16 Things I Thought Were True (5 page)

I jump off the stool. Judging by the looks on their faces, I'm in trouble. “I just finished ringing through a bunch of customers. I'm going to fill up the gum machine in a sec,” I say.

“Your brother called the office,” Adam says, cutting me off. “Jake. There was a cancellation at the hospital and they're doing your mom's angiogram in an hour and a half. Your brother wants you to get right there.”

Theresa is already behind the counter, and she pats my arm as she slides past me. “Go on,” she says.

I don't move. I blink, trying to concentrate. I don't have a car. The bus will take at least an hour to get back to town and then I'll have to transfer to the hospital. I don't know what to do.

“Come on,” Adam says. He's standing on the other side of the counter. “I'm taking you. Theresa's lending me her car.”

My hands start to shake. Theresa puts her hand on my back and gently pushes me toward the exit. A customer walks in the store then, an old woman wearing a layered dress and an orange cardigan. Adam grabs my hand as I come around the counter and pulls me along, out of the gift shop.

“I'll get you there as fast as I can. You got this, Morgan. You can handle it.”

The elevator door opens and I stride through the now-familiar hospital corridor toward my mom's room. Josh is standing outside in the hallway, stroking his mustache between two fingers.

“You made it here fast,” he says.

“Adam broke some speed limits.”

“Is he here?” The ways Josh says it, he almost sounds hopeful, as if he wants Adam to explain things or take control.

“No, he was borrowing Theresa's car and had to get back to the park.” Only his calm reassurances on the way over kept me from freaking out. “What's wrong?” I ask Josh. “Why're you out here?”

A nurse hurries past us with a stack of towels. “Mom wanted to be alone for a minute. Jake's in the chapel.” He stands up straighter, stretches his arms into the air. “Mom asked for you to go see her as soon as you got here.” He glances at the clock in the middle of the stark white wall across from him.

Mom wanted to be alone? Jake's in the chapel? This has “not normal” stamped on it on so many levels. I'm itching to run inside to her, but Josh looks absolutely miserable, so I put my hand on his shoulder. “You okay?”

“I suck at this. I freaking hate hospitals,” he says. He brushes my hand off. “Go,” he says.

“It's okay, Josh,” I say, shuffling my feet, wishing I knew what to say to help him. “Lots of people aren't good at hospitals.”

“Go,” he says again, so I turn and go inside Mom's room.

One of the old men is gone, but the man with gas is still there. He's sleeping. Mom's privacy curtain isn't pulled around the bed. The bed is raised so that she's almost sitting up. She's staring into space and looks pale and fragile under the baby-blue hospital bedding. It would wash out anyone, but without her makeup on, she looks especially vulnerable. When I approach her bed, she glances at me, the corners of her mouth turn up, and her eyes brighten. She hasn't looked at me like that in a while.

“You made it,” she says.

“Of course. You're my favorite mom.” I step beside the bed and take her hand. It's seems lighter and bonier.

“I'm your only mom,” she says and then sighs.

I stare down at her and, for a fleeting moment, get the sensation that our roles have been temporarily switched. I don't like it. I don't even like watching body-switching movies. They freak me out. This does too.

“Are you still mad at me?” she asks and turns toward the window. The blind is pulled down. The redbrick wall is hidden from sight.

“No. You're still number one.”

She glances toward the door. “They're coming to get me soon. I don't have a lot of time.”

“Mom.” I squeeze her hand. “You're going to be fine. Okay? You'll have plenty of time after the surgery to do whatever you want. Except smoke.” The old man snores loudly, which I prefer to farting. “The angiogram will find it if something's wrong, and they'll get you all fixed up.”

“I have a bad feeling. A dream.”

“Mom…” I start to say.

She takes her hand from mine and waves her fingers at me in the air. “Let me talk. It's not about the dream.”

I press my lips shut.

“I'm sorry.” She blinks fast. Her eyes are bright and serious, and I see fear in them. She turns back to the blinds.

“The boys need you. They're going to rely on you to pull the family together. That's what women do. But first, you need to accept yourself for who you are.” She sounds as if a death warrant in her name has already been written.

