite the fact I’m the front man for a rock group, I’m not the bad boy I pretend to be, Britt. I’m a saint.”