The Siren (18 page)

“Sloan,” he said, his voice cracking.

“Are you OK?” I asked. “It’s really late.”

“Sloan, it’s your mother.”

13.

The tone of my father’s voice alarmed me even more than his words. “What’s wrong with Mom?”

He cleared his throat. “I think it would be a good idea if you came home as soon as you can.”

I sat forward on the edge of my seat. “Why? What’s going on?”

Concerned, Warren leaned in close.

Dad sighed over the phone. “Maybe we should talk about it when you get home.”

“Dad, there’s no way I can get a flight home tonight. You have to tell me what’s happened!” I demanded.

There was another pause. “It’s a tumor, Sloan, in her brain. It’s very serious.”

I gasped and covered my mouth. “What?”

His voice was shaky. “I’ve never seen anything this aggressive. The growth rate alone shows it has to be malignant. We are making plans to do surgery to try and remove it as soon as possible, hopefully first thing in the morning. There isn’t any other choice.”

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. “OK. I’m going to figure out how to get home,” I said. “Can I talk to her?”

“She’s not conscious anymore, sweetheart. She fell asleep about an hour ago, and we haven’t been able to wake her up,” he said.

Tears spilled down my cheeks. “Dad, no!”

“Please come home as quickly as you can, but please be careful,” he said. “I promise I’ll call you if anything else changes. I love you, Sloan.”

“I love you too,” I said and disconnected the phone.

“What’s going on?” Warren asked.

My mouth was hanging open in shock. “My mom has a brain tumor. It’s really, really bad,” I said. “She’s unconscious, and they are going to try and remove the tumor tomorrow. We have to go.” I pushed myself up from the table. “I need you to take me to the airport.”

Warren reached for my arm. “You said it yourself. There aren’t any more flights out tonight.”

“Then we need to start driving!” I cried.

“It’s at least a fifteen hour drive, Sloan,” Nathan said. “You can sleep and fly home faster than you could drive there.”

Warren pulled me under his arm. “We will call the airline and get on the first flight out in the morning,” he said. “If we catch the five a.m. flight, we can be home before lunch.”

I melted into his chest and sobbed. He rubbed my back and let me cry for several minutes. Then, he finally suggested we go to our room.

When we stopped at Nathan’s floor, he hugged me. “I’m so sorry. Call me in the middle of the night if you hear anything.”

I nodded and the doors closed behind him.

When we got to our room, I sat down on the bed, and Warren put my purse on my lap. “Take one of your pills so you can relax and get some sleep. You’re going to need it. I’m going to call the airlines and figure out what flight we can get on.”

“OK,” I whispered. My hands were shaking as I rifled through my purse.
 

While I waited for the anti-anxiety medicine to seep into my bloodstream, I called Adrianne and then packed my suitcase. Warren was on the phone with the airline. I kept picturing my mother in my mind. She was alive, and I could still sense her presence, and that was the only thing that remotely consoled me.
 

I was still awake when Warren stretched out next to me. “We’re on the five-ten flight on American Airlines in the morning. That’s the first flight out.”

“Was it expensive?” I asked.

He smiled. “Not at all.”

“You’re a rotten liar.”
 

“Come here.” He pulled me into his arms and pressed his lips against the side of my head.
 

Tears leaked from my eyes onto his bare chest. “This is my fault.”

“That’s crazy. No, it isn’t.” He ran his fingers through my hair.

“I told you before we left that I knew something was wrong with her. The tumor has been there all this time. I’ve felt it for a few months. I just didn’t know what it was. I’ve been keeping her healthy by just being around, and I didn’t know it. Why else would she get so bad so quickly right after we left?”

“Shh,” he said. “This is a tumor. You didn’t cause this.”

“You know I’m right,” I whispered into the dark.

He was quiet for a moment. “If you were keeping her healthy, then you prolonged her life, Sloan. It’s not your fault. We’ll get you home and you’ll make her better again. You’ll see.”

I sniffed and nodded my head. The Xanax was kicking in and my eyes were getting heavy. Before long, with my mother still in the forefront of my mind, I was fast asleep.

* * *

The sound of my mother’s voice rattled me from a deep sleep. “Sloan,” I heard her say.

