Chapter four

Chapter four

Eveline.

DR. LUCIAN VALE. NEUROSURGERY. VALE MEDICAL INSTITUTE.

The badge on the hotel floor. That's the surgeon?!

The only person who can save Uncle Harold.

You've got to be kidding me.

Julian sits forward, already reaching for his phone. "Lucian Vale," he repeats. "That's my uncle. I have a number for him — I'll call him myself.”

“Is there someone else?” I press, facing Dr. Harry. “We're not sure if he's available, can we get someone else. Please! Anyone?!”

“Eveline!” Julian calls out to me, “You said you'd do anything, why do you want them to change the doctor? Uncle Lucian is family. Mr. Harold is in safe hands. What more do we need?”

“It's just… you know, what if he's not available?”

I don't know what else to say. He's right, and I hate that. I bite my finger nails anxiously.

My hands begin to tremble. I can't let anyone see that. I sit in a plastic hospital chair in last night's dress, hands folded in my lap. 

Where do I go from here?!

Julian steps away to make the call.

I watch him move to the far corner of the waiting room, phone pressed to his ear, shoulders tight. He has no idea. He has absolutely no idea that while they were looking for me last night, and Harold was rushed to the hospital, the uncle he's currently trying to call was…

How the hell did I find myself here?!

Did Lucian know who I was? If he did, he wouldn't do anything with me. Right?

Wait! Even the potraits of Vale men along the corridors upstairs in the house, LUCIAN'S PICTURE IS NOT THERE.

So how are they related?!

Why did he disappear in the first place? Was there a family feud or something?

But still…

Fuck! I should've just asked for his name before going into the room with him. Fuck! Fucccckkkkk!!!

I need to think.

Harold is behind one of those doors, in a bed, with a tumor sitting in the part of his brain that keeps him alive. “Pontine Glioma”, or whatever the Doctor called it. I repeat the name in my head until it stops feeling like a foreign language and starts feeling like something I can research, understand, dismantle. That's what I do with things that frighten me. I make them academic.

The only surgeon who can help him is a man I left sleeping in a hotel room this morning. And man who…

Julian comes back. His face says the call didn't connect.

"Voicemail," he says, sitting down heavily. "I left a message. I'll try again in an hour.”

I nod, and say nothing.

"You should go home and change," he says. "I'll call you if anything changes."

"I'm not leaving," I say.

He doesn't argue. Well, he shouldn't.

                              ***

I see Harold an hour later.

The private room is small and white and too quiet. He looks smaller in the bed than he does in real life — Harold is not a small man, he fills rooms, fills conversations, fills silences with his voice and his laughter and his performance of everything being absolutely fine. Lying here with a monitoring band on his wrist and an IV in his arm, he looks like what he actually is for the first time.

A man getting old. A man who is frightened.

He turns his head when I walk in, and something in his face releases. Just like that. Like a fist unclenching.

"There she is," he says, in the weakest tone I've heard him use since I've known him.

I sit beside him. I take his hand. It's warm, slightly papery at the knuckles, the hand of a man who has shaken a thousand hands for the wrong reasons and now just needs one person to hold his.

"I'm here," I say, my voice almost shaky "I'm sorry I wasn't reachable."

"You're here now." He squeezes my fingers. "That's all that matters.”

We sit quietly for a moment. The monitor beeps. Outside the room, the hospital moves — trolleys, voices, the efficient machinery of people trying to keep other people alive.

"How much did they tell you?" he asks.

"Enough," I say. "The Pontine Glioma. The surgery. All of it." My tone. Soft.

He nods slowly. Looks at the ceiling. "I've known something was wrong for a while. Kept telling myself it was nothing." A pause. "I didn't want to worry you.”

The irony of that sits between us, quiet and familiar. Harold Hart, who has structured his entire life around appearances — his social status, around keeping things looking fine, worrying about worrying me.

"Harold," I say carefully. "The doctor mentioned a surgeon. Dr. Lucian Vale."

Something moves across Harold's face. 

Not surprise. Something older than surprise.

“He said Lucian is the only doctor that can perform the neurosurgery on you” I continue. “the Doctor told us that he's back in town, and might be available for the surgery”.

Harold is quiet for a moment. "I've been trying to reach that man for two years, Eveline. Two years of letters, messages through colleagues, anything I could manage. And now…" He exhales.

Harold knows Lucian too?!

What the actual FUCK is going on here?!

"Now apparently he's back. Julian said he left a message.” I assure him. I don't wanna ask about who he is, or what not now. It's enough for me that I'm struggling to keep my cool with all these sudden information bombarding me like a storm.

Two years? He has been trying to reach him for two years?!

This means they've known each other for a while. How come I don't know about him? I don't wanna ask too many questions about Lucian, I'll find out later.

Harold has been trying to reach this man for the past two years. And this man spent last night with his hands all over me.

I keep my face completely still.

"He'll call back," I say. "Julian will reach him."

"I hope so." Harold blinks briefly. Kinda slow. "I need you to be okay, Eveline. Whatever happens. I need to know you'll be okay."

"I'm always okay," I try to reassure him.

He looks at me with the eyes of a man who knows that is both completely true and the saddest thing he's ever heard.

"I know," he says. "I know you are.” He squeezes my hand. Slowly. Then HARD.

The monitor suddenly screams.

Harold's hand clamps around mine — hard — then goes completely slack. His back arches off the bed, breathing suddenly loud and wrong, like his body is fighting itself for air.

"Harold…!"

His eyes are open, but he's not seeing me.

The door crashes open. Nurses. Dr. Harry. A crash cart. Someone pulls me back and I let them, because my legs aren't working and there is nothing I can do from here except not be in the way.

Julian materializes in the doorway. One look at the room and every drop of color leaves his face.

"What's happening?!" My voice is shaky.

"Brainstem pressure spike." Dr. Harry doesn't look up. "His regulatory system is destabilizing — airway, heart rate, everything at once." He says something sharp to the nurse beside him. Her face does not help.

"Can you stop it?" I ask.

He looks at me. Half a second. That's all I need.

"Not without the lead surgeon. The tumor's position — any wrong move without Vale's full case knowledge and we make it worse.”