The whole morning had passed, and still he’d not heard from Gina. He’d been calling her all day but it went to voicemail each time. Sure, he’d been off with her the last time they had spoken, but she had to understand, her mother always seemed to create some sort of drama each time Gina was coming to see him. He wished that for once, Gina could have seen right through her mother’s charade.
And now she was probably upset which would explain why she wasn’t answering her phone.
He was glad he had allowed Leon to convince him to go out last night.
“I need you as backup,” his friend had said. “Golden Pants is going to be there and I’m not sure I’m all that interested in her.”
It didn’t bother him that he was filling a need, and not going because his friend desired his company. A noisy bar full of boisterous people was exactly what he needed. Spending Saturday night at Carluccio’s Bar was a better way to pass the time, even if he had a hangover to show for it this morning.
But he had recovered during the course of the day and was ironing his shirts for work when the door opened and Gina walked in.
“Ciao,” he said, completely surprised and happy to see her and slightly taken aback by her unkempt appearance. He put the iron down and was tempted to stride across the room to greet her. She looked like death, and as if she was in sore need of a hug or two.
“Hey.” She stood in the middle of his living room, looking at him.
“I didn’t know you were going to come over today.” The atmosphere was cold, as if frost had set in. She stayed where she was, as did he.
“I wasn’t sure I should come, but I let you down and I’m sorry.”
Another apology. He expected as much. “Are you staying tonight?” he asked, noting that she didn’t have an overnight bag with her. He was getting concerned about the way she looked and wondered if she had been at work for most of the last evening.
“No.” She gave him a peculiar look. One he couldn’t quite pin down, or determine the nature of. “Why didn’t you call back?”
“I did.” He folded his arms, annoyed and getting defensive by her line of questioning. “I called you over and over but it kept going to your voicemail.”
“I meant last night.”
“Was I supposed to?”
“I know that you and my mother don’t see eye-to-eye but I would have expected you to at least call and find out how she was doing given that she’s in the hospital.”
“What?” he asked, his eyes big like saucers. “What happened to her?”
“I told you.”
He stared at her blankly. No, she hadn’t.
“I distinctly told you she was having blood tests done and that I’d had to rush her to ER. That’s why I missed the race.”
He slapped a hand to his brow. Of course he hadn’t heard. He’d switched off the moment she had mentioned her mother. “I’m…I didn’t…I’m sorry.” He didn’t know what to say but he knew he’d been an idiot. He rushed to her side and put his arms on her shoulders. “I honestly didn’t hear you, Gina.”
“But I told you.”
“It was noisy, and I—” He shook his head, it wasn’t easy trying to tell her that he hadn’t listened because he’d been so annoyed.
“I know you don’t like my mother much but she’s an elderly woman and I would have hoped you’d put your opinion about her behind you at a time like this.”
He cradled her face between his hands. “I’m sorry,” he said, gazing deep within her eyes. “I was mad at you when you called to say you’d missed the race and that you were with your mother. I wasn’t paying attention. I’m sorry. I swear to you I had no idea your mother was in the hospital.” He wanted to kiss her, to hug away her worries for she looked devastated. The fact that she had driven here despite the worry of her mother, that she had come to see him, made him feel as guilty as hell.
He tried to slip his hands around her, to hug her to his chest but she stood firm, not giving an inch. “What made you so mad that you didn’t have the time and decency to hear me out?”
He cleared his throat, feeling like a complete idiot. “It seems to me,” he took a deep breath, not sure how to say this without sounding needy. “I don’t know.” He scratched his ear, feeling stupid. “I thought she had conjured up something else to stop you from coming to see me.”
“That’s one of the most ridiculous things you’ve ever said.” Her large, mournful eyes looked at him. Looked through him. “You surprise me because I thought you were better than that.” He sought to keep his composure as her words hurtled through him.
He swallowed. Nothing he could say would make him look or feel better about it.
She broke free from him and stormed towards the door but he rushed to stand in the way. His girl was hurting, and he was damned if he was going to let her leave when she was in such a state.
“I can be pathetic, and I don’t always think your mother’s intentions are honorable, but clearly I was wrong this time and I’m–” He stopped talking, because she didn’t seem to be interested in any of his explanations. This wasn’t the time to be right, or to prove a point. He had his faults, and she had hers, but never in all his days had anyone told him that he considered himself too important.
“I made a mistake, Gina. I’m sorry.”
She was stiff as he tried to put his arms around her again. “Gina?” He lifted her chin with the crook of his finger. “Tell me how your mother is now.”
“She’s got pneumonia. She’ll be in the hospital for at least a week.”
“Pneumonia?” Oh boy. It didn’t sound good at all. He felt like an ant, small and inconsequential, as he recalled all the bad thoughts he’d had about the woman.
“Yes.”
“And you were at the hospital all day yesterday?”
“Until Mimi came.”
A shockwave of guilt surged through him. He noticed the worry on her face, her bedraggled hair and dark, haunted eyes and was overcome with the strong desire to hug her.
“And I’ve been there since the morning today.”
He stroked her face. “Come and sit down.” He reached for her hand. “I’ll fix you something to eat.”
