Bad for You (Sea Breeze #7)(63)

“Let’s get this place cleaned up. We can talk about it all later,” Trisha said, walking over to Rock.

I reached down and picked up some of the Sheetrock I had busted up. I had done a number on the place. I’d checked out mentally and lost it.

“Maybe you should take a picture of this place and send it to the preacher’s son. Bet he runs like hell,” Preston said as he tossed a piece of wood over into a pile.

“He better run fast” was all I said.

* * *

Green showed back up, and with the four of us working, it took five hours to clean the place out. Rock called a buddy of his that did Sheetrock to patch the place, and then he took Green to go replace the flat-screen and other necessary pieces of furniture we needed. I gave them my credit card and told them to put everything on there. I wasn’t letting Trisha and Rock pay for my shit.

It was evening by the time we were done and Green was getting ready to head to Live Bay. I couldn’t go. I wasn’t sure if I’d ever be able to go again. He wasn’t complaining. He said they had it under control. I let him deal with it.

Taking my seat at the window, I watched for her to come home. I called her phone again, and her recorded voice came on. I listened to her until the phone beeped, then I hung up. I’d left enough messages. So I sent her a text message instead.

PLEASE was all I could type. Then I hit send.

Chapter Twenty-Two

BLYTHE

The hospital wasn’t somewhere I was familiar with. I had only been inside one once, and it had been this one. I’d had pneumonia when I was eight. I remembered more about going to the hospital than the actual visit. Pastor Williams had taken me. I had been sick for days, but Mrs. Williams was saying that I was being lazy and didn’t want to do my chores.

Then one night I had heard them yelling at each other. It was the first and last time I had ever heard them fight, at least like that. Pastor Williams had come into my room, picked me up, and taken me to the hospital. They had admitted me, and then he had left. A week later he had picked me up, and I had gone home. No one had visited me that week. No one had brought me balloons like the other kids down the hall had been given. It had been just me and the television.

As I walked back through the doors of Token Memorial Hospital, that memory replayed in my head. Pastor Williams had seemed fierce that night. Like he was protecting me. But then he’d left me alone again. Maybe this was a pattern in my life.

“This way,” Linc said. He had already asked where we needed to go when he’d called earlier. Pastor Williams was still in the ICU, and he needed surgery. He had a blood clot. Surgery was risky, but if he didn’t have it, then there was a good chance he’d just have another heart attack due to blockage.

We took the elevator to the third floor and made a right into a large waiting room. Linc pointed to a chair. “Go have a seat. I’ll let them know we are here.”

I did as I was told. I had rather he handle it anyway. I didn’t want to talk to people.

“Blythe.” I glanced up to see several pairs of eyes on me. Members of the congregation. Of course. They would be here. No one ever really spoke to me. I was almost surprised they knew my name. I turned to look at Sylvia Bench, the church secretary for as long as I could remember. She had been the one to call my name.

“Hello,” I said, unsure what else they wanted from me. I was back in this world. The one where people ignored me or whispered about me. The one where I was an outcast and had evil inside me. Evil I had grown up wishing so hard I could get out of me.

“We wondered if you’d come,” Sylvia said, studying me through her round glasses that perched on the tip of her pointy nose. She wasn’t a nice person. I knew that much.

I wasn’t sure what she wanted me to say to that, either. I wasn’t sure if I would have come if I hadn’t just had my new world snatched from underneath me, but I was here because I was running.

“Blythe.” Linc was at my elbow, guiding me away from the chair I had been told to go to and out of the waiting room. What were we doing now? “I need to talk to you. It’s important.”

If he was about to tell me he had to leave, I wasn’t sure how I would handle that. I couldn’t stay here alone with these people. But now that I was here, could I just leave?

Linc pulled me around a corner and looked around to make sure no one was close enough to hear him. Then he turned to meet my curious gaze. He was acting weird. I wasn’t sure I could take another man acting weird on me and then unloading something on me I couldn’t handle. But then there wasn’t anything Linc could tell me that would shatter me the way Krit had. I was sure Linc couldn’t even hurt me.

“There’s a problem. I . . .” He rubbed his hand over his face and muttered a curse. I had never heard him curse before. “I shouldn’t be the one who has to tell you this. I don’t want to be the one. But . . . I think you would want to know. I mean . . . you have to know.” He made a frustrated noise in his throat, then he asked. “What’s your blood type?”

Was he kidding me? He was acting like this because he wanted to know my blood type? “B negative. It’s rare. Why?” I only knew this because we did blood typing in high school. My teacher had made a big deal out of my blood type. Most people had been O positive.

“Wow, yeah, okay. At any time in your life did you wonder why Pastor Williams and his wife were raising you?”