September: Calendar Girl Book 9

W
hite walls
. Nothing but white walls with cracked, chipped paint and ceiling tiles with gnarly rust-colored splotches. Blinking several times, I lifted my head and turned it from side to side, forward and back. The knot in my shoulder was the size of Mount Everest and had been there for almost a week.

“I’m sorry, dear. He’s not getting any better.”

“Mia, we’re here for you.”

“We’ll continue to pray for a miracle.”

“Your father’s chances are very slim, I’m afraid.”

“Make sure you notify the rest of the family.”

“Talk to him. Say goodbye.”

Snippets of condolences and responses from the doctor whirl in my head as if on an old time spinning record. I just keep picking up the arm and placing it back down until it repeats the melody.

With too tired eyes, I stare at the only man who’s always loved me. From the very first breath I took, to teaching me how to play baseball, rooting me on through my studies, all the way until Mom left before he broke down. Even when his face was bright red, his speech slurred, and his eyes a hazy gray, he loved me, and I counted on that love to get us through. For the most part, it did.

Sitting next to his bed, I clutched his hand, hoping my grip, the warmth I pressed into his palm, would worm its way into his body’s recognition and tell him to fight. Fight for his daughters. Fight for
me,
his flesh and blood. I’d spent the last decade and a half fighting for him, for Maddy, and now he needed to man up.
Be there
. Work hard to come back to us. We might not have been much, just two young women trying to find their way, but we were his, and I had to believe deep down that we were worth the fight, or he’d be lost to us…forever.

The new morning shift nurse entered. She was light on her feet, seeming to not make a sound as she checked Pops’s vitals and marked something on his chart before sending me a remorseful smile. That’s all I’d received for the last several days. Apologies, frowns, tentative condolences. I looked over at Maddy curled up in a fetal position on the tiny loveseat, asleep. Like me, she’d refused to leave for more than a speedy shower and change of clothes. If our dad was going to take his last breath, we’d be there to witness it.

We still hadn’t talked about the elephant in the room. The one that weighed so heavily on my chest, I swear it had broken a few ribs in the process. Taking a full breath was impossible, knowing that Maddy was hurting. The information about Jackson Cunningham being her real father had been a blow, one that hit us both upside the head so hard we knocked into one another. The knowledge had us tiptoeing around the other, separating us in a way that made my skin crawl. I needed Maddy now, more than ever before, and she seemed to be slipping away, uncertain of the space she occupied. I hated that and hated our mother even more for making it our reality.

The only benefit to all this was Maxwell. He’d sent us here on his private jet and called every day. Even scored us a hotel for the next month that was walking distance from the convalescent hospital. Our new brother had thought of everything, and he made sure money was no object. All of a sudden, we had the best doctors—teams of people coming in to check on our father, scouring over his medical records. They looked for clues as to not only his neurological status to be sure he wasn’t brain dead, but also whether he’d be able to overcome the physical ramifications of a viral infection gone bad, including not one but two heart-stopping allergic reactions to treatment.

A few of the doctors feared the worst. Until the new teams of specialists arrived, the convalescent hospital had written off our dad. Told us there was nothing more we could do and recommended taking him off life support.

Life support.

Removing the support that gave him life. I couldn’t do it. If I were in a similar circumstance, would Pops give up on me, stop the machines from giving me that life-sustaining air? Hell would literally turn to ice before that happened. That man would stand over me and pump my chest and give me CPR nonstop if it would keep me alive even for one minute. I had to give him the same chance.

“Good morning, Ms. Saunders,” Dr. McHottie said as he pulled Pops’s chart from the end of the bed and scanned it. For a few minutes, he’d make notes, check some things, flip pages, and repeat.

I stood, stretched my arms above my head, and did a small backbend, trying to relieve the constant ache in the center of my spine, the kind that comes from sitting in a plastic chair for nearly a week. My back protested, and I winced. Dr. McHottie shook his head, staring at me over a pair of black-rimmed glasses. His dark, curly hair was cropped close to his head and almost seemed to shine. It looked wet, and by the fresh scent of Irish Spring, he’d just left the shower. Smelling the soapy goodness reminded me of how ripe I was getting. It had been two days since I’d left the hospital. No amount of deodorant could mask the funk beginning to germinate under my arms.

