“Oh, God, please no!” I hear him whisper into the phone.
A fist wraps icy fingers of pure terror around my heart. “What? What’s going on? Why did you say that?”
I hear the strain in Mr. Locke’s voice. It comes across the line loud and clear. “I’ll explain when I get there.” And then he hangs up.
All the way to the hospital, my mind races with scenarios. There, they do little to clarify things for me. The nurses come out to assess her, asking me only one question. “Sir, are you a family member?”
I should lie, but I don’t. “No.”
“Have you notified someone in her family?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry, but you’ll have to wait here until someone in her family arrives. When they do, you can show them to registration first. Then, if you’ll have the receptionist give us a buzz, we’ll send for you.”
I don’t like it, but I know how strict hospitals are now with patient confidentiality. Without telling an outright lie that I have no way of backing up, there was nothing I could do. Now, I just have to wait for Mr. Locke to get here. Maybe by then they’ll have Sloane awake. I pray that they do.
Through the bank of windows that face the parking lot, I watch the headlights of every car that pulls in, holding my breath for Sloane’s dad to arrive. When he does, I take my pacing to the door to await him.
As soon as he steps through, I’m on him. “They need you to answer some questions in registration before they’ll let you go back.”
“The hell they do!” he says angrily, stomping up to the reception area. “My daughter was brought in on the ambulance a few minutes ago. I need to go back and see her. Right now.”
He doesn’t give them any other choice.
“Sir,” the young blonde begins, “if you’ll—”
“Forms can wait. I want to see my daughter first.”
The girl stares at him for a few seconds, evidently gauging whether he can be reasoned with at all and how much effort it will take to do so. She quickly decides it’s not worth it to argue and she gives in.
“Have a seat and I’ll call the nurse.”
Mr. Locke nods and turns to find the seat closest to the door that leads back to the patient rooms. Where Sloane is. He leans forward and puts his elbows on his knees and drops his head into his hands.
I move to stand in front of him, feeling more and more distressed by the second. He’s not only not surprised by this, but he seems to me like a man who has dreaded this day.
“Mr. Locke, I need you to be straight with me. What the hell is going on with Sloane?”
For a few seconds, he doesn’t move. Doesn’t respond. Finally, though, he runs frustrated fingers through his dark brown hair and sits back in his chair, his face ten years older than it was when I saw him yesterday.
“Did Sloane ever tell you about her mother?”
“I know she died of leukemia, right?”
“She did. She was first sick with it when she was a child. She went into remission and was healthy for years. And then one day…BAM! She got sick. At first we thought it was the flu. She had been achy and feeling a little under the weather for a couple of days. But then, one night after dinner, she just collapsed in my arms. She was burning up with fever. I brought her to the hospital and they did all sorts of tests. Turns out she had a relapse of her leukemia. And when that happens, the prognosis is bad. She fought it like a trooper, but there was just no beating it when it came back. She died two years later,” he finishes, his voice miserable.
“Sloane told me about her mother, sir, and I’m sorry that happened to your family. All due respect, but what does this have to do with Sloane?”
Mr. Locke looks up and meets my eyes. His are agonized and defeated. “Because Sloane had the same thing when she was a little girl.”
He says no more, just watches me as his words trickle in and my brain scrambles to make sense of them.
“Are you telling me that Sloane had leukemia?”
“Yes, that’s what I’m telling you. She was diagnosed when she was five. She was just really starting to act like a little girl and feel better when her mother died. She’s been fine ever since. Stubborn as hell, and determined to live her life to the fullest for as long as she has. Just in case… Every day, she has lived with ‘just in case’ hanging over her head. And that’s why we’ve protected her so fiercely. Because we have, too.”
My eyes, my chest, my soul burns with this knowledge, with what Sloane’s father is telling me. My mind rejects it, searches for some other conclusion to draw. But there’s none.
I can barely force the words past my numb lips. “So you’re saying that this could be Sloane’s leukemia relapsing and that she could only have a few years left to live?”
Mr. Locke’s eyes fill with tears and my heart crumbles, right behind my ribs.
“That’s what I’m telling you,” he confirms, his voice breaking as he leans forward and puts his head in his hands again.
I see his shoulders shaking as all the promise and hope and happiness that the future held suddenly gets swept away by a devastating wind. I’m torn between screaming and running my fist into one of these concrete walls over and over again. Or maybe just walking outside to give in to the urge to just sit in the dark and weep.
How could this be happening? She’s so young, and there’s still so much ahead of her. How can she be sick? She’s been fine. All this time, she’s been fine. So vivacious, so full of life…
As Mr. Locke gets up and walks to the reception desk again, I stand in the exact same spot, drowning in regret. All this time, I could’ve been enjoying Sloane, enjoying time with her, laughing with her, holding and touching her, telling her the truth about what is in my heart. But instead, I was destroying what we had with lies and deceit. In the back of my mind, I thought if she could just forgive me, I’d have another chance. I’d have more time, time to make up for what I’d done, time to make her happy and see her smile. Not make her cry.
But that was a cruel joke. There is no time. There is no future. Not for Sloane. And, now, not for me. She is everything I could ever have wanted. Perfect. Complete. Irreplaceable.
Desperation floods me. My thoughts, my feelings, my muscles. When I see the door to the back open, I turn and I run. I don’t ask permission. I don’t listen to the voices yelling for me to stop. I just run.
I begin passing doors. I pause to look in each one, searching for Sloane. Through a tunnel of heartache, I hear voices behind me, but I ignore them and I keep looking, keep searching. I can’t stop until I find her. I can’t rest until I see her.