Chapter 9 – Finn - Doctor’s Update
Hospitals always smell like somebody tried to bleach the soul out of the building and failed.
Fluorescents buzz mind-numbingly. Plastic chairs creak under people who won’t admit they’re afraid.
I sit apart from the rest of them, because I can’t perform for rooms like this. I won’t. I’ve been here before.
And because, if I sit near Eleanor, I’ll say something I can’t take back. My dad would fucking hate that. No matter what Ariane thinks she knows, I do care about that.
“Family of Richard Wagner?” he asks.
Eleanor is on him in three heel-clicks. “That’s us,” she says, her hand at her throat. It’s a theatrical, performative-seeming gesture, but the visible tremor probably isn’t.
Ariane is much slower to get to her feet, unsteady, like the floor might give. Julian rises with her, smoothing his tie, his hand already at the small of her back.
I stand with my hands pushed deep into my pockets, so I don’t put them through a fucking wall.
“He’s stable,” the doctor says without embellishment. The whole waiting room seems to exhale. “It was a significant myocardial infarction. We were able to stabilize him with medication and oxygen. He’s sedated for now.”
“Plain English,” I snap before I can stop myself.
The doctor isn’t fazed. If he is, his features don’t give it away. Simply, he rephrases, “He had a serious heart attack and we drugged him. He needs rest.”
“What’s next?” I press.
“We will be monitoring him in the CCU overnight,” he says.
“In the morning, we’ll evaluate enzymes and imaging.
Depending on what we see, we may discuss a catheterization.
Possibly a stent. Or a bypass later, if indicated.
” He pauses, locking the tablet’s screen.
“Lifestyle changes are non-negotiable. Diet, stress, exercise. Abstaining from alcohol. Of course, he’ll also need cardiac rehab. ”
Eleanor’s smile snaps into place like a visor.
“Of course, of course,” she says too quickly. “We’ll do whatever is necessary. He has excellent insurance and connections. He’ll have the best.”
“Money doesn’t buy a healthy body,” I say, straining not to roll my eyes.
Her head snaps toward me, an icy scowl paired with that fake, tight smile making her look vaguely constipated. “That is not helpful, Finn.”
“Wasn’t trying to be,” I scoff and then look back to the doctor. “Can we see him?”
“Briefly,” he allows, stern. “You can go in two at a time. Keep it short and don’t try to keep him awake long. He will be weak and groggy.”
His gaze softens an inch when it lands on Ariane. It’s understandable. She looks like a wounded puppy. I can’t blame him for adding, “He’ll know you’re there, even if he seems asleep,” for her.
Ariane swallows hard and nods meekly. Her lips move around a barely audible thanks.
She’s gray at the edges, mascara smudged, hair pinned back like it’s the only thing holding her upright.
I look at her and think about the teenage version who hid in hallways with a book too big for her hands, and then I think about last night, water and bare skin and heat, and I want to break something because the timing is a sick joke the universe keeps telling.
“I’ll go first,” Eleanor announces. She turns to Ariane. “You can come with me.”
Ariane doesn’t argue, just shoots me a look, an unnecessary apology in her big, wet eyes.
Julian squeezes her shoulder, voice low and practiced. “I’ll be right here.”
Yeah, you will, I think, and the thought tastes like metal. What the fuck are you doing here, exactly, besides branding yourself to the tragedy?
The doctor gestures. Eleanor glides toward the doors like she’s walking into a reception line. Ariane follows, spine straight, shoes silent. Within seconds, the doors swallow them.
The corridor deflates. The quartet in my head, which has been sawing at one note since the lawn, stops long enough for me to hear my own breath. I rub a hand over my jaw. My knuckles ache, though I haven’t hit anything—yet.
Julian takes his seat again, going right back to checking his phone. He looks shifty when he puts it face down, once he catches me glaring his way.
He offers me a tight smile that’s about as genuine as Eleanor’s.
“He’s a fighter,” he says, like that empty platitude is something I’m going to want to have printed on a fucking t-shirt.
“Touching, thanks,” I say.
He studies me, weighing the risk of an addition. “Ariane needs optimism.”
“All I’ve got is the truth, man,” I say, shrugging. He’s a fucking moron. “She can decide what to do with it.”
Julian just stares at me, unimpressed. I stare back. It’s him who looks away first. That small victory shouldn’t make me feel better, but it kind of does.
In the corner, a television scrolls a sports score nobody cares about at this hour.