“Mom. You're not going to die. You're coming home in a few days. You're just going to have to make some changes to your lifestyle, that's all.”

She doesn't answer me. She just sighs dramatically with her head turned toward the window.

“You need to know who you are first. I know that now. I wanted to protect you, Morgan.” She sniffles. “That's why I never told you about your dad.”

I look around and outside the door, see Josh still lingering around in the hallway. He's not looking inside. Tears plop down my cheeks. They roll one after another, after another. I want to keep my emotions under control, shoved down, but I can't. “Maybe you wanted to protect yourself,” I say softly, knowing it's wrong to do this to her now. “That's why you never told me.”

“You have no idea what it was like,” she whimpers.

“So tell me,” I plead. I want to know why she always made me feel horrible for wanting to know who my dad was.

There's a long pause, and she sniffles and gulps in air. Guilt pumps around my body, traveling through my veins. I open my mouth to apologize.

“The answers you might be looking for…who he is…”

I stop breathing. My heart pounds. The machines in the room whir and beep. The old man snorts and mumbles in his sleep. I push off the bed, get to my feet, stumbling a little as if I'm dizzy from low blood sugar or something. I fainted once in the hallway at school when I had too many Tylenol for cramps. It felt like this.

I reach out and touch the end of the bed to steady myself. “What?” I can't think of anything else to say, so I walk to the closed window and stand in front of it, my arms crossed, my back to her.

“I don't want to go to my grave knowing you never got a chance to find the truth. I'd feel guilty the rest of my life. Well—the rest of my death, I suppose.” She attempts a laugh, but it fades as soon as it leaves her mouth. “I'd have to hang around the hospital as a ghost or something, unable to move on to the light.”

There's a clatter from the hallway. Sounds like someone dropped a bedpan. I don't bother to look.

“Tell me,” I whisper.

“I can't,” she says.

My hands shake and I make fists at my side. I limp to the chair that's at the end of her bed and sit. Anger mashes with numbness. It feels cold.

“I'm sorry,” she says.

I raise my head to look at her. She's staring at me and she clears her throat. I'd given up knowing long ago. I look away and study the picture on the wall above the bed. A cottage scene. Pastels. Boring. Tranquil. Exactly opposite to what's going on inside me. It's almost worse that she's only telling me because she thinks she's going to die. But I can't provoke her now. I have to keep her calm before surgery.

“You're not allowed to die to get out of this,” I tell her. “You're not allowed to. We'll talk about this later.”

She will have a later, and I'll save my anger for then. She's not allowed to die.

There's noise outside the room, and then a couple of nurses enter the room. One waves her hand in a shooing motion, telling me to get out of the way. She's young. Blond. Probably in her twenties. Pretty.

“You must be the daughter. Good. You made it. Now off you go. We're prepping her for her surgery. Go wait with Josh.” I don't miss that the nurse knows my brother by name. She must like mustaches. The other nurse, an older one, starts unplugging and moving things around. It's a dance they've done a thousand times before with a thousand different patients.

“Wait,” I say, and something in my voice must be extra desperate because both nurses pause. I step around the young nurse and lean forward so my mom's face is in line with mine. I take a deep breath. “I love you, Mom,” I whisper, and honestly I don't remember the last time I told her that.

She smiles, and the fine wrinkles around her mouth crease up even though I know she secretly gets Botox injections when she can afford to.
Thank
you,
she mouths and then closes her eyes. “If you want the truth. Look at home. In my jewelry box. The answers are there if you want them.”

The nurses are instantly moving again. I stand straight and move against the wall, out of the way, and before I know it, they're out the door, wheeling my mom down the hallway. There's so much in my head, and I can't process any of it right now.

“Take care of my mom,” I whisper. I'm not sure who I'm talking to, but I think it might be God again. I hope He still listens, even if we haven't talked this much in forever.

The old man sighs in his sleep and then farts loudly again. I roll my eyes at him and leave the room. Josh is still standing in the hallway, staring off where Mom disappeared to. He calls my name, but I ignore him and keep going. I walk until I'm outside and then march straight to a cab waiting by the hospital exit. I give him our home address and then lean back against the seat.

