Page 3 of North
I pulled into Delta Memorial Hospital and found a parking spot near the emergency room. I started to call North while I walked across the parking lot but she was already there. Standing in the bitter cold, staring off toward the mountains.
A flash of red hair fluttered behind her like a flag alerting me to her location. My steps slowed as I got closer. Words and thoughts crumbled and fell to dust in my mind once I was in front of her. She jerked her denim blue-gray eyes to mine and her lips parted enough for her to suck in a shaky breath.
“Hey, Shortcake.” I hoped the childhood nickname would lift her full pink lips in a little smile.
Nothing.
I used to call her that when we lived under the same roof. She reminded me of Strawberry Shortcake with her red curls and round freckled face. There was nothing left of the Shortcake I knew as a snaggle-toothed girl though.
Now North was grown up. There was no fullness to her face. Her cheekbones were prominent slashes leading me to her slender straight nose then her pink lips.
“She’s dead,” North said, looking up at me with dry eyes and a voice that matched. I rooted around in her words for some kind of emotion but there was nothing that even resembled emotion lurking in her voice. “I can’t go home because I’m a minor.” She rolled her eyes and stared at the starry black sky.
“Why are you outside then?” My brows crashed together.
“I told the security guard I had to use the bathroom and she let me go alone. I was getting ready to walk off but…” She tossed her hand out in a vague gesture toward me.
“Good thing I’m here then. Come on, let’s go.” Emotion stirred in my chest the moment North turned to walk into the hospital.
Izzy was gone.
“Are you okay, North?” I asked on the way to the information desk. She folded her arms across her mid-section and refused to meet my eye. The silence between us amplified the sound of my boots on the shiny floor.
Since my daughter wasn’t going to communicate with me, I turned to the nurse behind the desk. “I’m here about Isabelle Fitzgerald.” Her name clogged my throat and felt heavy on my tongue. Was the woman I’d spent more than ten years with gone just like that? It reminded me of how fragile life was.
The nurse’s dark brown eyes softened at the mention of Izzy’s name. She nodded then stood to her feet so she could whisper to another nurse who finally directed North and me to a security guard. She was a tall broad woman with an expressionless face.
“You were supposed to be in the bathroom,” she grumbled down at North.
“My dad told me he was outside so I went to meet him.”
When did lies start rolling so easily off her damn tongue? I didn’t poke holes in her story because there were more pressing things to deal with. The security guard stared at North for a few beats before moving along.
The smell of cleaning products was sharp in the air once we turned the corner into triage. The guard took us to an office tucked away down a quiet hall and escorted us in. “I’ll be right back with the caseworker and the doctor.” Once she closed the door, leaving me alone with North, I let my shoulders drop.
“I don’t know why I can’t go back home. I’m seventeen. I can take care of myself.” Heat rose to the surface of her cheeks.
“You’re legally a minor and you know it, North. Happy birthday by the way.” I scratched the back of my head then pushed my fingers through my hair.
“Thanks, Dad,” she scoffed. A flash of vulnerability streaked through her eyes for just a moment. I wanted to grab it like a thread and unravel all the things she wasn’t telling me.
“I know this is hard. It’s okay for you to cry over losing your mother, North.”
“I’m fine,” she snapped. “Besides, it’s just like her to die on my birthday. Everything always had to be about her. Her sickness, her drugs, her addiction.” North cleared her throat and sat down in the seat across from the bare desk. “I don’t see you crying. She used to be your wife.”
“I made my peace with Izzy when we got divorced.” I sat in the chair beside North’s and stole glimpses of her face, mapping out all the ways she’d changed in the past year.
Her crimson hair was longer, brushing the small of her back and it was no longer curly. I saw at the ends where strands of rebellion started to bend into loose curls. It was a look most girls would pay someone in the salon for. North wore it effortlessly.
The innocence that used to live behind her eyes was gone. That was definitely different. It hurt knowing she wasn’t the same girl she used to be but it was inevitable when living with an addict.
Briefly, images of North’s sixteenth birthday rushed through my mind leaving pangs of regret and shame. I pinched the bridge of my nose and sighed. I wasn’t prepared to be face to face with North. Not yet. I no longer had a choice though.
“So what happens now?” North asked me quietly. “I have to live with you in Telluride until I turn eighteen?”
“Yeah, that’s what happens. You already knew that though. I’m guessing that’s why you were trying to make a run for it?” She didn’t respond with words, she offered me a shoulder shrug instead.
Before I could say anything else to her, the door swung open and a short man wearing glasses walked in with a woman wearing a white lab coat. “Mr. Fitzgerald?” The woman in the lab coat asked sitting behind the desk. She powered on the computer and looked at me.
