Chapter 18
EIGHTEEN
“Forgot to say: let me know how it goes with your parents.”
I stared at the message, not sure how to read it after the way we’d left things last night. Then I set it aside and dialed the number for the islet’s hospital.
After six rings, a female voice I didn’t recognize picked up.
“Emerson speaking,” she said.
“Hello, Emerson,” I replied. “My name’s Tanisha Lockwood and I’m calling to be put through to my parents, Rey and Norine Lock—”
“Ah, yes. Dora said I should expect you to call.”
There was a disconcerting pause. “So can you put me through?” I asked, my tone impatient as my stomach twisted into knots.
“Um, normally I wouldn’t because, unfortunately, the swelling did not go down overnight, as we’d hoped it would, and their temperatures have also spiked unexpectedly, but—”
My breath caught. “Wait, what? Their temperatures have spiked since yesterday?”
“Unfortunately, yes,” she replied, her tone apologetic. “They’re burning up and they have considerable swelling.”
“Why didn’t anyone call me?!” I tried to keep my panic hidden, but it bled through.
“I’m sorry, but we have many patients to attend to in this hospital, and we cannot always keep track of updating family members, when our focus is on the patients. It’s usually on the family to call—”
“Okay,” I said, cutting her off, trying to reel myself in. “I understand, of course. So, why have their temperatures spiked?”
Emerson sighed. “As I assume Dora explained, this virus isn’t something we’ve had experience with before, so the symptoms can be unpredictable.
However,” she added, before I could respond, “as I was about to say, in response to your request to talk to your parents, normally I would not pass a phone through in their current condition. However, they were informed that you called yesterday and they have indicated that they’re willing to tolerate any discomfort in order to talk to you, so in this case I will override protocol. ”
I hesitated, unsure of how to respond. While I desperately wanted to talk to my parents, I didn’t want them to suffer any additional pain to do that. Still, the situation felt like it was spinning out of control and I needed to talk to them.
“O-Okay,” I said. “Please pass me through.”
“Please hold the line.”
As her voice disappeared, suddenly my bedroom felt too small, the walls closing in on me. I went downstairs and paced up and down the kitchen-living area, trying to settle my nerves. It didn’t work.
Five minutes later but what felt like an eternity, Emerson returned. “Are you still there, Miss Lockwood?”
“Of course.”
“Okay, I’m putting you through to your parents now. Your mother first.”
There was another brief pause, and then I heard a noise on the other end of the line. It sounded like a low croak.
“Hello?” I said, my heart in my throat. “Mom?”
The croak came again, and it took me several moments to realize that my mother had said hello. My throat went dry, my imagination running amok at the state she must be in.
“Mom,” I gasped, tears rising to my eyes. “Mom, that’s you, right?”
The croak came again, and I had to ask her to repeat whatever she’d said just to make out her response. “Yes, it’s me honey,” she managed, her voice finally coming out a touch clearer. “I’ll try to… talk a little… more clearly. It just… hurts… quite a lot… when I try to… speak.”
Gods. This was serious. The nurse had told me talking was painful for them, but I hadn’t imagined it to be this bad.
I’d wanted to hear about the treatment from their own mouths, but now I could hardly justify holding them on the line for longer than a few seconds.
“Okay, Mom,” I said quickly, my voice thickening. “Listen, d-don’t talk. I just needed to hear your voice and know that you are…” I swallowed hard, fighting back the tears. “Alright.”
“Okay, baby,” she croaked back.
“I love you, Mom. I-I love you so much. And I’m… I’m going to do everything I can to get you better and out of that hospital, as soon as possible. Okay?”
I really had to.
“Okay… sweetie,” she said, her voice morphing into that near unintelligible croak again.
“C-Can I speak to Dad now?”
There was another pause and then my father arrived on the line, his usually deep, rich voice all but unrecognizable.
“Hey… baby,” he rasped. He sounded like death.
“Dad,” I said, my own voice finally cracking. I could no longer hold in the tears. “I-I just wanted to hear your voice. You don’t have to talk any more than that. You don’t have to…” I pushed the phone away from my mouth as a sob escaped me.
“Tani?” I heard his faint voice through the speaker and I quickly pressed the phone back to my ear, not wanting him to waste a precious breath.