Is this what I want? To find the guy who walked away from me? Do I want to rip off the scabs to those wounds? I feel fear throb inside me. What if I am left all alone? What if I need him? Will he even be willing to see me? Can I handle it if he won't?

Suddenly, I'm not sure I'm ready to find out who he is after all.

Josh is leaning against the wall of the hospital room. He looks as if he's been punched in the stomach. Jake is sitting, but his eyes are closed. I'm standing beside my mom and staring down at her, memories swirling around my brain—times I was in bed sick, when she'd bring me soup and ginger ale.

The doctor spoke to us while Mom was in recovery, assuring us she'd be out of the hospital shortly, within a day or two, and back to her regular routine in a week or so. “She has to make some changes, but she should be fine,” she says. They found an artery with 90 percent blockage and put a stent in.

The nurses brought her back to the room after they monitored her heart and blood pressure in the recovery room and removed her catheter tube. They told us her puncture site has been dressed and the bleeding stopped. My stomach rolled, but I thought of Adam and how he'd explain it in a way I would understand.

Her eyes flutter and then open and focus in on me first.

“Hey. What do you know, you're alive,” I say softly and then smile.

Jake jumps to his feet and whacks me on the back of the head. Luckily he whacks me lightly.

“Funny, Morgan,” she croaks. “Always funny.” Her voice is raspy and low. She'd make a good late night DJ on one of those call-in shows for lonely people, the way she sounds.

“How do you feel, Mom?” Jake asks, putting a hand on her forehead as if she's a child with a fever.

“Good. I mean…okay.” She peers over at Josh. He straightens up, and his lips turn up in a shaky smile. “Hey, Mom,” he says.

She squints, peering deeply at him. “I have a stent in my heart,” she tells him. He pushes himself off the wall and moves closer.

She gazes at each of us and then down at her chest. “I had to stay awake. I guess I fell asleep after. I don't remember.”

Jake takes his hand away from her forehead. “We know, Mom. It's all good. That stent will keep you going for a long time, like the Energizer Bunny.”

“You okay, Josh?” she asks.

He nods but looks far from okay. He pulls on a corner of his mustache. Everything is droopy and lacks his usual swagger.

“I'm fine, Mom. This is about you.”

“You should sit,” I tell him and point at the chair.

Without argument, he pulls it up to the side of the bed and sits.

“The good news is I'm going to make it.” Mom glances at me. “At least I hope it's good news.” Her thoughts are almost visible as they bounce around her head. I hear her regret.

“You boys would have a hard time without me.” She nods at me. “You too, Morgan?”

“Of course.”

Jake frowns at me as if I've done something wrong.

She turns to Josh. “Would you mind going to see if I can get some ice to chew on?”

He nods and stands. “Sure.” He hurries out of the hospital room as if he's grateful to have something to do.

“Poor Josh,” she says when he's out the door. “This is hard for him. He doesn't like hospitals. You never know how you're going to react to stuff like this.” She smiles. “Like you, Jake. You're handling this so well. I always said still waters run deeper.”

He stares out after his twin. “Josh doesn't like the smells and…”

“The sick people?” I add.

“It's okay. George, your dad, is the same way,” she says to Jake. “He almost fainted when I gave birth.” Mom looks right at him. “Why don't you go help Josh? Give me a minute with your sister.”

Jake looks at me, raises his eyebrows, then glances back at her. “Help him get ice?”

Mom nods.

He glares at me. “Is everything okay?”

“Fine,” Mom says. “Just give us a minute.”

“Sure. Okay.” He slowly walks out of the room.

We both watch him leave.

“He was in the chapel during your surgery,” I tell her.

She smiles. “Jake is my sensitive one.”

I wonder which one I am.

“The nurse said they're going to send me home tomorrow,” she says. “As long as my insertion site heals okay. In and out.” She stares off into space.

“I wish they'd keep you longer. Just to be safe. It seems so fast,” I tell her.

She turns to look at me. “That's the way it is, less expensive in the long run. I'll be seeing my own doctor regularly.”

