A Slither of Hope (4 page)

I turned away from the science book, finally ready to really torture myself. Using the café’s register/computer, I logged onto Lola’s Facebook account. My only friend, Lee, had updated his relationship status to: It’s complicated.

I wanted to smash my face into the keyboard. A girl like Gina Garson would eat him up and spit him out. Not to mention she was currently carrying his nemesis’s child. Things would be so different if I was still around. In school, I could—

The breaking news noise on the television positioned high up on a wall mount in the far corner stopped my train of thought. A dark-haired female news anchor, maybe in her thirties, reported an accident at a construction zone was tying up traffic on an already busy highway in San Jose, thirty miles from San Francisco. They cut to a live interview of an older man with graying hair peeking out from under a yellow hard hat, but the news anchor’s voice carried through. “TechNowCorp’s official spokesperson met us at the scene of their newest building, a work in progress the company is calling Hercules.”

TechNowCorp? That’s where my dad worked. I reached for the remote to turn up the volume and knocked over the tall vase of expensive flowers that were due to be picked up in ten minutes. “No, no, no!” I thrust a towel over the puddle that was fast approaching the keyboard and lunged for the fallen flowers. I dropped the undamaged stems into a metal vase on the shelf behind me and kicked away the biggest pieces of glass so I could rescue the remaining white and purple orchids.

The TV reporter went on. “They have informed us only one person was injured in what TechNowCorp is calling a ‘freak accident.’ Forty-five-year-old employee, Tom Evans.”

I looked up through the glass food case separating my workspace and the customer counter to find a picture of Dad’s face staring back at me. The flowers slipped through my fingers.

“According to reports, Evans was touring the site with several heads of development when a steel beam snapped overhead. Because of the proximity of the new site to the Winchester Boulevard exit, expect delays to continue through your afternoon commute. As for the injured party, paramedics air-lifted him to UCSF's Parnassus campus where he’s listed as being in critical condition. More on the story as it develops. I’m Rhonda—”

Without another thought, I bolted up and out the door, barely remembering to lock it behind me. I flagged down a cab a few blocks later when I reached Market Street. “UCSF, Parnassus campus,” I told the cab driver and whipped out my burner phone. I manually punched in Lee’s cell number, my hands shaking so bad it took three tries to get it right. An automated voice informed me this number was no longer in service.

He must have changed it. Without giving me the new one. Probably after Dad told him and his mom I wasn't technically sane. My vision blurred. I was probably the reason he’d changed it. Water rimmed my eyes. I thought about calling the only number in my phone, but after last night, I couldn't deal with Kade. I’d just have to handle this on my own.

***

The antiseptic-filled air pummeled me when I stepped through the two sets of entry doors. Florescent tube lighting gave the scratched white floors and blue-hued waiting area a yellow tint. I pressed forward on unsteady legs to a small lady in her fifties who greeted me from behind Plexiglas.

“Can you tell me anything about Tom Evans’s condition?”

Her face scrunched up like she had been sucking a lemon for ten years. “If I told you people once, I told you a thousand times, if you aren’t family—”

I waved both hands in front of my face, as if doing that would stop her tirade. “I’m a friend of his daughter, Laylah. I was just hoping you could tell me—”

“Oh, sorry sweetie. It’s been a crazy morning since that news report came on. She’s already up there. Eleventh floor.”

Laylah was here? She should be at school, where the information probably wouldn't have reached her yet. My sister should be filled with blind ignorance, not sitting alone in a hospital waiting to hear news from strangers about Dad's condition.

The world zipped in and out of view, blurring and spinning. Little of it made sense, all of it screwed me. Twice. I lurched into the elevator around the corner just as the doors began to close. The button for floor eleven already glowed, looking like a beacon among the fog clouding my head. Splashes of conversations from a group of doctors and nurses riding up burbled in, but nothing stuck. Words, sights, the scent of some lady's God-awful perfume, none of them meant a thing. Nothing mattered except Dad was in the hospital. He was hurt. I tried over and over to prepare myself for what might be waiting on the other side when the steel doors of the elevator opened.

