“Where the hell did he go? He was here a second ago.” Maddox turns to me where I stand in the doorway and I blink, startled for a second by the similarity between him and the man who was just here. It wasn’t just the voice they share—I’m so flustered by those piercing gray eyes I can’t answer at first, because that pang of familiarity is back. It’s like déja vù, which makes no sense because the face I see in my mind belongs to a dead man.
“I—I don’t know,” I finally manage with a shake of my head. “We were talking not two minutes ago. He must have just left.” I wave vaguely at the door. Maddox swears again and rushes back out.
I’m dazed by the crazy sequence of events this morning. It’s barely 8AM. and my adrenaline’s elevated as much as if I was just mid-surgery. I take a deep breath to settle my nerves and redirect my attention to Marcella. Her numbers all look good and she’s due for an MRI later today to assess the swelling. Her recovery isn’t going to be easy, but she’s in good hands.
I sense another presence as I’m updating her chart and look up to see Arturo Flores standing at the foot of her bed as if I didn’t just send him away. I start to object again and he raises a hand. “I’ll go in a moment. I just wanted to check on her.” He’s calm as he regards her, then looks at me, his gaze appraising. “Not many people have the guts to stand up to me, Dr. Nicolo. I appreciate that.”
“I’d want the same for anyone in my family, wouldn’t you?” I say.
A small smile appears amid his neat salt-and-pepper goatee. “You do strike me as a woman who honors her parents. I imagine they’re quite proud of you.”
My cheeks heat and I dip my head, a little awestruck by the attention of such a charismatic, if infamous, man. “I try,” I say, and straighten my spine. “But parent-child relationships aren’t always rainbows and kittens. Case in point.” I gesture toward the area just outside the room where Maddox recently struggled to get his dad under control. I don’t want to outright lie to the man; my parents and I have a complicated relationship.
“True enough. Trust can be destroyed far more easily than it’s gained, even when you share blood with someone. Perhaps especially when you do. Lies are difficult to overcome. The longer they go on, the worse the trust erodes, until there’s nothing left but a shell of the relationship held together by threads of memories. Parents come to those lies easily, claiming it’s to protect the child, but they never count on the child growing up and learning the truth, do they? They’re so blinded by the need to shield their offspring that they can’t predict the damage done in the long-term. To themselves and to the child.”
His gaze is direct, fixed on my face as he speaks, and the longer he goes on, the more I feel like he sees straight through me. It’s as if he’s talking about me and my relationship with my parents. But that can’t be it, can it? How could he know how my mother lied to us? How it destroyed her marriage to my father and almost ruined all our lives in the process? No, it’s impossible for Arturo to know that, but his words hit home anyway.
Except seeing how he looks at my patient, I start to wonder whether he’s actually talking about Marcella, about the lies she tells herself and her children in the interest of protecting them from an abusive father.
Or perhaps Flores is lamenting the collapse of his own family.
I don’t know what to say, so I just stand there, grasping for something. Finally he reaches out and takes my hand, squeezing it gently. “Treat her as if she were your own mother, Dr. Nicolo.”
“I wouldn’t have it any other way, sir.”
He walks out, and it takes me a second to get my bearings. I finally get moving again and check my watch, cursing at how much time I lost with this morning’s drama.
It’s going to be a full day, followed by a long night. Once I update the neuro attending on the status of all our cases, I’m looking forward to a long-awaited vacation. I skipped Christmas to work, hoping to gain points with my boss by staying through the holidays, but New Year’s is sacred. I may not have the best relationship with my mom, but I will be attending her annual New Year’s Eve party in four days, come hell or high water. It’s always been the best party of the year, and it’s one of the few traditions I observe.
As if on cue, my phone buzzes in my pocket and I take it out to find a text from my best friend, Nina.
“What time does your flight arrive tonight?”
“Midnight, give or take,” I reply.
“Is the brat picking you up or is your mom sending a car?”
I roll my eyes. She means my fiancé, Barnaby, who she’s despised ever since she first met him back when we started dating in med school. My relationship with him hasn’t exactly been drama-free, but aside from a brief break three years ago over the distance—he still lives in Denver and I’ll be in Los Angeles until I complete my residency—we’ve stayed together. Nina, on the other hand, has never had a boyfriend for longer than six months, so I suspect she just can’t wrap her head around a long-term, committed relationship based on mutual respect like Barnaby and I have.
“I’ll just Uber,” I type back. I’m past the age where I need Mom’s help with anything. As the daughter of a public figure, it took a long time to get out from under the eye of a watchful media. I even went as far as insisting on using only Dad’s half
