The Siren. Tiffany Reisz
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in one room. Nora lowered her eyes respectfully and kept walking. Passing through a set of double doors, they entered the pediatric ICU. Teddy bears holding balloons were painted on the walls. Oh, yes, she’d never let Wes hear the end of this. Dr. Jonas put his finger over his lips and left her by room 518. She stood outside the open door and listened intently—a woman’s voice with a heavy Southern accent, his mother’s she guessed, loudly whispered to a man with a softer accent. In hushed tones they went back and forth about how they never should have let their son move so far from home for college. Fighting was a good sign. That meant Wesley was out of the woods. But her relief was short-lived. His mother sounded determined to have him back in Kentucky again while his father argued that he was old enough to be on his own, that they couldn’t keep an eye on him forever. Nora found herself nodding her agreement with his father. But she could hear the distress in his mother’s voice, the pain and the fear and the wrought-iron determination. Wesley’s mom wanted him home with her to keep an eye on him. Nora felt the same way.
Nora didn’t know what to do. She found Dr. Jonas again and made him call Wesley’s attending physician. Wesley was in and out of consciousness after they’d brought him in, but he’d been awake and speaking a few hours ago. They’d stabilized his insulin levels and he’d be clear to go home in a day or two. Apparently Wesley wasn’t absorbing his insulin as well as he needed to. He might need to start using a bigger needle. Nora ached with sympathy. Wesley loathed needles. He always injected himself in his upper left arm where he couldn’t see the needle going in. Shoving needles into his own thighs or stomach would probably kill him before it cured him.
Dr. Jonas told her he’d call Kingsley if he heard anything else but there was nothing Nora could do for him now. She might as well go home.
Reluctantly, Nora left the hospital. She drove home and decided she would let herself sleep. She checked the clock—almost 8:00 a.m. She’d been awake for over twenty-four hours.
Once in her driveway Nora turned off her car. But after that she lost the energy to do anything else. She leaned forward on the steering wheel and cried tears of relief, exhaustion and fear. Wesley’s mother was the proverbial steel magnolia and she clearly wanted her son back home. Nora prayed Wesley had learned the fine art of telling someone off while living under her roof.
Telling someone off…
Nora leaned her head back against the headrest.
“Shit…Zach.”
She turned the car back on and headed south toward Manhattan.
9
The next morning Zach headed straight to J.P.’s office without even bothering to stop in his own first.
J.P. looked up from his reading and blanched.
“I am reminded of the last words of Emily Dickinson at this moment,” J.P. said. “The fog is rising.”
“I’m done with her.”
J.P. stared at him over the top of his glasses. “Easton, she could make Royal a great deal of money.”
“Find another editor then. I don’t care if we publish her or not. But I’m finished. Patricia Grier called me last night. She said I’m welcome to come out to L.A. a few weeks early and work with her. It’s not a bad idea.”
“It’s a terrible idea. The staff won’t know who’s in charge. You won’t know who’s in charge. She’ll undermine you. You’ll undermine her. Regime change has to be quick and dramatic for it to be effective.”
“It’s Royal’s West Coast office, not France in 1799.”
J.P. took off his glasses and rubbed his forehead.
“Bring me her contract. I’ll keep it.”
Zach turned on his heel without another word and walked to his office. He paused at the door when he noticed it was cracked open. He remembered very clearly locking it last night since he’d left his laptop on his desk. Warily, he opened the door and entered.
“Hey, Zach,” Nora said. She sat in his chair behind his desk with her eyes closed.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded. “How did you get into my office? It was locked.”
“Magic.” She opened her eyes and smiled.
“You look like hell,” Zach said. Nora had dark circles under her eyes and her face appeared gaunt from lack of sleep.
Zach came around his desk and she stood up to give him his chair back. She sat on top of his desk and rolled back on it like a bed.
“I’ve spent the last twelve hours in hell. Sorry, I forgot to bring you a souvenir.”
“I have all the souvenirs I need from my own trips there. What are you doing here, Nora?”
“Apologizing for going off on you last night.”
“Apology accepted. Now you can go. J.P. is going to find another editor for you to work with. Probably Thomas Finley. He’s an asshole. You’ll like him.”
“There are good assholes and bad assholes. You’re the good kind. I only want to work with you.”
“Well, perhaps you shouldn’t have told me to first, fuck the book and second, to fuck myself.”
Nora rolled up off his desk and turned to face him. She crossed her arms over her chest. She exhaled slowly.
“Wesley didn’t come home last night.”
“He’s old enough he can go anywhere he pleases, Nora.”
“But you don’t know Wes. He calls. He calls all the time. If he’s going to be five minutes late he calls me. I was in Miami a while ago and he called me to tell me he was going to the movies so if I tried to call him and didn’t get him, I wouldn’t worry. That’s Wes. He didn’t come home and he didn’t call. I freaked out.”
“I assume you found him?”
Nora laughed coldly. “Sort of. He’s in the hospital.”
Zach sat up in his chair.
“Good Lord. Is he all right?”
“He went into diabetic ketoacidosis at the library. No one called me because no one knows I exist. I’m not next of kin. I’m not any kin.”
“Have you seen him?”
“I just came from the hospital where I spent half an hour eavesdropping on his parents while lurking out in the hallway. I can’t go in since they’re there. Zach, I feel…impotent. Bad feeling.”
Zach looked away from her and stared out his window. His view was to the east, and if the world was flat and his vision was telescopic he could see all the way to England. He knew how Nora felt. Grace…her parents had come as soon as he called and told them she was in the hospital. As soon as they arrived he knew he’d made a mistake by calling them. The doctors immediately stopped talking to him and starting talking to them instead. He remembered his fury then, how he’d stepped between Grace’s parents and the doctor and told the doctor in no uncertain terms that when a married woman was in the emergency ward, you spoke to her husband first and her parents second. He hadn’t told the doctor to go fuck himself. He’d been far less polite than that.
“I’m sorry you had to go through that.”
“When you called last night I was waiting for news. If God Himself had called me and started telling me the secrets of the universe, I would have told Him to go fuck Himself, too. You can’t take me personally, Zach. Can I make it up to you? Coffee? Tea? Me?”
Zach laughed. Even exhausted she was still shameless.
“You need sleep, not caffeine or any other stimulant,” he said, narrowing his eyes at