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By the time I’m loading the plane, I’ve only been in the airport for a couple of hours. Kash called an hour later, informing me he booked me on a seven o’clock flight. My feet feel gross from not having the soft barrier of socks, and I briefly wish I had dug for another shirt besides the one I slept in, because it’s several sizes too big.
Flying home is the longest fourteen hours of my life.
Ever.
I don’t bother to call Kash when I finally make my way through immigration. I take a cab to where I know they all are.
The elevator moves too slowly. I want to take the stairs so I don’t have to keep waiting for people to file off and on at each floor, but still having my bags, I don’t. I swallow my impatience with an angry huff and watch the numbers slowly climb.
The front desk only informed me of the floor, which has brought me to a long white hallway that makes me yearn for terracotta tiles. I reach for my phone and hit a few buttons to reach Kash and press it to my ear, trying to balance my bags and ignore how hot I feel.
“Did you land?”
“I’m here.”
“At the hospital?”
“On the right floor, I think.”
Kash emerges from farther down the hall, and I hang up, grabbing my things and pushing them in his direction. He moves toward me, wrapping his arms around me, knocking my bag from my shoulder.
“How is he?”
“He’s good. He’s a tough sonofabitch. They put pins in his shoulder, and they had to put in a chest tube because a rib punctured his lung, but he’s going to be just fine.”
I sigh as tears course over the well-made paths on my cheeks. “Can I see him?”
Kash nods, reaching for my two suitcases and leading me to a door marked as ICU that makes my skin prickle with a wave of fear.
“You can’t bring that in here,” a nurse says from a desk.
“Can we keep it somewhere? She just flew in.”
“You shouldn’t be in here if you just got off a plane,” she says disapprovingly.
“King would take the bubonic plague over missing her.”
The nurse’s blonde curls shake and her lips purse, but she stands from her desk and moves toward the end of the counter. “You can leave them there for a few minutes. You need to wash your hands very well before you touch anything. And if she’s going to be a guest, you need to fill out another form so I can get her a bracelet.” She looks to Kash with her eyebrows raised in a V as though she’s challenging him.
I hadn’t considered that I could be a risk to him, and it makes my hand pause on the handle of my bag as I lower it from my shoulder.
“I’ll do whatever you need, but I’m going to take her back first.”
Kash places a hand on my shoulder and gently coaxes me forward, and my fears of going dissolve.
The sight of King stops my breath. He has so many tubes, wires, and bandages wrapped around him that my mind instantly believes Kash lied to me about his positive prognosis.
“The drugs have him sleeping a lot, but he said he’s feeling okay.”
I look to Kash, my eyes wide with disbelief.
“Where is everyone?”
“They went to grab some food downstairs in the cafeteria.”
I nod and then move to the sink, washing my hands three times before I dry them with a scratchy paper towel. Then I move toward his bedside, pulling a chair from the corner so I can be as close to him as possible. Kash slips out the door, closing it behind him as a tear falls down my cheek. My fingers hover over his hand, looking for a safe place to make contact without pulling on anything, and eventually rest on his forearm.
Then I tell King about nearly every single second that has passed since I’ve been gone. He’s already heard most of my stories, but I repeat them again, sharing minute details about things he already knows about like the creaminess of gelato versus ice cream, and how prego means far more than just you’re welcome as the guidebooks had told me. I discuss the piece I’ve been tasked with restoring and how I was so nervous to begin, I had to paint a small replica before I could convince myself to actually make the minor additions to the original.
I’m not sure how much time has passed when Kash and Mercedes enter the room. She smiles at me, though her own cheeks are red from tears, and wraps her arms around me from the side so I don’t have to move away from King.
“It feels like you were already gone for eighty-five days.”
I nod, holding her with my free hand, and turn when she calls out King’s name.
His eyes blink heavily as they move around the room, confusion making them grow wide. “Shit,” he hisses. “What in the hell are you doing here?”
I stare at King for several moments, trying to read the scowl on his face.
“You had to have surgery.”
“You’re supposed to be in Florence.”
“I’m supposed to be here, you jackass.”
“You’re throwing away your future,” King barks.
My heart thunders in my chest, doubts filling me with concern. I have to remind myself a dozen times that he isn’t upset about me actually being here, but about potentially harming my position with the program before I can respond. “I don’t care about any of it right now.”
“You need to!”
“Stop being a jerk,” Mercedes orders. “You need to appreciate what you have and stop being so rude. I know you’ve been in a bad mood since she left, but you’re supposed to be happy now—she’s here!”
King and I both look to Mercedes, then to each other.
“I don’t want you to throw away your dreams for me,” he says.
“I’m not. This is more important. You are more important. If they can’t understand why I need to be here, then I don’t want to be in their program.”
King flips his hand over, revealing another IV port in the crease of his elbow. He reaches for my hand still sitting on the bed and holds it. His fingers that are normally so warm, even with the Oregon rain and constant cloud cover, are cool as they wrap around mine, but his eyes slowly warm with an understanding that makes tears once again return to my eyes.
KING IS released from the hospital four days later, a cast around his entire left arm and a slight limp from severely bruising his hipbone.
“When do you have to leave again?” King asks while I stand beside him, posed to help as he slides into his bed.
“I’m not.”
“You’re not what?”
“Leaving.”
“Like hell you aren’t!” King yells, sitting up.
He has been grumpy since he woke up in the hospital. Mercedes and Summer have both assured me this is tame compared to the past couple of weeks, which seems surprising and so unusual for King.
“I nearly didn’t leave.”
“What are you talking about?” he demands.
“I didn’t want to go. Yes, I thought this would be great, and I wanted so hard to prove to my family that I was good enough. But I didn’t want to go. I love art, but I’m never going to work in art restoration. I don’t want to work in art restoration. I want to paint and draw and create. I just got scared. I thought if I didn’t go, I’d resent you later—resent us.”
“What’s to say that won’t happen now?”
“Because the second my phone rang, I didn’t think once about art or Italy. All I could think about was how upset I was that I couldn’t be here with you. I will always have art, and I’ll keep working to be the artist I want to be, but I’m not going back.”
King relaxes against his pillows, watching me carefully with his brown eyes. “What if we both go?”
“What?”
“I’m going to be in a cast for eight weeks, which is going to make Italy a royal bitch, but if anything can heal me, the steaks at—”
My eyes narrow and he laughs, folding my hand within his. “I want to go with you, Lo. I want to be there and watch you succeed. After Italy, we can come back to Portland and figure out what’s next, but this is your time to shine.”