Accidental Happiness Read Online Free PDF Page B

mother. I followed the ambulance and drove her here.”
    “Where is she? The mother. Is she here?” the nurse asked.
    She looked particularly capable, but I was losing her. In the background the intercom crackled as someone paged a doctor on the overhead.
Jesus, don’t they all have cell phones by now?
    “She’s over there,” I told her. I looked across the room but didn’t see Reese anywhere. “She’s in here somewhere. I drove her here. She’s really upset.” It sounded odd, my choice of words.
Upset.
Upset is what you are when a kid sprains an ankle. What are you when your kid has been shot?
    “She’s freaking out.” Eloquent. “She got sick a little bit ago, so I told her I’d find out what I could.”
    Too much information always sounded like a lie, but I was beginning to get pissed off, so I didn’t care.
    “How is the girl? Can her mother get in to see her? I need to let her mother know.” I spoke with force, conviction.
    “I’m sorry,” she said, without sounding sorry at all. “We have new regulations regarding patient information. Unless you’re the guardian—”
    “Please,” I said. “I don’t need a full report. Just tell me if she’s okay.” I glanced around again, wondering where Reese had gone. “It shouldn’t be this complicated.”
    “Tell the mother,” she spoke very deliberately, but with an underlying kindness, “that the doctor will need to discuss all matters of inpatient admission with her. And we need to find out about insurance. The girl likely won’t be discharged until tomorrow, at least.”
    “I’ll be covering any charges,” I told her.
    Discharge. Nurse code. The kid was okay.
    “I’ll make a note of that and you can talk with them at the desk,” she told me.
    “Thank you,” I said. We exchanged conspiratorial nods.
    “Oh,” she said as I turned to go back out. “What is the girl’s full name? I need to get her chart filled out.”
    Angelica? Angelina?
I couldn’t remember. “She goes by Angel,” I said.
    “Last name?” It was a reasonable question.
    “I don’t know.” I felt uneasy. That was a whole other conversation I had to have with her mother. “I really don’t know.”
    “And you’re a relative?” She looked skeptical.
    I thought for a second.
    “By marriage,” I said finally, realizing that it was almost the truth.
    Then before she could ask anything more, I headed back across the room to find Reese and give her the news.

3

    Reese
    I
t was hot outside the E.R. waiting area, but Reese was shivering. Inside, she had begun to feel her legs go weak, the nausea rising again. Prickly trembling in her hands followed and she figured she better find a place to sit down before she risked passing out. It had happened before. Since the waiting room looked full, she stepped outside where she’d seen some benches.
    Where the hell was Gina? Reese strained to see as someone opened the doors. She had been in line at the window, and then she was gone. She sat back down, willed herself to take a deep breath.
    “I’ve got to get up,” she mumbled to herself. “Go back and find her. I can’t be this fucking weak with my daughter inside there.”
    Where the hell was Benjamin? Why had his wife been on the boat—with a gun? He’d said once that she was high-strung, this new wife. But a gun? Still, the woman hadn’t been expecting her to show up. Lord knows why she was sleeping on the boat. She registered the old hope that something had happened with the two of them. Maybe the issue of having kids had escalated. She told herself to stop it. She couldn’t help but feel a little jealous. She had expected Gina to be smart, pretty. Ben had said as much. But Gina Melrose was more of these things than Reese had imagined. It got under her skin.
    The bottom line was, she needed to find Benjamin. She had to explain everything to him. But that was all for later. First, she had to know that Angel would be all right. She hoped to God the paramedics