I threw up my arm.
“Thanks for dinner, ma. Maybe you can let me know when you’d rather put me ahead of my ex. I’ve got some awesome stories that I think you’ll find extremely interesting,” I said, walking to the back door.
“Mikey,” my mother said worriedly.
I held up my hand. “Save it.”
With that, I left and didn’t look back.
Chapter 4
I hate you. Not in an ‘I hope you die’ kind of way, but more like I hope you develop an allergy to chocolate and cheese kind of way.
-Coffee Cup
Nikki
“Hey there, Nikki!” Joanna said from her position behind her desk at the Pediatric ICU nursing station. “How have you been?”
I smiled. “I’m good. I just came up here to check up on that little boy. How’s he doing?”
She smiled sadly at me. “Lonely, I’m sure. But I’m short two nurses and we’re nearly at capacity.”
I brightened. “Do you mind if I sit with him for a while?”
“I think he’d like that,” she smiled.
Taking her words to heart, I followed the directions to his room, and walked in on a starkly white room with a crib in the middle of it.
Well, a hospital bed, crib.
It really wasn’t much of a crib.
It didn’t have that homey feeling like most cribs had.
This one was cold, metal, and bland.
And the tiny boy in the middle of it, hooked up to hundreds of tubes and wires, broke my heart.
I loved children.
I loved them with a passion and fierceness so powerful that I could barely see straight.
And I’d never have any of my own.
So I soaked it up by spending time with other people’s children.
And it looked like this little guy could use a friend.
Walking over to the crib, I took a seat at the chair, just to the side of it, and watched him.
His little head was wrapped in gaze from about the nose up, only one eye revealed.
His hands were taped to little boards so if he were to move, he wouldn’t pull out the IV lines they had in both hands.
His feet had monitors attached to them with a bright green wrap, and his body was veiled in a bright red hospital gown made for tiny humans such as him.
Picking up one of the books that was on the shelf across from my seat, I leaned back in my chair and started reading to him.
I must’ve gone through five or six books before I realized I wasn’t alone.
I looked up from my book I was reading to see Michael leaning against the doorframe, watching me.
“Hey,” I said, surveying him.
He looked better than he had before.
His white t-shirt stood out starkly against his tattooed skin.
I’d never seen his arms bare before, now that I thought about it.
“Hey,” he said carefully. “I was just bringing him some of his things…you know, so he wouldn’t be alone.”
“That was nice of you,” I whispered softly. “Come in.”
He did, albeit a little reluctantly.
When I noticed, I stood, offering him the chair.
“It’s about time I went anyway. I just wanted to come check on him, see how he was doing,” I whispered softly.
Michael, who’d been surveying the boy, looked up.
His beautiful eyes pierced me straight through every time he gave me the full force of them.
“You don’t have to go,” he said softly. “I’m not staying long. I have to go.”
Wasn’t he being nice?
You see, Michael and I had a long history.
Well, it was more like four months total of history, but that history was enough to last a lifetime.
I patted him on the forearm, a little bit of smartass filling my tone. “Well, then I guess you can walk me out.”
After placing a kiss to the tips of my fingertips, I pressed it against the boy’s hand, and looked at him longingly.
How could someone ever shoot their own child?
What kind of monster was capable of that?
Saying a silent prayer, I walked out of the room, very aware of Michael watching me the entire way.
I’d convinced myself he wasn’t going to follow me, but the moment I walked into the elevator, the doors closed, and he was there.