Chapter Nine
Isabelle had been dropping by the PICU in the afternoons before she started her night shift at the ER, to check in on Angela and Jonathan, over the past couple of days. "To make sure my colleagues are taking good care of him, and that Tony's taking good care of you." Angela no longer bothered to deny it, and neither did the man she was tentatively thinking of as her boyfriend.
Isabelle seemed as pleased with her colleagues' work as she was with Tony's. Today was the first time she'd come up with any sort of complaint or even a suggestion. "Sadie, can I ask you something?" she asked the nurse on duty; a grandmotherly woman with grey streaks in her thick black hair.
Sadie looked up from the pile of knitting in her lap. "Yes, Isabelle?"
Isabelle got distracted by the pile of red and yellow yarn. "What's that you're making? Is that a stocking cap?"
"A skullcap for my patient," Sadie replied, patting Jonathan's leg. "Angela mentioned that she was worried he might be embarrassed when he wakes up and finds himself with no hair. Tony mentioned his gymnastics team's colors are red and yellow, so I thought this might come in handy, in case his hair hasn't grown back by the time he's out of his helmet." The old woman chuckled softly. "I needed a project. I've had a lot of downtime during today's shift. Tony and Angela have been doing all the baths, turnings, changes, and whatnot. Sam came in to read to him and trim his nails for a couple of hours while her folks stepped out to grab some dinner, and Mona dropped by play him the latest Bangles album. Other than keeping him bandaged and medicated, there hasn't been much left for me to help the little guy with. Maybe I should cut out early."
"Don't you be thinking about leaving us, Sadie!" Tony half-pleaded, half-warned, grabbing Angela's arm in alarm. "You saw the way we panicked when he had that nosebleed. We ain't fit to do this without you."
"Relax, Tony, she's just teasing us," Angela reassured him.
"It's cute!" Isabelle examined the skullcap thoughtfully. "Do you think you could send me the pattern? I'd like to make one for my nephew, and he's about Jonathan's size."
"Sure. But you had another question for me?" the old woman prompted.
"Oh right." Isabelle huffed a self-deprecating laugh. "Thank goodness this is my last shift of the week. I'm all burned out. What I was going to ask is, this clindamycin drip he's on, is it still set up for four hundred and fifty milligrams four times a day?"
"Yeah. I know cefazolin or Keflex is more traditional in situations like this, but given that the little guy has a penicillin allergy, we thought it was best to stay away from those," Sadie replied. "You know how cephalosporins can sometimes set off a reaction in people with beta-lactam sensitivities."
"Oh, no, I wasn't going to question that," said Isabelle. "I was actually going to ask whether anyone had talked about maybe adding some vanco to the drip to prevent c-diff."
"Do you know what the hell they're talking about?" Tony whispered in their ear.
"Not a clue," she replied, relieved it wasn't just her.
Isabelle had noticed their flummoxed faces, and took pity. "C-diff is an antibiotic-resistant bacteria that lives in your digestive tract."
"Not mine!" Tony denied.
Isabelle shook her head derisively. "Yes, yours too, Tony. In patients who are being heavily dosed with antibiotics, it can kill off the other germs living in there. With the c-diff as the last man standing, it buys up all the empty real estate in the patient's insides." She turned to Angela. "A hostile takeover, to put it in terms you can understand, sweetie."
"And it can be almost impossible to get rid of," Sadie added. "And very contagious, if he brings it home. Isabelle's right. It's not a bad idea to get him on something that'll prevent that. The little fella has enough worries."
"Let me go take it up with Carl," Isabelle suggested, referring to Dr. Dennison.
"No, let me take it up with Carl. I think he'd be more inclined to listen to someone from his own team." Sadie volunteered. "You stay here and visit with your friends."
