25. Omar
Chapter twenty-five
Omar
Matty’s head rested in the crook of my arm, which was now numb from the pressure, but there was no way on Earth I was moving it. We’d slept with legs and arms more tangled than a Jenga tower, and our faces lay so close I could taste his breath all night.
Ordinarily, that would be horrifying, morning breath being what it was. But Matty and I were still in the stage where everything about each other was adorably attractive. We could see each other’s flaws—everyone had them, of course—but each chink in our metaphorical armor was offset by a myriad of positive attributes. For example, Matty’s rank-ass breath was offset by the way said breath tickled my cheek each time he exhaled, and how my heart raced knowing it was his breath pimpling my skin.
I’d never been sappy.
We Brits didn’t do sappy.
Then again, I wasn’t technically British. I’d just lived in London most of my life. My blood—my heritage—was of a people who most definitely got sappy. We got so sappy we forced millions of people to work their entire lives to build monuments to our sentimentality.
Or was that religion?
Or royal vanity?
What did I know? I was raised in London, not Cairo.
Regardless, the part of me that swam in emotion was giddy with Matty’s breath teasing the tiny hairs of my unkempt beard stubble. It also didn’t hurt that his golden curls fell across the milk chocolate of my arms. Our coloring was so different— we were so different—and yet, we fit together, like his head and my arm.
My insides—all of them—felt mushy and gurgly and a bit queasy, if I was honest, just looking at Matty sleeping. He was beautiful, and not just the delicate curves of his perfectly formed face or the milky white of his unmarred skin. All that was nice. No, it was more than nice. It was stunning.
That wasn’t my point.
Matty was beautiful inside, where it mattered most, where the heart of a nurse met the stubborn will of a determined boy. He loved helping and caring for others. Nothing would stop him in that mission. If he had to do that in an emergency room where every form of insanity occurred on a daily basis, usually before lunchtime, so be it. He was a champion of compassion, a warrior of the wounded, a man of—
My phone buzzing silenced whatever terrible nickname I was about to create. As carefully as possible, I reached for it on the nightstand.
My mother.
At, what, three thirty in the morning?
She was bad with time zones, but this was odd, even for her.
I raised the device and pressed “Answer.”
“Mother?” My voice sounded like I was still asleep, which I nearly was.
“Son, did I wake you?”
“It’s three o’clock in the morning, Mother.”
“I’m sorry, dear. It’s just . . .”
The way she hesitated had me worming my arm free of Matty and sitting straight up.
“Mother, what is it? I can hear something in your voice. What happened?”
I heard her suck in a breath. She then lowered her voice and whispered, as though someone might be listening to our conversation, “Omar, it is your father.”
“Is he all right? Have they rescinded his appointment?”
“No, no. He will still be ambassador. I doubt Cleopatra herself could stop that once your father learned of it.”
If not the ambassadorship, then what?
“Omar, he’s . . . he’s dying.”
The whole world froze. Tiny dust motes floating through rays of light streaming past my curtains hung in the air. I struggled to draw a breath.
“Dying?”
“I am sorry to tell you this over the phone, but his cancer is back, and the doctor says it is worse than before.”
“What about chemo or some of the new drugs? There are trials he can enter. Mother, he can’t surrender.”
A weak laugh drifted through the phone, the sound that meant my mother understood and thought my inference was ridiculous.
“When have you ever known your father to surrender to anything?”
She had a point. He was a stubborn old goat.
“He is not giving up. If nothing else, becoming ambassador has him wanting to live forever, and the President has promised to give him the best medical support Egypt has to offer.”
“He needs to be in a British hospital. Better yet, he should fly to America.”
She tsked, and I suddenly felt five years old again. “He would never do that. He is too proud. A British hospital, here in London, perhaps. He would see that as an extension of his duties.”
“Mother, why did you call to tell me this? I will be in London in two weeks for his audience with the King.”
There was a long moment of silence, so long Matty stirred and opened his eyes. I brushed his hair back from his forehead and mouthed, “My mother.”
He mouthed back, “Everything okay?”
I shook my head, but before I could say another word, my mother found her voice again.
“Omar, your father refuses to accept what the doctors are telling him. He will not live long enough to complete his term. They do not think . . . They believe he has only months.”
Months?
How was that possible?
My father was the strongest, most stubborn, most determined man on the planet. Nothing stood in his way when he set his mind on a path. He would never let something like cancer stop him from fulfilling his life’s mission. He couldn’t.
He just couldn’t.
Matty’s hand rubbed circles in my back. At any other time, his touch would’ve calmed me, soothed whatever angst my heart felt. But in that moment, with my mother breaking down a thousand miles away, and images of my father vanishing into nothing, no touch could ease what I felt.
“Omar,” my mother said, her voice turning formal. “You should prepare yourself. This visit to London will likely be the last days you have with your father. You need to make the most of them.”