DAMIEN
The door swung shut in my face, and I immediately turned to my phone. Pulling it out, I crossed the hall to the waiting room. There were other anxious families waiting for news of their loved ones, and I fit right in. I called Millie first, telling her everything that I knew.
“She was complaining of a stomachache last night. Then this morning, she threw up and had some abdominal pain.” I was almost breathless rehashing it all, not breaking down until I got to the more recent events. “We went to the medical aid center, and they told us to go to the emergency room. They think it might be her appendix.”
“Oh my God,” Millie said. “We’ll be right there.”
I paced the room while calling Sean and Kent. They were both as outraged and scared as I was. I agreed that Meara meant the world to me, and knowing that something was seriously wrong was like a wakeup call. Could it really be over before it had actually begun? We had only been together for a month. That wasn’t even time to do everything we had been dreaming of doing. We were still feeling our way through it, all four of us. There were conversations we hadn’t had and adventures still to come. I didn’t want to imagine that our life together would be cut short.
Everyone converged in the waiting room, having shared the same experience trying to find parking in the massive lot. They all had to explain themselves to gain access to the inner sanctum, so it took some time.
I kept waiting for the doctor to come out and talk to me, but no one was forthcoming. I asked at the nurse’s station, and they told me they would check but didn’t get back to me. Finally, when Millie arrived, I marched her up to the head nurse.
“This is Meara’s sister. She is family. She deserves some answers.”
The nurse looked at me, perplexed. She hadn’t told me that I didn’t deserve to know what was going on. She just didn’t have answers, and the place was busy. There were at least a dozen other couples and family members waiting along with us. I knew the surgeons were racing to save lives and that they couldn’t spare a moment for little things like explaining what the hell was going on.
“I’ll get a doctor out to talk to you right away,” the nurse promised.
“You’ve been saying the same thing to me for half an hour!” I cried.
“Is she in surgery?” Millie asked, trying to calm both of us down.
“I don’t think so,” the nurse responded. “Let me check.”
I turned around, gazing out into the chaos of the waiting room. “Let me check, let me check. That’s all she says.”
“Maybe it’s not that bad,” Millie hesitated. “If she’s not in surgery, then maybe they’re still running tests.”
“We’ve got to figure out what’s going on,” I snapped. I was through with the careful plotting of the doctors. Meara was right: Everyone was just trying to cover their own ass. They wanted to make sure that they crossed all their Ts and dotted all their Is so that we wouldn’t have a legal leg to stand on if something went wrong. The problem was that in their need to be right, they wouldn’t say what they thought.
The nurse wasn’t authorized to speak. The doctors couldn’t speak to me because I wasn’t family. But even when I brought them a legitimate family member, they still refused to speculate. I was running short on patience.
“I’ll get to the bottom of this,” Vlad said.
“Hey.” I paused to shake his hand. It was good to see a friendly face, someone with even more experience and gravitas than I had. “Thanks for coming.”
“Of course,” Vlad replied. “Meara was there when Millie had her scare.”
“How’s the lawsuit going?” I knew that Vlad was suing the hospital and the original surgeon over Millie’s encounter.
“They settled. They just wanted it to go away. Insurance covered it.”
“I’m fine, by the way,” Millie said.
“She made a full recovery,” Vlad admitted. “I didn’t want to pursue it.”
“Meara will be fine as well,” Millie comforted me. “Hopefully her procedure will be by the book, and there won’t be any surprises.”
“I just wish I had more information,” I sighed.
Kent and Sean showed up at the same time. They rushed over, looking around as if they expected Meara to be with me. I shook my head. Sean grabbed at his beard, spinning around in frustration. Kent paused to shake Vlad’s hand and give Millie a hug. When I had caught my business partners up on current events, the hospital finally sent a doctor out to talk to us.
“Millie Jackson?” a weathered young man who looked like he hadn’t slept in weeks approached our little group.
He had a friendly air about him, and even though we were all worked up, his simple presence was enough to soothe our fears. I could tell that he had delivered his fair share of earth-shattering announcements, and that this wasn’t one of them.
“I’m Millie,” she said.