Ninety-Nine Wishes, One Broken Marriage novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Cold Hands

Damian saves Perry and Perry's mother calls him cold to his face, then Perry whispers wish ninety-one in Jo's ear: sign the papers and let Damian go.

Damian was waiting at the ambulance bay in gloves and a gown.

He did not look at me. He looked at Perry.

"Potassium and a rhythm strip," he said to the nurse. "Get the dialysis unit on the phone. Tell them I need a chair in ten minutes."

His voice was the one I had heard through the bedroom wall during three years of night calls.

It was calm, flat and fast.

Perry's gurney rolled through the double doors, and I ran to keep up.

"Family only past this point," a nurse said.

"She's family," Damian said, without turning around.

I stopped on the other side of the doors, and I held onto them.

For forty minutes I stood in a hallway that smelled of floor wax.

Bea found me there and put a paper cup of coffee in my hands.

"I'm sorry about this morning," she said. "I made it worse."

"You said what I should have said."

"Not in front of his whole team." She winced. "He was shaking, Jo. Did you see his hands?"

I had not seen them. I had been looking at the envelope.

A woman came down the hall at a half run, a coat over her arm and her handbag crushed against her chest.

Perry's mother.

She was sixty and small, and she had been at my mother's table every Thanksgiving of my childhood.

She took my face in both her hands.

"Is he awake? Did you see him?"

"He was talking in the ambulance."

"They said it was a missed session." Her grip tightened. "He never misses. Why did he miss?"

"He told me he wanted to see me."

She let go of my face, and I understood too late that I had said the wrong thing.

The trauma bay doors opened.

Damian came out, peeling off his gloves. Perry's mother crossed the hall in three steps.

"Is he stable?"

"His potassium was high. We've treated it. He's going to the dialysis floor now, and he'll be fine."

"Fine," she said. "You said that about his father."

Damian's hands stopped on the gloves.

"Ma'am, I wasn't his father's doctor."

"No. You're a cold man, Dr. Rowe. You do not touch people like they matter."

"That's not fair," Bea said.

"Bea," Damian said.

She shut her mouth. But she was glaring at the woman.

Damian threw the gloves in the bin.

"You can see him in twenty minutes," he said. "Jo, would you come with me?"

It was the first time since the dinner that he had asked me for anything gently.

He led me into an empty family room and left the door open.

We stood with the length of the couch between us.

"He skipped a session on purpose," Damian said.

"You don't know that."

"His chart shows it. Four sessions since March, and the nurse says he told her you'd be in to pick him up."

"I never said that."

"I know." His jaw moved. "That's what worries me."

He picked up a plastic cup of water from the table and put it down again without drinking.

I wanted to cross the room. I wanted my hands flat on his chest.

I stayed where I was.

"The nurse called you. I told her to," he said. "She said you were in the shop, and Perry was already on his way to find you."

"He wanted to see me."

"For what?" Damian's voice was very soft. "Nothing in his life is more urgent than a machine."

I had no reply.

He nodded once and left.

I found the dialysis room twenty minutes later. Perry was propped up under a cream blanket with a tube in his arm, his mother crying quietly in the chair beside him.

He looked worn out and so young.

"Jo," he said. "Don't be mad at me."

"I'm not mad."

"Come closer. Please."

His mother stood and stepped back to give me room.

I bent over the bed rail, and he took my wrist in his cold hand.

His mouth was an inch from my ear.

"I have wish ninety-one," he whispered. "I've had it ready for a year."

"Perry, not now."

"Now. I've been so careful, Jo, and today is why I can't wait."

He breathed in.

"Sign the papers and let Damian go."

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