Sing For Me

Chapter Thirteen: Waiting Room

With the police escort, we do indeed arrive at the hospital in record time. Our driver pulls right up to the emergency department, and a guy dressed in scrubs opens the door.

"You're here for the Babel concert girl, right? We've been expecting you. Right this way." He indicates for the two of us to follow him into the building. "A few of those photographer types have arrived already. They're hanging around the waiting area, so I'll take you two somewhere more private."

The guy in scrubs pushes through the double-doors past the reception and waiting area. Someone yells out, 'Over there!' and all of a sudden, chaos breaks out. Tim pulls his jacket over his face and puts his arm around my shoulder, shielding me from the flash of a thousand cameras.

My stomach constricts. Was this really what it was like, being famous like Babel? I swallowed the lump in my throat. If it wasn't a couple guys on motorbikes almost getting themselves killed, it was a waiting room full of clamoring paparazzi. And even if you did put all the millions of cameras aside, I could have sworn we'd gotten some really weird looks and double-takes just from regular folk in their cars on the way here... and then there was what I'd overheard from our driver...  something about a mystery black Land Rover tailing us, too.

I sighed. It was almost enough drama to make me want to set my insta to private.

The guy in scrubs leads us through the jam of reporters, and we make our way through another set of double doors, leaving the clamor behind us. Weaving our way through a labyrinth of hallways, the guy in scrubs finally pulls at the lanyard around his neck and scans us through into a small room marked 'On Call'.

"Strictly, this is for hospital personnel only, but you two can wait in here. It's the only place I could think of that doesn't have any windows, so you shouldn't get any, err, unwanted visitors." The guy in scrubs massages the back of his neck.

Tim nods and shakes the guy's hand. "Thanks. We appreciate it. When can we expect news about Abbey?"

The guy shrugs noncommittally. They're running a bunch of tests just to make sure she's not been given anything else. Sounds like your management crew has ordered every test under the damned sun to avoid a lawsuit. Could be a while, I can't really say."

"Sure, thank you." Tim sighs and throws Scrubs an infamous half-smile, and Scrubs turns to leave.

He hovers at the door a moment, and my stomach turns. But then, before he can say anything, Tim clears his throat and Scrubs winces, shakes his head and then leaves.

As soon as Scrubs is out of the room, I look to Tim questioningly. "Do... do you think he was hesitating just then because he didn't want to tell us bad news?" I bite fiercely at a hangnail. I feel it tug away from my nail and I suck it as it starts to bleed. Ironic, that merely hours ago I was telling Abbey not to gnaw on her nails, after the whole Aaron cafe incident... Sheesh, that seemed like half a lifetime ago.

"Oh, that? Nah. We get that all the time - people who want to ask for a selfie or autograph at the worst possible time. Usually raising an eyebrow makes it clear that now's not the right time, like just then. But Lachie had a guy approach him at a urinal once. And there was this big drama after Aidan almost decked a guy at his sister's funeral..." Tim sighs and sits on the bottom of one of the bunk sets.

The on-call room is fairly small -- not much bigger than a decent janitor's closet, really -- but somehow they've managed to cram two sets of bunks in there -- one against the left-hand wall, and one against the right. Between them, there's barely enough room to squeeze in a walkway, but I pace my way the four steps across the room back and forth anyway.