Right As Rain (Complete)

Chapter 12

Maelee

My heart sinks when Hudson isn't in Noah's room. "Where's your crew?" I ask. "You aren't supposed to be alone."

"They are mostly here," Noah says. He sits up from his reclined position in the bed and stretches his shoulders. "Pop and Jack went to the cafeteria; they told Ashley they would be right back. Hudson took his mum to dinner across the street. Jessica had to work today; she just text and said she was on her way back."

I sit in the chair at the foot of Noah's bed. "Hudson's mom is here?" I ask.

Noah cracks into a smile. "Yeah, you excited to meet her?"

I roll my eyes at him, hoping to brush off any conclusions he may be making. "How are you feeling?"

Noah adjusts himself more until he is sitting up straight. He blinks his eyes a few times, wiggles his nose, opens and closes his mouth, gawks at his own hands, stomach, legs, and feet, then drops his hands in his lap with an exaggerated flop. "I'm all good." He laughs. "How do you feel? How's your day?" Noah projects concern to everyone around him, including me.

"You know you are my patient, right?" I ask.

"Yeah, yeah." He waves me off. "When I bust out of here we are going to be friends though."

Truthfully, it would be easy for me to be friends with Noah. He is kind, considerate, and hilarious. But for now, he is strictly my patient.

"Well in the meantime, since I am still your doctor, how are you feeling?" I ask again.

Noah smiles. "Everything is good, I promise. I actually kind of like my doctor," he mocks. "Dr. Holt came by today. He's your boss, right? Did you know his wife is Maria Holt?"

"I did! Kind of cool, right?"

Dr. Holt's wife holds multiple Grammy's as a Jazz vocalist. I met her for the first time at dinner during the fellowship interview process. I had a hard time keeping it together. In middle school, I practically burned a hole in her movie soundtrack. It was the first movie I saw without parents. When my friend's mom dropped us off at the theatre and gave us her old brick cell phone to call when we were finished, I thought I had died and gone to adult heaven. The movie was long and I didn't really understand the significance of it, but I cried when the male proclaimed his love for the heroine and then died. From that point on, I claimed the movie as my favorite. When it came out on VHS, I bought it and its accompanying soundtrack. I watched the movie at least twenty more times, and listened to the CD, composed and performed by Maria, every morning on the way to school.

"Yeah," Noah says. "She's friends with Hudson's mum, I guess. Dr. Holt was talking to her about some new hospital floor."

Despite Noah's lack of interest, the hospital's new surgery floor is not something to be indifferent about. A private donor recently gave enough money to outfit our soon-to-be-built, sixty-thousand square foot surgery center. If I remember correctly, the donation was upwards of ten million dollars and promised to provide the hospital with advanced, state of the art, surgical and medical equipment. The donor wished to remain anonymous and very little has been discussed about the mysterious money outside of the hospital. I find it rather odd Dr. Holt was talking about it with Hudson's mom.

"How long was he here?" I ask Noah.

"About 'tirty' minutes," he says with a mischievous grin in his Irish laced accent. "So did he tell you?"

"Tell me what?"

"What they talked about when they left."

"They?" I ask. "They who?"