Better Not Love Me (22 page)

Chapter 43

Amelia walked down a massive corridor inside the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport, trying to find her gate. She was upbeat and happy. It felt good. When she left Nate's house he was up and talking with Chloe about the Texas Rangers. The girl was going to be quite an actress someday. Amelia had long ago given up on listening to Nate ramble on about the baseball team, but Chloe stuck with it and she admired her for it.

Amelia promised to return in a few weeks. Nate, for the first time in their relationship, really showed some emotion about her leaving. It was good to be missed, she thought. But that also meant she would miss him too. And she would.

Amelia paced the rows of seats at her departure gate, looking for somewhere to sit. The airport was massive, and crammed with humanity. Nearly every seat was filled with either an awaiting passenger or their bags.

Why did people have to place their bags on the seats where actual people could sit?

She traveled so much for Mr. Z's that she had access to the Delta Sky Club private lounge, but by chance the lounge was under construction, which meant she was stuck finding a place to wait along with 200 of her fellow passengers. She picked a seat between an elderly woman and a businessman in a suit. She slid her carry-on bag under her seat and closed her eyes.

After a layover in Salt Lake City, she'd be in Spokane late and lucky to be at her house by midnight. She was exhausted and looking forward to sleeping on the plane. The waiting area was loud. The buzz of people around her numbed her senses and soon she was asleep.

Amelia was startled when her cell phone vibrated in her pocket. The tickling on her thigh meant a text message, likely from Marcus or Susanna. She rubbed her eyes and fished the phone out of her pocket. She didn't know how long she'd been asleep.

The notification was from Chloe. She punched in her security code and the full text message appeared on the screen.

_Chloe: I know U R flying out now but I'm in an ambulance w/ dad. Going to hospital. It's not good. I'm scared. He won't wake up. I don't know wht 2 do.

Amelia didn't hesitate.

She keyed in a quick reply as she ran down the terminal and outside in search of a taxi.

_Amelia: I'm on my way to you right now.

What could have changed in just a few hours?

Chapter 44

The taxi ride to the hospital was a blur. And Chloe didn't respond to any of her other messages. The emergency room staff wouldn't allow her to go back into the room because she mistakenly said she was Nate's girlfriend. Only family members were allowed beyond the waiting room. She sat there for hours, in a worn chair, just like the airport.

A medical assistant came out and told her to go to another waiting room when Nate was moved to the Intensive Care Unit. She wouldn't tell her anything about his condition though.

The ICU waiting room was nicer. It had some windows and fewer people. The Price is Right blared from a TV mounted to the wall. Drew Carey held that impossibly long handheld microphone as he urged the contestants to bid on prizes. She couldn't help but watch.

A sailor in a Navy uniform just won a new car, with "California emissions," whatever that meant. The guy jumped up and down like he was on a trampoline. It didn't feel like reality. None of this did.

The hours ticked away. Drew Carey was replaced with daytime talk shows and an infomercial about a new type of wheelbarrow.

The waiting and not knowing made Amelia hurt inside. If this was Nate's final moments, then she didn't want to spend it without him. She wanted to be next to him, holding his hand. She could comfort Chloe, who had to be scared out of her mind. She lost one parent years ago when her mother died in that accident, and now this?

* * *

It was late evening when Chloe appeared in the chair next to Amelia. Her pretty face was swollen from crying. She had a small notepad and a pencil. A messy scrawl lined the pages.

She looked much older than a 17-year-old. The burden of a sick father wore heavily on her.

"They'll let two people back now. I had to tell them you were my aunt, otherwise they wouldn't let you back. You're not on any of his paperwork as family or next of kin," Chloe said.

Her words were matter-of-fact like a new doctor practicing proper bedside manner.

"Thank you," Amelia replied, then stood to go back. She thought that this was the invitation she'd been waiting for.

But Chloe didn't stand, so Amelia sat down again and began rubbing Chloe's back to comfort her. Amelia wondered if Chloe's mother ever did this for her when she was a child. She knew how a simple touch conveyed what words couldn't.

"It's not good," Chloe said.

"What did they say?"

"I took notes, but I'm not sure they make sense. They said that something went wrong with the dialysis at home. It's supposed to take out all the bad stuff in your blood that your kidneys normally do naturally. They said there are two types of dialysis, too."

"Peritoneal dialysis and hemodialysis," Amelia said. "I researched it when he started treatment. He was doing Peritoneal or PD."

"Right. Well, we're doing the PD one because of his previous cancer treatments. It would fill him up with fluid and then drain it. The doctor explained why, but I don't remember exactly what he told me. He said a lot of stuff."

"That's OK," Amelia said. "What happened at home?"

"This part I know. He went into hypovolemic shock—I wrote it down—because the PD took out too much blood. Some of the good stuff, that is not supposed to be filtered out, came out too. That's when he passed out and I couldn’t wake him up. I can't believe I didn't watch it close enough. I should have seen it before."

"Chloe, you can't blame yourself," Amelia said. "Please don't. How were you supposed to know? None of us knows this stuff inside and out. It's a very complicated process. And you
did
see it. You're the one who called for help. He's getting the care he needs right now because you acted."

"I guess."

But Chloe didn't seem satisfied with that and Amelia could understand it.

"Can we see him now?"

"Yes, OK."

The ICU room had glass walls with curtains on rails so they could be closed when something private, or terrible was happening. Amelia wondered why they were glass in the first place. The rest of the hospital had regular walls, but here they needed to see inside for some reason.

Chloe walked into the room. Amelia stayed at the doorway. The bed was situated at an angle toward the middle of the room. The dialysis machine was clicking away in the corner. Nate's body looked like a freeway off ramp, with so many tubes and wires converging on him.