“Morning, Doc. What’s the prognosis? Any better?” I tried not to sound too hopeful because every day for nearly seven days, he’d frowned and simply shook his head. Today though, there was a moment. One where I knew, I just knew, our luck was changing.

The slick, young doctor met me on my side of the bed and placed a hand on my shoulder. He squeezed, and I tried not to moan at the scant release of tension that small grip provided. I was wound so tight any touch, no matter how brief, felt like a momentous occasion. “According to the readings, at some point in the night, your dad’s lungs started to move
against
the machines. It’s a slight positive response indicating he might breathe on his own, but I don’t want to put the cart before the horse.

There weren’t words to express my gratitude for this tiny speck of hope. Instead, I plowed into his body and wrapped my arms around his waist. I poured everything I had into that one hug, holding on as if my own life depended on it. He didn’t seem to mind. In fact, he held me. Wrapped his arms around my body, keeping me against his chest. We stood there, a wrecked woman and a man of medicine, a healer. I leaned against that man and prayed God would grant him the ability to save my dad regardless of whether or not he deserved it. I had to believe that everyone deserved a second chance. If he made it, I think Pops would agree. Maybe this would be the wake-up call he needed to realize that life was indeed worth living.

A cell phone ring blasted into the euphoria that was my single positive moment in the better part of a week. I jumped back and looked into the sky-blue gaze of Dr. McHottie. “Sorry. It’s just a lot—” I started but he cut me off.

“Mia, never be sorry for needing a hug. I can tell you’re a very strong young woman, but everyone needs someone to lean on. Let’s keep praying for a miracle. I’ll be back to check on his status in a couple of hours.”

I nodded and turned around to find Maddy with her cell phone crushed against her ear.

“Uh, yeah, she’s right here, Auntie.” Maddy held out her cell phone as she pushed the blond layers of bedhead back off her face. She looked the way I felt, though I’m certain if a mirror were anywhere near me, I’d look like the night of the living dead revived.

Blowing out a long breath, I lifted the phone to my ear. “Hello?”

“What the hell is going on? You haven’t answered my calls, you didn’t show up for your flight, and you certainly didn’t show up in Tucson, Arizona where client number nine was expecting you!”

I tried to form a reply, but nothing came out. I should say sorry, should say something, but I didn’t have it in me to care. “Millie—”

“Don’t you Millie me. You are in deep shit, young lady! If you read the fine print in your contract, you’d know that if you stand the client up, not only do you lose the hundred thousand dollar fee, you owe them a hundred thousand for their trouble!”

Moving as fast as my tired legs would take me, I left Pops’s room and went down the hall to the outdoor garden area. It was early so the there wasn’t anyone out just yet. “Are you telling me I now owe some rich motherfucker a hundred thousand dollars?” I roared into the phone.

“You’re yelling at me?” Her voice was laced with venom and just as lethal. “You got yourself into this.”

“I had no choice! Pops is on his death bed!”

“So you just up and leave and don’t tell me? Mia, had I contacted the client in advance, this might have been avoided. Right now, you are two hundred thousand dollars in the hole. You did not have enough in the master account to send Blaine your monthly installment.”

Oh, no. My body started to shake, and my legs couldn’t hold me up any more. Quivering, I slumped into the nearest bench. “I missed my payment…” I choked out, fear controlling my tongue.

“Yes! I’ve been calling several times a day. Finally, I got in touch with Maddy, though she’d ignored my calls until today.”

“My phone has been off. It’s been touch and go with Pops for the last week, Millie. He’s still nowhere near out of the woods. I can’t leave him.” I ran a shaky hand through my hair and tugged on the roots, the instant bite of pain bringing with it a clarity I was desperately trying to wrap my mind around.

“I can’t bail you out, Mia. My money is tied up in the business and a new venture I just sank everything into. You’re going to have to talk to one of your rich friends. Maybe one of the ones that paid the extra fee?” she suggested—as if that were so easy. Sex and money. That was the name of her game.

Ask Wes or Alec for two hundred thousand dollars? Absolutely not. No way. “I’ll figure something out.”