“No.” She seemed distant, as if her mind was someplace else. “I can’t stay too long.”
“But you’ve come all this way.”
“I wanted to fix things. I wanted to know why you didn’t call.”
“I didn’t know. Otherwise I could have, you know I would have. If I had I would have abandoned the race and come to you.”
She stared at him in a way which told him she doubted his words. “Would you have?”
“Yes.” He squeezed her hand. “I would have come even knowing that your mother probably didn’t want to see me. I would have come to the hospital for you.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No. I’d just had a 50km bike race, Gina. I was exhausted.” And yet he’d managed to go out. He’d been at Carluccio’s until 2am. Guilt rolled over him like an angry wave.
“We don’t go a day without calling one another, at least a couple of times. Sometimes I think you do things on the spur of the moment. You take spontaneity to a new level, and I wonder if you asking me to move in wasn’t one of those spontaneous moments.”
“Are you doubting how I feel about you?” He tried to rationalize her thinking. Maybe she was worried, and maybe she had spent the whole weekend at the hospital and maybe it had just made her cranky.
“Sometimes I think you’re too obsessed about your work, you worry too much about your boss and personally, I think he’s a lazy ass shit who gives you too much of the stuff he should be doing. That’s what I think.” She stared at him with her mouth partly open, but the fire was raging inside him, especially when he thought of the man she worked for.
“How dare you?” she cried. “How dare you call him such a thing. You have no idea what he’s really like.”
“I can see what he’s really like. Maybe you’re the one who needs to take a look at what he’s like. Look at you, Gina. You look like death, and yet you still did the extra god-knows-what-stuff he left for you to do.”
If anyone had a right to wonder about feelings, it was him. He had no idea how strong her feelings were for him, and no matter how hard he tried to dig deep, peeling her layers off, like an onion, layer by layer, trying to get to the core of her, he still was none the wiser.
“Careful,” she warned. “People could mistake that for jealousy.”
He looked at her in confusion, saw the sleepless nights and worry etched in that face he loved so much, saw the worry flickering across those brown eyes. His mind drew a blank as he struggled to find the right words to comfort her with, that is if he hadn’t already blown it. Whenever there was mention of her boss, his rationale went out of the window. He’d blown it now, he could tell, from the feral look she gave him.
“I’m sorry if I haven’t spent the whole day thinking of you, because I’ve been worried about my mother.”
No, no, no. This wasn’t going the way he had intended. “Let’s not fight about this.” He tried to reach out for her face again, when a throbbing pain stabbed through his head. He winced.
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m still a little hungover.”
She gave him a look that would have skewered a pig.
“You went out last night?”
Damn that mouth of his. “I hadn’t planned to but—”
She stepped back in exasperation, a disbelieving howl coming from her lips. “Unbelievable.” She laughed, a cruel, false, hollow laugh. “I was at the Casa Adriana earlier this morning to finish off a few things but I wanted to come and see you. I was angry with you for not calling, but I wanted to put things right again. So I left work and came straight here.” She rubbed her temples, and her brow creased together.
She’d gone to work this morning? “I should be thankful, then,” he said, “That you decided to take time out of your day to come and see me because sometimes I wonder who’s more important to you. Is that man just your boss, or something more?” A father figure, someone she felt she needed to please just as she did her mother.
Her mouth twisted, and her lips shaped into something between surprise and shock. “I can’t believe you just said that.” Her voice was almost a whisper. “I didn’t think you would sink so low.”
“What?” His face twisted in disbelief. “That’s not what I meant,” he snapped back. He knew she had the virtues of a saint, and falling for her boss was not something that would enter Gina’s mind. “I meant that you never let him down.” But she already had her hand on the door knob.
“I thought I knew you. I thought…” She put her hand to her mouth as if she was going to be sick.
He placed his hand on her arm, halting her departure. “That’s not what I meant, I swear to you.”
“I think I should leave before we both say something else that we’ll both regret.”
~~
Just as she reached home, and was looking forward to running a bath and having a soak, she had a phone call from the hospital telling her that her mother’s heartbeat had accelerated and that they couldn’t stabilize it. If her heart stops, do you want us to take extraordinary measures to start it?
What? WHAAAAAAAAT? Heart? There was nothing wrong with her heart. Her mother had pneumonia. Just pneumonia.
She remembered feeling as if her insides had emptied, as if her spine had melted to mush and she was going to hit the floor in the next second.
“What?” she asked, confusion numbing her brain. What was the nurse saying? She couldn’t make sense of it. Her mother had been perfectly fine earlier.
For a sweet, confused second, she believed that they have the wrong patient.
“Serafina Morosini?” She asked. “Are you talking about Serafina Morosini?” One never knew. Hospitals had made worse mistakes before. Amputated the wrong limb, or so she had heard.
"Yes." The response was clipped, as if the nurse had been accustomed to dealing with idiots. “Your mother.”
Gina was stunned. Too stunned to speak for a second, and then, “Yes!” she screamed.
YES! YES! YES!
A million times over. “Do what you need to. Save her! She's my mother.”
I only have one parent.
Save her.