Started With a Lie

Chapter Forty

        I’m running down the halls, screaming for a doctor. People stare with curious eyes and scared eyes as I crazily scream and yell, frantically trying to get someone—anyone—who’s medically licensed to come look at my mother. I don’t care if I’m crazy but I know that what just happened was real. Immediately, a nurse comes up to me.

        “What’s wrong? Is everything alright?” she asks. Her eyes are wide and she probably expects me to say that something about someone’s water broke or that someone got shot but no it’s much more important than that to me.

        “My mother—she moved her hand,” I tell her, panting.

        Her eyes search my face, looking for what I might be trying to say. “What?” she asks.

        “She moved her hand!” I scream.

        Now she looks at me like I belong in the hospital itself. “Could you elaborate?” she says kindly. She tries to put on her most understanding face.

        “My mother, she’s in a coma, but I was grabbing her hand one second and the next, I felt something and I swear to god! She squeezed my hand back! She can hear me! She heard me!” I yell and I’m moving my hands in the air to try to show her what happened which doesn’t make sense but she nods skeptically and quickly calls for a doctor.

        We all race back to my mother’s room where a doctor checks my mother’s heartbeat with his stethoscope and then calls another doctor and they roll my mother away for scans. But this is good. This is showing me that they’re searching for a possibility that she actually can respond to what she hears. She’s going to wake up soon. It’s real. It’s real!

        There’s only one person I want to tell.

        The doctor informs me that they’re going to run various tests and results will come out later in the day and not to get my hopes up too much though. I nod so aggressively that I think the doctor wants to send me to the psychiatric ward of the hospital but he just smiles uneasily and walks away. I basically jump with joy out of my mother’s room and down the halls. In the elevator, I’m giddy and I’m smiling because this is it. I’ll get to surprise Brent when he gives me a call tomorrow.

        When the doors open at the third floor for the elderly woman to get off, I’m surprised when I see a familiar face waiting to step in the elevator.

        “Mark?”

        He looks up from his phone and once realization seeps in, his eyes widen. I haven’t seen him in a month...since I last saw him. My cheeks grow hot as I remember our little collision in Mom’s room. His feelings. My words. But he looks different. Better? His face is shaven and his hair is styled. Even in a suit.

        “Ivory,” Mark says softly. I kind of like how he does that. Always says my name ever so softly like I’m important. He puts his phone in his pocket.

        “Hey, how are you?” I ask, smiling. Smiling at him is okay, right? Of course it is.

        He surprisingly smiles back. Last time he acted like I had a gun to his throat. Mark steps into the elevator and presses for the doors to close. Nobody else is in the elevator. “I’m good,” he answers as the doors slide in front of him. He looks over his shoulder to where I am. “And you?”

          “Good...good.”

        Cue awkward silence.

        He coughs. I pick my nails. He taps his foot. I hum.