“Lt. Morgan?” The nurse paused at the doorway, nodding. “As soon as I get your last draw done and some paperwork signed off, I’ll tell him he can come in. There’s a menu on the rolling table there if you want to pick something for dinner. The cheeseburger’s pretty good, but stay away from the green beans. They cook them to death.”
“Right, no green beans.” He waited until she was gone and then another moment as he gathered up all of his courage to grab at the phone to pull it into his lap.
The last number he’d been given was almost two weeks ago. It was done in passing, through someone who knew someone else’s friend, but she’d at least made the attempt. Of course, he hadn’t actually spoken to her, but there’d been an attempt to keep in touch.
It was more than she’d ever done in the past.
“Not like shit’s gonna change, dude,” he muttered. “Fucking hell, I don’t want to do this.”
The rational part of his brain was still scolding him even as his fingers flew over the number he’d committed to his memory a while ago. It’d been the most recent of a long string of numbers, each only lasting a few weeks, as if they were hothouse roses.
He was taking a chance dialing the number now. It was nearly past the expiration date of most of the numbers she’d given him before it, but Forest wanted something—still and forever something—even if his gut knew it would never be the reality he’d wanted.
Still—that chance. And even greater of a chance that she’d be sober enough to talk—if she picked up at all.
It rang, and before Forest’s brain could pull the plug on his nonsense, a woman’s husky voice tickled his ear, her tongue stumbling over her words as she spoke. He closed his eyes, willing the tremors in his bones to go away before he responded.
“Hey, Mom.”
“Forest? That you, baby?”
“You got any more kids?” He snorted. “’Sides me, anyway?”
There was the sound of a lighter being scratched on, then a familiar suck of a cigarette. As if on cue, she coughed, a raspy boom into the phone, and his mother cleared her throat. “Always such a fucking smartass. Should have slapped that mouth off of you when you were still short enough for me to reach.”
“Yeah. Probably,” he agreed, despite sitting under a swaddle of blankets hoping to leech the cold out of his badly healed bones. “You got a little time? To talk, you know?”
“What time is it? Hold on. I’ve gotta go take a piss.” More noises, a rattling, then she came back to the phone. “Shit, not even seven yet. Whatcha calling for? Frank’s still dead, right? Fucker didn’t come back like he’s all Jesus or something?”
His mother laughed, and Forest once more felt the stab of her sour personality into his guts. Sighing, he ran his fingers through his kind-of-gritty hair as he tucked the phone under his chin. He didn’t laugh. He just waited for her to finish righting herself before speaking.
It was always the same. No, he corrected, sometimes it was worse. At least this time she knew who he was. There’d been a very uncomfortable call once when she thought he was someone she’d hooked up with before, and nothing said Merry Christmas like your own mother describing how she could suck a cock down into her throat. Of course, since it seemed to be a talent she’d passed onto him as well, Forest really couldn’t complain.
“No really, why’re you calling?” she rasped.
“Things have kind of been shitty the past couple of weeks. Okay, maybe a bit longer than that,” he confessed softly. “Guess I wanted to hear you. See how you were doing. Someone drove a van through the Amp’s wall. Kinda got a bunch of it on my head. So, I’m in the hospital. And I was wondering—”
“Um, honey, don’t take this wrong, but…,” she hedged, grumbling a bit under her breath. “Don’t think I’d be able to make it over there, you know? I mean, I get up early to get some stuff done, so there’s money in my pocket, right?”
She didn’t even know where he was, and his mother was making excuses. The hospital could have been right fucking next door to whoever’s place she was crashing in, and she couldn’t be bothered to poke her head out the window and spit in his general direction.
Forest blinked, hating she could drive him to tears without even being in the same room. Wiping at his face, he shuddered in a breath, for once thankful of the hospital’s cold air. It helped freeze his lungs a bit and still his heart, deadening him enough to talk.
There were angry words he wanted to spit at her—hot, foul leaden darts that might penetrate her skin and lodge into her already dead heart. Instead he said what he always said whenever she turned away from him. “Sure, no problem. I know you’re busy.”
“You’re okay though, right?” Another raspy drawl and she barked a laugh through the phone. “’Course if you’d died, I wouldn’t have to be working any more, would I? How much did old Frankie leave you? Everything, right? That coffee shop and shit.”