After Mia left, Eli looked over at Charlie, trying not to let his distaste show. The guy had never been a parent. He had only been a husband, and he clearly hadn’t been any good even at that, since he had also been divorced three times.
“So Mia had you talk to Gabe after she found the steroids?” Eli felt a pinch of jealousy. Was she already trying Charlie out for the role of father to her kids?
Charlie shot him a look, and Eli guessed that the other man knew exactly how he felt. “I happened to be there when she found them. So I asked if I could talk to Gabe, man to man, about how they can affect you. I figured she wouldn’t know those kinds of details, and even if she looked that stuff up on the Internet, it would be pretty awkward talking to her kid about it.” He snorted. “Hey, it was awkward for me.”
And how exactly did Charlie know these details? Was it from personal experience? Eli only said, “How did he take it?”
Charlie’s mouth twisted. “Gabe was angry. Really angry. I just hope that underneath he was listening. You know what it’s like at that age. Everything’s a big deal. Everything’s life or death. It’s all the best of times, or the lowest, and there’s nothing in between.”
That was certainly true for Rachel, and she wasn’t taking steroids. “Steroids mess with your emotions, don’t they?” Eli asked.
“For sure. Mostly they can make you irrationally angry. They can also make you pretty depressed. Even suicidal.”
That gave Eli pause. It sounded like Mia was right to be worried. What if Gabe had overreacted to something small that still seemed overwhelming in the moment that it happened? Teens were so impulsive. Would Gabe kill himself rather than face it—or face his mom?
The shiny silver doors to the surgical area opened automatically, and an African American woman dressed in green scrubs walked between them. She came over to them. “Are you two the cop and the lawyer?” she asked. A surgical mask dangled around her neck.
This was the surgeon, Eli realized as Charlie nodded, not the scrub nurse. How often did he only see what he expected to see?
“How’s Jiao doing?” he asked.
“We had to give her five pints of blood, but she’ll make it.” The doctor touched her own throat. “She’s going to have some pretty significant scarring on her neck. And the pen nicked her vocal cords, so her voice will probably be affected, but hopefully not too much. She might end up sounding a little husky. We’re just lucky that she’s so young and that her underlying level of health is pretty good.”
“When will we be able to talk to her?” Charlie asked.
The surgeon pursed her lips. “Not for a while. We want her not only medically stable but psychologically stable. Which means it definitely won’t be tonight. She’s still sedated and won’t be waking up from the anesthesia for several hours. We’ll need to get an interpreter in tomorrow and assess her medical state.”
“Do me a favor,” Charlie said, “and make sure you don’t use the one we did. Her name was Kwong something. She freaked out when this happened. She was pretty useless. And I don’t want her around Jiao, reminding her that she almost died.”
“I can imagine it was pretty intense,” the surgeon said. “A girl shoving a pen in her own neck—hopefully that’s something you never see in your life, or you only see once and never again. But I’ll make a note of it. No interpreter or visitor named Kwong.”
Even before she disappeared back behind the doors, Eli was pulling his keys from his pocket and getting to his feet. He knew Charlie wasn’t going to like what he was about to do, but Eli didn’t care what he thought.
“Where are you going now?” Charlie asked.
“The same place you are. I’m going to see if everything’s okay with Mia. And if it’s not, I’m going to help in any way I can.”