Some things are really just easier done alone.
It’s quiet and the lights are low as Janie and Cabel push through the double doors into the ICU patients’ hallway. Janie feels the faint pull of a dream from a distance and she combats it immediately, impatiently. Spies the culprit’s room whose door stands ajar and silently curses him. Frustrated she can’t ever get away from people’s dreams, even when her mind is extremely busy doing other things.
They check in at the nurses’ station. Janie clears her throat. “Henry, uh, Fein . . . stei—”
“Feingold,” Cabel says smoothly.
“Are you family?” the nurse asks. She looks at them suspiciously.
“I, uh,” Janie says. “Yeah. He’s my . . . father . . . I guess.”
The nurse cocks her head to the side. “The trick to getting into someone’s room is to lie convincingly,” she says. “Nice try.”
“I—I don’t want to go into his room. Just tell my mother I’m here, will you? She’s in there with him. I’ll be in the waiting room.” Janie turns around abruptly and Cabel shrugs at the nurse and follows. They march back through the double doors to the waiting room, leaving a puzzled nurse watching them go.
Janie mutters under her breath as she flings herself in a chair. “Feingold. Harvey Feingold.”
Cabe glances at her. “Henry.”
“Right. Jeez. You’d never guess I work for the cops.”
“Which is probably why you’re so convincing undercover,” Cabel says, grinning.
Janie elbows him automatically. “Well, not anymore. Don’t forget you’re talking to narc girl.” She turns to him. Grabs his hand. Implores. “Cabe, really, you should go. Get some sleep. Go back to
Fremont and enjoy the rest of the week. I’m fine here. I can handle this.”
Cabel regards Janie and sighs. “I know you can handle it, Janie. You’re such a damn martyr. It’s tiring, really, having this same argument with you every time you’ve got shit happening. Just let it go. I’m not leaving.” He smiles faux-diplomatically.
Janie’s jaw drops. “A martyr!”
“Ahh, yeah. Slightly.”
“Please. You can’t be slightly a martyr. You either are, or you aren’t. It’s like unique.”
Cabel laughs softly, the corners of his eyes crinkling. And then he just gazes at her, smiling the crooked smile that Janie remembers from the awkward skateboard days.
But right now, Janie can’t seem to smile back.
“Um, about this little adventure,” she begins. “This is really mortifying, Cabe. I’m . . . I’m so embarrassed about it, and I have a lot on my mind, and I can hardly stand how nice you are being. I hate that I’m ruining your time too, instead of just my own. So, really, please. It would make me feel better if you’d just, you know . . .” Janie gives him a helpless look.
Cabel blinks.
His forehead crinkles and he looks earnestly at her.
“Ahh,” he says. “You really do want me to go home. When you say this is embarrassing, you mean it’s embarrassing to you for me to know this stuff too?”
Janie looks at the floor, giving him the answer.
“Oh.” Cabel measures his words, stung. “I’m sorry, Janers. I didn’t pick up on that.” He gets up quickly. Walks to the door. Janie follows him to the hallway by the elevators. “I’ll . . . I’ll see you around, I guess,” he says. “Call me when—whenever.”
“I will,” Janie says, staring at the big CELL PHONES MUST BE TURNED OFF sign on the wall.
“I’ll text you later. This is just really something I’d rather handle alone at the moment, okay? I love you.”
“Yeah. Okay. Love you, too.” Cabel swivels on his flips and waves an uncertain hand at her. He looks over his shoulder. “Hey? Bus doesn’t run between two and five a.m., you know that, right?”
Janie smiles. “I know.”
“Don’t get sucked into any dreams, okay?”
“Okay. Shh.” Janie says, hoping no one else heard that.
Before he can think of anything else, Janie slips back inside the waiting room to sit and think.
Alone.
1:12 a.m.
She dozes in the waiting room chair.
Suddenly feels someone watching her. Startles and sits up, awake.
At least her mother is wearing clothes and not the nightgown Carrie mentioned.
“Hey,” Janie says. She stands. Walks over to her mother and stops, feeling awkward. Not sure what to do. Hug? That’s what they do on TV. Weirdness.
Dorothea Hannagan is sweating profusely. Shaking. Janie doesn’t want to touch her. This whole scene is so foreign it’s almost otherworldly.
And then.
Madness.
“Where were you?” Janie’s mother crumples and she starts crying. Yelling too loud. “You don’t tell me nothing about where you are, you just disappear. That strange girl from next door has to drive me here—” Her hands are shaking and her shifty eyes dart from the floor back up to
Janie’s, accusing, angry. “You don’t care about your mother now, is that it? You just running around wild with that boy?”
Janie steps back, stunned, not just at the sheer record number of words uttered by her mother in one day, but even more by the tone. “Oh, my God.”
“Don’t you talk back to me.” Dorothea’s shaking hands rip open her ragged vinyl purse and she rifles through it, dumping wrappers and papers onto the waiting room chairs. It becomes painfully obvious that what she’s looking for is not there. Dorothea gives up and slumps in a chair.
Janie, standing, watches.
She’s shaking a little bit too.
Wondering how to handle this. And why she has to. Haven’t you given me enough shit to deal with already? she says to no one. Or maybe to God. She doesn’t know. But she does know one thing. She’ll be glad to be away from this mess.