Page 60 of Make Me Yours

But not even in my wildest fever dreams could I have imagined the shit show that awaits us just outside of Bangor…

chapter 20

WEAVER

I dropSully by the entrance to the emergency room and circle around to park in the guest lot.

I dispose of our breakfast trash in a nearby bin and am headed back to the car to fetch my laptop case—might as well get some work done while I’m lurking in the cafeteria—when my gaze is drawn to a man stumbling out of a bus by the hospital’s main entrance.

The man is balding, with dark under eye circles, an unkempt beard, and a sizeable paunch beneath his gray hooded sweatshirt. He looks nothing like the sandy haired guy in a red tee and jeans who took a swing at me in a bar parking lot sixteen years ago, but somehow, I know it’s Leon, Sully’s father.

And he’s clearly still drunk from last night…

Or maybe he hits the bottle first thing in the morning, who knows? Whatever the case, he’s obviously impaired. He trips on the curb and nearly goes down twice more as he wobbles unsteadily toward the sliding glass doors.

I freeze, my stomach balling into a knot as I predict how this ends. Best-case scenario, the hospital staff stops him at the entrance and turns him away for public drunkenness. Worst-case scenario, he finds his way to his father’s hospital bed in hiswasted state and causes a scene that makes a difficult time even worse for the rest of the family and imperils his father’s already ailing health.

And yes, the hospital staff would surely take care of that, too, but only after he’s upset grieving people and given his daughter another terrible memory for her collection.

I can’t let that happen.

Not if I can prevent it. Sully’s been through enough.

Leaving my laptop case in the trunk, I lock the car and cross the parking lot. Keeping my distance and the brim of my hat pulled low on my forehead, I tail Leon past the reception desk and into the wide, open space beyond. The center of the hospital is one large room, with floor-to-ceiling windows stretching four stories into the air and exposed staircases leading to other floors.

The first floating staircase is on the left, about fifteen feet from the entrance, but he weaves past that, as well as a bank of elevators. He passes a sitting area filled with couches, where several people read books or scroll on their phones while waiting near a door with “Inpatient Surgery” painted above it.

Past the inpatient waiting area, Leon pauses to get a drink from a fountain. Water dribbles down into his beard as he stands, sucking in a deep breath. He closes his eyes, swaying on his feet. For a moment, I think he might be about to pass out—a best-case scenario I hadn’t considered—but a beat later, he swipes the back of his sleeve across his damp face and stumbles onward.

Trailing one hand along the wall, he tracks onward toward another large desk at the back of the hospital. I’m not sure what this desk is for, but the hallway to the left bears signs pointing the way to the East Wing and various lab stations. Behind the desk is a door labeled “Radiology,” and to the right is the entrance to the cafeteria.

The tension in my jaw eases a bit. Maybe Leon realizes he needs to sober up before he sees his family and is on his way to buy some breakfast.

If that’s the case, I’ll find another place to lay low, and text Sully to let her know where she can find me. There appear to be several waiting areas scattered throughout the hospital and, according to the signs by the elevators, a chapel and yoga room on the fourth floor.

I haven’t set foot in a church since I was in high school, but I know enough yoga to pass as a practitioner. I can spread out a borrowed mat in a corner, lie down in corpse pose, and savasana until my phone vibrates. After too little sleep last night and a stressful morning, a nap wouldn’t be an unwelcome thing.

Fuck, I’m actually craving anap.

Maybe I’m becoming an old man faster than I think.

I’m still meditating on the horrors of my sleepy, weakening body when Leon veers left instead of right, headed down the hallway toward the East Wing. I have no idea where he’s going, but no one stops him, or me, as I trail him down a narrower hallway. The ceilings here are only twelve feet high and there’s a lot more traffic.

Most of the people approaching from the opposite direction see Leon weaving toward them and veer out of his path, but the old woman with a walker just ahead has her back to him.

She has no idea she’s about to be mowed over from behind.

I’m about to call out a warning, when Leon suddenly careens to the left, bumping into the opposite wall and a teenager with a wad of cotton taped to the crook of his arm.

“Hey, watch it,” the kid calls out, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his skinny throat as he turns to glare at Leon.

But Leon only lifts a hand and stumbles forward.

I glance around to see if any staff members have noticed the interaction and are calling security. But the only nurse in thehallway is talking to a distraught elderly woman in a wheelchair, who seems confused about where she is and why she has to have her blood drawn.

Cursing understaffing, I circle around the woman in the walker and hurry after Leon, who’s moving faster now. Wherever he’s going, he seems to know the way. But then, Sully said her father spent a lot of time in the hospital after his drunk driving accident. If it wasthishospital, he’s probably fairly familiar with the layout.

At the end of the hall, the building opens up into another atrium, this one with trees planted throughout and tables and chairs arranged in the center. Here, several people work on laptops or take calls on their cell phones beneath signs that read, “No calls, please. This is a Quiet Zone.”

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