Page 54 of You'll Be the Death of Me

“Ah, thanks, lad,” Irv said with a nod. “Good thing it’s right down the hall...” he added, and headed in that direction.

Dell looked to Cole once Irv had walked away, his robe thankfully tied shut in back now. “Is that true, or were you just trying to get rid of him?”

“It’s true,” Cole said. “I sent a message to his case manager. She’ll prioritize the request.”

“Corporate indeed. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Now, this seems to be the place,” he said, and nodded at the crowded doorway.

“Seems like it,” Dell said with a big breath. She longed to run up and hug them all, and tell them everything would be all right. At the same time, memory of what it had been like the last time she’d witnessed her family mourning her slowed her steps. She wasn’t sure she could take it again.

“It’s all right,” Cole said, and slipped his hand into hers, as if he could read her thoughts. She looked down at his long fingers wrapped around hers, and it gave him pause. “Sorry,” he said, and tried to pull away, but she gripped his hand tighter.

“No, it’s okay. Thank you. I am a little nervous. But I’m glad this will all be over soon.” She softly smiled at him, and his return smile faltered around the edges. She got the sense he didn’twant it to be over. That perhaps their time together had meant something to him, and he might... miss her. The same hazy longing Dell had sensed earlier came over her again, the one that felt like her heartstrings being tugged by something very far away she couldn’t name. All at once, somehow, she felt like she would miss Cole too.

“Mr. and Mrs. Rodgers?” a voice interrupted. Dell startled at the sound of her parents’ names and realized the doctor they’d ridden the elevator with had approached her room’s door.

“Come on,” Cole said, and pulled Dell in that direction.

They entered a room that was at once somber and sterile and exploding with life. Flowers of every shape and color covered every surface. Even with her sense blunted, Dell could smell the room like a spring garden.

“Geez, you die for a day, and everyone you’ve ever known sends flowers,” Dell said, and brushed past a billowing vase of white roses. The tag said they were from her publisher all the way in New York City. “How did they even know?” She looked to Cole with an arched eyebrow.

He was reading the tag on a vase of lilies with a frown. “News travels fast, especially with a family as prominent as yours. But they don’t think you’re dead, remember? At least not yet.”

“Well, let’s hope not ever,” Dell said, and walked to the foot of her bed. Her body looked much like it had when she’d last seen it in her bed at home: pale, waxy, but now in a hospital gown with tubes taped to her arms and a little halo of sensors around her forehead like a crown. The monitors next to her bed showed minimal activity. She silently thanked Jason for whatever hysterics he’d pulled to convince them to wire her up at all, and knew if shewas the daughter of anyone else with less sway, it wouldn’t have happened.

Her parents stood when the doctor addressed them. They’d been on either side of her bed, each holding one of her limp hands, but her father now came around to the side where her mother stood.

“Any update?” her father asked. His voice was raw and cracked with pain.

Both of her parents looked like they’d aged a hundred years since that morning. Dell longed to wrap her arms around them and felt the now familiar urge to cry boil behind her eyes.

“The tox panel was negative. The only thing in her system was traces of alcohol, but we know from reports she’d had champagne and wine last night. There’s nothing to suggest this state is chemically induced,” the doctor said.

Dell leaned over the bed to get a look at her name. Dr. Albright. She was tall and lean with thick graying hair pulled into a neat ponytail.

Dell’s mother let out a sigh that sounded both relieved and frustrated. “Well, of course she wouldn’t have done drugs. But what else could have done this?”

Dell’s father wrapped his arm around her mother’s shoulders as if to keep her upright.

“That is a good question,” Dr. Albright said. “With no physical signs of trauma and nothing in her system, it’s possible there could be something psychosomatic at play.”

“Psycho—What?” her father asked.

Dr. Albright folded her hands in front of her. “Psychosomatic, meaning triggered by the brain. Mentally induced, you could say. Had your daughter been experiencing any stress lately?”

Patricia snorted, and Dell almost laughed at how much itsounded like herself. “Dell thrived on stress, are you kidding me? She owns a restaurant, supports charities, has a book coming out, and was a week away from marrying the mayor’s son. She’s never sat still a day in her life. It’snothaving something to do that stresses her out. Even with all that going on, it wouldn’t have sent her into... whatever state this is,” she said, and waved a hand over Dell’s bed.

“Patty, you don’t know that,” her father gently said. “Dr. Albright is just trying to help.”

Patricia huffed. “I know our daughter, and there’s nothing she couldn’t handle. If she was having a mental breakdown, she would have told us and gone to a therapist, not ended up in a coma, Bill.”

William shrugged a knowing shoulder like he couldn’t argue.

Dell’s dead chest swelled with pride that her parents knew her so well. At the same time, she could sense Cole cringing in the corner. The doctors were never going to find an explanation because there wasn’t one to be had, not one science could provide anyway.

“Well, now what?” Patricia asked.