Dipping Into Together

Ch 30

I feel like everyone is staring at me.

Pulling the sweater I’m wearing tighter around me, I step cautiously towards the front desk. The young woman behind it glances up at me, lips pursed, back straight as a board.

“May I help you?” she asks, voice dripping with rehearsed pleasantness.

“I, uh—” I glance around nervously, shuffle my feet. I feel stupid. Like I have boats for feet and I’m two feet tall, out of place. My jeans and converse sneakers look lame, and I feel like everyone knows that I picked them off from the floor of my room, that they’re probably dirty. Glancing back up at the receptionist, I see that her perfectly penciled in eyebrows are raised, waiting for my response. “Jonah,” I blurt, and then realize I don’t know his last name. My face reddens at this, and I clutch the fabric of my sweater, wondering if there’s some way I can still find him.

“Jonah…?” She frowns. “Does he have a last name, perhaps?”

“I—uh, I don’t, um…know it,” I whisper the last part and look down at my feet, wishing that I wasn’t so awkward.

Her frown deepens. “You don’t know his last name?”

I shake my head. Two quick, curt shakes. I’m growing anxious now.

“Okay…” her voice trails off and she glances at her computer screen, clicks a couple of keys, and looks back up at me. “I’m afraid,” she says, raising her cup of coffee and taking a quick sip, “there’s nothing much I can do for you.” She swallows. “Considering, of course, that you don’t have the gentleman’s last name.”

Heels click across the floor. “Lilly,” a female voice says that’s fairly familiar. “Lilly, listen…”

The receptionist glances up at the new arrival, glare fixed on her face. “What, Debra?”

Debra.

Where have I heard that name before?

One second passes.

Then another.

I jump in my spot and snap my head around, locking my gaze on the woman who’d just walked up. She has a straight blond hair, cut severely just below her chin. Her eyes are kind, though, as they settle on me. Recognition flickers through them as a smile stretches across her face.

“Destiny,” she says, “you probably don’t know me but—”

“Debra,” I but in. “You were my nurse.”

She frowns slightly, no doubt surprised that I remember her. “Yes,” she says, laughing a little, “I was.”

“Jonah,” I sputtering. The words in my head are jumbled, and it’s hard to form coherent thoughts.

The smile falls away from her face, and she takes a step towards me.

“He’s dead.” I recognize the fact that I have spoken, but the tone of voice in which I have done so is foreign to me. Even in my own ears, I can hear the sadness, the loss, the lack of…liveliness. I sound dead, defeated.

“No, sweetie, no.” Debra rushes to my side, grips my arms. “He just got—he, uh, he’s gone, sweetheart. He got transferred to a hospital in—”

“What?”

She takes a tiny step back, surprised by my outburst.

He’s gone? Transferred? I can’t even comprehend what the words mean…they’re swirling around my head in a whirl, and they won’t slow down enough for me to understand what they mean. When I realize that she’s talking again, I struggle to concentrate.