Chapter 12 #2
She was busy trying to convince herself of that when she walked to the kitchen to grab her purse and stopped after taking two steps.
On her small, bistro-style kitchen table was a bouquet of flowers, her breakfast boxed up in Tupperware that she vaguely remembered having but couldn’t remember the last time she’d used, and her to-go coffee tumbler with a white folded paper leaning against it.
The flowers were a riot of color—sunflowers, irises, snapdragons, and baby’s breath—tied in a hasty but loving explosion of rubber bands and ribbon, the plastic sheath still clinging to clusters of condensation.
The Tupperware was stacked with geometric precision, sealed so tightly that it looked vacuum-packed.
Once again she noticed her hands were trembling as she picked the paper up and opened it. Not from nerves but from something wilder, less familiar, hope, maybe, or the beginnings of heartbreak. It was a toss-up. She peeled open the tri-fold piece of computer paper, creased with surgical accuracy.
Poppy,
My phone was dead. I am expected at breakfast with my mom and Dr. Sterling before they leave for their honeymoon.
I had a really nice night with you. More than nice. I don’t actually know of a word to describe what last night was.
I’m flying out on a red-eye. I don’t know what time you get off or if you’d like to see me again, but I would like to see you. Very much.
I hope you have a good day at work. I will spend today having FOMO that I’m not with you.
AJ
FOMO. Her smile was so wide that it pushed her rounded cheeks up into her line of vision as she read the note again, then a third time, memorizing his handwriting, the shape of his letters, the sparseness and the directness.
He’d left his phone number underneath his name in a tidy little column, affixed with a parenthetical “(cell)” as if she wouldn’t know that it was a cell phone number instead of a landline, which she found utterly adorable, endearing, and oddly sexy.
She quickly added his contact into her phone, not as “AJ” but as “AJ FOMO” because, honestly, the joke made her happier than she was willing to admit.
After she grabbed her keys and her purse and packed her breakfast—which she’d be eating for lunch—in an insulated bag with a zipper to keep it warm, she was out the door.
On her way down to the car, she rushed down the steps but had to go back up and down them twice more.
The third step no longer groaned like a dying walrus.
She bounced on the wooden plank, nothing, not even the squeak of the tiniest mousy noise.
Either AJ had decided to be her personal handyman, or her one-night-stand fairy godmother had sent her maintenance fairy-god-landlord to come do repairs in the middle of the night while they’d been sleeping. If she had to put money down, she would bet on the former.
Why would he do that? Maybe he had OCD, and he just couldn’t handle things being in ill repair. If that was the case, whoever ended up with the man would be extremely lucky, but it actually made her a little sad for him. How exhausting that must be. How could he ever relax?
The ten-minute drive seemed to go by in the blink of an eye.
She’d expected to feel wrecked after the night before, but her hangover had mostly abated, replaced by a kind of nervous, fizzy optimism.
Her mind was filled with what could possibly be in store for them when she got off work.
Would they hang out at her place? Would he ask her to meet him at the resort?
Would he take her out for dinner, or would they get right to dessert?
Before she even realized it, she was pulling into the staff lot.
She gathered her things and took the service entrance, the cold metal bar biting into her palm as she pushed it open.
She felt like she was floating as she headed to the elevator to go to radiology on the third floor.
She was still walking on cloud nine as she exited the elevator and made a quick stop in the staff room to store her lunch in the fridge and purse in the locker.
She’d just finished clocking in and texting AJ she’d love to see him when the door opened and her work bestie came in. Poppy smiled, wondering if her Carmen would be able to tell that she’d gotten lucky last night, but as soon as she saw her friend’s face, her smile dropped.
“What? What is it?”
“You haven’t heard?” Carmen asked.
Poppy’s heart slammed into her chest. “What? Heard what?”
“Liam—”
Poppy felt her world start to turn upside down at the mention of her brother’s name.
“—his dad was brought in with a massive cardiac event. They rushed him up to six for emergency cath.”
“Oh, thank God.” Poppy exhaled in relief. “I mean, not, thank God, that’s horrible, but I thought…”
For a split second Poppy thought something had happened to her brother. He was the first and only stable man who had ever been in her life. She did not know what she would do without him.
“Zeta said he was going to the observation suite. She tried to stop him.”
Poppy didn’t say anything, she rushed out of the room and back to the elevators.
She pressed the up button several times.
Yes, she knew that pressing it repeatedly didn’t make it come any faster, but it didn’t stop her from doing it.
When it still hadn’t arrived after what felt like an hour but was probably thirty seconds, she ran up the stairwell three flights.
Liam should not be alone, and he definitely should not be watching his family member in open heart surgery.
When she got to the observation room, she scanned her badge and the doors opened with a whoosh.
She walked in expecting to find her brother staring at a screen in silence.
His posture stiff, his jaw tense, his fists clenched.
On the way there she’d been running through all the arguments she’d have to plead her case for why she was not going to leave when he inevitably told her he wanted to be alone, she had her reasons locked and loaded, but there was no one to debate.
The room was empty, but on one of the screens she saw Dr. Kahn and Dr. Valdez working.
They were two of the best in cardiology.
Dr. Sterling was in good hands. Literally.
