Karma - Forbidden Hearts Series Book 3

11| Emotional Pinball

"Hi, I'm here to see Hank Fitzgerald." 

The petite blonde nurse looked up at me with a warm smile. It was the same smile that every receptionist and nurse I've talked to on the way up to the third floor has given me. It was the same one that said 'your relative is probably not going to make it'. 

"Hi," she said, "are you family?" 

"Yes, I'm his daughter." 

The nurse typed something in her computer before she looked back up at me. "Okay, great. Do you have ID?"

I handed her my driver's license and she continued her typing. Damn typing. I looked around the large waiting room of the ICU at Tampa Genreal Hospital. There were people sleeping, crying, and pacing. I knew how they felt. I've never been in a situation like this before. I never had a family member sick. But now...now I knew how they felt. I was restless and agitated the whole plane ride over here. When I got the phone call from my mom was worse. 

I had just gotten home from hanging out with Harper and Lanie. I barely had time to open a bottle of wine and over-analyze how I felt about Nathan kissing that blonde before the phone rang. It was my mother. She called me from the hospital and told me that my dad had a heart attack. He was stable, but in the ICU. I told her I was going to be on the first flight out in the morning. She insisted that I didn't need to come all the way here, but there was no way I wasn't going to be there for my father when he needed me. 

After I hung up with my mom, I lost it. I broke down with every emotion you could imagine. I felt scared, alone, relieved that he was okay, and fear that he wouldn't make it out of the hosiptal. That was probably one of the few times in my life that I felt that alone. I could barely sleep that night. I kept waking up, pacing, going back to sleep, having nightmares...

I called Lanie when I had gotten up this morning. I didn't want her to think I was running away again. I was coming back. I was starting a new life in New York and I wanted to get back to it. I liked working at the hospital. I liked the few patients I had. I've only been there a few weeks, but I really cared about them. Well, most of them. There was one in particular that threw my emotions around like a pinball machine. And that wasn't a good thing. Being around Nathan Jenkins was never an easy thing. 

I told myself over and over again that I was over him. Sometimes I believed it...other times I didn't. When I was alone, or away from him, it was easy to convince myself that there wasn't anything between us anymore. But when I was near him, my heart did that little flip thing. I would get butterflies. Memories from our time together back in the day would plague me. I would hear the sweet things he used to whisper in my ear and it would send chills down my spine.

Then I would remember that fucking note he left me. I would remember how I tried to call him over and over again. Lanie didn't know where he went. No one did. He vanished. I spent months missing him. Crying over my lost love. People said I was young and immature; that what we had wasn't real. Eventually, I believed it and I put it behind me. I put him in a little box and tucked him away in one of the dark corners of my heart. Almost thirteen years had went by before I saw him in that bar in New York City. 

"Please smile into the camera so I can get your picture for your visitor's pass," the nurse said, drawing me back to my current situation. 

I looked into the small black camera. I felt the corners of my lips lift in something resembling a smile before the flash went off. She handed me my newly printed visitor's pass. I didn't even look at the picture. I probably looked like death itself. 

"Okay, Ms. Fitzgerald, go straight down that hall and it's room 1312."

"Thank you." 

I walked to my dad's hospital room in a daze. The heavy smell of antiseptic filled my nose and it made me nauseous. I've always hated hospitals. There was just something about them that made me feel dark and icky.