After Hours (InterMix)(108)

I shook my head. “Just the company’s been awesome. Really.”

He nodded. “Gimme a call if you hear any updates. If you want. Or if you need anything. I’m only ten minutes’ drive.”

“Thanks, Kel. I will.”

I watched until he turned a corner, then I was alone again. But I felt okay. Though his body was gone, it felt as if he’d draped me in some psychic jacket before he went, a lingering, comforting presence.

Amber returned shortly from a talk with the doctor. I stayed with her until six, when Jack’s condition got officially upgraded to stable. We cried a bunch, the whole scene feeling trippy and unreal from the lack of sleep and the overdose of emotion. I did as Amber insisted, and gave myself permission to go home and crash.

My eyes were so dried out from crying, my head so foggy, I didn’t feel entirely safe, driving. But the roads were deserted, no one around to get pissed if I went ten miles under the limit. I got home just after six thirty, so tired my bones ached. I left a message on Dennis’s direct line, telling him I was sorry, but there was a family emergency and I didn’t know if I’d be in for my shift, but I’d call when I knew.

Fully clothed and with my sneakers still laced, I flopped across my covers. Sleep hit me like a mallet, a dull thump full of mercy and peace.





Chapter Seventeen


I slept until noon, nearly, waking with a leaden gutful of fear as the previous night��s memories cleared away the initial confusion.

Two missed calls from Dennis sank the dread deeper. But the first was from around seven, just him telling me to play things by ear, the second left a little before ten, saying an extra tech had been called in and to not worry about work, just do what I had to do, let him know if I thought I’d be in tomorrow when I had a minute.

I spent the rest of the day at the hospital, long enough for Amber and I to complete a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle, and for me to leave on various errands—to fetch drops for her tear-pickled eyes, a pillow, better sandwiches than the hospital’s café offered. A stack of glossy magazines, always her balm when she’d been stuck home with a flu herself. We weren’t allowed in the ICU for more than twenty minutes every couple hours, and it was killing her. But doctors and nurses came into the waiting room with updates now and then, Jack’s prognosis getting brighter and brighter as the day went on, unclenching my heart one puckered cell at a time.

After a yawn-filled dinner in the hospital café, Amber ordered me to go home.

“Only if you’re sure.”

“I’m sure. I’m so sleepy, I barely know what I’m even saying. Jack’s stable, and you’ve got work in the morning.”

“I’ll call in, if you need me.”

“No, you go. I can handle this.”

I smiled, knowing she was right—she could handle this herself—and realizing it was high time we both started accepting that.

“Plus if Marco shows up . . .” She tossed up her hands and blew a raspberry. “I’ve got enough of an earful to give him, without you getting him even more wound up, just being here. No offense. Not your fault or anything. Just . . .”

“I know.” I reached across the table and took her hand. “You know you can do way, way better than him, right?”

She pursed her lips, then nodded. “Yeah, I do. Sometimes I doubt it, but after all this . . . I met your boyfriend exactly once before this, and it wasn’t such a hot time. But he still showed up last night. I know he came for you, but he came. Marco didn’t come, not for me or his son. You’ve got a good man, Erin. I wish I could say the same.”

I wished I could, too. “He’s not my boyfriend.”

She sighed. “So you keep saying. But he must be something special, to spend the night at the ER with us.”

“Yeah, I guess he is.” I knew he was.

“It’s better to not have anybody, than somebody who sucks,” Amber concluded, a fat tear slipping down her cheek. I held her hand tighter and another fell, as though I’d squeezed it out of her.

“But it’s scary having no one,” she said. “And lonely. And . . .” She laughed, looking sheepish. “And boring. But maybe I ought to get better at being bored. Before I wake up and realize I’m Mom.”

I nodded. “And you don’t have ‘no one.’ You have me and Jack.”

“Yeah, I know.”