One of them was holding part of his body that is normally inside of him.
Before leaving, Poppy checked the time stamps and saw that the last time Liam had swiped his badge into the room was nearly three hours earlier.
It appeared he’d only stayed for about five minutes.
She doubled back to the nurses’ station. “Has anyone seen Liam?” she asked, barely keeping the desperation out of her voice.
“Nope,” replied Gita, the circulator nurse, barely looking up from her screen.
With no other good ideas, she headed down to the ER. Maybe he was with his family, or maybe he was hiding out in one of the on-call rooms, trying to process the news in his own brooding, solitary way. She shot off a quick text to her brother first.
Poppy: Just heard about your dad. Where are you?
No read receipt. She tried calling. Voicemail after a single ring.
Desperate times called for desperate measures. She knew that one of the security guards had always had a thing for Liam, so she doubted she would mind breaking the rules for him.
Poppy: Hey, is my brother in any of the on-call rooms?
A few seconds later, she got a response.
Simone: No, ma’am, he is not… I heard about his dad, tell him I’m sorry.
Poppy: Will do.
She fought the urge to panic that he wasn’t there. There was probably a logical explanation. She was sure he was with his family and his phone was dead. But as she rode the elevator back down, she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was seriously, terribly wrong.
When she got to the first floor, she started down the hall, and at the end, she saw Frankie, Liam’s sister, sitting against the wall. Zion was holding her, and it looked like she was crying.
Shit. Shit. Shit. This was bad.
“Frankie! I just heard. Are you okay? Is Liam okay?”
Frankie lifted her head.
“I haven’t heard from Liam or seen him since we got here.” Frankie shook her head, and she wiped her cheeks as Zion stood and helped her up. “He’s not answering anyone’s texts or calls.”
“He’s not with you guys?” Poppy didn’t understand. If he wasn’t with his family and he wasn’t on six or in an on-call room, then where was he?
“No.”
“Oh.” That made no sense whatsoever. Poppy’s stomach performed a sickening loop-the-loop.
“Why?” Frankie asked, “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, I just…I checked the observation suite, where Zeta said he was going, and he’s not there. According to the log-in times, he hasn’t been there for hours. I just assumed he was with you guys.”
“Can you look for him?” Frankie pleaded. “Can you ask around?”
Poppy nodded and hoped she conveyed a level of confidence she currently did not possess as she turned on her heels and headed back the way she came.
She had no clue who to ask or where to look.
If Zeta didn’t know where Liam was, and he wasn’t in an on-call room, then she was out of ideas.
The roof, maybe. He’d go up there sometimes to be alone.
“Oh, and do you have any idea where AJ is?” she heard Frankie call out after her.
Poppy’s heart slammed into her chest once more, it was basically a crash dummy at this point. She quickly turned back around and tried to ‘read the room,’ if you will.
What did Frankie know?
How could she know?
Was this a trick to get her to confess?
“What? No. Why? Why? Why would I? Why would you ask that?” Poppy heard herself stumbling over her words. If she wasn’t guilty, she sure as shit made herself sound like she was…which, obviously, she was.
“I just…” Frankie’s expression was one of concern and confusion. “I just…You were at the wedding, and Niko mentioned something about seeing you two dancing, so I thought maybe…I don’t know maybe you saw where he went. No one can get ahold of him. He wasn’t at his cabin.”
“Ohhh, really?!” Poppy did her best to sound natural and surprised by the news that Frankie was sharing with her, like this was the first she was hearing about it and it had nothing to do with her. “Well, I don’t know. I’m sure he’ll, um, yeah, I’m sure he’ll turn up.”
With that, did a one-eighty and power-walked away from them. She went up onto the roof and did not see Liam there. She also tried to call AJ, but it went straight to his voicemail.
Or at least she hoped it was his voicemail.
It didn’t have a personalized greeting. It was just a robotic voice telling her that she’d reached the number.
When the beep sounded, she took a breath.
“Hey AJ, I’m at the hospital and everyone, or not everyone…
” She remembered that it bothered one of her neurodivergent patients when neurotypical people made generalizations.
Not that every neurodivergent person was the same—she refused to paint in generalizations—but she wanted to be aware of her speech.
“…um, your mom, brother, Liam, Frankie, and Zion are here because Dr. Sterling had a medical emergency, um, a heart attack last night. He’s in surgery now.
They have been trying to get ahold of you and haven’t been able to.
I didn’t say anything about…you know…us, last night.
I didn’t know if you’d want people to…or not.
Not that it even matters with what is going on.
It doesn’t. I just wanted you to know. Okay, bye. ”
She hung up and replayed everything she’d said in her head over and over.
Had she made it seem like she didn’t want people to know they’d spent the night together?
Because that wasn’t the case. She just didn’t want him to think that she did want people to know.
That didn’t even make sense. It didn’t matter. There were much bigger things going on.
Her pager went off, alerting her that her first appointment was there. Mrs. Patterson had a lot of anxiety and was claustrophobic. She always requested Poppy when she needed to get CT scans for her pancreatitis.
“Fuck.” She had to go do her job. She wished that she could blow it off, but it was too important. She tried Liam’s phone once more. Again it went to voicemail.
What was the point of everyone having phones if no one ever answered them?