“All I know is you’d better figure it out fast. Your next client is Drew Hoffman.”

The name bounced around in my mind like a game of Plinko until it sank into a winning number. “The doctor to the stars? The one with his own daily TV show, line of vitamins, workout clothing, and DVDs? You’ve got to be kidding.”

“The very same. Apparently, he saw your swimsuit campaign about beauty in all sizes. Wants you to appear on his show for a daily segment he’s going to call ‘Living Beautiful.’ Mia, if this goes big, you could end up securing a regular spot on the show at the start of the new year. He’d only have to wait a couple months for you to start. No pressure.” She cackled. Straight up witch-like screech you see in the bad B-movies. If I had been standing next to her, it would have taken a Herculean effort to peel my boney fingers from around her throat.

No pressure. Millie said that as if this weren’t the break of the century. I pressed hard against my temples. All the blood in my body seemed to rush to my heart and make it pound far harder than normal. If I weren’t here with Pops right now, this would be amazing news. The press I’d received had given me a small
in
with the world of acting so far. The media had taken notice, and when Anton’s video went live next month, it would definitely coincide nicely. This opportunity though, to be a regular on a TV spot with Dr. Hoffman? Crazy town. This is the big break I needed to find me, my own path.

Goddammit, I needed to talk to Wes. Get his opinion, see if he knew the famous doctor personally and whether he’d heard anything. Of course, I couldn’t do that because I hadn’t heard from him in two weeks. Didn’t know where he was, when he’d be back, just that Judi had said he left overnight one day. Told her he wouldn’t be back for a two to three weeks and to tell me he’d call. That was all she had for me. I’d received a scratchy voicemail from him that broke up so bad I couldn’t hear much of anything. Be home soon and that he loved me. Outside of that, nothing.

Of course, there was a whole new issue of figuring out how I was going to come up with two hundred thousand dollars or a way to get Blaine to give me more time.

“Hopefully, Pops will be out of the woods soon. Don’t make any cancellations on the October job until you hear from me. I’ll try not to be so unavailable, but it’s hard right now, Millie. There’s also some family shit I need to talk to you about. Serious stuff that has to do with Mom.”

“Have you heard from Meryl?” Her voice went as low as a whisper, so much so that I had to press the cell harder against my ear.

Shaking my head at the ridiculousness of that question confirmed that I did not want to get into this. Pops was here, fighting for his life. Our mother, Millie’s sister, and the whopping bad choices she’d made for the last three decades didn’t get to take center stage. The last thing I wanted to deal with was Mom and her secrets. “No, I haven’t. Just some stuff came up. When Pops is in the clear, I’ll call you, okay?”

Millie sighed through the line. “Is…uh…he going to be okay?”

An annoyed snort-chuckle slipped from my mouth. “Don’t act like you give a damn what happens to my father. You’ve always hated him, resented him for not bringing us to California when Mom up and left us in the lurch. He did the best he could.”

Her own disbelieving grunt came through the line. “The best would have been actually giving you a life. When my sister was there, you were all happy. He couldn’t keep anything together when she left.” Her voice was icy and chilled me to the bone.

A deep defensiveness for Pops swirled heavily in my gut. My aunt or not, she was poking the bear and needed to be set back in her place. “At least he didn’t leave. That was your sister. The woman you miss so much walked away from her ten-year-old and five-year-old daughters, but I guess that’s okay, huh? Wasn’t the first time she left a family hanging. Hell, for all we know, she’s got a whole slew of them around the nation. I probably have a handful of other siblings I don’t know about.”

Millie sniffed, and her voice shook. “Your mother was never well, dollface. You know that. Deep down, you know that she was never meant to be saddled with children and married life. Her spirit needed to roam free or she would feel imprisoned within her own life.”

“You’re making excuses for her?”

“Mia, she loved you.”

I huffed. “Is that what you call it? Up and leave your daughters? Love. She didn’t know the meaning of love.” Now that I had Wes, I knew that for a fact. When you loved someone that much, you cared more about their happiness than your own. You made sacrifices that benefitted them, not yourself. Sure, there was give and take, but it was all part of sharing your life, of having a family. “Mom didn’t know the meaning of love, Millie,” I repeated.