Left alone with said friends for the first time in days, Isabelle eyed their joined hands. "It's nice to see the two of you together." She shook her head in fond exasperation. "Eh, who are we kidding? You guys have been together for over three years. What I mean is, it's nice to see the two of you together and not pretending to be otherwise. I'm sorry this is what it took, but at least you'll have some good news for Jonathan, among all the bad, when he wakes up."
Tony blinked, as if waking up from a dream. "Oh yeah. I hadn't even thought about that. I guess you're right, though. We can trust him to be in our corner, at least."
"Well, let's see. He tricked us into a date, told us he wanted us to get married, and then loudly and repeatedly advised us to have sex." Angela patted his hand patronizingly. "In the circles I move in, that's generally considered to be a sign of approval."
Isabelle was staring at them with her jaw hanging low. "Wait. Jonathan told you to what?!"
"It's a long, humiliating story we don't have time to get into right now," Tony chuckled. "Our Jonathan's a lot smarter than we are, but don't tell him we're on to him."
"I think Sam had it figured out before we did, too," Angela mused. "She was only too quick to chime in and back him up when he said it." And despite the fact that she'd been laughing madly at the time, Sam calling her Mom before she'd been driven from the room by her angry father had been oddly heartwarming.
"I'll bet she was excited when you told her," said Isabelle.
Angela frowned. She hadn't said anything to Sam. It hadn't really occurred to her to do so, with everything else that was going on. The whole family had been working in shifts, splitting their time between the waiting room, their beds at home, and Jonathan's bedside. Since they could only enter his room in pairs, they hadn't spent any time together as one family since all this had started. She looked at Tony, and he was wearing the same puzzled, guilty frown on his own face. Their eyes locked, and they shared a silent nod. They needed to tell Sam what was going on between them, before she picked up on it herself and thought they were deliberately trying to hide their relationship. They needed to talk with her, period. Neglecting one child in favor of another was perhaps understandable at a time like this, but not excusable.
"You haven't even told Sam?!" Isabelle groaned, burying her face in her hands. "Oh no. I didn't realize you guys were trying to keep this a secret, and I told my husband. As much as I love him, the man's a total yenta—it'll be all over the block by morning!"
"It's not a secret!" Tony protested angrily, before giving Angela an uncertain glance. "It's not, is it?"
"No," Angela replied vehemently. "I'm not ashamed of you, or our relationship."
"Good. I ain't ashamed of you, either." He put a protective arm around her, as if to shield her from the very idea. "I just haven't gotten around to telling Sam because we haven't seen much of her, and when we have seen her, she's usually interrogating us about the latest on Jonathan."
"Plus, we haven't all been together in the same room since all this started, and this is something I feel like we should tell her together," Angela admitted.
"Just tell her before she finds out elsewhere," Isabelle reminded them. "And I really am sorry for spilling your secret. Though, in my defense, you were doing a supremely bad job keeping it yourselves." She indicated their joined hands and Tony's arm draped around Angela. "I'd better get to work. Tell Sadie I'll come hit her up for the knitting pattern later." She patted Jonathan gently on the chest. "Feel better, Jonathan. Get some shut-eye while you can, because when you wake up, you're going to have an army of doctors and therapists working you like a dog."
"I wish she hadn't told him that," Tony whispered in her ear as the door closed behind Isabelle. "Now that he knows, he's going to play dead when we try to bring him out of the coma, just like he always does when I try to get him out of bed to help with the yardwork on Saturday mornings."
There was a perfunctory knock at the door before Dr. Dennison stepped in, Sadie in tow. She carried a small bag of IV medication, and gave Tony and Angela a quick thumbs-up behind Dr. Dennison's back. "Good evening Angela, Tony. We're putting Jonathan on some additional antibiotics to prevent nosocomially-acquired infections while he's here in the hospital. Nothing you need to be concerned about, just a precaution."
Angela fought the urge to roll her eyes at him. "Got it."