I opened my eyes. The hotel room was still dark. The clock on the nightstand read two-fourteen. I pictured my mother and felt nothing but a deep void. I sat up and tried harder, but again, I felt nothing. Uncontrollable sobs welled up inside me as I tried, over and over, to find her presence in the dark.
 

My mother was gone.

* * *

The flight to Asheville was excruciating. I had called my father in the middle of the night, and he told me they had put mom on a ventilator because she was having trouble breathing on her own. I didn’t have the heart to tell him the machines were only keeping her organs functional.
 

I knew it. Warren knew it. My mother wasn’t going to wake up.

Adrianne was in a wheelchair in the waiting room with her father when we got to the hospital. It was the same room where I had slept for several nights when she was in intensive care after the car wreck.
 

I stopped to hug her. “You should be at home in bed,” I said.

She squeezed my hand. “You know I wouldn’t be anywhere else.”

I wiped my eyes.
 

“Your dad is down the hall,” she said, pointing through the door. “He came out and talked to us a few minutes ago.”

My Aunt Joan, Mom’s sister, was talking with Dad in the hallway when we walked through the door. Aunt Joan looked a lot like my mom, except she had more gray hair and was probably thirty pounds heavier. Mom had been extremely health conscious and was an avid jogger. She had always been the healthiest person I knew. It made the whole scenario very ironic.

I released Warren’s hand and ran to my dad when he saw me. I cried all over again in his arms. Tears soaked my hair as he wept holding me.
 

He pulled away. “She’s stable, but she’s still on the ventilator. Do you want to go in and see her?”

I sniffed and nodded my head.

Warren squeezed my arm. “I’ll wait out here.”

Dad and I walked down the hall and behind a curtain in ICU. My mother was tethered to every life-sustaining machine in the room, but I knew it was pointless. I cried as I took her cold hand and kissed it.

My father’s hand came to rest on my back. “The results of the tests we did this morning weren’t good,” he said. “It’s grown in such a way that there’s not much hope they’ll be able to get it all. They are still going to attempt the surgery, but I asked them to wait until you got here because there is a good chance she might not come out of it.”

I sucked in a deep breath and leaned down to push some stray gray hairs away from my mother’s smooth, peaceful face. “Don’t do the surgery, Dad.”

He took a step toward me. “It’s the only option we—”

I cut him off. “Mom’s gone. These machines are making her heart and her lungs work, but she left early this morning.”

The blood drained from my father’s handsome face. His blue eyes were bloodshot from worry and lack of sleep. They filled up with tears again. “How do you know?”

“Because her soul isn’t here. This is only a shell.” For the first time in my life, I didn’t care that I sounded like a lunatic. “She’s gone, Dad.”

My father crumpled into the chair beside the bed. I went over and knelt down beside him as he wailed. “I’m not ready,” he cried. “I can’t let her go.”

My mother was the first experience I had ever had with death, not counting Billy Stewart. I wondered if something about me had extended the lives of others without me realizing it. Holding her hand on that bed, one thing occurred to me: the word dead was the wrong word. My mother’s body may have been lifeless, but my mother, herself, was just gone. I had no idea where she was gone to, but I was certain I didn’t have the power to summon her back.

Over the next hour, my dad had to convince my aunt and my mom’s doctors to not attempt the brain surgery. He signed a medical release stating he didn’t want any more excessive measures to keep her body alive. The doctors turned off the machines. Even though I knew she wasn’t there, something about hearing the finality of my mother’s last heartbeat devastated me all over again. Warren held me as I sobbed with my dad at her bedside.

Blindly, I walked to the waiting room and sat down next to Adrianne. She reached over and took my hand and rested her head on my arm. “I’m so sorry, friend,” she said. “I love you.”

I nodded. “I love you too.”

My dad walked into the waiting room. Aunt Joan was with him. Warren got up from beside me and offered Dad his seat. “The funeral home is sending someone to pick her up,” he said. “We’ll need to go down there at some point today or tomorrow and make the arrangements.”

“OK,” I said, unsure of what else to say.

