He Brought His First Love Home Again, So I Left novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: Pump Night

We ran the six blocks to the hospital in the rain, and Ward did not slow down once.

The ICU smelled like floor cleaner and fear.

My mother lay under a web of wires with her lips gray and her eyes closed.

A nurse was saying numbers in a low voice, and every number was lower than the one before.

"Her heart is giving out," Ward said to me, in the same flat voice he had used at the counter. "I can put a temporary pump in tonight. It buys us days. Emergency care is covered whether or not she has insurance."

"And the permanent one?"

"That's the two hundred and ten thousand. We'll fight for it tomorrow."

"Do it."

"I need your signature."

He put a clipboard in my hand and held the pen steady while I signed my name in a hand I did not recognize.

"I'm going to scrub in," he said. "Callie."

I looked up.

"Sit down. If you stand there I'll worry about you, and I need to worry about her."

He touched my shoulder once, quickly, and was gone through the double doors.

I sat in the family room under a clock with no second hand.

At two in the morning the billing clerk found me and asked me to step out to the front desk.

Gavin was standing in the lobby, soaked, with Corinna at his elbow in her cream coat.

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