Chapter Text
They passed a vending machine in the hall.
“Want a hot chocolate?” Raleigh asked.
Maia buried her precious dog into her lap and leaned a little closer, seeming to hesitate whether or not to scoot closer to him on the bench. Raleigh eyed the four-year-old girl sitting next to him. Her hair was short, strewn over her face and haphazardly cut with a pair of scissors Serah must have used.
Raleigh hated hospitals. His entire life, he had been in and out of them, but he could never got used to any of it. Not the cold, dim fluorescent lighting that reflected against the lifeless walls or the sterility of it all. He tugged the collar of his jacket, concealing a conspicuous, copper implant protruding between the vertebrae in his neck. Engraved on the implant was an identification registration number indicating that he belonged to Maia.
“Are you cold?” Maia asked him. She curled her knees into her chest, digging her sneakers into the cracks between the bench slabs. A stuffed, white dog was smothered under her arms, clutched close to her faded yellow windbreaker. Its ears sagged over its head. The cotton fur was matted with dirt and sweat from being stroked. As she rubbed her dog’s ears between her fingers, she watched a set of double doors shut at the opposite end of the hall.
“No,” he told her, which wasn’t entirely true. “Why, are you?”
“Little.”
Raleigh debated putting his arm over her shoulder, drawing her into him. However, his instinct to comfort her was overtaken by reason. He stopped himself.
His eyes drifted back to the styrofoam cup clutched between his hands, filled with water he had poured from the hospital’s water cooler near nearly an hour ago. It could have been the poorly maintained fluorescent lights, or maybe it was the sterile stench of ammonia and mouthwash that permeated the hallways as if the walls, ceiling, and tiled floors. The air was saturated with the stench. It was intoxicating and the smell sent Raleigh’s head reeling.
“Hot chocolate,” Raleigh insisted, offering to get her some if it allowed him to walk away for a few moments alone. He spoke with his eyes shut. He rocked forward, swaying to his stand. “Let me get you a cup. It’ll warm you right up.”
Raleigh retrieved the bottle of prescription painkillers buried deep inside his pocket. He emptied a few pills into his palm. The water was stale and left an aftertaste of plastic in his mouth. He shook the remaining pills back into the bottle and once certain the pills were staying down on his empty stomach, he left Maia behind on the bench.
Raleigh crossed the hall. His head felt thick as if his mind was lagging behind his choice to rise to his feet. His steps were off balance.
When he looked behind him, he saw Maia watching as if terrified he would never return. Raleigh waved, motioning that he would not be gone long.
“Ma’am?”
Raleigh froze, perturbed to see a doctor suddenly addressing Maia. The woman knelt next to the girl, pinching the sleeves of her white coat as if she had an itch. She tapped her nails against the clipboard, flipping through some papers.
Raleigh could not hear what was being said, but it was the seriousness in the doctor’s posture that caused him to return as fast as he did.
The doctor jotted quick strokes into unseen files. She tipped the clipboard away from Raleigh when he approached. “You brought him with you?” the doctor asked Maia, directing a half-hearted look at Raleigh. She stopped writing and tilted the pen in his direction.
Raleigh darted his eyes toward Maia, who appeared thoroughly distraught.
“Yes.”
The doctor looked down at her clipboard and scribbled down something. Her eyes lifted from her clipboard. “Is there someone we should call?” she asked.
“No.”
It had taken years of practice for Raleigh not to speak without being directly addressed. He wasn’t about to break social norms now. Impatiently, his fingers twitched resisting the urge to reach for his painkillers.
The doctor leaned forward, frowning. “Ma’am, are you alright?”
Maia clutched her stuffed, white dog against her chest, smothering its face into her yellow windbreaker. The windbreaker had a washed-out color to it reminding Raleigh of wilting buttercups or jaundice.
“Maia,” he said with a smile on his face and it surprised him how naturally that smile came. “Answer the doctor.”
“Excuse you.” The doctor’s voice was soft but Raleigh could clearly see the tight line of her jaw that there was a serious concern with him entered this conversation. “I’m going to have to ask you to leave—“
“No!” Maia screeched, scrambling off the bench. She positioned herself in front of Raleigh, leveling her elbows as far as she could, clutching her dog firmly against her chest. Her feet were planted firmly on the ground. If someone were to push her, she may have even done a decent job at holding her own ground.
Without hesitation, the doctor grabbed the nearest phone. There was one hanging to the right of the bench where he and Maia had once been sitting. “This is the doctor stationed at Ward 23. We have a bondsman on premise,” she said. The curtness and disgust were not veiled from her voice. “Repeat, we have a bondsman on premise—”
“—where’s mama!” Maia demanded. Dread pooled into the pit of Raleigh’s stomach. “We came to see mama. Where is she? Raleigh, bring her back.”
Raleigh’s throat clenched at the request. The spinal implants in his neck and spine forced him to immediately kneel next to her, meeting her at eye level. The stress from the implants started to make him nauseous. He raised his gaze to the doctor. The doctor, phone clamped against her cheek, mouthpiece pressed against her jawbone, seemed horrified as if she took a single step back from them.