"Any other news for us, Dr. D?" Tony inquired
"Yes, the good kind. The MRI we got this morning shows the swelling has reduced even further. I think we're okay to stop the sedatives in the morning." He checked his watch. "He got his last twelve-hour dose four hours ago. I want to be here when he wakes up, since I'm the one making the call, so I'm going to have a half-dose administered early tomorrow morning, and he should hopefully regain consciousness around nine or ten."
Hope and fear warred deep in the pit of Angela's stomach. Tony's grip on her tightened, though she couldn't tell whether he was trying to comfort her or panicking himself. "Can you give us any idea what to expect?"
"I really wish I could, but given the extent of his injuries, he's going to need a pretty extensive evaluation before we can say anything for sure. You've got to remember, this child of yours is defying expectations just by being alive. If you guys hadn't bought him a helmet and made sure he wore it, he'd have been DOA. If CPR hadn't been performed immediately and perfectly," here the doctor paused to give a respectful nod to Tony, "he'd have been DOA. If your daughter hadn't kept her cool and called EMS within seconds, he'd have been DOA. Normally, the prognosis for an injury like this isn't good, but your family seems to have a knack for defying expectations."
Tony grinned. "I guess he does come by that honestly, doesn't he?"
Angela thought it over. That was something of a running theme in their family, she supposed. A muscle-bound athlete becoming a suburban housekeeper. A suburban mom opening her own ad agency. A woman pushing sixty graduating college and partying all the way to the finish line in the process. A quarrelsome Brooklyn tomboy turned social butterfly and honor roll student. "It does run in our family."
Dr. Dennison gave them a sympathetic smile. "Go on home and get some rest, both of you. Tomorrow might be a very good day, or a very bad one, but either way, it's going to be a very long one."
There was another knock at the door. "Must be Jonathan's night nurse. Come in," Angela invited.
"Hi Angela, hi Tony," Kate greeted cheerfully. "Hey Sadie. What's new tonight?"
"He just got a new antibiotic introduced to his regimen, and we're bringing him out of anesthesia tomorrow," said Sadie. "I'd better head home and finish up his little hat pronto, but let me give you report first."
"Tony, Angela, please tell me you're going home to bed," Kate all but begged them as she followed Sadie to the door. "With Jonathan coming out of the anesthesia tomorrow, this could be your last shot at a full night's sleep for God-only-knows how long."
"I don't want to leave Jonathan, but we do need to have that talk with Sam," Angela whispered to Tony.
"Yeah. And you could use a shower."
"Don't take this the wrong way, but you could, too." Angela was relieved he had brought it up first. She hadn't wanted to hurt his feelings, but he smelled like a hamper full of unwashed gym socks, and she probably did, too.
"And he'll be with Kate." Kate had been caring for Jonathan every night of the past three, and they had gotten to know her fairly well. She seemed pretty together, and she was good about keeping them in the loop.
"All right, we'll go home to bed. But we're coming back first thing in the morning," Angela warned Dr. Dennison.
"I expected no less," the doctor replied calmly. "I'm going need you here when he wakes up. Best case scenario, familiar faces will help get him alert and oriented. Worst case, I'll need your consent for additional testing. He'll need you at your best, so get a good night's rest and be sure to eat your Wheaties." Angela was fairly sure he was patronizing them, but he wasn't wrong, so she held her tongue. "And if you're planning to take your daughter home with you, she's been giving out free mani-pedis to all of our female patients, and she was in room 7G last time I saw her. If you're not, we'll be glad to keep her forever."
"Oh, I hope she hasn't been disturbing the other patients," Tony fretted.
"Quite the contrary. She's been a real ray of sunshine," the doctor reported. "I haven't seen so many of my patients smiling since Santa Claus dropped in at Christmastime." He gave them a smile. "You two have raised a wonderful girl. I'm looking forward to meeting your son properly tomorrow and seeing how he matches up."
"He's as great as the other one," said Tony affectionately. He helped Angela on with her coat, she helped him on with his, and they went to collect her presumptive stepdaughter.
