know her or that she was coming apart at the seams.
We talked for a few more minutes, and then I hung up and drove the rest of the way in silence; I didn’t even want the background noise of the radio. I pulled over at a rest stop to send out emails and shot them off to people, informing them of my family emergency and then doing what I could to prepare my colleagues for the following day. My phone started pinging with their replies, even this late, because we all worked stupid hours. Everyone, as expected, wanted me to take whatever time I needed. I was certain that when my boss got into the office and saw my note, I’d get not only a reassuring reply but also a supportive text and maybe even a phone call. Because yes, we were a big company in the habit of making our clients, and ourselves, piles of money, but family was the most important thing, from our CEO on down.
Stopping to send the emails added about thirty minutes to my travel time, and with dropping off the car and taking a tram to the main terminal, I got there right around the ridiculous hour of four in the morning. Walking into the ground level, I saw my sister, Courtney, standing with her husband, Seth, his arm draped around her shoulders, waiting for me.
She looked like she had put on whatever was clean, and as a result, there was a denim jacket over a tie-dyed sweatshirt, a long scarf looped many times around her neck, yoga pants, heavy crew socks, clogs, oversized sunglasses, and her long dirty-blonde hair was pulled up into a messy bun. She could have passed for a starving college student until she saw me, and waved. The diamond band on the ring finger of her left hand, when it caught the light, could be blinding, and the stacked gold Tiffany bracelets also announced her status.
“You didn’t have to do this,” she called as I got closer, but I could tell from how tight she grabbed me when I reached her that our father, Ray Gallagher, had scared her to death. I clutched her tight so she didn’t fly apart.
When I looked over at Seth, he mouthed the words, “Thank you,” and I understood that my sweet little sister had been losing her mind. “How’s Mom?” I asked her.
Easing back, she bit her bottom lip for a moment. “Okay. She’s still at the hospital, even though Uncle Brian and Aunt Lindsey tried to make her go home. I mean, at this point we’re all just watching him sleep.”
In Seth’s ancient Prius—the man was an environmental engineer, after all; he spent time in sewers with acid water eating through his hazmat suit and jeans—Courtney explained that it was a minor myocardial infarction, but since there was a blockage of blood flow, they were going to put in a stent.
“No, wait, that’s not right,” she corrected herself, turning to look at her husband, who nodded in agreement, keeping his eyes on the road. “They already put the stent in.”
“They did, yes,” he agreed, reaching over to take her hand.
“Everything looks great,” she explained, sounding calmer, steadier, “and they think he might get out of the hospital either Saturday or Sunday.”
“Oh.” I released the breath it seemed like I’d been holding for hours. “So he is actually good,” I rasped before my voice went out, and my sister, wildly against the law, unclipped her seat belt, climbed into the back seat, and dropped down into the hug I was waiting to give her.
Seth pulled over as soon as he got through the light so she could sob in my arms and I could rock her back and forth until the flood subsided, first to staccato crying, and finally to hiccups. We stopped and got Starbucks on the way, because, as our mother had taught us early in life, coffee fixed everything.
My parents got married young. My father, Raymond, was a junior in college, my mother, Brynn, a freshman, when he knew she was it and asked her to marry him. She knew he was it for her too, and said yes.
For the Pruitts, my mother’s family, it seemed fast, but my grandmother always assured us that when you knew, you knew. Second-guessing your heart was a bad idea and only led to regret. So even though her youngest child, my mother, was attending Cal State Berkeley on a full scholarship for volleyball