Chapter 19 #2
Like her command has snaked a leash around my neck, my shoulders drop and roll back, my back straightening. I smooth my hands down the front of my body. With one final breath to steady myself and the tears that stopped the moment I heard my name, I slowly turn towards my mom.
“Good god,” she gapes at me, clutching a hand to her chest. “You look ghastly.”
She has the same chocolate-brown hair as me, but hers is longer and blown out, looking perfect despite the early morning hour.
Even her tan khakis and white buttoned shirt look clean and crisp despite the distance she and my father drove.
My dad, in a pair of black dress shorts and a blue golf shirt, looks almost as put together as she does, his salt-and-pepper hair tousled in the same style he’s worn for years.
“Do you own a brush?” she asks, disgust evident by the wrinkle in her nose. “Or foundation? Blush? Mascara? Jesus, Brynleigh, you’ve let yourself go.”
My cheeks heat, and I look down to the floor, struggling to keep my thoughts to myself.
It’s not like I’ve been sitting in a hospital waiting room for hours or seen my grandmother in a pool of blood.
And before that, well, my mother would be scandalized if I told her I’d been finger fucked to orgasm multiple times.
The door to the emergency room opens, and a man in dark blue scrubs with light blond hair walks out, eyes landing on us immediately.
“Are you here for Ruby Myers?” he asks, and I step sideways to give him an entrance to our group of three.
My father answers. “Yes, how is she?”
“I’m Dr. Verdeem. She’s better than when she came in. Conscious, more alert and oriented.”
The news has my knees threatening to buckle, and I wrap my arms around myself, posture be damned, to keep myself up. Alive. She’s alive. My worst nightmare isn’t my reality.
“She’s got a couple of good lacerations to the head, and a severe concussion.
In the field, her blood pressure was quite low, but we’ve managed to get her stabilized with that,” he continues, sliding a hand into his pocket as he speaks using his free hand.
“Besides that, she seems relatively healthy. Nothing is showing up in her heart or lungs, and her imaging came back with what I’d expect from a concussion. ”
“A concussion,” my mom mutters, shaking her head. “How would that happen?”
The doctor looks in her direction. “Well, she remembers not feeling well and falling, but not much after that. The paramedics who brought her in said they were told she called 911 herself, so my educated guess given her blood pressure is that it caused her to faint, and she hit her head.” He pauses to look at all of us, then continues.
“I’d say hit it a couple of times based on the lacerations.
Sometimes there’s a few moments of lucidity after something like this, and I think she had the wherewithal to call for help before her state declined to the point the paramedics found her. ”
Firefighters, I want to correct. The firefighters found her, not the paramedics.
It’s so minor, but I have to physically bite my tongue to keep from saying it.
“What would cause her blood pressure to be that low?” my dad questions.
“We’re still working on some tests to try and figure that out,” Dr. Verdeem answers. “With her becoming more lucid, she complained about her arm hurting, so we’ve sent her for more X-rays. Once she’s back, I’ll have someone come get you so you can see her.”
When he’s gone, my mother whirls on me, her eyes blazing. “How could you let this happen?”
“Lillian,” my dad cautions, but nothing in his tone suggests he doesn’t agree with her.
“You have one job living with her,” she says, ignoring him. “To take care of your grandmother. This is what happens in your care? You cannot be that hopeless, Brynleigh. Truly.”
My eyes settle on the ground again, jaw clenching. There it is. I can never do anything right, it’s always wrong, I’m always hopeless. It’s just one more mark she can use against me.
I don’t think I can even defend myself. She’s not wrong.
It is my job, and I wasn’t there. I was too busy with Wyatt.
The man I hope is still sitting across the room, pretending not to know me.
My back is turned to him, and I can only pray he doesn’t get up.
Doesn’t try to get in the middle of this.
“What were you doing tonight? Partying? We raised you better than that,” she scolds.
“Is that why Ruby is in the hospital? Because you were too busy with your friends? I mean look at you. Your hair is a disaster, your makeup is…God, I can’t even look at you.
And where are your teeth? You aren’t wearing them. ”
Jesus. My teeth. My fucking snap-on veneers that I haven’t worn since I moved out of her house.
Veneers I hated the second I got them. But she wasn’t willing to invest in braces for me to correct my front tooth because it would have taken too much time out of pageants.
I’m glad for it, really, because I don’t hate the snaggletooth at the front. I never have.
Only she does.
“And what are you wearing? God, Brynleigh, what is that? A sweatshirt? In public?” A disgusted sound is thrown in my direction. “Santa Rosé Fire? Oh, you have got to be kidding me.”
I want to dissolve into the floor and disappear forever, my body starting to get pins and needles as I repress all of the shame and anger bubbling to the surface with each word.
This isn’t the first dressing down I’ve gotten from her, but I’m well aware that Wyatt can hear everything.
We’re not that far from him, and my mother isn’t a quiet woman on a good day, let alone when she’s amped up like she is now.
It’s her one flaw, she always says. She doesn’t know how to bring her voice down to an appropriate level.
If you ask me, it’s less because she can’t and more because she likes attention, whichever way she can get it.
“Please tell me you are not still hanging out at that bar with those people.” She takes a deep breath like she needs to find the strength to deal with me. “I thought we discussed this. Are you still working there? Brynleigh, that place is not for people like us. For someone like you.”
Taking a step towards me, she sweeps her hand around the room. “You need to get yourself together. There are probably plenty of single doctors here looking for a wife. This is the kind of place you want to find a husband, not that disgusting bar.”
“Stop,” I breathe, my eyes closing, unable to take more of it. “I’m not looking for a husband, and that bar isn’t disgusting. The firefighters I hang out with are amazing people, and I will not listen to you put them down.”
“They do great work, they save people, help animals, everything else they do, I’m not saying they don’t.
But Brynleigh, they aren’t our type of people.
You need to find someone of your own caliber,” she continues, almost like she didn’t hear anything I said.
“If you hang out with them, you’ll attract them, and those are the kind of men you don’t want.
They’re uneducated and don’t make nearly enough to support the things you like.
Julia Stein’s daughter married one and now she wears generic brands. Can you imagine?”
There’s no stopping my eye roll. To my mother, generic brands are the worst. God forbid anyone be seen in one. Little does she know the dress I’m wearing isn’t a brand name, nor do I care.
The door to the ER opens, and a nurse with light brown hair in braids steps out. The three of us turn, and she looks at us, then directly at me. “Are you Bryn Myers?”
I nod.
“Your grandmother has been asking for you. You can come back and see her now,” she says, holding the door open for me.
My world rights itself, my shoulders melting away from my ears.
She asked for me.
“It’s about time,” my mom says, stepping forward as though she’s the one who has been sitting here for hours.
The nurse’s eyes flicker to my mom, and she smiles politely. “One at a time, please. We don’t want to overwhelm her.”
My mom blinks at the woman, but my dad steps forward. “Would it be okay if I came? That’s my mom, and we’ve driven the last couple of hours to get here.”
The nurse assesses the situation, and from the way her eyes move between all of us, I can almost see her calculating if it’ll be a problem. “Sure. But only the two of you for now.”
Glancing in Wyatt’s direction as I follow the nurse, our gazes connect and the look he’s wearing has my stomach swirling with unease.
Enraged. Nearly the same murderous look he wore the night in the bar when that asshole yelled at me.
And I fear, as I leave him and my mother in the waiting room together, what might await me when I come back out.