Page 89 of Fall of a Kingdom
I gently set Piper into her carrier and grabbed the diaper bag.
“Have a good one,” the elderly woman called to me.
“You too.”
I followed the nurse down the hallway. She stopped outside a closed door and gestured to it. “She’s just inside. Do you need anything else?”
“No. Thank you.”
“The doctor will be by in a bit to talk to you.” The nurse looked down at Piper. “What an angel.”
I pushed open the door and walked into the hospital room. Barrett sat on the edge of the bed, dressed in a hospital gown. A plastic bracelet was cinched around her slim wrist. She was staring at her lap, and it didn’t appear as though she’d even heard me enter.
I couldn’t imagine what was going through her mind.
“I just spoke to the nurse. She said the doctor will talk to you soon,” I said, wanting to fill the silence.
She nodded absently, like she wasn’t truly processing what I’d said.
“I have to go to London,” she said, finally meeting my gaze. “Tonight.”
“You’re telling Flynn.” It came out like a statement, not a question.
“Yes,” she admitted. “You’re right, Sasha. He has to know.”
“Why do you have to go to London?” I asked her. “Why can’t you ask him to come home and have the conversation there?”
“He’s finalizing business at The Rex. I know he’d come home right away if I asked him to, but I don’t want to have this conversation in our home. With our children running up and down the halls. I don’t want to pollute our home with this.”
I gently set Piper’s carrier next to the chair and took a seat. Barrett looked longingly at her daughter and then clenched her fists, as if to stop herself from reaching for her.
She stared at the ceiling when she said, “It’s always something, isn’t it?”
“It might be nothing.”
Her hazel eyes met mine and her smile was sad. “You don’t really believe that, do you? You know something’s wrong.”
“I don’t know a thing.”
“What’s your intuition telling you?”
“What’s yours?” I pushed back.
She was silent for a moment and then she said with finality, “I’m sick.”
“Don’t get ahead of yourself. You haven’t talked to the doctor. You haven’t had your scans read. You don’t even know what this is.”
“It’s a brain tumor. It has to be.”
“Even if it turns out to be a tumor, not all brain tumors are malignant,” I pointed out. “It could be benign. It could be pressing on the part of your brain that makes you hallucinate and have seizures. It could be as simple as shaving your head and having surgery—and in six months, this will just be another memory. A memory in the rearview mirror of life.”
She smiled slightly. “I’m pretty vain, Sasha. All I could focus on was the fact that you said I might have to shave my head.”
“There’s that glimmer of dark humor,” I said with a grin.
Piper let out a squawk, turning our attention toward her.
“She’s hungry,” Barrett said. “Will you hand me the diaper bag?”