By the time they found her, she had moved on to room 9I, where she was chattering a mile a minute with a slender black girl perhaps a year her junior. "…Yeah, don't get me wrong, I do like U2. I just like REM a little bit more," she declared, pulling a few cosmetology sponges from between the younger girl's fingers. "Okay, I think they're finally dry."
The little girl admired her sea-blue nails happily. "Oh, you're right," she said with a musical accent. Jamaican, or Haitian, maybe? "The polish did get more sparkly when it dried." She displayed her hands for a weary-looking woman standing by the window. "Look, Muma."
"Beautiful. Your friend does good work." The woman smiled lovingly at her daughter, then noticed Tony and Angela lingering in the doorway and cleared her throat. "Samantha, dear, I think your parents have come to collect you."
Sam looked over her shoulder, lighting up at the sight of them. "Oh, hi Dad, hi Angela! This is my new friend. She's here from Martinique to get some kind of crazy sci-fi gadget installed in her heart, and guess what her name is?"
Was this a real guessing game, or was it just an expression? Either way, it was a joy to see Sam smiling. Nothing kept that girl down, bless her heart. "What?" Angela inquired politely.
"Marie-Ange," Sam's friend introduced herself with a feeble wave
"Like both the moms in my life," Samantha pointed out, as if she feared they may not have made the connection in their exhausted state. "Cool, huh?"
"Very." Angela blinked back tears. They came at the least provocation, these last few days. "I guess you two were destined to be friends."
"Two incredibly beautiful names," Tony agreed. "I can see how you might not have been able to stop at just one for such a beautiful girl." He gave Marie-Ange's mom a wink. "I'm Tony. This is Angela."
"I'm Amelie." The adults shook hands.
"You ladies are awfully far from home," Angela observed. It was hard enough to deal with a critically ill child in her own hometown. She couldn't imagine doing it in a whole other country, with an ocean between her and her child and their support system.
The woman nodded wistfully. "The defibrillator implant my daughter needed wasn't available at home. For the exact procedure we were looking for, it was either Connecticut or Bern, Switzerland. And we speak English much better than we do German."
"Wow, I hadn't even thought about the language barrier," Angela realized.
"Luckily, I went to university in Britain, so I've been able to keep up with what the doctors are telling us, for the most part. And Marie-Ange has been at the top of her English class, six years running," Amelie boasted, smiling proudly at her daughter.
"Ah, Muma," Marie-Ange groaned.
"Teens getting embarrassed by their parents is an unfortunately universal phenomenon," Angela chuckled.
"Speaking of which, Sam, get your stuff and come out to the car, or I swear to God, I'll hug you, right here in front of your friend," Tony threatened playfully.
"He'll do it. He's crazy," Angela warned.
Sam rolled her eyes. "Angela's not wrong about him, Marie-Ange. I'd better go before he starts flashing baby pictures around, too."
"Will you come back tomorrow?" asked Marie-Ange hopefully.
"'Course. You were gonna show me how to do my hair like yours, remember?" She gestured at Marie-Ange's intricate braids, adorned with pink beads and rainbow-colored ponytail holders.
"Right. I've got some extra beads you can have, but bring lots of hair ties, and a comb with sharp teeth on it."
The two girls probably would have stuck around talking hair all night if Tony hadn't chosen that moment to open his wallet and menacingly withdraw a photo, causing Sam to run from the room screaming. As Amelie and Marie-Ange laughed at the two Micellis' antics, Angela picked up Samantha's forgotten manicure set and wished the ladies a good evening.
In the family waiting room, they nearly tripped over Adam Novak and his two youngest children, who were on the floor building a tower out of Legos. "Hi, Sammy!" the curly-headed toddler greeted. Baby Andy gurgled happily at the sight of her.
Their father looked up. "Hey, Sam, Angela, Tony. Thanks for the sandwiches and fruit salad you brought us earlier. It was good to eat real food for a change, instead of that cafeteria slop."
