Sam stared at the panel of buttons inside the hospital elevator. The numbers blurred. Which didn’t matter a whole lot because she didn’t have a clue what floor she wanted.
“Ma’am, are you all right?”
Ma’am. What was up with ma’am? Liv was a ma’am. Inez was a ma’am. Since turning thirty, Sam had become a ma’am to salesclerks and waiters. It was as if there was some rule about age thirty.
She glanced at the person beside her, a woman in greenish scrubs. A short, young woman who probably had not yet been called ma’am. “I…” Her heart hammered in her throat, cutting off her voice.
“Where are you going?”
She gulped. “ICU. I can’t find it. I keep asking people. I’ve been on sixteen elevators and down a dozen corridors.”
The woman smiled and punched a button. “This place is a maze. I’ll take you to ICU.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I’d better before you collapse.”
“I’ve been running.” Which she did several times a week. Therefore she was in good shape. Why couldn’t she breathe?
The stranger deposited her at the ICU waiting area. “Good luck.”
Sam found Jasmyn seated on a couch behind a plastic potted palm. “Jasmyn.”
Her friend turned.
Her friend? She’d never had one, not really. She wasn’t sure what it entailed.
Jasmyn Albright, the woman she had dropped off at the airport. The one from Illinois who should not be at the hospital and involved with Casa business. The one with the overly sweet voice who liked Canadian bacon and sauerkraut pizza and wanted a job. The one who seemed to enjoy Sam’s company.
The one who cared for Liv as much as Sam did.
Jasmyn rose from the couch and wrapped Sam in a tight hug. “They let me see her. She’s going to be all right.”
Sam squeezed shut her eyes and held her breath. Big girls didn’t cry. Ma’ams certainly did not cry.
But they hugged. It was okay to hug because that’s what friends did.
The rest of them arrived, every Casa de Vida resident. Chad, Piper, Riley, little Tasha, Inez, Louis, Coco, Noah. Even Keagan. For that matter, even Sam herself. And, good grief, even Beau, the self-employed handyman who should have been working on a Saturday.
They filled the waiting room with chatter and made it standing room only. An ICU nurse shooed them off. Jasmyn suggested the cafeteria, and the noisy bunch straggled down the hallway.
Sam positioned herself behind Keagan, the only one she trusted to lead them directly there and back.
“Hey,” she said to his shoulder.
He turned halfway, slowing until she was beside him.
“How did you and Jasmyn get in to see her? I thought it was family only.”
“I explained we were the closest thing to family Liv has.” He shrugged. “One nurse bent the rules.”
No stretch of the imagination was needed to believe him. She said, “Can you tell her I’m family too?”
“Are you?”
Sam did not like Sean Keagan. He was aloof and enigmatic and talked like a robot and asked more questions than he answered and he was special to Liv.
He touched her elbow and halted. The others kept on going. “Sam, you are family.”
The lump in her throat returned.
“You and Liv care about each other.”
Sam blinked and blinked. Family…Another concept so cobbled up in her past it meant nothing. “I pay rent. I respect her. She’s a good businesswoman. She…she…”
“She makes your home feel like a safe place. She watches over you. She cooks and bakes for you. She prays for your well-being.”
Sam kept blinking, but the heat in her eyes remained.
“Samantha, did no one ever do those things for you?”
Made her feel safe? Cared for her? “My dad,” she whispered. “A long, long…” She took a deep breath. “Time ago.”
Sam didn’t know who moved first, but the tears spilled and then his shirt was soaking them up, Keagan’s arms around her.
Liv appeared to be sleeping peacefully, but she wasn’t exactly herself. Her gray skin matched the matted hair. Her chin was jowly. The ugly blue floral garb hung crookedly at her neck, the furthest thing from L.L. Bean imaginable. Liv would have used it to scrub down the courtyard fountain before wearing it.
Sam exhaled. “Ohhh.”
Behind her, Keagan said, “She’ll be fine.”
“Yeah, right.” Her ears felt on fire, a sure sign she should be quiet. “She won’t be fine, not without some major lifestyle changes. She needs to walk every day, down to the beach instead of the coffee shop for glazed donuts and lattes. She needs to eat more vegetables. And she needs to hire Beau full-time so she doesn’t do it all. He gardens too. He doesn’t do just handyman stuff. She knows that.”
“It’s understandable why you’re angry. We get like that when we’re afraid.”
Sam clenched her jaw.
“Jasmyn thinks she can hear us.”
“Good. I hope she can. Liv, look, I know you’re tired and hurting and you probably want to quit. But you are not, I repeat, you are not checking out on us. We need you here. Do you understand? I need you here.”
I need you here?
Sam brushed past Keagan and sprinted from the room as if a wildcat were in pursuit.
Sam’s father died when she was seven. A heart attack.
Like his mother of Swedish descent, Jimmy Whitehorse was blue-eyed and a much-loved high school math teacher. Like his Diné father, he wore his black hair in a thick braid halfway down his back and served on the tribal council. Like both of them, he was gone at a young age.
When Sam was old enough to understand the strange workings of marriage, she realized that her mother—much younger than her dad and still in her late twenties—had been cheating on her father for a long time. As a seven-year-old fatherless child, with no extended family, she only knew that the day after they buried her dad, a stranger moved into the house, a man she had never met.
He was a rough construction worker who took care of her mother and the three sons they proceeded to create in quick succession. He basically treated Sam as if she were invisible except when she was in his way. Then he snarled and called her names. Her mother? She was emotionally absent to her firstborn, unaware of her presence except when a cook or babysitter was wanted.
Much later, Sam realized she was bright, brighter than the adults in her house. She also realized that that fact intimidated them. They verbally struck at her most vulnerable point, her heritage, which was an oddball grandmother of Swedish descent who happened to visit the rez in the 1940s and marry a Navajo man.
School was no different. Kids went for the jugular. It was hardwired into their little brains to call others derogatory names. Teacher’s pet cut as deeply as did half-breed, outsider, bilagáana. She wasn’t the only smart one or the only one of mixed heritage, but she seemed to be the only one who carried both identities.
Sam no longer blamed her classmates. The way she flew off the handle, she had been a fun target for them. Through it all she had learned how to take care of herself, how to fight as a little kid and how to be mouthy as a teenager. Some teachers understood and nurtured her better side. She focused on studies rather than cliques and boys.
But at home? That wasn’t fair. That wasn’t right.
And the only one who understood it all was dead.
I need you here.
She couldn’t lose the only one who had ever shown her the same kindness that her father had.