Chapter Twenty

Comfort only works if you allow yourself to accept it. Wade could tolerate only a few minutes of his mother’s embrace before he had to break away. Sure, it was nice to share more about himself with her. It was nice to know that she wouldn’t completely reject him if he kissed a guy. It was good to feel less alone. But after a few minutes with Mary, he just felt guilty as fuck because he was still lying to her. It’s easy for her to talk about a mother’s unconditional love. She didn’t know her son was a monster. All her words and kindness would evaporate.

Wade said he had to go check on Lydie, whom he hadn’t even seen since he came to the hospital. He said he needed to know that his baby was all right. Mary nodded, told him to go down to the ICU and see her favorite on-call nurse in the hospital, Stephanie, who would lead him to the right room. Stephanie was always where she was needed at Waverly General.

“The baby would love to see you,” Mary told him. “You and I can talk more later.”

She patted him on the shoulder, her way of letting him know that they were going to make their way through this. And she smiled at him. Or maybe she just smiled at the prospect of getting Jessa out of her basement. Maybe it was a bit of both, the thought of which made Wade wince.

Wade passed by Dr. Emmett’s room and glanced at the man, now dozing in some painkiller haze. The dentist’s head was bandaged, the circles under his eyes were severe. He looked puffy and weak. The gash in Dr. Emmett’s head was still bleeding on the bandages. And Wade had done that to him.

Though he was tempted to step inside and apologize to his lover, Wade decided to look away and just keep moving toward the elevators. He couldn’t risk his mother finding him there again. Besides, no apology could be enough. And even if the dentist could ever dare to forgive him, Wade would never be able to forgive himself for giving in to the impulse. He knew now what sort of person he was. He knew what it was like to bash in someone’s skull. Wade knew he was the sort of person who’d just leave a man lying in his own blood.

Wade stepped aboard the elevator, hit the button for the third floor, and headed to pediatrics.

Wade was the sort of person who’d kill. He was the sort of person who’d hurt someone else. It’s a terrifying thing to learn. And Wade didn’t just harm any man, he harmed his lover. He tried to kill someone who had provided him with care, who had listened to him when he was stressed and down for months. In the minutes and days before yesterday, Wade considered Dr. Emmett to be the best thing in his life, a secret reprieve from everything confusing and sad.

Wade wished he were older, so that all of these emotions and the sex stuff would make more sense. If Lydie had come when he was ready for children, if he’d kissed Dr. Emmett when he was in college or whatever, all of this would be easier to deal with, Wade guessed. He envied adults. Adults knew what they were doing. His dad was always in control. His mom faced down crises at work every single day. Dr. Emmett was a successful person.

Wade saw himself as a mess of a human being, a pinball that hit every bumper, causing noise and disaster until it inevitably crashed.

He tried searching in his phone whether he could be tried as an adult or if he was still eligible for juvie, stupidly cursing himself for a second that he should’ve tried murder before he turned 17. But the phone wouldn’t connect to the internet while he was on the elevator.

Wade put the phone back in his pocket as the door to the elevator opened. If the cops got a hold of his phone, they could check that kind of thing. That—and all the daddy porn links he’d been perusing lately—would convict him, particularly in Georgia. Georgia would just send him to the electric chair, probably.

Exiting the elevator to try to find the baby, finally, Wade instead got quite a shock.

Δ

Waiting to go up, he saw that delivery guy Trevor, holding a bouquet of flowers.

Trevor saw him and grinned.

“Hey, I was just—,” the delivery man started.

Wade, with eyes opened wide, recoiled from the young man in horror. And Trevor’s face dropped from the reaction.

“What are you doing here?” Wade asked. “Jeez, is everybody here today?”

“Well, I didn’t mean to scare you,” Trevor said. “I just heard your dad was in the hospital.”

“My dad?” Wade asked, then reconsidered. “Oh yeah, he’s here. How did you hear about that? Was it on the news or something?”

Idiot, Wade cursed himself. Why would a dentist falling down be on the news?

“I was making a delivery near the office, and it was shut down,” Trevor explained. “Somebody at the drugstore said the dentist was in the hospital. I figured you’d be here and maybe you’d need a shoulder or something.”

Wade looked at him skeptically.

“But I don’t even know you,” he said to Trevor, trying not to look into his eyes. Trevor’s eyes were very distracting.

“I’ve found that barely matters when you’re in a crisis,” Trevor said. “A friendly face always helps.”

Wade smirked at this. It had to be some kind of joke. No one was this nice. “And the flowers are for my dad?” Wade asked.

“Well,” Trevor replied, blushing. “No.”

“Well, I’m not sure my dad would understand a guy bringing me flowers,” Wade said, then considered the irony.

“But isn’t he in a coma or something?”

“Jesus,” Wade said. “Do those people at CVS know everything?” Trevor laughed, and Wade snapped out of the haze.

Wade had places to go and people to see. Trevor—so shiny and nice—had this weird way of making him goofy, even in dire situations. It made no sense. Wade understood what it was and what it was about, of course, but it did him no damn bit of good to know Trevor right now. And Trevor didn’t know what he didn’t know. And Trevor knew enough to mess up Wade’s life if he started asking the right questions.

Instead, Trevor just smiled at him.

“Look, I have to be somewhere right now,” Wade said, stepping away from Trevor and the elevator.

“But isn’t your dad upstairs? The front desk told me he was up there.”

“Well, yeah, he is, but, like, I have to check on something else.” Some thing. Wade just called his daughter a thing.

“I can come with you,” Trevor said, trying to follow.

“No, dude, you really shouldn’t,” Wade said, grabbing the flowers and dashing away. Then he turned and asked the delivery guy, “I’m seeing you tomorrow, right?”

When Wade went toward pediatrics, Trevor stopped jogging behind him, looking a little puzzled by the whole exchange. Wade turned and headed to Stephanie. The nurses there were all in a huddle.

Stephanie turned and glared at him, looking teary-eyed and pissed. “Hi Stephanie, which room is the baby in?”

“I don’t know how on Earth you can tolerate that insane young woman,” Stephanie blurted at him. “She’s awful.”

“What do—?”

“Wade, your little girlfriend is a horrible mother,” Stephanie complained.

“What happened?” Wade asked. “Where is the baby?”

“That Jessa bitch just ran off with her,” Stephanie said.

“Huh?” he asked, feeling very small.

“She was trying to hurt the baby,” Stephanie explained. “Seriously. I tried to stop her. And then she just screamed at me, took the baby and bolted.”

Baffled, Wade turned, trying to figure out where Jessa could’ve taken his baby girl.