"It was no big deal to throw a few extra helpings in the cooler," Tony replied.
"How's Sarah?" Angela inquired. "I haven't heard her scream in a while. Has the new pain med been helping?"
Adam breathed a sigh of relief. "Yes, thank God, and thank you. You were right, Angela. The moment I said the words 'lawyer' and 'malpractice,' Dr. Niems suddenly got a lot more helpful."
"Glad to hear it," said Angela. Though she was sorry it had been necessary for them to resort to threats to get a little basic compassion from Sarah's doctor.
"How's Jonathan? Any changes?"
"We're going to try and wake him up tomorrow." Angela's voice sounded far shakier than she liked. "Keep your fingers crossed for him, okay?"
"Will do," said Adam. "Hang in there, guys."
"You too, buddy," said Tony. "Tell your wife we said hey."
"Wait, we're going to wake him up tomorrow?" Sam repeated. "Why am I always the last one to know these things?" She spent the entire ride home bombarding them with questions.
Upon their arrival at home, Samantha ran to the TV and gave it a hug. "A TV that's not playing Sesame Street!" she cried in melodramatic bliss. "I'd forgotten such a thing still existed in this world. Dad, I know it's almost time for Little House on the Prairie…"
"I don't like that show and I never have!" Tony barked at his daughter, a bit too vehemently. "I just watch it with Angela 'cause she don't like to watch alone!"
"Tony, please, you're not fooling anyone," said Angela, giving his arm a consoling squeeze. She leaned over to whisper in his ear. "And I happen to like a sensitive guy."
"Fine," Tony huffed. "And the joke's on you, Sam. Little House ain't even on this time of day no more. This is the night I watch Highway to Heaven."
"Ooh. You're really living on the edge there, Dad," said Sam derisively.
"But I can forgo it for tonight if you want to watch Growing Pains," Tony conceded. "I know you've got that mad crush on Kirk Cameron."
"I do not!" Sam denied.
"Yeah, it's The Cosby Show she wants to catch, and the real apple of her eye is that kid who plays Theo," Angela tattled mischievously, relieved that they still had it in them to laugh together as a family.
"For your information, you're both wrong," Sam declared loftily. "It's Family Ties that I'm looking forward to, and Michael J Fox that I'm looking at." The girl breathed a dreamy sigh. "That guy was aptly named."
"Speaking of true love—" Tony clumsily tried to segue.
"I don't love Michael J. Fox," Sam insisted. "Attraction and love are two separate and distinct feelings."
"How in the world did you figure that out all by yourself?" he wondered. His daughter was smart, but he doubted if any teenaged girl in all of human history had ever been that smart.
"You've been reading Mother's Cosmo again, haven't you?" Angela guessed.
From the look on Sam's face, she was right on the money. "Ask me again when Dad's not around."
"All right, fine!" Tony exploded. "We're not speaking about love! I get it! Can we?"
"Why?" Sam abruptly sobered. "Oh God, you're not seeing that Frankie chick again are you?"
"Who?" Between his lack of sleep over the past few days, all the stress rattling around the inside of his skull, and the abject relief of finding out Angela returned his feelings, it genuinely took Tony a minute to recall who his daughter was talking about. "Oh, her. No."
"Good, because anyone that desperate for a man is bound to be hiding some kind of deep, dark secret. Betcha she was an alien cruising for some poor sap to help her make a half-human hybrid."
Tony was getting more exasperated by the second, but Angela seemed to like the way his daughter thought, and collapsed into a fit of giggles. "Have I told you lately that I love you, Sam?"
"Angela!" Tony whined. "We're trying to have a serious conversation with her."
"Right. Sorry." Wiping tears of mirth from her eyes and biting her lower lip to keep her laughter under control, she took a deep breath and did her best to look dignified. "Sorry," she said again. "I think I'm a little hysterical from the lack of sleep."