A clear tube protruded from his mouth. It was taped to the sides of his cheeks, forcing air down into his lungs. The ventilator hummed away. Nate's chest slowly rose and fell again.

Nate wasn't breathing on his own, something Chloe neglected to say earlier. This didn't look good at all. She tried to be strong for Chloe.

"You can go inside ma'am," a nurse said. "You're the sister, right? You should see him."

Amelia nodded. She was the sister today. Chloe's aunt. Amelia knew as soon as she went inside that the situation would be real. Maybe if she never walked in, then it wouldn't happen. That Nate wasn't really being kept alive by a machine that would breathe for him.

She wondered what the nurse meant.
You should see him.
Like, you should see him because he's on the bed in there. Or you should see him before it's too late?

She shook her head to break loose the cowardice inside her, and stepped into the room.

His face was puffy and very yellow, which contrasted against the stark white sheets, blanket and pillows. The stubble on his face was long. He'd refused a shave earlier that day. He hadn't been too concerned about his appearance, and he certainly wasn't now either. He was asleep or unconscious. She didn’t know which.

A heart monitor beeped rhythmically.

Amelia put her hand on his shoulder. It was a reassuring pat that Nate never felt. Amelia pulled up one of the wooden chairs with vinyl padding next to Chloe at the side of the bed. Chloe was holding her father's hand—the one that wasn't connected to the IV. She fiddled with the hospital identification bracelet encircling his wrist, running her finger over his name again and again. 

"Why don't they play music in hospitals?" Chloe asked.

The question was out of context. Amelia thought about it for a moment.

"Maybe because hospitals are serious places and music would take people's mind off that."

"But wouldn't that be a good thing?" Chloe asked.

"I guess it would."

"Like they could have a hospital DJ and you could call in and request songs."

"That might be fun, but there are a lot of elderly people here. They might request songs you don't like or don't know."

"Maybe you could have stations and tune into one just for your room," Chloe suggested.

"I'm pretty sure you can do all that with your phone now too."

"Good point, but they’ve got rules against using your phone in the hospital. I just think the hospital is too quiet. Just these machines and people coughing, and hushed voices inside the rooms. I don't like it."

Chloe was making conversation as a distraction to avoid the reality of seeing her father motionless in the bed.

A nurse came in and opened a little white door on one of the machines Nate was hooked up to. It required a key. She pushed some buttons and locked the door again.

"When is the doctor coming to see him?" Amelia asked.

"Dr. Munson was in earlier, but our on-call doctor, Dr. Ribald, is here on the floor," the nurse replied.

Amelia didn't press any further. She didn't have a question. She just nodded OK. It seemed natural to ask when the doctor would be in, it's just something that people do. 

"I really liked hanging out with you guys last summer," Chloe said.

The comment shifted Amelia's mindset and made her smile.

"Yeah? Me too. It was nice to be away from everything for a while."

"Dad and I never had a summer like that before. I'm glad I'll have that to remember, when—"

She didn't finish her sentence, but Amelia knew she was going to say that she was glad that she would have that memory to hold on to when her father was gone. Amelia felt the same, but she tried not to think about it.

"Dad's gonna be pissed if he doesn't wake up soon," Chloe said.

"Why's that?" Amelia asked.

"He's going to have to miss that big meeting he keeps talking about."

"What meeting? Why is he attending meetings? He's supposed to be resting."

"You know," Chloe said. "The investors are coming to the house."

The look on Chloe's face said she had revealed something she wasn't supposed to.

"Spill it," Amelia said.

"I thought you knew about it. Sorry, I shouldn't have mentioned it. It's just that he's been on his iPad so much and he talked about it so often, I guess I just thought you were helping him."

"No, your father and I haven't had the best working relationship. It's something we need to work on. He didn't tell me about any meeting. What's it about?"

"That's why I thought you knew. It's about Mr. Z's.”

So Nate had been working on the company . . . but he excluded her. Why? He must have had his reasons, she thought, but it still hurt a little that there was activity going on that she didn't know about. She still considered it her company, no matter what happened to it. She leaned back in her chair and wondered what the meeting was all about. What Nate was up to and what would happen now. She was reluctantly hopeful. Maybe Nate had it all figured out.

She didn't have long to think about it.

The prolonged beeps from the heart rate monitor were loud and strong. Muffled only by the armada of other machines around the bed. Amelia glanced at the screen. The beats had become erratic, then absent.

The piercing sound was steady. Flat line. No heartbeat.

"Oh my God!" Chloe yelled. "Help!"

A light inside the room, and just outside the doorway flashed alternating colors of white and blue. Amelia could hear the ping from the light as it pulsed. She pushed back her chair further as the nurse burst into the room, assessed what she saw in an instant, and shouted into the hallway.

"Page Ribald! He's coding," she said, then turned to Nate. She unsnapped the buttons on the front of his hospital gown by yanking them apart in one swift motion. She moved in practiced, but hurried steps.

A robotic voice came over the speakers overhead, "Code Blue Adult ICU Room 1209. Code Blue Adult ICU Room 1209."

A stampede of hospital staff streamed into the room. Chloe and Amelia were forced backwards until they were pressed against the glass wall.

"Charging!" someone yelled. And there was a momentary break in activity as the hospital staff stopped their orchestrated symphony. "Clear!"

Nate's legs and chest jumped. Chloe clutched Amelia's arm.

A man in light blue scrubs entered the room and saw Chloe and Amelia against the wall.

"I need you two to step outside, now."

It wasn't a request. It was an order. They did as they were told and positioned themselves at the exact same spot, just on the other side of the glass wall. They couldn't see Nate now. There were too many people crowded around him.

A nurse grabbed the end of the wall curtain and pulled it tight, blocking their view.

Chloe turned to Amelia and collapsed into her arms.

They never got the chance to say goodbye.