by Eden Butler
“What do you need from me?” I asked the doctor, turning away, putting my back to the hallway when two nurses slowed to glance at me. I didn’t need curious attention. Not now.
“There’s a private room you can wait in.” He nodded toward a door marked “Reserved” just down the hall. “We’ll take good care of him.”
“Yeah, thanks,” I said, feeling a little helpless.
Two more women in scrubs passed me, but other than a quick glance, they didn’t gawk. Still, I hurried to move down the hall, nodding a greeting at the large woman with a volunteer badge pinned to her collar who manned the small waiting room desk.
“You can go on in, Mr. Vega. Dr. Campbell says there shouldn’t be anyone there to disturb you this time of night.” For once, I was grateful for the small bit of preferential treatment that came my way.
“Thanks,” I said, digging out my phone when it alerted me to a text. Jimmy had returned to my apartment to clean up the mess, the only thing he promised he was good at when it came to Wills’ sickness. I settled into the room, falling into a small leather chair near the window.
There were tables around the room, and two long couches that divided a row of wood cabinets, a counter with a microwave, and a French-door fridge. On the other side of the room there was another door with a sign that read “Doctors Only,” and I understood that this was likely the doctor’s lounge, and that room was probably the on-call room. But no one seemed to be around, and so I climbed across the long couch, resting my feet on the end, and covered my eyes with my arm, trying like hell not to worry too much about how sick my father really was.
I might have slept for days, but the sun shined across my closed eyelids and the sound of a woman yelling a complaint woke me. There were two guys in scrubs eating their breakfast, taking turns glancing from their phones, to each other and back up at the television and some broadcast on The Weather Channel as I jerked awake.
A quick glance at the clock told me it was nearing 10:00 a.m., which meant Wills’ surgery had long since finished up, and no one had bothered to give me an update. But when the shouting started up again, I forgot everything but the loud refrain of her voice and how impossible that it was she was on the other side of that door.
“He wanted me here,” Iris said, and I caught the irritation in her tone. “Just tell me how he is.”
“As I mentioned before, ma’am, I can only release information about a patient to family, and, unfortunately, you are not related to Mr. Lager.”
“For shit’s sake…”
“I’ll thank you not to curse at me,” the older woman snapped, and I jumped off the couch, ignoring the looks I got from the two doctors at the table as I slid my shades out of my pocket and over my face. When I opened the door, I spotted a volunteer, this one older than the woman who’d staffed the desk the night before, standing in front of her chair, her face red and blotchy. “If you want information on Mr. Lager’s condition, I suggest you ask his son.”
Iris followed the woman’s finger as she pointed at me, though I had no idea how this woman knew who I was. My focus went to Iris then, and it felt like everything in that moment slowed into seconds and then milliseconds when she turned to face me. I held my breath, watching her, feet frozen where I stood, even as one of the doctor’s moved to my side to leave the room behind me. It was only when Iris’s expression shifted from anger to fury that I made a move. I felt stupid, awkward waving my arm, the movement really half an attempt to defend myself if she decided to punch me. I couldn’t go on gawking at her, mouth dropped open like she was some sort of angel come to life.
And she was. Hair still thick, shiny, and black like a raven’s feather. Her face was lit with a pink color, and her eyes were bright, shining with what I guessed was that constant fury, usually directed at me.
“Iris…” I tried, my shoulder moving as the last doctor left the breakroom and brushed my arm.
It must have taken all her control, all the wells of patience I knew she had, to walk across that hall and stand in front of me. But she didn’t scream at me like her mother had. She didn’t call me filthy names or curse my life. What Iris did was worse: she smiled, brushing her hair off her shoulder like I was some stranger she had to pretend to like.
“How is he?” she asked, stepping to the side of the nurse’s station as an orderly moved down the hall, pushing a gurney.
“He caught an infection,” I heard myself saying. My mouth moved, the information came out, but my shaded gaze stuck to her features, soaking in the smooth, perfect arch of her cheeks and that tempting full pout of her mouth. God I wanted to touch her. I wanted to hug her and hold her and kiss her all over.
“And?” she tried, some of that forced sweetness breaking.
“Ah,” I swallowed, stretching my neck. “He had surgery early this morning, but I haven’t gotten an update. They had to get rid of the infected tissue.” If I looked over her head, to the activity behind her, I wouldn’t get caught in the vortex of her face. I’d be able to speak and function like a normal man and not some lovestruck pendejo. “The doctor said it can happen sometimes with dialysis. But that’s all I know.”
She watched me then, arms folded, the fringe from the long shawl she wore bouncing against her leg as she tapped her foot. “And they haven’t told you how the surgery went?” I shook my head, unable to keep my thoughts straight when she looked at me like that. “Lord…” she said through a sigh. “Take those stupid glasses off so I can see you.”
“Ah…” I shot a glance around the hall then froze when Iris tilted her head, reaching for my shades, but I stepped back, pulling them off my face before she touched me.