A nurse’s laugh spills down the hall, brash and human. The sound of joy feels like a crime to me. How dare the world keep spinning madly on?
###
I don’t know how much time has passed by the time the doors open again.
Ariane steps out first, her hands cupped around each other like she’s borrowed a piece of warmth from the room and is trying not to spill it.
Her eyes still shine, but at least she looks farther from bursting into tears than she did before.
Eleanor’s right behind her daughter, with her features smoothed into a mask so thin you can see the cracks under it.
“You can go in now, Finn,” she says to me, like I was waiting on her to grant me permission. “But keep it brief.”
“I’ll be fucking concise,” I sigh, refusing to waste my breath arguing with her.
I just brush past them before she can scold my language like I’m seventeen.
Scrubbing my hands with the sanitizer from the pump by the door, I push through it and follow the nurse to a curtained bay where machines beep along.
I’ve never seen my father look small. Hospital beds do that, I guess.
They shrink people, steal their edges. That’s what’s happened.
He’s a patient with ghostly pallor, with an oxygen cannula feeding air in through his nose.
His chest rises and falls weakly beneath the thin, standard hospital-issue blanket in a rhythm the monitor documents studiously.
His left hand is taped up around a line, and the skin there looks like crumpled paper.
“Hey,” I say, because what else am I supposed to say anyway? I take the chair, pull it close, put my forearms on the rail like I’m leaning against a bar we both liked and he’s about to tell me the same story he’s told me for fifteen years. “You made a scene. Eleanor’s going to send you an invoice.”
The corner of his mouth twitches. I think. I’m imagining things. For a second, I can almost see him on the dock in the summer, his pants rolled around his knobby-ass ankles, waving a beer at the water like it owed him money.
I don’t take his hand. Can’t bring myself to.
Instead, all I can do is stare at the chart of his heart on the monitor, watching the peaks and shallow valleys etching out a landscape I don’t understand but would burn cities to fix.
“Doctor says you’re stable. Says we’re going to talk about stents and saws and salad,” I tell him lamely. “Don’t sweat it, though. I’ll sneak you a cheeseburger when Eleanor’s not looking. It’ll be our secret, okay, Dad?”
He looks at me with such sadness; I find myself finally reaching for his hand anyway.
Fuck me, it’s cold.
I wrap my fingers around his and try to rub life into the knuckles I watched turn white on the steering wheel when he taught me to drive. He squeezes back, weak but alive.
“You scared her,” I mutter hoarsely. “You scared Ariane. You scared me.”
His hand trembles between both of mine.
“I’ll take care of what I can,” I say. At this point I don’t know if I’m talking to him or to myself.
Eventually, his breath evens. The machines keep counting.
He drifts, not asleep so much as unhooking himself from the pain for a minute.
I sit and watch the numbers, because numbers have never lied to me.
People do. Numbers will tell you when a line rises, when it breaks, when a thing that beat eighty times a minute decides to stop.
I let a memory in, just one, because the room is merciless and I need to feed it something or it’ll take everything.
I’m ten. Mom is still alive. She runs with me on the trail behind the house, laughing when I pretend I don’t need to breathe.
Later, when she’s gone, Dad stands at the same trailhead with shoes that don’t know what dirt is and says, “Show me the route.” He runs like a dad—slower than me but stubborn.
He’s still there at the end, hands on hips, chest heaving, sweat everywhere, smiling like he found a piece of the map he was missing.
I squeeze his hand again. “Don’t make me learn a third version of home,” I tell him. “Two was fucking plenty.”
His mouth moves. Maybe he heard. Maybe I imagined it. I sit with it anyway.
A nurse taps the door frame. “Two more minutes,” she says softly.
“Got it.”
I lean close to dad.
“They’re going to cycle the family through for the next couple of days,” I say, low. “Eleanor will tell you how to breathe. Ariane will ask you not to leave. Julian will hover. I’ll be the one who tells the doctors to cut, sew, fix. So, you gotta do your part, okay? Stay.”
I get up to walk away. At the door, I still look back—and the fatigued body in the bed is still Dad but also every version of him at once: the guy with the daisies, the man swearing at a skipping stone, the father figure in a suit coaching me through a meeting.
###
Outside, Eleanor is waiting in the hall. She has questions I won’t answer and rules I won’t follow. Ariane is there too, eyes red and mouth pouting. Julian stands a polite half-step behind her like an irritating shadow.
I step into the space they make without asking. “He’s fighting,” is all I offer.
Ariane’s shoulders drop a fraction. Eleanor nods once like she built the outcome with stubbornness. Julian gives me a public smile, which I refuse to return.
