Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
Kit
Everyone forgets that hospitals all smell like resignation—disinfectant, metal, and bad decisions hanging in the air like a song stuck in the wrong key—until we step back into one of them.
It’s as if we delete the scent the moment we leave the building, but when we enter again with another emergency, the scent hits harder.
Every hospital I visit feels almost the same.
The sterile stench, the whiteness, and the hum from the fluorescent lights.
My shoe squeaks, and there’s the occasional cough that sounds like a warning.
I’m not ready for this, but I keep walking, heels tapping out a nervous tempo against the linoleum floor.
Four-four time. The rhythm of someone pretending to be composed.
I’m a woman in control, but I’m not. In fact, I’m actually losing my sanity. Focus on the outside, Kit. You can’t have a panic attack in the middle of a crisis. Everyone is counting on you—including Connor Dempsey.
Find five things that start with L. That’s grounding, right? That’s something.
Linoleum. Fake shine, real grit. It’s probably older than I am.
There are the lights. Fucking fluorescent and aggressive, buzzing like swarming bees that might sting you if you’re not careful.
There’s a lab coat. And . . . I can’t find anything else, maybe my lipstick.
And there are lies. The ones I tell anyone if they ask, “Are you okay?”
I pass a vending machine filled with stale peanut butter crackers and a row of blue plastic.
Bernice meets me just outside the ICU, notebook in hand, lips pressed into a line so thin it could slice. She’s never been warm—more efficient than empathetic, she’s one of those people who files grief under “G” and schedules mourning between budget reviews.
“Kit, sweetheart. I’m glad you’re here,” she says with a nod that doubles as a summons. “I hope you brought a notebook.”
I want to ask if she ever just starts with a simple, “Hello, how are you?”
Instead, I follow her down the hallway anyway, past half-wilted plants and fluorescent lights. It seems like a private conference room has been temporarily converted into a staging area for Dad’s business affairs. It smells like coffee left too long in the pot and sadness.
Papers are scattered across a long table beneath flickering bulbs that make everything appear harsher than it should. I stand next to the seat across from Bernice, and for a second, it feels like I’ve been summoned to the principal’s office.
Wouldn’t it be better if I see my father first? The question lingers at the edge of my mouth. But she’ll argue. She always does. She’ll tell me this is what he’d want—get the business over with before the emotional wreckage.
Bernice slides a stack of manila folders across the table toward me.
The tabs have several names I recognize. Some I used to fight for. Some I helped scout when I was seventeen and still believed I’d belong in this world. Bernice asks me to sit down, which is obviously not a good sign. I do because, knowing her, she won’t talk until I do.
“Your father left instructions,” she says. “He named you interim director of D I should be with him.
Instead, I’m dealing with whatever he wishes, which she believes is more important. Knowing Dad, he’d agree.
“That can’t be right.” I finally string a few words together.
“Kit, he signed the paperwork two years ago. Witnessed. Notarized. His lawyer will confirm it. If anything ever happened to him, you were to take over. Until he gets better. Or if he died, you have the option to find someone more suitable, but preferably, you should keep the place in the family.”
Okay, so this was his plan all along, and he made sure Bernice would be following it right away. This makes more sense than the whole he spoke while he was being taken to the hospital—or whatever it is that she mentioned. I already forgot.
“No.” I push away from the table. My chair skids back with a squeal.
“I’m not becoming him. I teach piano lessons.
I run the vintage shop, and Aunt Tilly left me with records and books.
The heater is cracked, and the front door barely closes unless you push it just right, but it’s mine.
I don’t do contracts. Or talent meltdowns. Or monitor mix-tantrums.”
“You’re the only one who knows his roster, his language—most of all, his rhythm.”
She leans in like she’s about to confess a sin.
“Kit, your father built this agency for you. He just didn’t know how to say it.”
I press my fingers to my temples. They throb from the scream I swallow. So, this is guilt. Coated in professionalism. Laced with legacy.
D&D Talent Agency is his creation. I had nothing to do with it and don’t plan to deal with it either. Who in their right mind would want to babysit other people’s music careers? If I didn’t want to deal with mine, why would I want to fix theirs?
“There are others,” I mutter weakly. “Junior agents. You.”