We're both quiet again. It's obvious we're thinking about the same thing—the elephant in the room. The name. Such a simple name. Such a complicated name.

“I found the papers,” I tell her. “In your jewelry box. With his name. Bob White.”

She sighs. “Morgan. I really thought…I didn't think I would make it. Maybe I shouldn't have said anything. Allowed you to find that document about your dad.”

“You mean Bob White?”

She winces. I press my lips tight, wishing I had my ChapStick. He's not my dad. Dad is something you earn. “Well,” I say quietly, “I didn't find him—not yet. But I can't pretend I don't know his name.”

She sighs deeply. “I know.”

“Why'd you never tell me before?”

She stares at me and I stare back. And then she pats the bed beside her. I half sit, not wanting to get too close. She reaches for my hand, but I move it away and scratch my head.

“I love you,” she says.

I blink back a sudden flood of tears and look away. Now she says it back? I wait, but she doesn't fill the silence. “I know you do. But I still had a right to know. Even if he didn't want me. I had a right to know his name.” My toes tingle. I feel it starting there. The anger. I focus it toward him. I can hate him with much less guilt because I don't know him. It's harder to aim it at her.

“I can help you with what the insurance doesn't cover,” I tell her. “I have savings.”

“Are you crazy?” she asks.

I frown at the intensity in her voice. “Don't get worked up. It's okay.”

“You are
not
paying for any of this. Your savings are for college. Do
not
worry about the insurance. One of my kids needs to go to college. Not that I'm not proud of my boys…but I want you to go. I'll manage. I spoke out of fear before. I thought I might not make it. I didn't want to burden you with bills when I was dead. I certainly won't when I'm alive.”

“I can help,” I say again.

She blows a feeble raspberry. “No. Absolutely not. The money you made is for your future, working with kids.”

The anger in my toes rises a little. She had George to help with some of the boys' things. But there was no help with me. “What's wrong? What's with that face?” my mom asks. “Don't worry, Morgan. I can deal with this. It's going to be okay. It'll all get paid off.”

I take a breath. In through my nose. Out of my mouth. She's not perfect, far from it, but she made sure I had everything I needed growing up. Well. Except a father. I stare down at my hands. I did a Google search for Bob White and it brought up a lot of images. It's embarrassing to not even know him to look at him.

“Bob White is a pretty common name,” I say softly.

She sighs. “I know.”

I sit up straighter on her bed. “I don't want to upset you, but I'm going to look for him.”

She presses her lips together and stares behind me.

“Mom?”

She doesn't answer.

“Mom?”

A plump tear squeezes out of her eye and rolls down her cheek. She finally looks at me. “I know. I understand.”

My insides ache because I'm adding pain to her recovery. The back of my throat throbs. “I wanted you to know. I don't want to go behind your back. Or hide it. I wanted you to know the truth.” Even though she hid it from me for so long. It's the right thing to do.

She stares into space.

“I need to meet him,” I continue. “I'm prepared for him to slam doors in my face. I mean, I know he's never even wanted to meet me. But I have to find him.” I don't tell her my fear—that I might be left all alone.

Her face seems to pale even more. She picks at her blanket, looks up at me, but as soon as her eyes meet mine, she looks back down. She's terrified.

“Mom?”

She picks at the blanket. Her hand shakes. “What's it going to change?” she says softly. I stare at her, but she won't look up.

“Everything,” I say, and the resentment in my voice makes it louder than I intend. “Nothing.” I want to know who he is. How he lives. Does he have another family? Maybe I have a sister. Other people. Maybe, just maybe, if he meets me, he'll see that I'm not so bad—that I am a good person.

She glances up. “Just be careful what you wish for.”

I hear her unsaid words. He's never looked for me. He's never tried to find me. But it's not his choice anymore. And it's not hers either. It's mine. I want to see him in person. I want to know what he looks like—maybe even find out why he left me. I'm ready to handle this like a grown-up, even if the two of them aren't.

“For the record, I don't want you to do this,” she says, her voice flat.

I bite my lip to keep myself from backing down, telling her I won't. I inhale deeply and concentrate on breathing in and out.

