“Is there anyone I can call?” Cary asked from my bedside. I could hear the hope in her voice, the curiosity. “Maybe… a boy?”
I snorted. “Mind your own damn business.”
“Not a chance, Tatum Halloway. Not a chance.”
I peeled my eyes open and tried to glare at my favorite nurse. I found myself smiling instead. Damn her. I wanted to hang onto my anger, hold it tight and let it feed me enough fire and brimstone to get me through this weekend.
I’d been admitted yesterday when I went to see Dr. Masters because I had been feeling worse than usual. I hadn’t even been in the office long enough to check in before I blacked out.
There had been a male nurse standing next to the circulation desk and he managed to catch me before I did any real damage to my body or brain. I was thankful that I didn’t also have a concussion, but I was frustrated with my weakness.
I had a dumb infection and not enough white blood cells to fight it off. My body was in a dangerous place and they admitted me right away. This infection had the power to kill me if they didn’t get it under control.
I couldn’t have talked Dr. Masters into letting me go home even if I had wanted to. And frankly, I was too tired to care anyway. It would have been different if I had a home to wait this out in, but the thought of suffering through the next couple days in my dorm room sounded like something out of the bottomless pits of hell.
Thanks, but no thanks.
I’d called Carter earlier this evening to let her know my plans had changed for this weekend. She promised to come up later and bring a deck of cards and ginger ale.
“What happened to the boy, Tatum?” Cary hovered over me with raised brows and a pinched face.
I pulled the blankets over my face. “If I would have known you were going to harass me all weekend, I would have gone home.” My voice sounded muffled beneath the blankets. My breath puffed in hot clouds around my face and I yanked them down, gasping for breath.
“How many times have I told you that you can’t suffocate that way?” She did not look amused.
I sucked in another fortifying breath of pure oxygen. “I don’t believe you,” I gasped. “I hate that feeling.”
“It’s your own air!” She looked completely exasperated with me.
“But it’s used! It’s like when hair falls out. I’m fine with touching my own hair until it comes out of my head. Then it’s the most disgusting thing on the planet. I know you feel the same way. I saw you use tweezers to pick off Katrina’s hair on the back of her sweater the last time I was here.”
She rolled her eyes. “Have you seen Katrina’s hair? She might be my supervisor, but she needs a better conditioner.”
I gave a weak laugh, the best I could do. “Don’t be a mean girl.”
“Don’t hold gossip back from me then. It makes me mean.”
“I’m cold. And hungry. And I have other needs you should be attending. Why are you all up in my grill over one dumb boy?”
“Grill? Those meds went straight to your brain. And you’re not hungry. And there’s nothing I can do for you if you’re cold. You already have three blankets on you. I can’t steal anymore.”
I let out an exasperated sigh and tried not to shiver. My bald head was wrapped in a scarf and it did nothing to hold in any body heat. Plus, this hospital set there temperature at freezer settings or something. I hadn’t stopped shaking since I arrived. “You’re a terrible nurse.”
She started laughing like she couldn’t believe I just said that. She swatted my leg with her chart and then sunk down next to me. I enjoyed the warmth of her legs pressed against mine and the comfort she so freely gave me.
The truth was she could have been a terrible nurse, or a cranky one, or one that didn’t care about me at all. But she wasn’t those things. In fact, I rarely met a nurse that didn’t make me feel completely comfortable and taken care of. Cary just went above and beyond her call of duty.
If I didn’t have her during the last few months, I probably would have gone crazy.
It was hard enough to get treated away from home and away from family. But with all the treatments, I hardly had any time to make friends either.
I had Carter.
And I had Cary.
And for a little while I had Bridger.
I sniffled and wiped at my nose with the palm of my hand.
“Tell me what happened with that boy. The cute, buff one. Did y’all break up? Did he break your heart? I need to know.”
“There’s not much of a story there.”
