going to stay with her mahmen. At Havers’s, that is. Until the situation… resolves.”
iAm started chopping a bundle of fresh basil leaves. “Tell her to take as long as she needs for that sad business.”
“I will. Just keep the position open for her if you can. She needs this job.”
“She has it. For as long as she wants it.”
Trez thought of all the things he would change if he could. There were so many… but none of them involved that female morphing into his Selena. He’d lived that fantasy for ten minutes, and all he’d done was prove his brother’s predication true.
Someone who deserved better was going to get hurt. And it was all Trez’s fault.
“She’s saving up to move out of the rooming house she’s staying in,” he heard himself say. “She wants to do things on her own.”
Maybe that would be different now, though. With her reconciling with her family, maybe she would go back to Michigan with them. Surely they would return to her hometown there—no, wait. She’d said her parents were moving for her mahmen’s health. Down south somewhere? North Carolina? South Carolina?
As he pictured her leaving Caldwell, and him never seeing her again, his heart ached, but he didn’t trust the emotion.
He didn’t trust his read on anything anymore.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Mahmen,” Therese said. “We’re right here. We’re all right here.”
There were now three chairs around the bedside. The staff had been so kind, so easy to deal with, so accommodating where and when they could be given the dire nature of that which they were treating. Then again, they didn’t go into this particular division of medicine unless they were a special breed. Here, in the ICU, there was more death than life, the battle against the Grim Reaper lost more times than won.
So you had to be tough without losing your compassion.
Therese gently stroked her mahmen’s cool, dry hand and tried not to choke up. “I am so sorry I left like that.” She glanced across at her father. Looked to the right at her brother. “I’m so sorry, but I’m here with you now, and Gareth and I have made up, and Dad is here… our family is back together, Mahmen.”
“That’s right, nalla,” her father said.
“I want to understand, Mahmen,” she continued. “You have a story to tell, I know this. And I want to know what it is, from you, and I want you to know that whatever it is, I accept it. You had your reasons for doing what you did, but you have to come back to us so I can know them from you. You have to… come back to us so you and I can be as we were.”
Focusing on the closed eyes, she had no idea what to expect as she fell silent.
No, that was not exactly true. She knew what she wanted. She wanted the female to wake up, start breathing on her own, and resume life. Resume all their lives. Continue into the future that Therese had once taken for granted, but would no longer.
When nothing happened, when there was no response at all nor any recognition, Therese took a deep breath. “I’m so sorry, Mahmen.”
And… that was how it went. They sat like that, on their vigil, with the machines beeping and staff coming and going silently, for God only knew how long. Every once in a while, Therese would repeat what she’d said in some form or another, or her father would tell an anecdote—like about the time Gareth had tried to paint the outside of the house as a Mother’s Day present—or Gareth would stand up and pace in front of the glass wall that faced the rest of the ICU.
As there continued to be no change, time took on a surreal, elastic quality. Therese couldn’t decide whether it was crawling… or flying… and that was because it was seeming to do both at once—
Except then, without warning, the scent of something absolutely not antiseptic in the slightest drifted into the room. And a second later, Trez appeared on the far side of the glass, a bunch of paper bags in his arms.
Therese smiled, her heart lifting in her chest. And as her father and her brother looked up, both males rose to their feet and Trez bowed out of respect.
“Is that…” her father started.
“Yup,” Therese said as she patted the hand she had been holding. “Dinner has arrived, Mahmen. I wish you would join us. It’s very good Italian, your favorite.”
“They won’t