27. What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve?
What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve?
HENRY
I stood in the lobby of Sunshine Meadows with two bouquets of roses. The red roses were for Aidan. The deep pink roses were for Great Aunt Isla.
If either of them ever showed up.
In the next room, the party was in full swing. A live band played. Old folks danced. The smell of pigs in blankets wafted out the door. I shifted from foot to foot.
I’d turned my phone to silent and placed it in another room after I sent Alexa off with my painting of Aidan. I knew I’d be too tempted to check every couple of seconds for word from him.
I’d stayed up so late finishing the portrait that I ended up dozing off on the couch with the TV on. By the time I woke up, it was six thirty, and I had three missed calls and a voicemail from Aidan.
I raced to get ready, threw on a nice pair of slacks and a button-down shirt, gelled my hair, and hightailed it to the nearest shop that sold flowers.
I was right on time, but Aidan and Great Aunt Isla never showed at seven thirty nor at seven forty-five, and by eight, worry became my date for the evening.
I had wanted to give the two of them their space but there was only a half hour left of the party. They were going to miss it all.
At Great Aunt Isla’s door, I knocked four times, called out five. There was no answer. I tried the handle, and it gave way. Nobody was in the apartment, but most of the lights were on. Half of a cupcake lay top-down on the table. My growling stomach started sinking.
On my way back to the lobby, I passed Delilah in a party hat and a swoopy evening gown. “Delilah, have you seen my aunt?”
“Not since this morning. Is something the matter?” she asked.
Not wanting to ruin her evening, I said, “Just lost track of her, that’s all. Enjoy the party.”
Once out of sight, I rushed to the front desk, heart pinging around in the back of my throat. The person at the desk was Brock. “Hi, I’m looking for my aunt, Isla Attenborough. She told me to meet her in the lobby at seven thirty, but she never showed and she’s not in her room.”
“Oh, Ms. Attenborough? She signed out not too long ago in a rush. She’s at the hospital.”
“The hospital?! I’m her emergency contact! You call me when she de-wigs a woman who’s been harassing her but don’t think to call me when she’s at death’s door?!” I ended up crushing most of the bouquets in my fist from the force of the anger pinballing through me.
I ran out of the building as fast as I could, started my car, and skidded out of the parking lot in the direction of the nearest hospital.
If I pushed the speed limit a little, I was approximately ten minutes away.
With only the sound of the accelerator to keep my thoughts occupied, I started a mental list of who I was going to need to call since Great Aunt Isla was dying.
Mom, Dad, the aunts and uncles, the cousins, Mr. Potter, the landlord.
When was the last time Great Aunt Isla updated her will?
Was I named executor? I couldn’t recall.
By the time I parked, I was in a full frenzy. I whipped in there like a tornado on speed. “Hi. Hello. Please help me. I’m looking for Isla Attenborough. She came here from Sunshine Meadows Nursing Home. I’m her emergency contact!”
“Okay, sir,” said the brunette woman behind the desk. “I’m going to need you to take a breath. It’s going to be okay. Who are you looking for?”
“Isla Attenborough.” I spelled her last name once and then again, but the woman just shook her head.
“No one named Isla Attenborough is being treated here,” she said.
“Shit,” I muttered. Brock hadn’t said which hospital she’d gone to. I’d just assumed it was this one. “Can you please check again?”
“Sir, I assure you she’s not here. Now please calm down—”
“Yeah, doll, calm down.” Great Aunt Isla’s voice nearly gave me a heart attack.
She stood a few feet away in sweatpants and a robe. Her hair was half full of ridiculous pink curlers. Relieved, I threw myself into her arms. She smelled like salmon. “Oh, thank God. You’re okay. You’re here. Wait, they let you go? What’s going on? Are you okay?”
“Me? Oh, I’ve never been better,” she said.
“Oh, good.” I caught my breath before realization dawned on me. “Sorry, I’m confused. Why are you here then?”
“Aidan,” she said.
“Aidan! What happened? Where is he?” I asked, frantic once again.
“Currently, he’s in the ICU in room—”
I stopped listening after the floor and room number.
My heart worked double time to keep up with my speeding feet.
I spent the entire, seemingly endless elevator ride imagining a thousand horrendous scenarios.
Car accident. Slipped while getting out of the shower.
Tried to do a backflip to impress the elderly and landed on his head.
Each step I took reverberated with frenzied, erratic, nonsensical, real, true love. If I hadn’t verified it before, it was too apparent to brush aside now. The thought of losing him had the emotion pounding around me like incessant cymbal crashes.