It would be so easy to sink right now. Rock back on my heels and just let myself fall. Allow the insanity just beneath the surface of my skin to creep forward. Let it take me. Let go of the control I’d been fighting for so long to keep—still fighting, every day.

Giving up would be so easy.

The elevator chimed at the eleventh floor. I released my fingers from the elevator railing one at a time.

Losing another parent. I’d never make it through.

I lurched off the elevator and followed the signs to the waiting room, knowing I wouldn't be allowed in to see Dad. I was missing, after all, a runaway wanted for questioning in a murder. And a suicide. Lola Penmis had no relation to Tom Evans.

The light blue waiting room was lit only by the light streaming in through the many windows—and the golden glimmers bouncing off my wings. Dark brown carpet matched the upholstery on the chairs. Two clusters of people sat in the room, one in the far right corner and one taking up a circular table underneath a large flat-screen TV. In the left corner, a young blond girl sat alone, sobbing quietly.

“Laylah.” On the trip up the elevator, I'd been too distracted to focus on her being here. I'd all but forgotten.

When she looked up, her eyes were red, puffy, and dim. Wetness streaked down her face, chasing trails of black mascara. Why was my twelve-year-old little sister wearing so much makeup? Instead of her school uniform, she donned a shirt that hung off her shoulder, revealing a hot pink bra strap, and tattered jeans that clung to hips I didn’t know she had.

The ends of my wings curled in as I trudged forward, tapping my fingers on the front of my pants so I wouldn't be tempted to hug her. I knew how intrusive we both found them. Usually. The family in front of us leaned across the table they sat at, a father hugging his children. A lump formed in my throat, forcing me to turn away or experience the full wrath bubbling its way through my stomach.

“Wha—?” Her doe eyes scanned my face as if she couldn’t believe I was real—or still alive.

I tensed my back and wings, fearful she might be the only other person on Earth capable of seeing them.

Finally she blinked. “What are you doing here?” she hissed, regaining that wonderful harsh exterior.

My shoulders sagged and I lowered myself into the hard, uncomfortable seat beside her. She could have any number of reasons for being here, several hours before school was out, and not in her school uniform. It didn’t matter so much now. Dad was all that mattered. I ignored her question and asked one of my own. “How is he?”

“They haven’t told me anything yet, except they’re trying to stabilize him.” The bottom of her chin dimpled as she fought her lower lip from trembling.

Stabilize. Meaning he wasn’t dead. Yet. But he also wasn’t okay.

Don’t die, Dad. Please, don’t die.

Without looking, I reached over for Laylah’s hand, but settled for resting my hand on her leg. My fingers absently fiddled with the white frays of her jeans just above her knee.

A long silence stretched between us like burnt, brittle paper. Finally Laylah said, “That wig is dumb.”

Wonderful.

The chasm between us had grown since our last meeting. Didn’t know it was possible for us to be farther apart than before.

“You aren’t in uniform. So I take it that means you were skipping school.”

She harrumphed and crossed her arms, jerking her leg out from under my hand.

I hated to think what else I’d missed since being gone.

The two other groups in the waiting room grew and shrank with time, ebbing like ocean waves, until they both eventually left before sunset. The usual gloom of the San Francisco skyline had cleared just as the sun began to dip into the bay, casting pinks, oranges, and reds from the windows behind us, projecting them—and gold shimmers from my wings—onto the walls in front of us. Only our two dark shadows blocked out the colors. Separate. Alone. Dark.

“You should go ask someone how he is,” Laylah said. “You look older now. They might tell you something they won’t tell me.”

It would have been a good idea. “I can’t. I can’t risk getting recognized.”

“Seriously, Ray?”

I pulled my jacket closed, glancing around to make sure no one had heard. “Don’t call me that. Not here.”

“Isn’t Dad more important than your stupid sickness? Oh, wait, what am I talking about? Nothing has ever been as important to you. It’s not like anyone cares who you are anymore. You’re so
frogging
selfish.” She jumped out of her seat and stomped out of the room before I could stop her.

She was right, of course.

Why had I even said that? I was supposed to be the big sister. I should be protecting her in any way I can, not abandoning her to do it all on her own.