Her eyebrows scrunched together over her eyes. “If he hurt you, Tatum, there are ways to get revenge. You know all the right people.” She hooked a thumb at herself and her eyes danced with mischief.
I laughed unexpectedly again. “Revenge!” I was quickly out of breath from laughing so hard. I tried to steady out my giggles and asked, “Just out of curiosity, how are you the right people?”
She waved me off like I was crazy. “All people in the medical field are the right people. For instance, you could send him to Dr. Masters for a prostate exam. If he hurt you, I’m fairly confident we could enlist her help. She wouldn’t want to set back your treatment because of a broken heart, you know. Or we could fudge the results on some mandatory tests after his yearly physical and send him in for multiple colonoscopies. He’s not allergic to anything, is he?”
I couldn’t stop laughing. She was so crazy. And I loved her to pieces. “At least you didn’t suggest murder.”
“Do I look like a murderer to you?”
“No! But I’m not as creative with my revenge. Remind me never to piss you off!”
She smiled a shit-eating-grin, like she’d just won the lottery by cheating, but knew she could get away with it. “I’m supposed to remind you not to piss me off. So tell me about the boy.”
I groaned. She got me. The trickster. “You sneaky biotch.”
“Hey! Watch the language. If I had known you were going to be this grumpy, I would have sent Katrina in to shed all over you.”
“You’re so full of it tonight!” She narrowed her eyes on me and I knew I was trapped. “Fine. He knows. He knows all about this.” I gestured down at my body with my IV-ed hand. “Someone told him I was sick. I think he knew for days before he said something.”
“He went for days? So that means he wasn’t mad at you for lying to him for months?” She sounded completely shocked. And I didn’t blame her. I was still shocked over that too.
Through the course of my treatment, I’d been keeping her updated on all things Bridger-related. Except for today of course, she’d gotten a complete rundown of all things exciting and romantic in my life.
Each time I’d seen her, she had encouraged me to be honest with him, to tell him everything. Each week, I’d put her off and ignored her pleas for honesty.
I’d been stupid not to listen to her. And even dumber not to tell Bridger.
I could see that now.
“I don’t get it. He’s not mad at me. I mean, maybe a little bit. But I think he’s more hurt than anything. And I understand that. I would be hurt if I were in his position.”
“So, you apologized and he didn’t want to hear it?”
I squirmed in the bed and avoided her piercing eyes. “Um, not exactly.”
“Tatum M. Halloway! You haven’t apologized?”
“Makenzie. The M stands for Makenzie.”
She waved me off again. “I knew that. I just couldn’t remember.” She sucked in a deep breath and then railed at me. “You owe that boy an apology. Even if he decides not to stick with you, you still owe him an apology. You lied, Tate! A lot of times! And you led him on without giving him a chance to decide if this was something he could deal with or not!”
“That’s the whole point! I lied because I didn’t want him to have to decide! I didn’t want him to look at me here or after a treatment and decide to stay
with me just because he felt sorry for me. I didn’t want a pitying relationship or a fake one. You don’t know him, Cary! When we first reconnected, he was like this shell of a person. He wasn’t himself. He was someone… someone empty and sad and just, it just broke me to see him like that. And I knew that if I forced him to be in a relationship with me, whether intentionally or not, he would be that person again. And I couldn’t stand it. I couldn’t stand the idea of turning him into that! I just could not be the cause of that version of him.”
“That was his choice to become that person before, Tate. And it was his choice to come out of it. It sounds like he maybe went through something before?”
I nodded. “He, uh, his parents died when he was still in high school. They got caught in a fire. And then his serious girlfriend cheated on him last year.”
She gasped at the trauma Bridger went through. Hot tears stung at my own eyes. Silently, in my head, I added, and then I lied to him and kept my serious illness from him.
I hated what happened to his parents. I hated what Jesse did to him.
And I hated what I did to him.
How could I have been so short-sighted? How could I have been so horrible?