"We're trying to tell you we're in love!" Tony blurted out quickly, before the conversation could devolve into further chaos.
Angela took his arm. "Doing a terrible job of telling you, but yes. Your father and I are very much in love."
Sam stared up at them from the couch in uncomprehending silence, and for a moment, he worried she wasn't taking the news as well as he'd expected. Then she finally opened her mouth. "You mean you're finally admitting it?"
He turned to Angela to gauge her reaction. She looked exactly the way he felt. Like a stunned fish. "You mean you knew?"
"How could you know?" Angela cried in alarm.
"What do you mean, how could I know?!" Sam seemed genuinely offended by the question. "I live with you two. How could I not? It's been written all over your faces since the day we moved in!"
"It has not!" Tony protested feebly.
"Oh, come off it, Dad," the girl scoffed. "I'm a teenager. I know, better than most, what it looks like when two people are too shy and awkward to admit they're hot for each other."
"We weren't shy and awkward," said Angela. Sam just stared at her skeptically. "Okay, we weren't just shy and awkward. We were worried about you kids, too."
"Oh. I see. You were worried that the little boy who spent days putting together an elaborate scheme to trick you two into having sex wouldn't approve of your love." Sam folded her arms, looking supremely unimpressed. She glanced at her father. "Oh well. I guess the important thing is that you finally manned up and made a move."
"Actually, I made the move," said Angela.
Sam nodded. "I should have known. That makes more sense."
"You think I ain't got it in me?" Tony huffed indignantly. His own daughter thought he was a geek. And here, all these years, he'd actually thought she looked up to him!
Sam took his hand in hers and gave it a condescending pat. "Dad, I know you can handle yourself around most women. But when it comes to the ones you really love, you're about as smooth as a Brillo pad." She turned to Angela. "You know, Mom told me the story of their first meeting. It was the first day of their freshman year of high school."
"What's wrong with that?" asked Angela. She must have noticed his cheeks burning with shame, because she reached out to put a protective arm around his shoulders.
"What's wrong with that is that their first date was to the senior prom," Sam replied, regarding her father with pity.
Tony hadn't thought about that in years. He'd spent freshman year trying to ignore his feelings, and hunt for easier prey, because he'd known Marie would be a tough nut to crack. Sophomore year had been spent chasing other girls to make her jealous. Junior year had been spent essentially stalking her, inserting himself into every club and activity she joined to get himself on her radar. It wasn't until midway through senior year that he'd finally gotten desperate enough to try admitting he was interested in her. Three and a half years, just like me and Angela. Guess it's my lucky number. Or my curse.
"Maybe there's something to be said for taking it slow. Your parents were eventually very happy together," Angela tried to help him by pointing out.
"Eventually," Sam conceded. "And don't get me wrong. I hope you'll be just as happy as they were." The girl made a face. "Just try not to get too happy in front of me, huh?"
"It's a deal." Angela drew Sam into a hug.
Tony eagerly joined the embrace, enveloping his two favorite girls in his arms. "Nothing like a group hug to make a bad week hurt less," he sighed.
"Can I watch my show now?" Sam's voice, muffled by the two sets of arms around her, was barely intelligible.
"Yeah. I'm gonna go whip us up a quick dinner."
"I'll help," Angela volunteered.
"Uh-oh," muttered Sam, sitting down on the couch and reaching for the remote.
Tony would normally have had no qualms about banning Angela from the kitchen. She was a terrible cook on a good day, when she wasn't jumpy and sleep-deprived. The state she was in right now, they'd be lucky if her cooking didn't kill them. However, the fact that she was worried about her son and bursting into tears at the least provocation made him hesitate. As she followed him into the kitchen, he debated whether to feign a sudden craving for pizza, or just pretend the stove was broken.