I needed to get to Laylah, to stop hiding behind my fears of being exposed, or of finding out Dad may not make it. I pushed out of my chair and marched for the door, right as someone turned in. Someone with hair like sunshine, and the shadows of white wings behind him.

My heart shifted in my chest and thumped against my ribcage. “Cam?”

I stepped back. This couldn’t be real. I drank in his tall form and wide shadow, including his wings. I stood there for a long time, refusing to let myself blink. Watching, waiting for him to disappear.

“Rayna,” he whispered. A muscle feathered in his jaw.

“Cam?” Laylah called from the hall. Her stylishly floppy boots clapped along the floor. Cam turned just in time to catch her as she flung her arms around him.

Chapter Six

Rayna

A fist clenched in my gut, twisting with razor-sharp intensity. He was real. And my little sister had… stolen my fantasy.

“Hey.” Cam let loose a chuckle as he patted Laylah on the back. A half-laugh. Such an out-of-place sound in this cold, sterile hospital, worlds away from my and Laylah’s emotional state.

I swallowed the intrusive welling of emotions. “Dad. How’s Dad?” I asked, forcing myself to ignore Cam, the twitching of my wings, and the fact that Laylah was still grasping onto him—the way I should have a month ago.

“The same. They let me in to see him, but the view isn’t…” She was still clinging to Cam.

I sidestepped them and flipped on the light switch, accidentally brushing Cam’s wing, the feathers tickling my skin.

Cam stroked Laylah’s hair. So much for her hating hugs.

If my mouth wasn’t still slack, I’d ask him what the hell he was doing here. Here. Back on Earth. On my planet. In my city. In this hospital. On Dad’s floor.

The haze in my head cleared some. Was he…here for me? Had he somehow heard about Dad’s accident and—

He looked at me then, his gaze intent, his face hard, serious.

No. He was here on business.

“Did they say anything else?” I asked Laylah, determined to ignore Cam. I had to in order to keep myself together. If I allowed myself to think about him being here, I didn’t know what I’d do. Even now, my heart was swelling and breaking all at the same time. It wasn’t like Cam and I could have an off the record conversation with Laylah’s ears—I looked at her again, still suctioned to him—between us.

“I’ll go talk to them,” Cam said, “see if they’ll tell me anything more.”

To my surprise, Laylah detached from him without the use of a pry bar.

Jumping at the chance I should have taken earlier, I said, “I’ll go with you.”

I didn’t turn to see if Cam followed me, or if Laylah moved to the door frame. Her skin had been so pale when she returned from seeing Dad.

The thought of him lying in a hospital bed, fighting for his life, or losing it, ripped my raw world open again. I braced myself even as my feet got heavier, weighing me down, making it that much harder to push forward.

The double doors riveted in metal at the end of the hall reminded me of the entrance to a spaceship. I punched the doorbell on the left.

Through the two rectangular glass panes a nurse exchanged a thick handful of paperwork with another nurse and settled in behind the counter before pushing the buzzer. She drew a world-weary gaze up to meet mine as we shuffled forward. “Can I help you?”

“My d—” Not dad, I couldn’t say dad. I wasn’t Rayna Evans anymore. “My, uh…” My tongue thickened in my mouth. From the bored, lidded look of the nurse’s eyes I knew I was going to lose my opportunity if I didn’t say something soon.

Cam slid in beside me, his sleeve brushing mine. “Tom Evans. What’s his condition?”

The white-blue light emanating from his eyes bounced off the nurse’s. His influence was switching on. She fished a clipboard from a stack alongside her and flipped to the first page. “He’s being prepped for surgery. He has cerebral edema, bruising of the brain. They have to remove part of his skull. The hope is this will relieve some of the pressure. There are risks. With this type of injury, many complications can arise.” She blinked blankly, waiting for further instructions.

“Good, thank you,” Cam said. “The instant you hear something, we’ll be in the waiting room.”

The woman’s nod was as flat as the look on her face.

Surgery. Part of his skull. I took in the information, processing it with a deep breath.

“Come with me.” Cam slid his fingers into my palm and I noticed the lights from his eyes were gone. We exited the spaceship doors and rounded the corner away from the waiting room and into the stairwell.