Chapter Forty-One

Owen was driving when his phone pinged. He did not glance at it, far more sensibly attending the road. He was, in any case and against the expectations of all who loved him, already on his way to the hospital. He had been intending to visit Jude the next day, post-operation, but with his grandmother's accident and coinciding stay in the same hospital, he had rearranged his schedule to get there sooner.

Turning off the road and onto the hospital drive, he scanned the car park for Olivia’s vehicle. Finding it, he parked in a space nearby. Only then, did he check his phone and find Olivia’s text message. Owen rolled his eyes in the direction of the hospital and decided to simply go find her inside.

The sun beat down from above and throbbed back up from the tarmac. Owen hurried quickly into the shade of the large square porch of the hospital. The automatic doors parted before him, but he paused on the threshold, momentarily indecisive.

He checked his watch, and reasoning that Jude would still be in surgery, decided to search for his grandmother’s room first.

Entering the hospital, he was confronted with the labyrinthine layout, aided only by colored lines on walls and floor tracing routes throughout. Owen experienced a rare moment of frustrated inadequacy, realizing he had no idea which of many departments he needed to find. He picked a path almost at random, eliminating the departments whose names he did recognize and taking the most likely candidate from the rest. With some semblance of a decision made and all outward seeming of calm, he proceeded into the hospital maze.

The place was busy, as congested as the traffic on the roads outside. Doctors, nurses, and porters alternately hurried or meandered through the halls, individually and in the occasional clump. Patients and visitors wandered, eyes on the colored guiding lines or scanning for signs telling them their way. Sometimes, a gurney or wheeled bed went by, bearing a patient and attended by mixed flocks of medical staff and visitors.

Owen caught himself breathing hard and stopped to collect himself. He was stressed, torn in three different directions—worried about Jude, his grandmother, and Olivia—seeking and dreading each encounter for different reasons. He was not used to acknowledging stress, but the hospital was an unfamiliar environment, and he could not ignore the rising anxiety tearing at his attention.

He had started out following the blue line, but, at some point, had switched unconsciously to the red. The layout of the hospital made no sense, related departments seemingly scattered at random around the huge complex. He had gone up elevators and down stairs, through corridors and waiting rooms and spaces doubling as both. His sense of direction was thoroughly confused, and he could not now guarantee retracing his steps to the entrance.

He had passed through two cafeterias already, and seeing a sign indicating a third nearby, he went with the idea of getting a coffee to steady himself. While he was waiting, he had the thought to call Olivia and see if she would meet him there. His phone was in his hand before he decided against it. Reasons vied, from reluctance to admit even to himself that he was lost, to a stab of melancholy for his first meeting with Olivia, over confused coffee.

Then, a familiar face passed him in the crowd, in the white coat of a doctor. Owen could not place the man’s name, or how he knew him, but guessed he must be one of the doctors met or seen over the months in context to Jude’s treatment.

Habitual self-assertion took hold, and Owen broke from the queue to stop the man confidently.

“Say, can you help? I’m looking for the penthouse suite.”

The doctor treated him to a look of profound disdain. “You would be.”

“Excuse me?” Owen blinked.

“You don’t recognize me, do you?”

“I think we’ve met, that’s why I asked you rather than...” Owen gestured vaguely at the sea of human traffic passing on either hand.

“We were at school together,” the other said, in a tone of strained sarcastic patience.

“Were we?” Owen frowned and studied the man’s face, digging deeper in his mental files for a name. “Well, look, there’s no need to take on; it was a very long time ago.”

“I remember you.”

“I’m a memorable guy.”

Owen’s flippant confidence seemed only to irritate the man. He spoke through his teeth, almost snarling.

“Everything came so easily to you. You just had everything handed to you from the start. Now look at you, asking for the bloody penthouse in a hospital. You over-entitled...” his teeth ground into silence, restraining outright insult.

The man’s venom surprised Owen, but he let it rebound off the very over-confidence of which he stood accused. He was well aware of it, wore it like golden armor every day.

“Look at you: a successful man, a doctor, everyone respects you. I certainly do...”

“You what?” The doctor’s eyes narrowed, anger mingling with confusion.

“Who doesn’t respect a doctor? I can’t do what you do. I’ve never saved a life. I suppose I’m closer to it now than I’ve ever been, but I really would be an ass to take any credit for it.”

“What are you talking about?” The doctor adjusted his collar, strangely flustered.

“I’m paying for a kid’s operation. Not my kid. What good’s a billionaire if you can’t do something like that, at least once in your life?”

“You’re not fit to take care of a child...”

It was Owen’s turn to be confused. “Never said I was. I’m paying for his operation. But saying it out loud even once sounds like boasting, I’d rather not keep repeating it.”

His easy manner was having the opposite of its usual effect: Far from charming and disarming, his every word seemed to inspire deeper hostility. The doctor’s flush of anger was edged now with suspicion, even fear.

“Why are you here?”

“Visiting the kid I just told you about. And my grandmother, she had a fall. All I wanted was to ask you directions.”

“Pediatrics,” the doctor said mechanically, “follow the purple line. Mrs. Kim will be in the private suites, top floor.”

“So... the penthouse suite?” Owen deadpanned.

The doctors massaged his brow with one hand and muttered something semi-obscene.

“Thanks for your help.”

Owen walked away, deeply puzzled and more shaken by the encounter than his outward affect revealed. Six paces along the purple line, he stopped mid-stride: A name surfaced from memory, with a face attached, the same face, decades younger.

“Wait... Nolan?” Owen half turned, but Nolan Rickards was gone, carried back into anonymity by the river of hospital traffic. Other memories surfaced, and Owen winced as if he had been bitten by a wasp. “Oh, you were always an oily little tick at school...”

Shaking off the ill dive into memory, Owen stopped the first nurse he saw and asked, “I’m looking for a formidably sweet old lady who’s in for a fall. Can you help steer me?”

“You’ll want the private suites, top floor, follow the purple line.”

“Thank you kindly.”

Sightly mollified that Nolan had not led him false, despite an unconcealed and intense personal grudge, Owen hurried on in search of his grandmother’s room.