Where She Goes
He had hated hospitals for most of his life. His mother had wallowed and died in one, his father had disappeared from one. And now Mimi, his beautiful Mimi, had been spirited away into the bowels of one.
He didn't regret taking her, however much apprehension and disgust he held inside him. She was sick, had gotten progressively worse during the week until he had forced her to go in for a check up. They, of all people, knew how fragile life could be, especially for Mimi.
Her time on the streets had changed her. The supple body had thinned until it was nearly skeletal. She had not been able to shake the cough that had settled in her chest. It worried him that she could cough and cough; going so pale it was like she was a ghost.
He had overruled her when she objected to going to the hospital. It had been this way for Angel too.
Nervous, Roger paced the length of the Emergency Department's waiting room again. "Roger…" Mark's quiet voice stopped him in mid-stride. "Sit down, please; you're making me dizzy." Grunting, he turned to look at his friends, chairs dragged into a sloppy circle, as they waited for news.
Collins tilted his head to indicate the empty chair on his left. "Sit, man; they'll take there own sweet time."
Sighing, and raking his hands through his hair, Roger fell back into the vinyl-covered chair. "She's going to be okay, Rog," Maureen murmured in a rare show of compassion. He glanced at her and tried to smile.
"She's been having her T-cells tested regularly," Joanne agreed. "They weren't bad, as far as I know."
Roger shrugged. "You never know. Her T-cells haven't increased since her time out…" he trailed off, guilt rearing its ugly head. If only he hadn't been so stupid.
"Stop it, Roger," Mark ordered softly from his left. "This isn't your fault. People get colds."
"Yeah, well it's a bit more complicated than a simple chest cold, this time, Mark."
Mark's brows beetled as he stared at his friend's bowed head. "I know that, Roger. Mimi forgave you for leaving - you came back, didn't you?"
"Yeah but not before it was almost too late!"
"Roger," Collins interjected. "You almost lost her. Almost isn't definitive. She's still here; she's still with us. Don't you give up on her."
"Never."
"Roger Davis?"
He looked up and pinned the slight nurse with a wild-eyed stare. "Yes?"
"Miss Marquez is back in exam room three, if you wish to see her." The woman smiled wearily. "She's been asking for you."
As he was hurrying from the room, he heard Mark ask Collins: "Is that a bad sign?"
He held his breath the entire length of the hallway. Didn't blink until he was inside her room and staring at her beautiful face.
Her eyes were closed.
"Mimi?" He approached the bed cautiously, laying the back of his hand against her cheek. The feverish warmth met his skin and made his stomach drop. "Mimi?" he whispered again, louder.
Her eyelids fluttered and she pried them open with a great deal of effort. The smile that grew on her face seemed to tax her quickly, because it dropped off of her face almost as soon as it formed. "Hi you."
He smiled and, though tears were gathering at the back of his eyes, he settled down next to the examination bed. "How are you feeling?"
"Shitty."
Barking out a laugh he reached out with his free hand and took hers. His other palm remained pressed to her forehead. "Yeah, you look it."
"You sure know how to flatter a girl, Roger," she murmured, her lips twitching in a phantom smile. He squeezed her hand. "A regular Casanova."
He chuckled and brought her hand up to his cheek. "What'd the doctor say?"
"I've got a cold."
Roger snorted. "No shit. I coulda told him that."
"It was a her."
"What?"
"The doc, it was a woman."
"No." Roger pretended to look disbelieving. "You're sick and they don't even have the decency to give you a guy doctor to ogle?"
She chuckled softly. "Who says I didn't ogle the doctor?"
His eyebrow shot up. "Why, Mimi, I do believe Maureen's rubbing off on you."
She laughed again, breaking down into a coughing fit, turning her face away. Roger gripped her hand tightly. "Ugh…" groaning, Mimi turned her head back toward him. The grimace on her face might have been comical if he hadn't been so scared.
"What did the doctor say, Mimi?"
"Nothing good."
A fist clutched at his belly. "You'll be okay?" The quick jerk of one shoulder was his only answer. "Meems?"
"They're optimistic." The lie hung in the air, identified and categorized even before she'd finished speaking.
"Can we take you home?"
She blinked owlishly up at the fluorescent lights over the bed. "Dunno."
"We're taking you home - we're not leaving you in here."
She smiled. "My hero."
It was quick. He supposed he should have been grateful for that. She hadn't suffered overmuch, especially with their decision to leave the hospital AMA.
Now he was sitting in his empty room, thinking just how wrong it felt without her near. Sighing, he rubbed a hand over his face and lifted the guitar to sit across his lap.
"Roger?"
"Yeah, Mark?"
"Going to come to Life Support tonight?"
"Maybe next time, Mark."
He didn't look up as Mark settled his weight against the door frame. "Mimi would want you to go."
He dragged the tips of his callused fingers over the strings, reveling in the minor chord that floated from the instrument, mirroring a funeral dirge.
"Yeah."
"There's only today, Rog." He sighed again and set aside the guitar.
Straightening, Roger settled more firmly onto the mattress, pointedly ignoring his friend's probing stare. Mark stayed a moment longer before he turned to go, not renewing his offer. Roger was grateful; it would save him the guilt of refusing him a second time.
He was far from ready to take up the gauntlet and move on with his life.
He stayed in the room for a long while after Mark left. The shadows of night had finally overtaken the grasping twilight by thetime he stirred from his powsition on the bed they had shared.
When the light had fully faded, and the city grew bright with its man-made sunlight, Roger stood and walked from the room. He didn't look back. The emptiness would drag the tears from him he refused to shed. Instead he headed up to the roof, mindless, hurting, angry. He stood on the edge, staring out.
First April, now Mimi. It struck the artist in him as humerously ironic, in a dark and bittersweet way, how his loves had been taken from him. It was as though the Reeper was following him around plucking those he cared for from his grasp just as he'd realized he wanted to hold on. He cursed.
He'd only just found Mimi again.
He leaned forward, slapping his palms on the railing of the fire escape, a concession to the anger boiling up inside of him.
He wasn't built to live with so many changes. That was life, he supposed. So many curves that you ended up driving through all manner of muck and briars just to have some semblance of a straight path.
He snorted. It was bullshit, that was what it was. Mimi had been bright, funny, driven. She'd fought through so much to end up where she was - weeks from getting her GED, holding down her first steady job in weeks.
It shouldn't have been her time.
And yet, life, unfair and despicable though it was, had taken her all the same.
He setlted onto the top step of the ladder and stared across the city. Resting his head against the railing he let the tears come, weeping quietly for the love he had lost and the death of the hope, she had represented, with her.
A flight of metal stairs below, the loft apartment remained empty, with only silence awaiting his return.