Page 3 of Hate On

Eighteen Years Ago

She was so little.

That was the one thing that bugged Roman Montrose. She wasn’t a big kid like he was. It was one thing to be eleven years old and be alone in the hospital, but a whole other can of worms to barely hit five or six years of age and not have any family around to visit. He wondered why she didn’t, but he didn’t creep out of his bed to talk to her or find out.

Not yet, anyway.

The nurses in this ward were cranky old bitches. He didn’t have much love for them, or the place, even though he enjoyed not having to sit in a classroom all day. He’d smacked his head pretty hard while they were playing soccer and he had to be admitted because they said he had a concussion. What he had was a headache, and he didn’t see why he was forced to be in the hospital—he didn’t understand why he was in a room with agirleither. He’d asked about that, several times, and finally one of the cranky old nurses had told him.

“We’ve got a problem with strep throat and scarlet fever going through the pediatric ward. You two came in after the symptoms started and we’re trying to isolate all the children who are contagious so that kids like you don’t catch those nasty little infectious diseases.”

It drove him mad the way she started talking to him likehewas a little kid, explaining what contagious and isolated meant. What did she think he was? Seven years old?

The girl had come in a few hours after he had, breathing heavily. It sounded like asthma to him. She would make a whistling little wheezing sound sometimes that had annoyed him at first, but then he caught sight of her face and that breathing sound scared him a little. It probably scared her a lot. Her eyes were big and dark in her face, and he was almost positive that it hurt her to even breathe.

Sometimes, she’d start coughing and when it was over, she’d cry a little. She always sounded like she was trying hard not to cry, too.

That was what made him go over and talk to her after the nurses left.

He edged in closer to see if she was still awake, although how could she be asleep after that coughing fit?

She lay in the bed, so little and pale, and he frowned as he eyed her chest falling up and down. She was breathing so fast. That wasn’t normal.

“What’s wrong with you?” he asked without even planning on it.

She turned her head to his, her big, brown eyes going wide in her pale face. Two dark braids lay in long thick ropes to her shoulders and she swallowed as she looked at him. “I have asthma,” she said, her voice rough.

“That’s what I thought. So that’s the only reason why you’re here?” he asked, perplexed. One of the kids on his soccer team had asthma and he just had to use his inhaler before he played. It wasn’t like it was any big deal.

The little girl nodded at him. “Yes.”

He cocked his head, studying her. “I guess you got it bad, then.”

She jerked up one shoulder in a shrug. “I got the flu and they said it went to ’monia.”

“You meanpneumonia.” He nodded sagely even though he was only vaguely aware of what pneumonia was. He hadn’t thought little kids could get it. His grandpa had it once, and had been a mean old grouchy bastard the whole time he was sick. Grandpa hadn’t been forced to stay at a hospital either. But then again, his grandpa hadn’t had asthma on top of his pneumonia.

“What’s your name?” he asked softly, casting a quick look at the door. The nurses had actually closed it most of the way this time so he wasn’t too worried they’d come in. They were really big on them sleeping when it was time to sleep. He liked to sleep when he was tired, not just because it wastimeto sleep.

“Julianna.” Her lips trembled a little. “I want my mom and dad. I don’t like being here alone.”

“Well, you’re not alone.” Poor kid. “I’m here.”

She blinked at him and those big dark eyes made him feel a little funny inside. Almost…sad for her. “I guess.”

“We can be friends,” he added. “That means you’re not alone.”

She plucked at the blanket that covered her thin body and whispered, “I don’t got a lot of friends.”

“Have. The proper word ishave,” he advised her.

She slid him a look from under her lashes and he wondered if she’d tell him that he sounded like a jerk. Sometimes his friends back home did, but all the kids at the boarding school he attended here in Switzerland talked like he did, and so did his family. It was always wise to speak properly. It couldn’t hurt for a six-year-old to understand the rules.

“Okay,” she said, a little spark showing in her eyes. “I don’thavea lot of friends. I have to go to school here now. All my friends are back in ‘Merica.”

He didn’t have the heart to tell her it wasAmerica.

She probably had to go to boarding school like he did. He remembered how rough it had been when he’d first left home. But then he’d made a bunch of new friends here and it wasn’t so bad.

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