Home Again

Lina felt a rush of pure, blinding anger. How dare her mother be so calm and matter-of-fact and … and motherly? It made Lina feel off balance, confused. It wasn’t supposed to be this way; she was supposed to get what she wanted by using the old tricks.

She yanked up her backpack and wrenched open the door. She lurched out of the car and spun around to stare at her mother. “I’ll be home when I feel like it.”

Madelaine stared at her, so cool and calm that Lina wanted to smack her perfect face. “Then give my regards to Mr. Spencer.”

“I hate you,” Lina hissed.

“That’s too bad,” her mother said quietly. “Because I love you.” Then she leaned over and shut the door.

Lina stood there, so angry she was shaking. She wanted to yell or scream or cry. She wanted to kick something in. But all she could do was watch her mother drive away.

Madelaine ducked into one of the empty hospital rooms and peered into the bathroom mirror.

She looked like Sylvester Stallone at the end of the first Rocky.

She poked at the dark circles under her eyes and frowned. It was too bad Maybelline didn’t make a combat fatigue face makeup. She looked like she hadn’t slept all night—which she hadn’t. This “no shit” parenting was harder than it looked.

She’d done the right thing with Lina. For once, she’d been a parent.

And what if Lina ran away? What then, Miss Parent of the Year? The voice was her father’s, booming and authoritative, but the words were her own. It was that worry that had kept her up all night, trying to assuage her guilt in books about tough love and hard choices in parenting, but the experts’ words were cold and dark against plain white pages. No comfort at all.

She left the bathroom and headed down the familiar white corridor toward Intensive Care. When she reached Angel’s room, she knocked lightly and went inside.

She couldn’t believe what she saw.

He was lying there, sucking on a cigarette, then blowing smoke into the air. An open bottle of tequila sat on the bedside table.

He didn’t even have the common decency to look guilty. Instead he gave her a bleary, cockeyed grin. “Uh-oh, hall patrol.” He reached for the bottle and hit it with his knuckles. It wobbled and crashed sideways, spraying golden liquid everywhere. The sickeningly sweet smell of tequila wafted upward. He stubbed out the cigarette on the bedside table.

A white-hot flash of anger swept through her. She grabbed the bottle and took it into the bathroom, pouring the remaining alcohol down the sink. The bottle hit the wastebasket with a satisfying thunk.

She spun around and surged back into the room. “You are the most selfish, self-centered son of a bitch I’ve ever known.”

“Way to ruin a good party, Doc.”

She could smell the cigarette smoke, hovering in the room, reminding her with every indrawn breath that Angel was too selfish to change, too weak to really make the decision to live. Even here, in the cold blankness of ICU, with machines hissing and spitting around him, holding his battered heart together with a dozen electric threads, even here he couldn’t find the strength to change. Instead, he’d brought his partying, irresponsible life into the hospital.

“What in the hell were you trying to do?”

He laughed, a hacking, breathless sound, a pale shadow of the laugh she remembered. “Die of cancer.”

Then, very slowly, he turned his head on the pillow and stared up at her through watery eyes. Suddenly he wasn’t smiling anymore. He looked sick and weak and broken. His hair was greasy and uncombed. Two days’ growth of beard stubbled his chin and darkened his upper lip. Even his eyes, those incredible green eyes, looked inestimably tired.

She’d seen this face before, a thousand times in her career. Sometimes the eyes were blue, sometimes brown, sometimes green, but they were always watery and sad and tired-looking.

He was dying.

The anger dissolved as suddenly as it had come. She walked over to the bed and pulled out a chair. “Oh, Angel,” she said softly, shaking her head, releasing a heavy sigh.

“Don’t do that to me,” he said in a Demerol-slurred voice. “I… don’t…”

The rattling wheeze of his breathing seemed to suck the words away. She had to scoot closer to hear him. “What is it?”

He stared at her, and the bleakness in his gaze was almost too much to bear. “I don’t know what else to do.”

Madelaine saw his fear, his uncertainty, and though she didn’t want to be moved by it, she found herself being drawn to him. She touched his rough, unshaven jaw. “It’s okay to be afraid.”

“Who said I’m afraid?”