“God, you look like shit,” she said, the sweetness of her fake greeting gone now. “I hope you’ve been taking better care of Wills than you have yourself.” She glanced at the volunteer, then down the hallway, straightening when a group of doctors came around the corner. “Is Wills’ doctor any of those guys?”
I stepped next to her, moving my head to look down the hallway. “The Indian guy in the green scrubs.”
“Come on,” she said, grabbing at my sleeve before she moved ahead of me and straight at the doctor.
When Iris wanted something, she got it, plain and simple, and at the moment what she wanted was information. All the information. The poor doctor looked a little flustered as she kept at him, holding her cell in one hand, while she glanced down at the article she read and back up at him.
“And the infection was caused by…”
“Could be a number of factors, actually,” he said, holding Wills’ chart between his hands.
“But he’s been under your care while getting dialysis. Was there a problem with the injection site?”
“Iris…”
“Ma’am, I’m sure you have a lot of questions, as does Mr. Vega.” The doctor stepped to the side as a nurse wheeled a cart of clean linens and dressings into Wills’ room. My father was passed out on the bed, still sleeping off the anesthesia from the surgery. “Right now we’re trying to get the fever down and to normalize his blood pressure. The surgery was a success, and if everything goes right, Mr. Lager will probably be discharged tomorrow morning.”
“But won’t he be…”
“Excuse me,” the doctor said when someone at the nurse’s station called him over.
“This is bullshit,” Iris said, stepping to the window of my father’s room. “He looks worse than he did when I saw him last.”
“When was that?” I asked, standing at her side, not surprised when she didn’t answer.
“And you,” she grunted, turning to glare at me. “He needs a damn transplant. Why won’t you give him your kidney?”
“You think I haven’t tried? That gringo won’t take it.” My skin felt electrified with how intensely she stared at me, but I played it off, turning to watch the nurse inside Wills’ room tending to him.
“Stubborn ass men…” she mumbled, and I didn’t bother hiding my smile, wondering if she�
�d return it. She didn’t. Instead Iris rubbed her shoulders, eyes wide, worried, and I watched her, my chest burning, my fingers aching to touch her.
She was starlight, bright and brilliant and out of my fucking reach. There was a hardness to those beautiful features now, a glint of something distant I’d never be able to take from her face.
Didn’t mean I wouldn’t try.
“You good, mami?”
The endearment bothered her, had Iris jerking a glare my way, and I couldn’t decide if I loved or hated it.
“Don’t.” It was all she said, all that seemed able to move beyond the anger and bitterness that had tightened the muscles around her mouth. I did that. I’d caused all that rage, all that venom. I should take it for the medicine it was; gulp it down because I deserved it. But Iris was my past, the sweetest and best part of who I hoped like hell I could be again. More than that, she was my end game, my forever more. I’d do anything to have her back, anything at all to deserve her again.
I took two steps—slow, careful, like she was a landmine easily triggered by the wrong words, the wrong look from me. The closer I came, the straighter her back went, and I knew not to push. She hated me, and I understood why. I got that I’d done something unforgiveable.
“If saying sorry was enough, it’d be the first thing I’d utter every time I opened my mouth.”
She kept silent, looking between Wills and the nurses as they shuffled around their reception area, thumbing through files, answering phones. I could only watch her, profile sharp, face tense, but none of that lessened the beautiful lines of her face or the sweet swell of precise features that gave her the look of a statue—something formed with love and care, something far too beautiful for this ugly world.
Coño, I sounded like a pendejo.
Blinking brought images straight to my mind of Iris and me, her laughter, her smile, and how many times I’d put it there; how often it was my words, my music, my jokes that kept her face lit up and happy. But that had been a long damn time ago, and I hadn’t been the cause of anything remotely similar to those expressions lately.
“Sorry means nothing,” she started, focusing still on the activity around us. “Especially when it comes alone.” She nodded once, and her voice was tight, the inflection shaking with what felt like anger to me. “Words are just words, sounds and syllables that fade to nothing. Actions. Deeds. Those are the things that matter.”
“Tell me what to do,” I said, moving closer than I should have, making Iris step away from me. “Please.”
Iris inhaled, wetting her lips with her tongue before she shot one sharp, furious glare at me. “Forget you know me, and for God’s sake, Jamie, leave me the hell alone.”
The click of her boots sounded like slaps against my face as she moved down the hallway, further and further away, and I fought the urge to chase after her. Her hair was longer now, sliding against her back, grazing her waist as she moved. I wanted to tangle all that hair between my fingers. I wanted to know if that honeysuckle scent still hung in her hair.
“Sorry,” I told her, knowing she was too far away to hear me. “You can’t forget the only good you’ve ever known, mami.” I walked forward, scrubbing my face as I watched her. “Forgetting you is the last thing I can do.”
Chapter Eight
The fever kept Wills in a bad mood and in the hospital for two more days, all of which was spent listening to him berate the doctors for being “complete eejits” and me for hanging around and not being at my own place working on songs that would encourage my label not to give me the boot.
“What am I paying Jimmy for, if the wanker can’t stomach a little sickness? Jaysus!”
