Chapter 9 #3
Cole frowned at her but reached into his satchel to pull out a small tablet.
“Oh, how kind of you. I’ve been turned around in here all day,” Irv said. “Last I remember, a nurse was bringing me chicken
noodle soup. You know, the food here is quite delicious. You wouldn’t expect such a thing in hospital . . .”
Dell let Irv chatter on. “What is that?” she whispered to Cole, and nodded at his tablet.
“It’s for work,” he said. “Email and stuff.”
“Email?” she asked in shock.
“Yes. I told you the administration is very corporate.”
“Who on earth are you emailing?”
“Not earth, obviously,” Cole said, and tapped at the screen. “And I’m looking up our new friend’s case manager, as requested.”
“Huh,” Dell said, shocked but thankful. “Thanks.”
They passed doorways with nurses coming and going, aides pushing carts.
An intercom buzzed to life and paged Dr. Arroyo.
Dell gently held Irv back when they reached the elevator, knowing they’d have to wait for a living person to open the doors for them.
He was still chattering about the surprisingly tasty menu.
“Mm-hmm, I had some delicious Jell-O earlier,” Dell added after Irv gave a compliment of the desserts. “How long have you
lived in San Francisco, Irv?”
Irv cheerfully pivoted topics with the ease of the wind changing direction. “Came here in ’69. The Summer of Love.” He chortled
a laugh. “I’ll tell you, that scene was wild. What a time to be alive.”
Dell had a vision of Irv with long hippie hair and wearing bell-bottoms.
A harried-looking doctor with a stethoscope around her neck approached the elevator and jammed the button to open the doors.
She wore a long white lab coat over a pair of purple scrubs. Dell wondered what department she worked in and if she might,
hopefully, be on her way to the third floor.
“I was born and raised here, but well past the Summer of Love,” Dell said, keeping Irv occupied while they waited to enter
the elevator.
Irv laughed a jolly sound. “Well, you would have loved it. I remember the day we . . .”
The elevator opened, and they all stepped in with the doctor. Dell let Irv continue to chatter and nudged Cole with her elbow.
“Anything?”
Cole was still studying his tablet, his brow pinched and lips pursed. “He passed three days ago,” he quietly reported.
“Then why is he still here?” Dell whispered.
“Looks like a paperwork delay.”
“Paperwork delay? Seriously?”
“Unfortunately, yes.”
“Well, can you send a memo he’s stuck or something?”
Cole looked down at the plea in her eyes, and she saw the no on his lips melt like a scoop of ice cream in the sun. “Your altruism is equally as impressive as your loyalty. As are your
persuasion skills. I’ll see what I can do.”
Dell beamed at him. “Thank you. And while you’re at it, can you look up Robbie’s mom?
Cole sighed. “I should get a raise . . .”
Dell caught the hint of a smile on his mouth and grinned to herself, knowing he’d do it. Irv was still chattering beside her.
She threw in an occasional mm-hmm and how interesting, though she was only paying about 60 percent attention.
It turned out the harried doctor was going to the third floor. She stepped out when the elevator arrived with a ding, and the three invisible companions she didn’t
even know she had followed.
“It’s this way to your room,” Irv said, though Dell didn’t need the direction.
She could see a small cluster of people outside a doorway: Mariana, tapping away at her phone; Oscar, her sous-chef, leaning
against the wall with his bulky arms crossed; a hospital security guard; and her sister-in-law, Lena, bouncing Dell’s younger
niece on her hip.
The sight of them all made Dell’s chest swell.
“Thank you, Irv,” Dell said, and patted his arm. “You’ve been very helpful.
“Sure thing, dear. You’ve got a lot of admirers. Count me among the list,” he said with a wink. “Say, any chance your friend here has figured out those directions?”
Dell turned to Cole with the same question on her face. Cole finished tapping something into his tablet and looked up with
a kind smile. “If you return to your room, Mr. Jones, someone will be with you shortly to help sort things out.”
“Ah, thanks, lad,” Irv said with a nod. “Good thing it’s right down the hall . . .” he added, and headed in that direction.
Dell looked to Cole once Irv had walked away, his robe thankfully tied shut in back now. “Is that true, or were you just trying
to get rid of him?”
“It’s true,” Cole said. “I sent a message to his case manager. She’ll prioritize the request.”
“Corporate indeed. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Now, this seems to be the place,” he said, and nodded at the crowded doorway.