“I’ll stay here tonight,” Eleanor declares. Her tone is clipped, already rehearsed, like she’s giving instructions to the staff. “Julian can stay with me. Someone responsible should be at my side in case any media personnel come.”
The way she says ‘responsible’ makes my jaw clench. Though, not as much as when her eyes flutter past Ariane. She’s already dismissed her.
I’m almost shocked when Ariane’s head snaps up, unwilling to be set aside this once. She’s a fucking mess, but her chin juts out stubbornly, defiant. “I’m going to stay too,” she insists. Her fists are clenched bundles at her sides. “I’m not going home while he’s like this. He’s my stepdad.”
Eleanor exhales through her nose, like a goddamn dragon. It’s a warning. “Ariane, you won’t be valuable here. You need rest. You’ll come back in the morning, fresh, and you’ll be more useful then.”
Ariane opens her mouth, but Eleanor’s hand cuts the air like a blade, shutting her down before she can speak.
And then, right on cue, Julian slides into the silence.
He’s all prefect lines and sleek sympathy, his voice smooth as silk, designed to soothe, to convince.
He sets a hand on Ariane’s arm like he’s claiming her.
“She’s right, darling. I’ll stay here with your mother.
You should go home, get some sleep. You’ll be back first thing tomorrow. Richard will want to see you strong.”
His tone is perfect, sounding like a line out of a campaign speech, something practiced until it doesn’t even feel human anymore.
Ariane steps back at the words, looking betrayed.
“I don’t want to leave him,” she whispers. The crack in her voice nearly guts me. “Not like this.”
Julian tilts his head, gentle smile fixed on his lips. “Of course you don’t. But this is better. I’ll text you if anything changes.”
Eleanor folds her arms, nodding, satisfied with Julian’s delivery.
“Exactly,” she chirps, satisfied with the back-up. “Ariane, you need to be sensible. Don’t make this harder than it already is.”
That’s when Ariane snaps, soft but perceptive. “Don’t make this harder?” Her eyes flash, and for a beat, she looks like she might tear the pearls from Eleanor’s throat. “Richard almost died. I’m supposed to go home and sleep?”
“You’ll do what’s best for the family,” Eleanor says, unaffected, her tone final. “We don’t fall apart in public.”
Her words are shackles. I can see Ariane fighting them with trembling shoulders. She wants to fight but she’s too goddamn tired.
Julian is smoothing his thumb along her arm like he can iron her into compliance. “Darling, listen to me,” he cajoles her. “This is the smart choice. Trust me.”
“I’ll drive her,” I say, just to get this conversation to be over. I can’t stand any of this—any of them.
Julian’s head jerks toward me, brows rising. The man probably doesn’t like being interrupted mid-performance. His lips part like he’s about to argue, but I pin him with a look that makes the words die in his throat.
Eleanor doesn’t even blink.
She just studies me for a beat, and then she nods. “Fine,” she allows, again granting permission I never asked for. “Take her home. Make sure she rests.”
She trusts me more than she should. That’s her mistake.
Ariane’s eyes find mine.
There’s a hint of relief, but dread too, buried deeper, that she probably doesn’t want me to see. She doesn’t protest. Maybe she can’t. Maybe she doesn’t want to.
Julian clears his throat, trying to salvage ground. He presses a kiss to her temple, which looks more territorial than tender. “I’ll keep watch here. Don’t worry, darling. I’ll take care of your mother. You focus on yourself.”
Yeah, like focusing on herself is something that comes naturally to her. I see her once in a blue moon and even I know that’s fucking stupid.
Ariane’s mouth is set into a hard line. She nods stoically, not debating any further.
But when I step closer, close enough that my shadow falls over her, she shifts toward me like her body knows before her mind does.
“C’mon, I’ve got you,” I exhale, gesturing her on.
She glances back at Dad’s door one last time, eyes glassy, then turns back. Her heels scuff against the tile as she moves, small and quiet, but she follows.
Julian watches us go, his smile is polite, but his eyes give away the slight anxiety he’s feeling seeing her with me. It makes me feel more satisfied than I expect it to.
Eleanor doesn’t even bother to watch us go. She’s already pulled out her phone, probably already rehearsing the next move.
I shove open the doors, the night air slamming into us, agonizing and cold. Ariane hugs her arms around herself, and she looks so fragile I want to strip my own skin to give her warmth.
But I can’t, so I just lead her to the car. She follows wordlessly.