Chapter 66 The Central Hospital Nightmare
Chapter 66 The Central Hospital Nightmare
(Trish's POV)
The phone felt like a block of ice against my ear. My hands were still shaking so violently I almost dropped it into the pool of blood and glass at my feet.
"Miss Britney," I choked out.
"Trish? Thank God. Where did you two go? Joseph ran out of here like he’d seen a ghost and—"
"There’s been an accident," I interrupted, my voice sounding like it belonged to someone else. "A truck. Main and 4th. The ambulance is here. They’re... they’re loading him in now."
The silence on the other end wasn't just quiet; it was a vacuum. I heard a sharp, panicked intake of breath, then the sound of something, a glass, maybe shattering on the kitchen tile.
"Is he alive?" her voice was a thin, terrifying thread.
"He’s unconscious," I sobbed, watching the paramedics slam the back doors of the rig. "I’m going with him. Miss Britney, please… just meet us there."
"I'm coming," she rasped. "I'm coming right now."
The ride was a blur of high-pitched sirens and the sterile, metallic smell of the ambulance. I watched the paramedics work on him, their hands moving with a practiced, robotic efficiency that made my stomach turn.
Every time the light from a streetlamp flashed through the small window, it illuminated Joseph’s face, pale, slack, and unrecognizable.
We arrived at Central Hospital. The irony was a physical weight in my chest. This was the same sliding door, the same fluorescent flickering, and the same smell of floor wax and antiseptic that we had faced weeks ago for Miss Britney. Only this time, the "Golden Boy" was the one on the gurney.
"You can’t come in here, miss," a nurse said, placing a firm hand on my shoulder as they pushed Joseph through the double doors of the trauma unit.
"I’m his... I’m with him!" I screamed, but the doors swung shut, leaving me standing in a hallway that felt a thousand miles long.
Twenty minutes later, the automatic doors at the entrance hissed open. Miss Britney sprinted in, her hair disheveled, her coat half-buttoned. She saw me standing there, covered in her son’s blood, my eyes hollow, and she didn't even have to ask. She collapsed against the intake desk, her head in her hands, before a nurse guided her toward the "Family Only" area.
She went inside to see him through the glass. I stayed in the hallway, a ghost in my own life.
When she finally emerged, she didn't look like the woman who had welcomed me into her home. Her face was set in stone. She walked straight to me, her eyes boring into mine with a quiet, terrifying intensity.
"Tell me everything, Trish," she said, her voice low and dangerous. "From the very beginning. Why was my son running into the middle of the road like a madman? What happened in that room?"
I leaned my back against the cold hospital wall, the weight of the last two months finally crushing me.
"I have a contract," I whispered, my voice cracking. "With the New York Writers Project. They assigned me a personal advisor today. I... I have to move to Manhattan next Wednesday. I'll miss graduation."
Miss Britney blinked, her brow furrowing. "New York? Next week?"
"I’ve known for two months," I confessed, the words tasting like poison. "I didn't know how to tell you. I didn't want to ruin the peace. Joseph heard the call. He thought... he thought I was just playing a game with him. He thought I was abandoning him and you."
I saw the flicker of pain in her eyes. It wasn't just shock; it was the sting of being kept in the dark by someone she treated like a daughter. "Two months, Trish? You let us plan a future, you let him fall for you, while you were counting down the days until you left?"
"I was trying to save us!" I yelled, the tears finally spilling over. "I didn't say anything because I wanted to make sure the money was real! I have five hundred thousand dollars, Miss Britney! It's in my account right now! I was going to pay off the bank. I was going to save this house so you never had to worry again!"
Miss Britney froze. The anger in her face didn't disappear, but it was joined by a look of sheer, tragic bewilderment. "The house... you did all this for the house?"
"I did it for you," I sobbed, clutching my stomach. "But because I waited, he ran. Because I wanted to be a hero, he’s laying in that room with tubes in his chest. I ruined everything by trying to fix it."
She didn't hug me. She didn't tell me it was okay. She just looked at the closed doors of the trauma ward, then back at me.
"You have to go on Wednesday, Trish. Regardless of what happens in that room. If you stay here for a boy who might not even wake up to look at you, then all of this... his blood, my heart... it was all for nothing."
I looked at my hands, the dried blood flaking off my skin. I was an author just on the brink of reaching success, and yet I had never felt more bankrupt in my life.
I was also devastated. I expected Miss Britney to reach for me, to wrap me in that familiar warmth and whisper through the tears that it wasn't my fault, that the truck, the blood, and the betrayal were just a cruel twist of fate. But the embrace never came. Instead, the silence between us grew teeth, and she simply turned her back, her footsteps echoing a hollow, rhythmic rejection as she walked out toward the lobby.
Why didn't she hold me? Did she see a monster where her daughter used to be? Was my "gift" to save the house actually the curse that broke her son? How could I be worth half a million dollars and yet be so utterly worthless that I couldn't even earn a single look of comfort from the woman I called Mom?