Screams of agony and broken sobs emanated from the rooms I jogged past. Nurses brushed by me with carts.
708. 709. Ah!
I braced myself before entering Aidan’s room. Did he get burned? Did he break a bone? Was he in organ failure? Would I recognize him? Would he make it ? Uncertainty had me seconds away from crumbling.
Aidan was sitting up in a hospital bed, wearing the hell out of a flimsy paper gown, looking better than he had any right to under the buzzing low fluorescents. In his lap was a book he flipped through. He seemed… perfectly fine.
His lips were redder than normal and puffy like he’d gotten bad filler from a crooked esthetician.
The remnants of a splotchy rash speckled the inside of his forearm where an IV needle was taped down.
A slender tube swirled up to a hanging bag on a rolling stand.
Aidan’s throat had scratch marks up and down it.
Other than the occasional beep and the pervasive antiseptic smell, he seemed at home, fully engrossed in his reading as if nothing at all was wrong.
“Hello?” I called into the room.
He closed the book. “Henry! You found me! I left my phone at Isla’s. I hope you didn’t think I stood you up.”
My breathing settled a tad because of course he was more worried about my feelings than his health.
The world and I were undeserving of Aidan Smith, former mannequin.
I suddenly remembered the crushed roses on the passenger seat of my car.
Oh well. I rushed to his bedside and reached for his hand. He didn’t hesitate to give it to me.
“That doesn’t matter. Are you all right? What happened?” I asked, sitting on the edge of the bed, cautious of his outstretched legs.
“Walnuts happened,” he said, almost gleefully.
“What?” I asked.
“I need to add walnuts to my list of things that can kill me because I’m allergic to them.
Isla and Alexa brought me a maple walnut cupcake from a bakery they went to.
I ate it after dinner. It was delicious but deadly,” he said, voice pitching upward with a confusing yet endearing excitement.
“I thought the cold would kill me, but it was a cupcake that almost did me in! Isn’t that funny? ”
“You had a reaction?” I asked.
“A bad reaction. First, I was hot. Then, I was itchy. Then the walls of my throat felt like they were growing, and I couldn’t breathe.
Next thing I knew I was in the back of an ambulance and being stuck in the thigh with a needle that made me feel like someone soaked my nerves in coffee,” he said.
“Once we made it to the emergency room, ten people surrounded me, saying strange words like ‘triage’ and ‘vitals’ and ‘anaphylaxis.’ Isla was beside me the whole time. She’s really my guardian angel. ”
“Mine, too,” I croaked, suddenly choked up over how this story could’ve ended.
“Everything after that was sort of a blur. They moved me up here and the nice nurse with the braids told me I’ll need to stay overnight on the epinephrine drip to make sure nothing else goes wrong. She said I was lucky. She said I almost died.”
A tear fell from my eye. Aidan brushed it away with his thumb. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
“I’m ridiculously glad you’re okay. I’m trying to process it all.” Our gazes met. He inched forward in bed, so I took the opportunity to plant a soft kiss on his sensitive lips.
At that moment, Great Aunt Isla arrived. She carried a big-eyed teddy bear and a GET WELL SOON balloon. She must’ve been on her way to the gift shop when she saw me at the front desk. “Sorry to interrupt. It wouldn’t be a hospital stay without a memento of the occasion.”
Aidan hugged the teddy bear to his chest. “I love it. Thank you.”
I hugged Great Aunt Isla again. “Thank you for taking care of him.”
“It was my pleasure. My honor, really,” she said. A latent maternal instinct simmered in her eyes. I hugged her again, harder this time. “I’m sure you two have some catching up to do. I’ll be off in search of a vending machine.”
A hush fell over us. There was almost too much to say that we couldn’t say anything. We sat there staring at each other, blinking in time with the persistent staccato beeps from the machine he was hooked up to.
The tears fell again without my permission. “I’m sorry,” I said.
“For crying?”
“For what I said to you on Christmas. For making you feel like you weren’t enough to be loved and be human.
That was anger spurred by insecurity and fear that had absolutely nothing to do with you, and I shouldn’t have taken it out on you,” I said.
“I was wrong for treating you the way I did. When you proposed, I was shocked. At first, I was shocked because you had the ring and were playing out this fantasy. But then, I was shocked because you had this interior life. You’d developed this whole set of values and decision-making skills and that meant you wouldn’t need me forever, and even if you grew to love me that didn’t mean you’d love me forever. ”