The Truth Hurts

88 │the aftermath

A man in his late thirties bites frantically at his nails as he sits nervously across from Taylor. She glances around, attempting to yet again distract herself from the time, and finds that the two of them are the only ones in the exceptionally large waiting room. Even the front desk is unoccupied, with nothing but the back of a frame from an outdated computer monitor peeking from behind the counter's edge.

Suddenly, the man gazes down at the floor as he closes his eyes and tightly presses his palms together. Through his faint words, muffled by the sound of his own crying, Taylor can tell that he is praying. Something that she hasn't done in a very long time.

The stout receptionist finally returns, holding what Taylor had counted to be her third coffee by now. A loud squeak can be heard as she nestles into her chair before scooting it inward until her extended stomach shoves against the table. Her strawberry blonde hair is pulled back into a loose bun, the frizzy strands held together by nothing but a thick rubber band.

"Excuse me." Taylor rises from her seat and passes the devout man as she makes her way to the heavyset lady. "Can I see him now?"

The woman takes a sip, or more like a chug, from her foam cup. She clearly doesn't have a care in the world. "See who?"

"You know who," Taylor snarls, her eyes shifting back and forth as she attempts to control both her anger and agony. "The guy I've been asking you about for the past hour now. Marc Douglas."

"No need to get snappy." The receptionist, truly unaffected by the morbid atmosphere surrounding them, uses her index finger to slowly click a few buttons on her keyboard as she looks dully at the computer monitor. It's clear the hospital's system is, surprisingly, more inadequate than its staff at times. "One moment."

The woman continues to peck at the keyboard, slowly typing in letter after letter, and they are interrupted by one of the head nurses—a seemingly also unsympathetic lady who Taylor has become well familiar with by now—entering from the doors to the right of the room. She sets a file on the counter and slides it to the receptionist but, before she can make a quick dash for the exit, Taylor grasps her upper right arm and nearly pulls her to the ground.

"Yes, Ms. Chase?" Although the nurse's voice is composed, it's obvious that she has had a stressful night.

Join the fucking club, Taylor can't help but think to herself before speaking. "Let me see him."

Unlike the receptionist, the nurse doesn't play stupid. "I'm sorry, but it's like I told you earlier. Visitors are not allowed in during surgery."

Loosening her grip on the woman's arm, Taylor's voice lowers to that of a helpless plea. "Just tell me... please... Is he going to be okay?"

"I can't make any promises," she replies but a slight smirk appears on her face as she slips in an out-of-character reassuring statement. "But Navarro is the best doctor in town. He's treated much worse cases and the majority of those patients have recovered fully."

Little to Taylor's knowledge, one of those worse cases is actually lying down in the Intensive Care Unit this very moment. But he has yet to recover the slightest.

"Thank you." She pulls her hand away, allowing for the woman to head back toward the still swaying doors.

Stopping at the doorframe, the nurse glances over her shoulder. "Take a seat, Ms. Chase. We'll let you know as soon as he's out of surgery."

And, as much as she wants to follow her into the surgery room, Taylor does exactly what the nurse had told her. The last thing she wants to do is get in their way. After nearly another hour drags by—and after seeing the man who was begging for salvation be told that his wife had passed—she hears commotion and, through the narrow crack between the doors in the lobby, she can see five nurses swarming around a stretcher as they roll it down the corridor.