Neither one of us speaks. The machines in the room whir.

“I'm sorry,” she says after another moment of quiet. “I know it's not fair…it's just that…” She stops. Sniffles. Closes her eyes.

“It's okay,” I whisper.

“No. It isn't.”

I glance toward the door, hearing the boys chattering, their voices getting closer. “Victoria,” Mom says softly.

I look back at her, wondering if she's drifted off or if maybe she's hallucinating that she's talking to an old friend or something.

“Mom?” I lean forward and pat her shoulder gently. “It's me, Morgan,” I whisper.

“I know that,” she says and opens her eyes. “I mean, Victoria, British Columbia. The last I heard, Bob was living in Victoria.”

I slowly process that. “You mean in Canada?”

She nods.

“He's Canadian?” For some reason this strikes me as absurd. I giggle.

“When we met, he was working in the Seattle office of his company. He's an engineer. Before you were born, he moved back to Canada.”

Of course he did.

God. This must explain my strange addiction to maple syrup.

“I'll be back in a minute,” I manage, and then I rush out of the room. As soon as my toes touch the floor in the hallway, tears burst out of my eyes. The boys are close. Josh is holding a baggie filled with ice chips. My face must look bad, because they both rush to me as I bend over to catch my breath.

“What's wrong?” Jake says and pats on my back. “Is Mom okay?”

I lift my head, unable to speak. It's stupid, but it's the fact that he lives in Canada that slays me. He lives in a different country.

The boys run past me into her room. I start walking. My feet move quickly, until I'm running. Everything I've been holding is fighting to come out. The operation is over. Mom is okay. My dad is alive and his name is Bob White. And the thing that tilts me over the edge is that he doesn't even live in America, that he's Canadian.

And now, I'm a mess.

I jump on the elevator to the main floor, ignoring the smiles of an old man in a hospital gown pushing around an oxygen tank he's hooked up to. I don't have room in my heart for other people or their troubles. When the elevator door opens, I walk out quickly, avoiding people's eyes until I'm outside the hospital on the sidewalk.

It's dark outside, and I'm surprised the sun is down, though when I think of it, I can't tell when the day started and when it ended. I pull my phone from my pocket, turn it on, and walk to the path that leads behind the hospital. My phone beeps in quick succession, letting me know there are new messages. I ignore them and walk to a nearby bench and plunk my butt down. My heart beats triple time as I click on the Google icon. I type in Bob White + Victoria BC, take a breath, and press search. The connection is slow.

Finally the search brings up a few links. I scan down. One is a pharmacy website, another advertises a paint shop. I sift through pop-ups and see images of people attached to the name Bob White. There's an artist, a businessmen, even a politician. I wonder which one of them is dear old Dad. I'm furious I can't tell by looking.

I scroll up and down, clicking on links but nothing jumps out at me, nothing screams,
This
is
your
father, Morgan McLean. You've come to the right place. Please call this number to speak with the man who made you.

I'm disappointed. I'm angry. I want to eat carbs. How am I ever going to find him?

I tap my way out of Google, to the Twitter icon, and click on it. I think about tweeting my dad's name, telling my followers about him—asking for help tracking him down online. But no. I want to do this organically. I don't want anyone or anything to warn him that I'm onto him now. I want to go find him with the element of surprise on my side.

I scroll down, but my heart isn't in any of the things my friends are tweeting. I can't concentrate, and I'm close to typing a tweet to express my distress, something I vowed never to do. My online image is peppy. I don't want to drag people down.

I click out of Twitter and go to my phone. I stare at Adam's contact number, and then for the first time in my life, initiate a call with a boy. One that has nothing to do with work. Or school.

When Adam's voice mail picks up, I hang up without leaving a message. He has to have caller ID. He'll know it was me. If he wants to call me back, he will.

My phone beeps, letting me know a new text came in. I glance at it and frown. It's from my mom's phone. But how could she possibly send a text? She must have gotten Jake to do it. Or Josh. I glance at the message.

It's a picture of a man. I enlarge the image and look closer. It's a picture from a newspaper article. He's wearing a golf cap, but it's clear what he looks like.