The abject terror he was feeling must have shown up on his face, because she got annoyed and swatted him on the arm. "Tony, get a grip. I won't help you if you don't want me to. I just wanted to talk and I didn't want her eavesdropping."
He tried not to look as relieved as he felt. "Oh, good. No offense or nothing, it's just that I was planning to make tortilla soup, and it's super easy. A one-person job."
Mollified, she took a seat at the table as he set to work throwing cans of corn, beans, tomatoes, broth, and enchilada sauce into a pot with some leftover chicken. "You sure you don't want some help?"
"No!" Tony blurted, then tried to play his fear off as irritation. "I know I ain't an Ivy Leaguer, like most of your boyfriends, but I think I'm smart enough to open a few cans on my own." He added a few chopped cilantro leaves and a spoonful of diced garlic to the mixture. Then he adjusted the heat. Then he added a squirt of lime juice. Then he adjusted the heat again. Then he got out the cilantro and cut up one more leaf to add to the pot. Then he stuck a meat thermometer in the soup and pretended to care how close it was to simmering. Then he stood in front of the stove for a minute, racking his brain for more ways to pretend to be busy. When a woman says she wants to talk, it's never good.
"Tony, stop pretending to be busy."
Damn. She knows me way too well. He covered the soup and slunk to the table to join her like a kicked dog. "What did you want to talk about?"
"What Sam said."
"Oh no. You're not into that Family Ties kid, too, are you?"
"No. If I was going to lust after a TV personality, it would be that guy from Taxi, but I prefer men I've actually met." She reached across the table to take his hand. "Tony, why did it take you three and a half years to tell me how you feel?"
Tony shrugged sheepishly. "You heard my daughter. I'm a slow mover."
Angela raised her eyebrows. "Really? That's the story you're going with? Tony, a couple of months ago, you were seriously considering marriage to a woman you'd been dating for a weekend!"
"Psh. Nobody around here's gonna let me forget about that one, are they?" He sighed.
"She's just the latest in a long line. Let's face it, you're not shy with the ladies."
"I'm only shy with the ones I'm in love with," Tony explained. It was something he hadn't realized about himself until now, with Sam and Angela forcing him to think about it. "Being confident with some chick in a bar, or some babe Mrs. R pushed on me, or some lonely client you pushed on me, is easy. I ain't putting much on the line, there. With you, I'm putting my heart on the line. That's something I've only done once in my life, and…" He couldn't say it had ended badly, all told. He'd come out of it with eight years of beautiful memories and a precious little girl. But it had come with a high cost. "I know what it's like to lose the woman I love, Angela. I don't want to go through that ever again."
He was afraid he'd see pity when he looked into her eyes, but she seemed more confused than anything. "But you told me how you felt, in the end."
"I had no choice. You cornered me in a church," he accused.
"You could have gotten up and walked out."
"I guess I could have. But that would have been as obvious as just saying yes. Besides, you were right. The shape we're in right now, you needed to know and I needed to get it off my chest." He thought over the exchange in the hospital chapel two days ago. "Hey, while we're on the subject, why didn't you say anything?" Some women might have felt it was the man's job to initiate a new relationship, but Angela had never been the sort of girl to be confined by traditional gender roles.
Angela hesitated for a moment. Then she opened her mouth to answer. Then she closed it again. Then she stood up. "I think the soup needs to be stirred."
"Ay-oh, oh-ay, don't give me that!" Tony caught her by the waist and pulled her into his lap. "I answered your questions, now it's your turn."
She hid her face against his shoulder. "But my answer's so stupid!"
"Now honey, you're a very smart woman. I'm sure it's not."
"It is too. Even my therapist thought so, and I pay her to be on my side!"
Angela had been talking about him in therapy? He would investigate more about that later. "C'mon, tell me. I promise not to laugh."
She lifted her head from his shoulder and looked him in the eye. "I wanted you to go first."
That was the last thing he'd ever expected to hear. "Why?"
