Rose Garden [book two]

Chapter Eight

"I'll be back," I told Niall who held a sleeping Rosemarie in the waiting room of the ER. "I have to go pee." In all honesty, I felt as though I was going to bring up my pizza from earlier. There had been a man with a pencil in his arm. I don't think Niall had seen him sitting across the room considering he was watching our child sleep in his arms, but if he had, he might have hurled too.

It took me minutes to compose myself after what I'd seen. The man had even been reading a magazine as though his arm didn't have a pencil in it.

He should have been seen by a doctor immediately when he walked into the emergency room. This meant that this hospital's priorities were all sorts of fucked and it wasn't the place for Rosemarie to be seen. We needed to leave immediately to another facility.

Just as I wiped my mouth of excess vomit, my phone vibrated with a text from Niall.

they called her name. we're in room 2461 on the 2nd floor.

After rinsing my mouth with sink water, I went to the front desk. "How can I get to room 2461?" I knew to take the elevator, but where was it?

"Who are you looking for?" The nurse asked. She was an older woman.

It didn't matter who I was looking for if I had just told her what room I was looking for, but I answered, nevertheless. "Rosemarie Horan, two years old," I say.

"You'll have to fill out the form."

But Niall had already done so when we first came in, checking Marie in, so it didn't make any sense for me to do so again. "It was already filled out."

"By whom, may I ask? What is their name?"

My patience was weighing low, but I knew that the longer I was held back for not cooperating, the later it would be until I was reunited with mine. "Her father, Niall Horan."

I always said his name with hesitation, because you never knew who the name was familiar to, and who knew him as a celebrity.

"What is your name?"

"Rosaline Kendall," I say, even pulling out my ID.

"Oh, I see," the lady finally says, and I sigh in relief... "visiting hours aren't for another hour, you'll have to wait." That had not been the response I was hoping for.

Niall's name and picture flashed on my phone screen as he started to call me. I hadn't responded to his text, but he had to wait until I straightened things out.

"No, lady. I am the patient's mother," I sternly enunciated the last word. I could understand the skepticism, considering Niall and I weren't married, and Rosemarie and I didn't share the same last name. But also, I could see that she was judging me. So what if my kid was a bastard? It was always the older people who were quick to judge young people who weren't married and had kids.

"I'm sorry but—" she was starting to say, but I was already walking away. There were security doors that I assumed was the way into the rest of the hospital. Coincidentally, a doctor happened to be going in, and the security guard had been leaning over the desk by the door, distracted. The only person watching me had been the lady who tried to tell me that I couldn't see my baby.