“Do you want to come to the house? We are going to head that way since there’s nothing left for us to do here,” he said.

I squeezed his hand. “Of course, Daddy. We’ll be there.”

“All right.” He pressed a kiss to my knuckles.

Warren hugged my dad. “I’m so sorry, Dr. Jordan.”

Dad patted Warren on the shoulder. “Call me Dad, son.”

When he was gone, we waited for Adrianne’s dad to bring the car around, and Warren helped her into the front seat. “Let me know when the service will be. Come over and have a beer if you need to get away.” She held my hand through the car window.

I smiled. “Thank you.”

When they were gone, Warren put his arms around me, hiding me from the chill of the mountains. As I shivered against his warm chest, I deeply regretted not wearing a jacket.
 

His hands rubbed my bare arms. “We need to get you home so you can change. Are you ready to go?” he asked.

“I need to get my phone. I left it in the waiting room.” I pulled away from him and turned back toward the hospital.

A tall black man was standing in the doorway of the waiting room. He matched Warren in size and had a shiny bald head. He was wearing blue hospital scrubs and an I.D. name tag. His eyes sparkled like gold nuggets, but there was nothing behind them. I knew exactly who he was.
 

An angel of death.

14.

Like a bull being released from a rodeo pen, I charged at the man and slammed my fist into his face as hard as I could. The jolt from touching him nearly knocked me off my feet. He barely flinched, but I recoiled, grabbing my hand and cursing in pain. Warren took hold of my arms and pulled me under his control. Without a word, the man wiped a trickle of blood from his bottom lip.

“It was you!” Undeterred by the possibility of fractured fingers, I fought as hard as I could to free myself from Warren’s tight grip. “You took her!”

The man held up his hands in defense and took a half-step away from me. “Yes, I took her.” His voice was calm and even.

I lunged at him again, but Warren kept me from reaching him. He shook me and put his lips close to my ear. “Sloan, you need to calm down.”

“Shall we talk inside?” The man nodded toward the building behind him.

Without waiting for us to agree, he turned and walked through the door. After exchanging a worried glance with each other, Warren and I followed. Once we were inside the waiting room, the man raised his large hand and waved it toward the doors. They slammed shut without being touched, and I heard their heavy locks tumble.

Beside me, Warren froze. Had I not been blind with rage, I probably would have been frozen in awe and fear as well.

“Who are you?” I demanded.

He tapped his name tag and looked at it upside down. “Today I am David Miller.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Who are you really?”

He bowed his head and touched his fingertips together. “My name is Samael.”

I shoved him in the shoulder. “Why did you kill my mother, Samael?”

Warren bent down to look at me in the face. “The dude just slammed the doors in the room without touching them and locked us in here. Please stop putting your hands on him.”

Samael held up his hand and smiled, clearly amused by my weak show of hostility. “It’s OK. I was warned she could be a little volatile if provoked, particularly early in the day.”

I was puzzled but still furious. “Who told you that?”

“Your mother.” He smiled. “Her exact instructions were to not try and approach you until at least ten in the morning, unless I bring coffee, at the risk of physical assault.” He touched his lower lip. “Maybe I should have waited a few hours more.”

I cut my eyes at him. “What do you mean my mother told you?”
 

He motioned to the chairs behind us. “Shall we sit?”

Warren pushed me down into a chair and pulled one over next to me. Samael moved a chair around to face us and carefully sat down. I massaged my sore knuckles.

“I’m Warren, by the way,” Warren said, extending his hand.

Samael shook it. “It is my pleasure to meet you both. I am very sorry it is under these circumstances.”

I pointed a finger at him. “Cut the pleasantries and start explaining to me why you killed my mother.”

He leveled his gaze at me. “I did not kill your mother, Sloan. Mortality destroyed her body. I simply freed her from this world and escorted her into mine.”

Warren eyed Samael skeptically. “No offense, but I’ve killed plenty of people, and there has never been an angel there to take them anywhere.”
 

Samael slowly pointed at him. “You were there.”

That was sobering.
 

Warren sat back in his seat, his jaw a little slack.

Samael had a small smile on his face. “You using your power is a little more…” He paused like he was searching for the right word. “Explosive.”