Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 76713 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 384(@200wpm)___ 307(@250wpm)___ 256(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76713 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 384(@200wpm)___ 307(@250wpm)___ 256(@300wpm)
I wasn’t allowed up to the ICU with her, and she visibly tensed at the idea of having to go alone.
“I’ll be right here,” I promised her, waving toward the seating area. “When you’re done, come right down to me, okay?”
“Okay,” she agreed, nodding, then turning and walking stiffly toward the elevators just a few feet away.
Then and only then did I pull out my phone.
I ignored the calls and texts from my brothers.
But immediately opened the one from, of all people, Aurelio.
Aurelio was Lucky, Sofia, Milo, and Elisa’s brother.
A cousin.
Not someone I typically heard from on some random day out of nowhere.
Where are you? Luca and Nino sent me.
Fuck.
I guess I was going to have to face consequences a lot sooner than I’d anticipated.
Hospital, I texted back.
Then waited.
It wasn’t long before he made his way down the hall toward me.
There was no mistaking the family resemblance between Lucky, Aurelio, and Milo.
All were tall, black-haired and fit. Aurelio had warm brown eyes and lashes that chicks were always commenting on. The last few years had put a small bit of gray in his hair and chiseled out his jawline even more than usual.
“Tell me she’s worth all the shit you are going to get for this,” he said, dropping down in the chair next to mine.
“She was in trouble. I had to help her,” I said.
“She in here?” he asked, waving around at the hospital in general.
“No. Her old man.”
“This sounds like a long story,” he decided.
“It is,” I agreed.
“I’m getting coffee first then,” he said, moving down the hall toward the machine.
Then when he came back, I launched into it.
“I see,” he said when I was done recounting everything that seemed pertinent. And quite a few things that definitely weren’t.
Like the pussy cookies.
And how she bristled when I ordered a to-go coffee then sat in the cafe to drink it. That’s a waste of a paper cup. You could have gotten a ceramic one instead.
“Alright,” Aurelio said, nodding before taking sip of the bitter coffee. “Well, you’re stuck with me now until you figure this shit out.”
“As what? My babysitter?”
“How about we call me a… mentor?” he suggested with a smirk. “Less degrading for the both of us.”
“Mentor,” I repeated, and was about to say something else.
When the stairwell door opened and slammed.
And there she was.
Looking like she was seconds away from breaking into a million little pieces.
CHAPTER FOUR
Traveler
I was a little… let’s go with ‘overwhelmed.’
It was the closest I could get to explaining how I felt as I walked on shaky legs into the elevator, and had the doors close me in, creating an unexpected surge of adrenaline.
My mouth went dry as my throat started to tighten enough for my hand to move there, pressing against my neck as my heartbeat started to hammer relentlessly against my ribcage.
What the hell was going on?
A cold sweat broke out on my arms, back, chest even as I started to feel a little light-headed.
The door chime nearly made me jump out of my skin.
But then the doors were sliding open, and the pressure on my throat and the relentless thrumming of my pulse eased back like the fog when met with daylight.
I stepped back out of the elevator and onto the intensive care unit. Two steps out of the elevator, it was like the event never even happened.
A panic attack.
That was… new.
I’d always been pretty laid-back, go-with-the-flow, the proverbial duck with the water sliding off its back. I wasn’t even sure I’d ever felt anxiety before, let alone an actual panic attack.
Over nothing.
Well, no. Not nothing. An enclosed elevator.
It didn’t take a genius to conclude that I seemed to suddenly have a bit of a fear of small spaces.
Claustrophobia.
Because of the oven and the men outside of it.
Great.
Just great.
A shiny new phobia to go with the rest of the shit I was already dealing with.
“Can I help you?” the nurse standing at the station a few feet from the elevator, but before the door leading to the unit, asked.
“I, ah, I’m Traveler. My father, James Moon, is here,” I said, the words feeling strange coming out of my mouth.
My father.
In the ICU.
My father, a man I’d never seen have so much as a cold, was in a coma in a bed in the intensive care unit.
The nurse rattled off the same things I’d heard on the phone, then led me into the unit where I was given one of those paper onesie things, gloves, and a mask, and allowed inside my father’s room.
“Talk to him,” the nurse encouraged, then left me to go inside by myself.
I paused, taking a deep breath, then forced my feet forward.
This wasn’t how it was supposed to be.
The first time I saw my father in over a year, and he had tubes sticking out of him.
I pushed back those thoughts, knowing they were a little selfish. This wasn’t about me and my discomfort. This was about my father.