"Mr. Armado? I have your... um, lunch."
Diego turned his head automatically toward the sound of the nurse's voice and noted that it seemed slightly brighter on that side of the room. That's all his eyes were good for these days: detecting changes in light levels. Whatever. He could cope.
The hospital coffee was shit, but it was better than nothing. It warmed and stimulated him, and would serve as a suitable substitute for the real stuff until he could get out. Diego groped around on the bedside table where the nurse had placed his tray until his fingers bumped into a paper cup. He detested paper cups, but picked it up, held it under his nose for a moment- ahh, he felt alive again with that familiar smell going up through his nostrils and seemingly straight to his brain!- and sipped.
"Bitter," he announced, half triumphant and half blissful.
The nurse, not catching his tone, shifted slightly. "There's cream and sugar on the table, Mr. Armando. I can help you with it if you like..."
"No, no." Diego waved his free hand vaguely through the air. "No, sweetheart, bitter's how I like it. Bitter like fate. Mine. Yours, too, I imagine. Maybe everybody's."
The nurse hesitated, then said, "I'm not sure what you mean, Mr. Armando."
"Forget about it. And call me Diego, won't you? Mr. Armando is my dad." He paused. "Is he still alive? My dad, I mean. And my mom. And the rest of my family."
She paused again. Diego wondered, briefly, why he hadn't thought to ask after them before. But it wasn't that strange; for the past week, ever since he had come out of coma, his brain had been in a white fluffy haze. Probably sedative-induced.
"We have been unable to get in touch with your family," the nurse said slowly. "No one has visited you for several years, so our contact information is probably out of date..."
"Several years," Diego repeated flatly. It felt as if it had been only yesterday that he had been in that cafeteria, sitting just across from his nemesis. Only yesterday that he could have reached out, wrapped his hands around her throat, and throttled the two-faced Dahlia Hawthorne. For Mia's sake, of course.
Mia...! Diego accidentally took a too-large gulp of his coffee and spluttered. As the nurse rushed to his side anxiously, he cursed the fates soundly for making him hurt Kitten the way he must have. But... if no one had come to visit him for years...
The nurse's thin hands tried to pluck his cup of coffee from his grip, but he held on, breaking free, and poured it all down his throat with a glugluglugluglug.
"Right-o." he said calmly, as though nothing had just happened, over the shocked protestations of the nurse. "Then there's someone else I'd like you to call. Mia Fey. Tell her... tell her death has no meaning in this world anymore."
