Chapter 17
GEMMA
Now
When I left the Mill, I had every intention of heading home.
Janet was undoubtedly pissed that I’ve missed our nightly biscuit making session and filled my pillow case with dead rodents.
Intent on getting home and appeasing my feline overlord, I pull up to the place where the Mill’s gravel parking lot meets the highway.
To my left is the bridge that will take me to Clearwater.
To my right, the highway that’ll lead me home.
Without even a moments’ worth of debate, I take the left, not even sure where I’m going until I’m pulling into the hospital’s visitor’s lot.
The best and worst thing about living in a town the size of Barrett is that everyone knows everyone.
So, when I walk into the hospital lobby, the front desk is manned by a familiar face.
Even though it’s well past visiting hours, I’m given Riggs’s floor and hospital room number because before she retired and started volunteering at the hospital, Mrs. Pollak was our home economics teacher in junior high. All it cost me was a little small talk.
“I sure was sorry to hear about your grandpa, honey,” she says sympathetically while I scribble my name across the hospital’s visitor log.
Leaving my arrival time blank, I set the pen down with a practiced smile.
“Thank you.” I don’t want to talk about Dent.
I never want to talk about Dent. He was the last person to leave me and even if he didn’t want to leave, he still left.
“I won’t be more than a few minutes. Beck called and is real worried about Riggs going into surgery tomorrow.
” It’s a bold-faced lie—I haven’t spoken to my brother in nearly a year—but I tell it without remorse.
“I promised him I’d stop in and check on him on my way home. ”
Mrs. Pollak gives me a shrewd smile. “Firing you was just about the dumbest thing June could’ve done,” she says, letting me know that news of me losing my job at the diner has spread like wildfire.
“And over a creeker…” She makes a clucking sound while she gathers up the clipboard.
“Take your time, honey. I’ll let Janelle know you’re on your way up. ”
“Thanks.” I say it again with the same practiced smile before I head for the elevator.
Stepping out on the fourth-floor, I’m hit with the familiar smell of disinfectant and recycled air.
During his last year, Dent spent a lot of time in and out of this hospital.
I’d forgotten how much I hated it until now.
Leaving the bank of elevators behind, I take a right and make my way down a short hallway that opens up onto a large circular room that always reminded me of a hamster wheel. In its center is a massive charge desk, surrounded by private hospital rooms. Behind the desk, Janelle is waiting for me.
“I gave him a sedative a few hours ago, so I don’t know how lucid he’s going to be,” she tells me with an apologetic smile. “If I’d known you were going to stop by…”
“It’s okay.” Giving her a friendly smile, I shake my head. Janelle was a year ahead of me in school—same year as Riggs. “I just promised Beck I’d put eyes on him.”
“How is Beck doing?” She practically melts when she says his name which grosses me out on a sisterly level.
“Rich and famous,” I say, giving her the same answer I gave Penny Montgomery earlier today.
“I heard he’s signed on to be the lead of some new TV series,” she keeps gushing, a reminder that she’d always had a crush on my brother growing up, even before he was famous.
“I didn’t know he was doing television again.
I thought he’d moved on to movies.” She says it like Beck offended her somehow by not discussing his career choices with her beforehand. “Isn’t TV a step back or something?”
Because I’m sure she heard it from Hollywood Insider or some other celebrity gossip magazine, I give her a shrug while I back myself away from her.
“Yeah—he’s just really tired of all the travel.
He wants something steady.” I have no idea if it’s true or not.
Beck can sign on as a human marionette for an all nude puppet show, for all I care.
Before she can figure out a way to keep interrogating me about my famous brother, the desk phone rings. “Well, tell him I said hey.” Flashing me an exasperated, see what I have to put up with smile, Janelle lets me go so she can answer it.
Not wanting to risk getting caught again, I move away from the desk and quickly locate Riggs’s room, still unsure of what I’m doing or even why.
Why am I here?
I already told Reese no.
Riggs Wheeler is the last person I want to see.
He doesn’t need me.
Doesn’t want me either—he made that abundantly clear.
Still not sure what the answer is, I push my way into his room, the light from the hallway slicing across his bed while it slowly hisses its way closed behind me.
In the shrinking light I can see him. He’s sleeping, even bigger than I remember.
So big they had to add the extender to the bottom of his hospital bed and his feet are still pressed again the footboard.
So big that the width of his shoulders, encased in the thin fabric of a tight fitting hospital gown, spills over the edges of his mattress.
Before I can wrap my head around the fact that I’m looking at an entirely different version of Riggs than the one I remember, he speaks.
“Are you real?”
That’s how I know for sure that it’s him.
Because when I hear his voice, my throat goes tight and the room starts to tilt.
Swallowing hard, I shake my head because of all the things I thought Riggs Wheeler would say to me if I ever saw him again, are you real was never on the list. “As real as you are, I guess.”
“That’s what you said the last time…” Even though all I can make out is the entirely too big shape of him, I can feel him looking at me.
Watching me, the same way I’m watching him.
“I never wanted…” He trails off, whatever he was about to say getting tangled around a rough, ugly sound.
“I was never going to come back here. I decided a long time ago that I was never going to see you again”
“You decided…” I make an ugly sound of my own. “I hate you, Riggs.”
He lets out a tired sigh. “I know.”
“You broke my heart.” As soon as I say it, I regret it. I want to bite my own tongue off because obviously, it can’t be trusted with the truth.
“I know that too…” He trails off again and I imagine he’s wearing that sick, panicked look he used to give me whenever he let himself think or feel anything about me that he deemed inappropriate or wrong.
The shape of him shifts on the bed, turning away so he doesn’t have to look at me.
“Are you happy?” He sighs. “Sometimes I want you to be.”
“Only sometimes?”
“Yeah… sometimes I imagine you married. Kids. White picket fence and it makes me happy because if you’re happy, that means it was worth it… but most of the time I just hope you’re as miserable as I am.”
I wanted those things.
Used to lay awake at night and imagine an entire life, exactly like the one Riggs described. One where I’m happy. Loved. Surrounded by people who stayed.
“Wow,” I choke it out on a bitter laugh. “That might be the shittiest thing anyone’s ever said to me, Riggs Wheeler.”
“Well… I’m a pretty shitty person, so it makes sense.” He answer my laugh with one of his own. His is less bitter but every bit as sad. “Do you ever think about me?”
The same sort of panic that plagues him started to claw at my chest when he asks because Riggs hurt me once. I’m not going to let him do it again.
“No.”
I turn away from the dark shape of him. Pull the door open and make my escape before he can call me a liar.
Rushing past the charge desk, relieved to see that Janelle is still stuck on the phone, I throw her a quick wave while I speed walk my way to the elevator because I’m sure he’s going to follow me.
Chase me down and remind me of all the ways he broke my heart.
It isn’t until I’m back in the elevator and on my way to the lobby before I remember.
Riggs can’t chase me.
He can’t even walk.
Because someone dropped an entire building on him.
Shit.
Digging my phone out of my bag, I tap out a quick text.
Me: I’ll get Dent’s old room ready.
Jesus, what are you doing, Gemma? What the hell do you think you’re doing?
I don’t know.
I really don’t know.
But I hit send before I can give myself a chance to figure it out.