Read Online Naked in LA by Colin Falconer - Free Book Online

gurney. They clamped an oxygen mask on his face and rushed him out to the ambulance. I rode in the back with him to the hospital and prayed.
    When we got to Jackson Memorial the medics ran the gurney down the hall to the nurses’ station. I ran along behind. Everyone was shouting at once. An intern ran out, then another. They transferred him to a bed in the casualty ward and pulled the curtains. A nurse hustled me into the waiting room.
    The swing doors closed behind us. Suddenly it was quiet.
    She sat me down in a plastic chair. She started asking me questions but I could barely hear her. I had been ready for this moment for weeks, for months, but now it was here it seemed surreal. Everything seemed to be happening very far away from me.
    The nurse finished filling out her clipboard and then she went back down the corridor to get Papi’s file. I sat there and watched a policeman bring in a drunk he’d found lying in the road. Another ambulance arrived and a man was brought in on a gurney with a swollen eye and blood seeping from his nose. The medics told the duty nurse he’d been in a bar fight.
    I stared blankly at the tiles on the floor.
    I wanted Papi to live, but there was a part of me that wanted it all to be over, for me as well as for him. I was ashamed for even thinking that way, but that was the truth of it. I just wanted the end to be easy for him. He had suffered so much and he didn’t deserve this. I didn’t understand a god that would do this to a man who had lived a good life. It made no sense.
    I tried to shut out the buzzing of the strip light overhead, ignored the sympathetic glances of the duty nurse. I disappeared somewhere inside. At some stage someone asked me if I wanted a coffee and I shook my head, numb.
    I thought about Reyes, I wished he were there with me. I thought about that afternoon in the Fontainebleau. I had always hoped I would see him again, but not like that. I could still see his face when Angel had walked into the bar. If there had ever been any hope for us, it had been extinguished right then. So now I really was alone.
    Well, not quite. Lena arrived a little while later, she had locked up our flat and driven to the hospital in her nightgown. She didn’t say anything, just sat down on the plastic chair beside me and put her arms around me.
    We waited.
    An hour later the doctor came out of the emergency room. He didn’t say anything and he didn’t need to. His face told me everything I needed to know. I didn’t cry. I was way past that. I just said: “Can I see him?” and he led the way.
     
     
     
     

Chapter 14 

     
     
    He didn’t look like my papi anymore.
    His eyes were already clouded, his jaw slack. I picked up his hand and held it. This was my fault. I had wanted my freedom and now I had it.
    He had been my rock since Mama died, the one certainty in the midst of so much upheaval. I sat down on the chair beside the bed and waited to feel the upwelling of grief I had expected to come, but there was nothing.
    This couldn’t be him; this was someone else’s father.
    I laid my head on his chest and kissed him.
    I remembered the last thing he had said to me. “I’m holding you back, cariña, it’s time I moved on.”
    I slipped the silver wedding band off his finger and put it onto mine. “There,” I whispered. “You’ll always be with me now.”
    He felt so cold. I pulled the sheet up to his chin to try to keep him warm. “Goodbye, Papi,” I said. He was finally free.
    And so was I.
     

     
    Angel was waiting for me in the corridor with two of his bodyguards. “Where’s Lena?” I said.
    “I sent her home. I can take care of you.”
    “I don’t want you here.”
    “You don’t know what you’re saying. Come on, the car’s waiting, we’ll take you home.”
    I barely knew what was going on. I let him lead me out to the car. I didn’t remember driving back to the flat, I just remembered thinking: I can’t leave Papi there at the hospital on his