“Caught a cold,” I told him, sitting up in the chair next to his bed, pulling a deck of cards from my pocket. “The doctor won’t let him around you until he’s not sneezing his head off and your fever is gone.”
“Bleeding ridiculous.” Wills waved me off, seeming uninterested in another round of poker when I offered him the deck. “It’s due to his desert temperament,” Wills scoffed, elbowing the pillow behind him then frowning when I got up to fix it.
“Desert temperament?” I ignored the frown, used to his bad mood already. It hadn’t even been a month since my father invaded my life, and already I knew his moods.
“He’s from New Mexico, you see. All this,” he pointed out of the window to the fresh layer of snow that coated the ground, “is a detriment to his western sensibilities.” I sat back down, nodding to let him know I caught his meaning and did a piss poor job of hiding the yawn that moved over my mouth. “You need rest,” he said, leaning against his pillow as he watched me. “And bloody time out of this place.”
“De nada,” I told my father, stretching out my legs next to his bed. “I’ve got nothing better to do.”
“Bollocks,” Wills said, folding his arms tight. “You’ve got a song to finish, and don’t you have a show to do? In a month or so?”
I cracked open an eye, watching my father’s face as he pouted and glared. “Nearly three months…”
“It’s for me, is it not? I’ll not have my own flesh and blood embarrassing me by sounding like he hasn’t performed in an age.”
“I’ll be ready…” I protested, but he wouldn’t let me lay the excuses thick and heavy. Fact was, my manager had phoned three days ago to tell me that the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was inducting Hawthorne, and they wanted me to perform at the tribute. When Wills learned about this, his first reaction was to refuse it.
“I’ll not be around those tossers…” and then I blocked what other foul things he had to say about his band. Like me, Wills had alienated his bandmates, though I didn’t have half his excuse. I was a pendejo who played a video of me and Iris having sex during one of our shows, just to humiliate her more than I already had. Wills was dying and didn’t want his bands’ pity. It was me reminding him of the real reason he didn’t want them around that had changed his mind.
“Fine, but I won’t be propped up like some half-dead arsehole in that balcony. You’ll make sure of it?”
“Of course.”
My father leaned up on his elbow, pointing a finger at me, the IV moving as he gestured. “You see that you’re in top form. Show those arseholes at your label that you’ve got a shed load more inside you.” He relaxed, looking exhausted. “Show them that you’re more than the bloody stage paint and filthy insults.”
Truth was, I didn’t know if I was more than that. I wasn’t sure if I could get on that stage and stand in front of all those people, pretending I was nothing more than a fan. At my core, that’s who I was to Wills. A fan. An admirer. It didn’t matter that he’d made me. It didn’t even matter that I’d followed in his footsteps. Even if Wills had never spoken a word to me, he sang my childhood. He’d never known it, but he’d shaped and molded the musician I was. How could I lay down the mantle, the veil I wrapped myself in every time I hit the stage, and sing for my father? I’d never measure up and didn’t want to try.
The room had gone quiet, and I relaxed again when Wills started snoring. I couldn’t sleep, though I was bone tired. I couldn’t do much else but worry—about the induction, about Isaiah bringing the band to see me at the end of the week, about Iris. Mainly, I worried that she’d left Willow Heights without saying a word. I worried that she’d made an appearance to check on Wills and then had taken off, ready to put this town and me behind her. Couldn’t blame her.
The door swung open slowly, the small creak of the hinges barely making a sound, but growing loud enough that it pulled my attention from the ceiling where I kept staring without blinking. Iris’s gaze went straight to Wills, and at spotting her, I jerked up from my seat, holding the door wider to let her in.
“Fever down?” she asked, not looking away from his bed.
“Some,” I finished, moving my jacket off the back of the chair so she could sit. “But they just gave him another IV. They’re hoping it won’t be long now.” I didn’t know what to do with my
hands or where to fucking look. Iris walked further in, dropping her large bag to the floor next to the chair and leaned over Wills, touching his forehead before she squeezed his hand.
“He’s out,” I told her, stepping the bed to watch her across the mattress. “When he starts snoring, there’s no getting him up. Trust me, I’ve been hearing it for a month. Dude’s a hard sleeper.”
Still, she didn’t look at me, deciding, it seemed, to fall back into the chair and pull her legs up against her chest. “I can stay for a while. I know you’ve been here all night and day.”
“How do you know?” I asked, tilting my head when she pulled out her laptop and started powering it up. “I haven’t…”
“I called Jimmy to check up on Wills.”
“Jimmy.”
There must have been something in my voice that sounded off. It did at least to me. But Iris finally looked up at me, face twisted up in confusion. “What?”
“I just…” There was nothing I could say, no way of saying it that wouldn’t make me sound like a jealous, irrational prick, but my pride got the better of me. “Why didn’t you call me to ask about him?”
“You?” She looked genuinely confused, as though the question was the most ridiculous thing I could have uttered. When I shrugged, she sat up straight, adjusting herself in the chair before she dismissed me, looking back at her laptop. “Jimmy has been my point of contact for almost a year. Since Paris. Why wouldn’t I call him?”