“Seems like it,” Dell said with a big breath. She longed to run up and hug them all, and tell them everything would be all
right. At the same time, memory of what it had been like the last time she’d witnessed her family mourning her slowed her
steps. She wasn’t sure she could take it again.
“It’s all right,” Cole said, and slipped his hand into hers, as if he could read her thoughts. She looked down at his long
fingers wrapped around hers, and it gave him pause. “Sorry,” he said, and tried to pull away, but she gripped his hand tighter.
“No, it’s okay. Thank you. I am a little nervous.
But I’m glad this will all be over soon.
” She softly smiled at him, and his return smile faltered around the edges.
She got the sense he didn’t want it to be over.
That perhaps their time together had meant something to him, and he might .
. . miss her. The same hazy longing Dell had sensed earlier came over her again, the one that felt like her heartstrings being tugged by something very far away she couldn’t name.
All at once, somehow, she felt like she would miss Cole too.
“Mr. and Mrs. Rodgers?” a voice interrupted. Dell startled at the sound of her parents’ names and realized the doctor they’d
ridden the elevator with had approached her room’s door.
“Come on,” Cole said, and pulled Dell in that direction.
They entered a room that was at once somber and sterile and exploding with life. Flowers of every shape and color covered
every surface. Even with her sense blunted, Dell could smell the room like a spring garden.
“Geez, you die for a day, and everyone you’ve ever known sends flowers,” Dell said, and brushed past a billowing vase of white
roses. The tag said they were from her publisher all the way in New York City. “How did they even know?” She looked to Cole
with an arched eyebrow.
He was reading the tag on a vase of lilies with a frown. “News travels fast, especially with a family as prominent as yours.
But they don’t think you’re dead, remember? At least not yet.”
“Well, let’s hope not ever,” Dell said, and walked to the foot of her bed.
Her body looked much like it had when she’d last seen it in her bed at home: pale, waxy, but now in a hospital gown with tubes taped to her arms and a little halo of sensors around her forehead like a crown.
The monitors next to her bed showed minimal activity.
She silently thanked Jason for whatever hysterics he’d pulled to convince them to wire her up at all, and knew if she was the daughter of anyone else with less sway, it wouldn’t have happened.
Her parents stood when the doctor addressed them. They’d been on either side of her bed, each holding one of her limp hands,
but her father now came around to the side where her mother stood.
“Any update?” her father asked. His voice was raw and cracked with pain.
Both of her parents looked like they’d aged a hundred years since that morning. Dell longed to wrap her arms around them and
felt the now familiar urge to cry boil behind her eyes.
“The tox panel was negative. The only thing in her system was traces of alcohol, but we know from reports she’d had champagne
and wine last night. There’s nothing to suggest this state is chemically induced,” the doctor said.
Dell leaned over the bed to get a look at her name. Dr. Albright. She was tall and lean with thick graying hair pulled into
a neat ponytail.
Dell’s mother let out a sigh that sounded both relieved and frustrated. “Well, of course she wouldn’t have done drugs. But
what else could have done this?”
Dell’s father wrapped his arm around her mother’s shoulders as if to keep her upright.
“That is a good question,” Dr. Albright said. “With no physical signs of trauma and nothing in her system, it’s possible there
could be something psychosomatic at play.”
“Psycho— What?” her father asked.
Dr. Albright folded her hands in front of her. “Psychosomatic, meaning triggered by the brain. Mentally induced, you could
say. Had your daughter been experiencing any stress lately?”
Patricia snorted, and Dell almost laughed at how much it sounded like herself.
“Dell thrived on stress, are you kidding me? She owns a restaurant, supports charities, has a book coming out, and was a week away from marrying the mayor’s son.
She’s never sat still a day in her life.
It’s not having something to do that stresses her out.
Even with all that going on, it wouldn’t have sent her into . . . whatever state
this is,” she said, and waved a hand over Dell’s bed.
“Patty, you don’t know that,” her father gently said. “Dr. Albright is just trying to help.”
Patricia huffed. “I know our daughter, and there’s nothing she couldn’t handle. If she was having a mental breakdown, she
would have told us and gone to a therapist, not ended up in a coma, Bill.”
William shrugged a knowing shoulder like he couldn’t argue.
Dell’s dead chest swelled with pride that her parents knew her so well. At the same time, she could sense Cole cringing in
the corner. The doctors were never going to find an explanation because there wasn’t one to be had, not one science could
provide anyway.
“Well, now what?” Patricia asked.
Dr. Albright cleared her throat. “I’d like to order a psych evaluation.”
“How? She can’t talk,” Patricia protested.