I swallowed past the burning in my throat. “Is my dad here?”
“I think he’s the gentleman sacked out on our waiting-room couch. Devoted guy, your father.”
I half smiled. “He is.” After my mother’s disappearing act when I was five, it seemed like he tried to love me twice as much so I wouldn’t feel the sting. It still stung. What he didn’t realize was that twice as much love was like wearing twice as many seat belts. His love was starting to feel like a five-point harness.
“Knock, knock.” My father stood in the doorway. His pants were a wrinkled mess, as was his shirt. His tie was gone, and one sleeve was rolled up to his elbow; the other flopped around his wrist. It was alarming to see his meticulousness so spoiled. He ran his fingers through his salty black hair and walked to my bedside, nodding politely to the nurse as she left. “How’re you feeling?”
“Tired. I swear they checked my temperature every hour last night. As if anyone could sleep on this icebox anyway.” I fixated on the slow drip of IV fluid streaming into my arm. “And you were here, right? You took blood samples from me.” My eyes flickered up to meet his. “Why?”
“I did,” he admitted, grudgingly. Were all scientists trained to be vague in case they couldn’t prove their hypotheses?
“But you study outer space, not inner.”
He smiled, wry and sparing. “They’re not as different as you think, kiddo.” He ran his hand over my forehead, a temperature check concealed in a gesture of affection. “I wanted to run some tests of my own. You’ve been very sick, honey.”
His answer gave as much satisfaction as chewing on air. “Tests of your own?” I pressed. “And why did Janelle ask if my sickness had anything to do with my mom?”
“Janelle was worried, grasping. This has nothing to do with Grace.” He sighed as if her name was heavy coming off his tongue. “There have been some mysterious deaths, not anything the general public needs to know about yet, but I’m on a team that’s working to find out what might be the cause. Keep that between us, okay? I took your blood as a precaution.” He shrugged like, can you blame me? I’m your father. “Your hospital tests aren’t back yet. They still don’t know what’s wrong with you. There was one point when they weren’t sure—” Dad’s voice cut out before continuing. “Losing you, Cora— I’m not sure I could’ve dealt with it. Not you.”
We stared into each other’s eyes, saying all the words we never said aloud about loss, about fear for the other’s safety. About love. It was an old, silent conversation we’d shared at different times over the years. Though lately, our real conversations had become a little more combative since I realized we were on opposite sides in a war of independence.
Dad broke the silence, his eyes glassy. “Thank heavens you’re a fighter.”
Strange that Dad would call me a fighter. Me? The quiet, introspective book lover. No one had ever called me a fighter before. I barely remembered the last twelve hours. I had been in another place, floating in and out of consciousness.
What part of me did the fighting?
Dad bent over and placed a gentle kiss on my head. As he straightened, a fuzz of light formed around his head, undulating like heat waves on pavement, as though he were going to slowly rise up into the ceiling.
I recalled the strange man from last night. A chill passed over me. I didn’t exactly have a handle on the past few hours, but I remembered being scared down to my soul. Did I have what people called a near-death experience? If so, there was anything but love and peace in the white light.
I reached for my dad. “My eyes are funny.”
He squeezed my hand. “You’re tired. As soon as the doctor is done with us, I’ll make sure they let you sleep for a good chunk, okay? I’ll go find her now.”
I nodded and blinked, but still the distortion around my dad persisted. Even as he walked to the door to look for the doctor, the hazy light followed him, seemed part of him. He was mountain and he was mist. I closed my eyes. I was just tired.
Janelle made a drive-by visit, a Tasmanian devil with control issues and impeccable nails, dropping off folders of schoolwork, neatly grouped by color and stacked by due date. She had already arranged a makeup date for my missed math test. She exhausted me, but I appreciated her efforts. I was happy when Dad had finally remarried five years ago. He deserved to have a life, and I had hoped it’d take his focus off me so I could have one, too. That hadn’t exactly panned out.
Just when I began to sink back into my pillows, the door swung open again, and I couldn’t have been more surprised by who entered. Of course, I knew of Finn Doyle. The whole school knew of the intriguing new student from Ireland. Despite the fact that he was from the place of my birth, and that I’d cultivated a robust obsession with Ireland since my dad moved us to the States when I was little, I’d never tried to get to know him.
Finn Doyle had unfortunate taste in friends.
He was one of them. The banal, popular crowd I found so irritating. I nicknamed them the VIPs. (Vapid. Irritating. Populars.)
I gaped at Finn in his striped volunteer apron as he neared my bed, while trying to ignore the cloud of colors surrounding him. It wasn’t unpleasant, though. Kind of like the sun was setting over his shoulders.
“A guy candy striper?”
“That’s surprisingly discriminatory. The family friend I’m staying with, who since birth has been male, works here as a lab tech. And I do believe your doctor is a woman. I’m willing to bet the world’s ready to accept a guy candy striper,” Finn said in his thick Irish accent. He followed through with a wide, teasing smile.
There was something so focused about him as he spoke to me, it was unsettling. I scowled, getting on my own nerves for allowing Finn Doyle to make me self-conscious. I did my best to avoid the VIPs at all times. They were like soul sandpaper. Some of my humanity rubbed off with each interaction.
It didn’t matter that Finn had been in the States as a foreign-exchange student for only a couple months. They’d snatched him up and adopted him the minute he landed. Gorgeous guy from Ireland with impossibly adorable accent equaled immediate in with the VIPs.
“I’ll have you know a guy can deliver flowers as well as a girl can,” Finn continued. “Perhaps better.” He gave a slight bow and whipped a bouquet of daisies from behind his back. My dad always gave me daisies. “More flourish and technique.”
An insufferably amused smile curled the corners of his full lips. I noted a dimple on his left cheek and added it to the list of his irksome qualities. I looked away from him, out the window, anywhere else.
“I’ve seen you around school before,” he said thoughtfully. “You seem different somehow, up close.”
Did he have to point it out? “I’ve been sick.” I was sure he heard the word “moron” at the end of my sentence, even if I didn’t say it.
“Right. Well, I imagine being in the hospital would make anyone cross. Or is this your normal disposition?” he asked, setting the flowers on the bedside table and arranging a few stems to his liking.
I glanced sideways at him. “Yes.”
Finn leaned in and adjusted my pillow. He was so close I could see the faintest hint of a tattoo reaching up from his chest to his neck. I had an intense, irrational desire to know what the tattoo was, and it was all I could do to fight the forceful urge to pull his T-shirt collar down for a better look.
Finn smiled a pirate’s smile, rogue and full of mischief. His gaze flitted from my hand back to my eyes, and I realized I had grabbed Finn’s T-shirt and still had it wound tightly in my fist.