Last Night at Chateau Marmont Read Online Free PDF

to end, or that they would save up for nearly two years to drive cross-country together or get engaged while listening to live music at a divey little place in the West Village with a plain gold band he’d paid for entirely on his own, or get married at his parents’ gorgeous seaside Hamptons home because really, what were they proving by refusing a place like that? All she knew for sure that night was that she desperately wanted to see him again, that she would be at Nick’s in two nights come hell or high water, and that no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t stop smiling.

2
Suffer One, Suffer All

    B ROOKE stepped into the hallway of the maternal medicine ward at NYU Langone Medical Center and pulled the curtain closed. Eight down, three to go. She rifled through the remaining files: a pregnant teenager, a pregnant woman with gestational diabetes, and a first-time mother struggling to nurse newborn twins. She checked her watch and did a few calculations: if all went as smoothly as she anticipated, she might actually get to leave at a decent hour.
    “Mrs. Alter?” Her patient’s voice called out from behind the curtain.
    Brooke turned back inside.
    “Yes, Alisha?” Brooke pulled her white scrub coat tightly around her chest and wondered how this woman wasn’t shivering in her paper-thin hospital gown.
    Alisha wrung her hands and, staring at her sheet-draped lap, said, “You know how you said the prenatal vitamins were really important? Like, even if I haven’t been taking them since the beginning?”
    Brooke nodded. “I know it’s hard to look on the bright side of severe flu,” she said, walking over to the girl’s bedside, “but at least it got you in here and will give us a chance to get you started on the vitamins and discuss a plan for the rest of your pregnancy.”
    “Yeah, so about that . . . is there, um, like some sort of samples you could give me?” Alisha refused to meet her eyes.
    “Oh, I don’t think that should be a problem,” Brooke said, smiling for her patient’s sake but irritated with herself for neglecting to inquire whether or not Alisha could afford the prenatals. “Let’s see, you’ve got another sixteen weeks . . . I’ll leave the full supply with the nurses’ station, okay?”
    Alisha looked relieved. “Thanks,” she said quietly.
    Brooke squeezed the girl’s forearm and stepped back outside the curtain. After getting Alisha’s vitamins, she half-sprinted to the dietitians’ dreary fifth-floor break room, a windowless cubicle with a four-seater Formica table, a mini fridge, and a small wall of lockers. If she hurried, she could cram down a quick snack and a cup of coffee and still make it to her next appointment on time. Relieved to find the room empty and the coffeepot full, Brooke pulled a Tupperware container of precut apple wedges from her locker and began to smear them with travel-sized packets of all-natural peanut butter. At the exact moment her mouth was full, her cell phone rang.
    “Is everything okay?” she asked without saying hello. Her words were muffled from the food.
    Her mother paused. “Of course, honey. Why wouldn’t it be?”
    “Because, Mom, it’s pretty busy here, and you know I hate talking at work.” The overhead intercom drowned out the second half of her sentence.
    “What was that? I couldn’t hear you.”
    Brooke sighed. “Nothing, never mind. What’s up?” She pictured her mother in her signature khaki pants and Naturalizer flats, the same style she’d worn her entire life, pacing the galley kitchen of her Philadelphia apartment. Despite filling her days with a never-ending stream of book clubs, theater clubs, and volunteer work, it still seemed like her mother had way too much time these days, most of which was filled with calling her children and asking them why they weren’t calling back. While it was lovely her mother got to enjoy her retirement,she’d been a lot more hands-off with Brooke when she was teaching from