“Y-Yes, Dad. I just want you to know I love you. I love you more than anything. And I’m trying to get you out of there, okay? Just… Just hold on, okay?” Please.
There was a beat, in which I could’ve sworn that I heard my father’s own breath hitch. “Okay,” he croaked after a moment. “Take care… of yourself… and your sister. I… love you… too.”
The line went quiet again, giving me a moment to try to recompose myself, but I still felt like a broken mess when Emerson returned to the line.
“Ms. Lockwood?” she said.
I drew in a ragged breath, willing strength into my voice.
“Yes. So, Emerson, I need to know exactly what you’re doing about this.
You said their temperatures have risen. What exactly are you doing to combat that now?
We can’t let them rise any further. And what are you going to try next to combat the swelling? ”
She began rattling off a list of treatments…
or maybe it was medication. I had no idea.
Every single term she uttered may as well have come from another planet, to the point where I exhaled in frustration and interrupted, “Okay, thank you for explaining, but it’s all foreign to me.
I don’t understand a word of what you’re saying.
I just… I just…” I trailed off, my throat constricting again.
I just need to know they’re going to be okay, was all I wanted to say. It was literally all I wanted in the world right now.
But of course, I knew Emerson couldn’t promise me that. Dora couldn’t, and neither could any of her colleagues.
So, I tried to suck in a deep breath and replied, “Okay, Emerson. Thanks for putting me through.”
I was about to hang up, when she added, “If you like, I can send a couple of photos through to your phone. I know it must be hard not being able to visit them, but via photos you can at least see their current state for yourself. I have your number, so I can transmit them once we end the call.”
I hesitated, a pit of dread opening in my stomach. A large part of me didn’t want to see them. Just wanted to wait until they were better again. Because, based on their voices, I feared how disturbing the visual would be.
But I didn’t want to bury my head in the sand either. It was always better to face the truth head on, no matter how painful. So, I steeled myself and replied, “Okay, thank you. Please do that.”
I ended the call, then waited several tense moments, unsure exactly how “photos” could be “transmitted” by her to my phone, but trusting Fairwell’s technology enough by now. When my phone beeped, two images of my parents’ faces flashed up on the screen. It was worse than I could have ever imagined.
I barely recognized them. Their mouths and jaws had expanded to puffy, cushion-like things, to the point where I could hardly even make out their chins.
As if that weren’t bad enough, what looked like red, burning blotches marred every inch of their skin, which the nurses hadn’t even told me about.
A thick sheen of sweat coated their faces, and their eyes were bloodshot and half-closed, as though they were barely conscious.
My knees weakened and I dropped to the sofa. The phone slipped from my hands as my tears returned full force. I couldn’t stop them, and I sobbed and trembled for fifteen minutes.
I had just… never seen my parents so sick before.
They rarely got ill back in the jungle. The worst I had seen my mother was when she got a fever four years ago, but even that had been gentle compared to this.
And I had never witnessed my father with anything worse than a mild flu.
They were always strong and vibrant. Bea’s and my backbone.
The ones to look after us when we got sick.
For them to be lying there practically paralyzed, their arms and legs broken, and now with this…
It was all too much. And I wanted nothing more than to rush over there and hold them in my arms. Pull them close to me and cry them better.
But, of course, crying wasn’t going to make anyone better. It wasn’t going to help anything.
It was just wasting time.
Forcing myself to stand, I headed upstairs to the bathroom to splash my face with cold water. I stared at myself in the mirror, willing my strength to return.
It took another fifteen minutes for my tears to stop, but finally a feeling of numbness set in, and my mind became focused on nothing but the burning need of the hour: I had to get them out of there.
I couldn’t shake the feeling that if I managed to transfer them to that swanky Beauchamp Hospital, they’d get better—and way faster.
At the very least, they’d stop deteriorating so fast. It was much larger and cleaner.
Literally everything about it was superior—from the equipment to the building. They were incomparable.
But how I was going to do that was another matter.
I gripped the phone and quickly swiped away the photos so I didn’t have to look at them again, a cold determination coming over me. I had been planning to call Anna this morning anyway about my employment, and now that call seemed all the more urgent and vital.
I had to get her to help me somehow.