I almost flinch because he’s never made her responsible for anything, even when she has a lot of knowledge. One time, she threatened to quit if she wasn’t promoted. I heard the complaint but never the solution since she’s still his assistant.
“He chose you.” Her voice has a hint of bitterness behind it. We probably think the same. She’s a lot more qualified, but there’s no other option. I have to be the one. “Not because you’re his daughter. Because you see the music.”
I know I’m going to regret what I’m about to say, but it should only be temporary. My father is going to get better, right? “What do you need from me?” My voice comes out low. Ragged.
She flips open the folder. Bands. Solo acts. Broken contracts. Half-finished albums.
She rattles off names—some familiar, some forgotten. And then she drops it.
“Let’s start with him. Roderick Wilder.”
I sit again. It’s so hard. The chair groans as if it wants no part in this—me neither, but we’ll have to deal.
Or . . . what if she’s wrong? What if he’s no longer with us?
There have been rumors that his career was over and that he was in rehab.
Okay, the rehab rumors have been going on for years.
Alcohol is his best friend. Drugs are his permanent companions—allegedly.
“He’s still playing?”
The question barely makes it past my lips. It’s not real—not really. More reflex than curiosity, like my brain trying to buy time before his name crashes through me, dredging up everything I’ve tried to bury.
His career flatlined two years ago. It didn’t just fade away—it plummeted, spectacularly, like a plane that never quite got off the ground. Just like what happened to many grunge bands who couldn’t transcend. Cleo just pulled him out of rehab. Why are we doing this?
Are they aware of his situation?
“I thought Dad was done with him after the Rolling Stone disaster seven years ago.”
He wasn’t finished with him after what he did to me. Nope. He said I should be able to separate the personal from the business. It was a big ‘fuck you, Kit.’ His priorities will always be his business and his clients.
“Your father never dropped him.”
“No. I’m pretty sure they—” I stop short. My throat dries out. “They weren’t working together anymore.”
Bernice tilts her head, eyes unreadable. “That may be true.”
“It is true,” I insist.
“Fine. Wilder and his band fired your dad after their sophomore album,” she confesses.
I’m a little surprised about how things went down. Dad made it sound as if the relationship took longer to end. I have no doubt my father was telling potential clients that he was still in charge of the band.
“The point isn’t what happened in the past,” Bernice takes over the conversation. “Right now, he, Roderick, needs someone. He’s back in Seattle. Solo tour hanging by a thread—or is it the label that wants to drop him? It’s all a PR train wreck after that last interview.”
I stare out the window, not really noticing anything—just shapes behind streaked glass. The Space Needle appears blurred and distant, softened by the haze of hospital grime and gray light.
Roderick used to say the city looked best in the rain. He said it gave everything a soundtrack.
I swallow around the memory, trying not to let it stick. “There must be someone else.” The words come out too flat, too even—like I’ve already lost the argument and I’m just pretending I haven’t.
Truth is, it wouldn’t be a tragedy. Not really. Let the label drop him. Let them scrub his name from the billboards.
We could help him in other ways if we chose to. That’s the whole damn point of owning a recording studio. Labels aren’t gods anymore. Not like they were a decade ago. Now, they’re just another middleman with flashier business cards.
Bernice exhales a slow, tired sigh.
“It’d be a loss for your father. And I don’t think he can afford that right now.”
I laugh, but there’s no humor in it—just exhaustion wearing sarcasm like a second skin.
“I can’t afford to take over Dad’s empire.” My breath escapes in a shallow gust, as if saying it aloud might make it real enough to walk away from. “I’m not babysitting his clients.”
Especially not Roderick Wilder, I don’t say.
Bernice crosses her arms and looks at me like a mother trying to reason with a stubborn child. “Kit . . . I know what he did.”
I stiffen. Does she? What exactly are we talking about here? My father or Roderick? There are many reasons why I’m not bailing my father out in this situation. And that’s the thing I will argue about, not Roderick.
“It’s not about what he did.” I force out a shrug because Connor Dempsey has done way too many shitty things in his life. “He decided at twelve that I was old enough to be a functioning adult. I survived. But I’ve got my own life now, and I’m not inheriting his.”
“I meant Roderick.”
She says it casually, as if she’s dropping a name, but it lands like a fucking landmine.