Rule 12: Be agreeable and easy to get along with!
Sydney quietly opened her bedroom door and stuck her head into the hallway. Her mother and father’s voices were soft murmurs in the kitchen. They were talking divorce. Sydney knew because she’d overheard the word late last night when she’d gotten out of bed to use the bathroom.
Now her parents were probably talking terms or maybe other options.
At this point, Sydney didn’t care and maybe that was worse than being upset.
Back in her room, she grabbed her keys and her bag. She had to be at work in fifteen minutes. She seriously considered sneaking out her bedroom window to avoid her parents, but she didn’t want them thinking she’d run away like her mother had.
Groaning to herself, she headed down the hallway, her pace quick, her head down. She hoped to slip past the kitchen without being noticed. Unfortunately, as soon as she entered the kitchen, both her parents stopped talking and looked up.
“Sydney?” her mother said.
Sydney hesitated between the kitchen and the living room. That stupid fish clock on the wall ticked, filling the awkward silence. Sydney hadn’t said more than ten words to her mother since she arrived, and she didn’t plan to say more than twenty total.
“What?” She quirked a brow.
Sydney looked from her mother to her dad. Her mom was put together like always, as if at any moment she’d get a call for another business meeting and have to leave town. Her black hair was pulled into a chignon. Pearls adorned her ears and wrapped around her neck. She wore a black suit and pointy heels.
Sydney’s father, on the other hand, looked like he’d just climbed out of bed. His dark brown hair stuck up around the crown. Stubble covered his chin. There were dark bags beneath his eyes.
“Do you have any free time tonight or tomorrow so we can talk?” her mom asked.
Why had her mother even come back? Guilt? Money?
Sydney tightened her grip on the car keys, the points of the key digging into her flesh. Did she have free time after work? “No,” she answered and marched out the door.
The hospital seemed unusually cold today. Sydney zipped up her hoodie and shoved her hands in her pockets as she waited for the elevator to make its slow crawl up to the third floor. You’d think for a hospital, it’d move a little faster, but Sydney would bet that if she raced to take the stairs, she’d get to the third floor before the elevator even cleared the second.
She just didn’t feel like stair climbing today.
The doors dinged open on the second floor and Sydney stepped back into the corner to make room for any new passengers. Except there was only one person waiting and it was Quin.
“Hey,” he said, stepping inside. “How are you?”
She frowned and shook her head. “Not good. Today isn’t a good day.”
“Is it your mom?”
“Yes.”
They got out on the third floor and hung there by the elevator banks. Quin leaned against the wall, his white Oxford shirt blending in with the equally unappealing white walls. Now that Sydney knew what Quin was like outside of work, she hated seeing him inside the hospital. He had to shield himself here, cover his tattoos, and tie back his hair. She hated that he had to edit himself like that.
“Do you want to talk about it?” he asked.
Sydney shook her head. She felt more comfortable talking about how she felt with Quin, but she just didn’t have the energy right now.
“I just kinda want to get my work done today and have some time alone, if that’s okay with you.”
“Whatever you need, and when you want to talk or hang out or whatever, you know where to find me.”
“Thanks. Really. I appreciate it.”
They parted, Quin going to West One and Sydney to West Two. She stopped at the nurses’ station to get a to-do list from Jannie.
“Just visit each room and see if the kids want anything,” Jannie said.
It sounded good to Sydney. She certainly didn’t feel like dressing in a dragon costume today. In the first couple of rooms, the kids wanted movies and Sydney fetched those. In the fourth room, with the nurse’s permission, Sydney gave the boy some microwave popcorn along with his movie.
In the last room she visited, she said hello to the little girl lying in bed, her tiny frame drowning in the starched white blankets. She’d been there for over a week and her parents had yet to visit. There were no balloons in her room, no flowers.
Sydney didn’t know the specifics of the little girl’s hospitalization, but Sydney did know the little girl wasn’t doing well.
“Hey, Haley,” Sydney said as she entered the room. Cartoons played from the TV. The machines behind the girl’s bed beeped. The IV dripped steadily at her bedside.
“Hi, Sydney!” Haley grinned wide. “I was wondering when you worked again.”
Sydney pulled up one of the guest chairs and sat down. “How are you?”
“I’m good. It’s a nice day out.”
Sydney glanced over her shoulder out the window. The sky was overcast and rain fell in sheets. “A nice day?”
“I like the rain,” Haley said, dialing down the volume on the TV. “The rain is pretty.”
Sydney looked out the window, trying to see what Haley saw. It was so dark and dreary, how could it be pretty?
“You don’t see it?” Haley asked.
“Not really.”
“People see things differently,” she mused. “That’s okay.”
Sydney turned back around.
Haley was about ten years old, with acorn brown hair and hazel eyes. Freckles peppered her nose and chubby cheeks. There was always a smile on her face, no matter how many times the nurses had to poke her or check her blood pressure or hand over foul-tasting medicine.
“How do you stay so upbeat when you’re stuck in a hospital?” Sydney heard herself ask. She quickly regretted it. She was talking to a child, a sick child, and she was bringing up the girl’s illness. Quin had told her over and over again that it was their job to try to make the kids forget why they were here. And Sydney had just broken that rule.
Of course, she was breaking a lot of rules lately. Certainly there wasn’t a rule in the Crush Code that said to break up with the boy you were supposed to love.
Haley glanced at Sydney, unfazed by the blunt question.
“You can’t let the bad things get to you,” she said. “Bad things must happen to you in life. The bad things teach us how to appreciate the good things. Well. That’s what my grandpa used to tell me before he died.” She widened her smile, her eyes focusing again on Sydney. “My grandpa always said,” she added, “there can be no rainbow without rain.”
Sydney laughed and somehow the conversation veered from chocolate to knock-knock jokes to weird dreams.
And when Sydney left Haley’s room an hour later, her day didn’t seem so bad anymore.