Angela positively withered. "Because I'm insecure. I've had to say it first in every other relationship I've ever had, and I wanted it to be different with you."
"Yeah?" Silly, but oddly flattering, in a way. "So, what you're saying is, I'm the bravest man you've ever been with, including the guy who went around sticking his head in lions' mouths for a living."
Angela rolled her eyes affectionately. "My ex-husband only did that once, but broadly speaking, yes."
"Freeze, dirtbag!" Mona suddenly burst in through the back door, wearing Tony's catcher's mask and brandishing his baseball bat. She lowered her weapon when she saw them at the table. "Oh, it's you guys. Sorry. You've been spending so many nights at the hospital, I wasn't expecting you. I saw the lights on and I figured it was a burglar."
"The only burglar here is the one who snatched my bat and mask from under my bed," he sniped at her.
"Hey, cut me some slack. I'm used to having a buff guy with a quick temper defending the homestead. Being here alone these past few nights has been seriously spooky." She removed the mask and sat the baseball gear on the table. "Since you're home, you can have these back." She gave her daughter, still in Tony's arms, on his lap, a rare look of approval. "Well, you two seem to be getting along nicely. I do good work." She polished her nails theatrically on her lapel.
"Speaking of good work, how are things at the office?" said Angela in a blatant ploy to change the subject.
"Terrible. With you gone, I'm being forced to do actual work!" The redhead shuddered. "This is not the natural order of things."
"Agreed. Did you bring me anything?" She sounded like she was five years old and harassing her parents for a treat.
"A marketing brief, several booking forms, and the minutes of our meeting with B Cleaners. Oh, and the Bringham's Instruments report."
"Ooh!" She removed herself from Tony's lap and ran for the door as if she'd just heard an ice cream truck drive by.
He held onto her wrist, stubbornly anchoring her in place. "Angela, leave it till tomorrow. The shape you're in, you'll probably fill out them forms in purple crayon, sign the wrong name on the marketing brief, and use the report to line Jonathan's lizard terrarium."
Angela gave him a dirty look. "Well, as long as we're telling each other hard truths, you forgot to defrost the chicken before you put it in the soup, and you also salted it three times."
"You're just making that up!"
Mona took a bite of the soup and made a horrible face. "Blech! She's not making it up, Tony! This is the worst thing I've tasted since that time I accidentally took a sip of Jonathan's chemistry experiment!" She spat the mouthful into the sink, and scrubbed her tongue clean with a nearby dishtowel. "It tastes like something she'd have made herself." The redhead groaned. "Oh, Tony, you didn't let her help, did you?"
"No! I would never—" Tony felt Angela's eyes on him. "I would never be so cruel as to insult my girlfriend's skills in the kitchen, though."
Angela reached for the phone. "I'm calling out for pizza, before this conversation goes any further and I have to kill one or both of you."
They went to join Sam in front of the TV to wait for the pizza to arrive, the whole family crammed onto the couch together in an unspoken desire for closeness. Tony had his arm around Angela, and it was a relief to be able to do so out in the open. Sam was initially slumped, half-asleep, against Angela's shoulder, but she came to life when a commercial break hit and Mona changed the channel to ABC's Thursday Night Movie, which happened to be Red Dawn. The pair began a heated debate about whether Charlie Sheen or Patrick Swayze was hotter, and for a few wonderful minutes, life felt almost normal.
Then there came a knock at the door. "Oh, good, our pizza's here." Before he'd even finished standing up to answer it, there came another knock. Then the knocking rapidly devolved into pounding. "Hey, put the battering ram away, already! I'm coming!" he hollered irritably.
"Give him a break, Tony. The guy's probably swamped," said Angela.
"You and your bleeding heart," said Tony, affection and irritation mingling in his voice and his heart. He opened the door. "All right, buddy, what do we owe y-"
But it wasn't the pizza guy on the other side of the door. It was Michael Bower. "An explanation would be nice," he growled.