She was off the bed before he finished the sentence. Literally just launched herself vertical and started grabbing at clothes in the dark.
Her jeans were draped over the radiator which was cold because of course it was cold so now her jeans were cold too and she was trying to jam her legs into cold stiff denim while holding a phone against her face with her shoulder.
"He's stable now but—"
"I'm on my way."
"Ms. Williams one more thing."
The way he said it. One more thing. Like it was a small addition. Like he was tacking on a footnote. But his voice changed on the word thing.
Got a little lower. A little slower. She stopped. One shoe on. One shoe off. Jacket half on like a cape.
"Insurance denied coverage for the experimental treatment. The notification came in this afternoon. I'm sorry."
She didn't respond. Not right away. Her brain did that thing where it just leaves. Just shut down. Like a computer that overheats and needs a minute.
She stood there in her apartment that smelled like radiator dust and hot sauce, and she didn't blink for what felt like a very long time. Could have been three seconds. Could have been thirty. She doesn't know.
What she does know is that somewhere in that blank space her brain pulled up an image. An envelope on a diner table. A man with tired eyes sliding it toward her with two fingers.
Fifty thousand dollars and she left it there like she had principles.
Girl what are your principles going to do when David is dead?
She caught the night bus. 4AM buses are a different species of public transportation. The driver was a heavyset woman eating sunflower seeds and spitting the shells into a Styrofoam cup. She didn't say hello and Rosaline appreciated that honestly. She wasn't in a hello kind of mood.
The bus smelled the way all night buses smell, like floor cleaner trying to cover up something floor cleaner can't cover up. There were maybe four other people on it.
Nobody looked at each other.
Everybody had their own emergency.
Hospitals at 4AM. She had opinions about this.
During the day a hospital is a liar. It puts on a whole show. Fresh flowers at the front desk, usually carnations because they're cheap and they last. That instrumental music in the elevator that's trying so hard to be calming it actually makes you more nervous.
The lights are warm. The nurse's smile. Everything says don't worry, this is a place of healing and not a place where people's brothers are hooked up to machines that breathe for them.
At 4AM the hospital drops the act. Fluorescent lights, the flat white kind that make everybody look slightly dead. Scuff marks all over the floor that the day shift mops over but never get rid of. And the sounds. God the sounds. At night you hear everything.
Every beep. Every ventilator hiss. Every monitor is doing its little electronic heartbeat thing, and you start to realize that half the sounds in this building are machines doing jobs that bodies should be doing themselves.
She walked to David's room on autopilot. Fourth floor. Elevator. Left. Past that supply closet that always has the door cracked open. Right at the nurses station. Room 412.
She could find it in the dark. Had found it in the dark actually, one night when the hallway lights were being serviced and she walked the whole route by feel and by the sound of his monitors getting louder as she got closer.
He was asleep. Or he was unconscious. or the machines were keeping him in some in between place that isn't really either. She'd stopped trying to figure out which one.
There were wires everywhere. Coming out of his chest. His arm. Running to screens that showed numbers she'd taught herself to read. Heart rate. Oxygen. Blood pressure.
She knew what the good numbers were and she knew what the bad numbers were and tonight's numbers were not the bad ones which is the closest thing to good news she ever got in this room.
Twenty-three years old. Her kid brother. The boy who once put a Hot Wheels car up his nose at Thanksgiving dinner and their mother had to take him to the ER and the doctor pulled it out with tweezers and David cried not because it hurt but because he wanted the car back. That boy.
That ridiculous sweet stupid boy was lying here with a heart that couldn't figure out how to do its one job.
She sat down. Same chair. The vinyl seat had a crack right down the middle and if you sat on it wrong it would pinch the back of your leg. She knew how to sit on it now. You kind of lean to the left. It's a whole thing. She'd spent enough hours in this chair to have a relationship with it.
She picked up his hand, and it was warm and she let out a breath she didn't know she was holding. Warm hands. Good. Blood moving. Heart pumping. Still here. We're still here.
"Hey."
Quiet.
So quiet.
He probably couldn't hear her. Definitely. She talked to him anyway because the alternative was sitting in silence listening to machines and she wasn't strong enough for that.
"You gotta quit doing this to me D. I'm serious. I'm too tired for this."
She sat there until the sun came up. I watched the light change in the room from that grey blue early morning color to actual daylight. Her back was killing her.
That chair was not designed for a human spine to spend hours in it but then again nothing about this situation was designed for a human anything.
Okafor came at six thirty. White coat. Clipboard. He sat on the edge of the empty bed across from her which is something he did when the news was going to take a minute. When it was quick news, he stood. When it was news, he sat down. He sat.