at the idea that the hospital housed not only a Starbucks and a mobile phone shop, but a nail boutique as well, that I almost missed the barista calling my name.
“Alice!”
I snapped back to reality and hurried over to retrieve the cardboard tray of coffees. “Cheers.” My polite smile went unnoticed as the young man turned his attention to the next order. Business was brisk today, it seemed. Must have been a popular day for falling ill.
It was going on three hours of waiting now and no word from the surgeon yet. Carl’s surgery was meant to be a relatively simple procedure, but you never knew with these things. An innocent trip to the chemist could end in a four-car pile-up, just as an ascent on a ladder to hang holiday lights might result in a broken back or a sprained wrist at the very least.
There was an article just last week about a perfectly healthy twenty-two-year-old woman who entered hospital for rhinoplasty and never left. One minute, she was planning her new life with an attractive ski-slope nose, and the next she was gone. Poof. Just like that.
And it’s not as if Carl Green was a paragon of healthy living with his diet of beer and cheeseburgers and those size double-extra-large coveralls. For heaven’s sake!
I swallowed hard and forced myself to breathe. One in, one out. Two in, two out. You’re in a rainforest surrounded by the sweet chirping sounds of the birds and insects. Three in.
“Hey! Over here!”
I turned to see that Ruby and her cousin, Sadie, had moved from our previous spot sitting vigil outside the surgery ward to a pair of small plush sofas and a coffee table that must have just recently been vacated.
“We scored the good seats.” Sadie smiled, reaching her hands out to help with the coffees while Ruby spread her arms over the back of her sofa and dropped her head back.
“Finally. My ass was falling asleep,” she said with her distinct North Carolina accent and usual straightforwardness.
“Any word?” I dropped down onto the seat next to Sadie, careful not to spill my medium roast as I settled my bag next to me. The scent of coffee was a vast improvement over the stringent antiseptic odor lingering near the surgery doors.
“Still nothing, but don’t worry,” Ruby reassured, righting her head once more to send a small smile my way. She looked effortlessly beautiful, as usual, with her denim shorts, sleeveless top, and mounds of hair secured on top of her head with a handkerchief.
“It was sweet of you to come.” Sadie laid a hand on my arm, and I had to remind myself not to pull away. It had been almost four months now, but I was still somewhat unaccustomed to how tactile Americans were. Or perhaps it was just these Americans. The Green women doled out hugs like sweets on Christmas, something I was coming to not only accept, but appreciate as well. “I can’t imagine your new boss is too thrilled to have you skip out on work.”
Using my free hand, I dug in my bag for the cardboard coasters I kept there and then arranged them on the table before setting my coffee down. “According to her, I work too many hours as it is.” It was true I’d only recently found employment here in North Carolina after a visa issue required me to abandon my original post in Washington D.C., but I’d always been a hard worker, and that hadn’t changed. “And of course I came. If anything happened to Carl, who would call me ‘tiny girl’?” I asked, referring to the big bloke’s pet name for me.
Easy smiles spread on both Ruby and Sadie’s faces as they shook their heads in tandem. “I still don’t know what you did to own him like you do. He’s turned into a regular old softie.” Ruby laughed.
I merely grinned in return because I hadn’t a clue why Carl and I had hit it off so famously from the very start. He was a fifty-year-old, two-hundred-and-forty pound car mechanic with barely a secondary school education and a reputation of a quick and dirty temper; while I was a petite, bespectacled, twenty-nine-year-old Feldish executive assistant who did crosswords for fun and never made a move before considering it from every angle and then some. We were polar opposites, but it did nothing to stop me from adoring him.
And now he was lying on a surgeon’s table, probably fighting for his life while