It’s really coming down.
“My girlfriend’s mom had just dropped me off after cross-country practice. I remember being so tired, and stressed about homework. Gram was waiting for me at the door. With you. You were screaming like a banshee, no surprise. But Gram … was crying, too. Which was scary, because I’d never seen her cry. Ever. Not even after Mom died. You remember how she was. So she must have been at the end of her rope.”
Darcy leaned toward her.
“‘Here,’ Gram told me, pushed you into my arms.” Rita mimed the motion. “‘Take her. Just take her.’ Then she went to her room and shut the door. Didn’t say another word. I didn’t see her again until the next morning.”
“So what happened?”
“You stopped screaming. I mean, not all at once. It wasn’t like I could turn you off, like a light switch. God, how I’d wished I could! But you calmed down after a while. And then you … smiled. It was … beautiful. Like this tiny, private smile you’d been saving. Just for me. You’d smiled before. But this one seemed different. And suddenly I wasn’t tired anymore. Or stressed about homework.”
Rita’s throat tightened. She twisted the bedsheet in her hands and watched the rain slap at the window. She knew that if she looked at Darcy now, she’d start crying. “I took you upstairs, gave you a bath, got you ready for bed. I didn’t know what else to do. Then we sat in the rocking chair together, across from your crib…”
“That old rocker in the living room?”
“Yeah. We kept it in your room back then. Anyway, after you fell asleep, I tried to put you down in your crib, but you started to cry. So I sat back down in the rocker with you, and you quieted down.”
“Then what?”
“I fell asleep. Woke up in the middle of the night, still sitting in the chair, with one hell of a stiff neck. You were out cold in my arms. I laid you down in the crib. You didn’t cry, so I snuck back to my room, did my homework, slept for a few hours, then went to school. After that, well … I helped Gram out more, and started sleeping in your room. Things got better.”
A gust of wind rattled the window.
“Things got better,” Rita murmured.
She reached out and grasped Darcy’s hand.
Darcy started crying.
So did Rita.
Which made Darcy start bawling. She launched herself out of the chair and seized Rita. Rita hugged her back as best she could, but one arm got tangled up in her IV line, so she draped it over Darcy’s shoulder while she squeezed her with the other arm. The two held each other, crying, until Darcy’s shoulders stopped heaving up and down, and her breathing slowed.
Darcy settled on the bed next to Rita. “I just—when I got the call, from the hospital, I was so scared. So scared. I don’t know what I would do without you, Ree.”
“We’re going to be okay, Darcy. Whatever happens.”
“You’re lying.”
“Darcy—”
“No. No. You don’t believe that, Ree. Don’t try to tell me for a second that you do.”
Rita pursed her lips. “Well,” she admitted. “It is fair to say I’m not sure what’s going to happen next.” Her urge to smile at the absurdity of this caught Rita by surprise. In fact, she felt strangely—remarkably—calm and clearheaded. Darcy’s presence (and Finney’s continued absence, which she still sensed) seemed to be having that effect on her. One thing had now become clear.
I need to protect Darcy.
Everything else around her could collapse—
(shit, it pretty much already had)
—but she had to guard her little sister.
I wasn’t there for her. Now I need to protect her.
No matter what.
“What are your doctors going to do?” Darcy asked.
“Well … I’m not exactly sure. Has anyone come by since you’ve been here?”
Darcy shrugged. “A nurse. Around eight. She took your blood pressure and temperature. You seemed pretty out of it, so I just let you go back to sleep. You don’t remember?”
“No.”
“You’ve been talking in your sleep. Mentioned some guy named Spencer. Isn’t he the guy you used to date?”
“Something like that. Have any of the doctors talked to you?”
Darcy shook her head. “None have come by.”
Nor would they anytime soon, Rita suspected. She had a feeling that, short of a medical emergency, Chase had declared her room a no-fly zone for her doctors—at least until tomorrow, when he and his bosses could figure out what the hell they were going to do with her next.
She could imagine the stories that would soon emerge. Alcoholic druggie surgeon butchers patient before collapsing in cocaine-induced stupor. People would eat it up. She almost felt sorry for Chase. How the hell was he going to spin that?
“So … you’re going to stay here in the hospital tonight?” Darcy asked.
Am I?
She gazed at the rain hammering away at the windowpane.
“Ree?”
The only way out is through.
“Hmmm?”
“You’re going to spend the night here?”
“Ummm … yes.”
Or … maybe not.
“Do you want me to stay?”