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Again, more silence. Not that he expected different. God, he missed the sound of her voice.
“I haven’t seen her in a few days. I don’t know if she’s coming back this time.” It felt wrong to unload this on the woman who wouldn’t remember it from moment to moment, but he was just so damn exhausted with doing all of it alone. “I’m pretty tired of chasing after her. I don’t know if I’m making it better or worse.”
Dei remembered seeing some quote somewhere about the definition of insanity being doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. He couldn’t for the life of him remember who said it, but he understood it now. Every time he saw her, he couldn’t help but hope that something would click. That her brain would stop the deterioration and she would be herself again. Or that she’d have just one more lucid moment that he could take with him.
But it never happened. She hadn’t said a word to him in months, and he hated himself because he couldn’t remember the last thing she’d said.
He felt so fucking careless. How could he not have paid better attention?
Dei’s gaze snapped up when there was a knock on the door, and one of her afternoon nurses poked her head in. “Uh-oh.”
Dei sighed. “She wasn’t thrilled with me helping her put her crayons away.”
The nurse smiled softly and stepped over them, brushing back a lock of his mom’s hair. “Alexandra? Did you say hi to your son?”
His mom didn’t take her eyes off the page.
“It’s fine,” Dei said after a long beat. “I can’t stay. I got a late start, but I didn’t want to go to work without popping in.”
“I think Dr. Fuller wants to chat with you soon,” the nurse told him. “Do you think you could come in early sometime? I’ll leave him a message if you can pick a day.”
Dei wanted to bury himself under his covers and not face whatever conversation that was going to be. It was probably going to be hospice and end-of-life care and all that other shit he was terrified to face. He was not the man who should be making those kinds of choices for anyone, but he was the only one his mom had left.
“I should be good next Thursday.”
The nurse smiled at him. “I’ll let him know. And you try to have a good afternoon.”
He nodded, hoping he was smiling back, but he couldn’t really tell what his face was doing. He debated about helping the young woman get the room tidy, but he had to save what strength he had for his long shift, and in all honesty, he just wanted to get out. The less time he spent thinking about all this, the better he slept at night.
At least, the better it was for now. It wouldn’t last, but he’d take what he could get.
5
Since the Keys were almost always in season, except when some storm was looming off the horizon threatening to sink them into the Gulf, Dei was unsurprised to pull into the Midnight parking lot and see that it was almost full. There were three cars he didn’t recognize parked in the employee spots, and he sighed to himself as he went in through the back door and paused by Jeremiah’s office.
“Tell me it hasn’t been this bad the whole time I was gone.”
Jeremiah glanced up from his computer, his eyes looking large and owlish behind his massive lenses. He didn’t talk about his vision loss anymore, but Dei knew the guy couldn’t see much of anything these days. “How was your time off?”
Dei laughed. “Is that your way of avoiding the question?”
Jeremiah snorted and leaned back in his chair, kicking one foot up on the edge of his desk. “We had some drama. Turns out your sister…”
Dei knocked his head on the doorframe loud enough to cut Jeremiah off. “I swear I’m not avoiding this topic, boss, but it’s a madhouse out there, and she is a very long story. Can we pick this up after close?”
“I’ll buy you a drink later,” Jeremiah promised. “You good, though?”
“Been better, but I need to work.” He hurried off before Jeremiah could offer him something absurd, like a month’s paid vacation. He’d struggle to say no, but he knew the moment he was alone with his thoughts for longer than a day, he’d regret it.
He made his way past a few of his line cooks, keeping his head down as he ducked into his own little office that Jeremiah had set up for him in the unused storage pantry. It was barely large enough for him to turn around, but Jeremiah had ordered a small dressing tree to hang on the wall, and it made getting into his chef’s whites a fuck of a lot easier.
He’d mastered a lot of things one-handed and a few things with one hand and one foot, but it took ten times longer than it used to. Dei didn’t quite belong to the generation of instant gratification, but he was close enough that needing to take everything slowly was a quick way to piss him off.
Life after his injury was a lesson in patience he’d never wanted to learn.
He used his button hook to close his jacket, then took a quick look in the wall mirror before stepping out and into the kitchen. They were fully staffed to deal with the lingering lunch crowd, and it took Dei a second to spot Marcus, his sous, who was leaning over the prep table with what looked like the dessert menu.
Dei walked over and lifted a brow at him. “Tell me there’s not a crisis.”
