Discombobulation/
/dɪskəmˈbɒbjʊleɪt/
noun
A feeling of perplexion that leaves a person befuddled and confused.

▫CHAPTER 7▫
DISCOMBOBULATION

Evelyn

Tap. Screech. Tap. Screech. Tap. Tap. Ta-

"Could you stop that? " I lifted my head up to glare at the person standing in front of me.

"No." I growled, continuing to tap my feet and move back and forth on the squeaking chair.

For a second I thought about how ridiculous this was, Adrian Gallagher was standing in a hospital waiti g room with me. He had not wasted any time in taking action, he had accompanied us to the hospital, in fact he had even arranged for his driver to find the quickest route possible. I still don't know why, but he had.

He had taken off his hat and glasses and had dumped them on a chair nearby, he currently stood leaning against the wall in front of me, he had also removed the coat and had folded the sleeves of his white shirt, his tie was loosened and his eyes were bloodshot. The jagged scar on his brow was more pronounced now that he was frowning at his phone, his short hair was messed up and looked like it hadnt seen a hairbrush in years but despite the tired look in his eyes he still manged to look good and I hated him even more for it.

If someone would've told me a week ago, that this would happen I would've laughed until my stomach hurt.

And if they would've also said that Carlos, bloody Carlos, was Adrian Gallagher, I think I might have died while laughing.

Strange, how life works.

I was still in the shock that had first descended upon me when finding out the truth.

Carlos was bad enough already, now combine him with Adrian Gallagher and you get the antichrist!

I turned my attention to my surroundings, or rather the lack thereof.

There were no plants and no paintings not even the smell of chemicals. The waiting room was empty and white. Bland and soulless. Just like every other hospital in the world.

I despised hospitals.

Everyone did.

Even the doctors and nurses
who spent their whole lives here. 

I just despised them more than anyone else.

This was one of the best hospitals in the whole city and the waiting room belonged to the VIP ICU, yet they still couldn't invest in decent chairs.
Mum hadn't actually needed the ICU, but I wanted the best for her and apparently throwing around more than a grand worth of bills can get you anything.

I didnt realize it but I had stopped tapping and moving, It was silent. The kind of silence that turns the lack of sound into lack of oxygen and suffocates you.

"You can go, if you want to." I said after more minutes ticked by in silence and I couldn't take it.

When he didn't reply for seconds I turned towards him, to see that he hadn't even acknowledged me, "I'm talking to you."

He scowled, "I'm here for Laura and I'm not going anywhere until she wakes up."

"Why?"

He didn't reply and I noticed he had switched his phone off. He sighed before looking up, "Because."

"Did you know she was sick?"

He looked at me for a long time, then walked to the chair I was sitting in and lowered himself into the one beside me.

"No. How long has she known about this?" He asked softly in a tone I had never heard him speak in.

"Since forever, she never told you?" I asked.

"No, but I don't blame her, I wouldn't have either." He muttered, leaning his head back.

"I still dont get it," I said, my headache growing, "How did you meet her and why do you...why do you even care?"

"Its a long story."

"Well, we literally are in a waiting room?"

He turned to look at me and seeing his stubbled face and those icy blue eyes this close, I couldn't stop my mind from replaying the memories from a few days ago.

He sat up straight and leaned forwards, his hands hanging limply between his knees, "Hold on."

And then he took out a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and putting one in his mouth lit it. The smoke wafted in the air and the stench reached my nose.

"It says no smoking over there." I pointed out.

He just shrugged, "Do you want to know or not?"

"Whatever."

And so he told me, in that slow and agonizingly quite voice, that tested my patience but I listened. Minutes passed and I was staring at his face continuously while he stared ahead at the empty wall, his lips moved and some of the words coming out of them explained planty of things.

"That's it." He finished, tilting his head to look at me and taking a final long drag of the cancer stick in his hands.

"Wait!" I leant forwards and he relaxed back,  looking at me with bemused eyes, "So you just walked in that random cafe and my mum started talking to you instead of kicking you out."

Taking me by surprise his lips lifted slightly, "Thats what I said darling."

Okay not going to lie my stupid heart fluttered at that term but I chose to ignore it.

"So she's been your free psychologist and you just visit her and give her flowers every month? An asshole like you? I don't believe it."

Oops.

The weariness in his was replaced by fury again, I had obviously said something extremely insensitive and he was looking at me in disgust.

But as soon as he opened his mouth a sound made both our heads turn towards it in sync and I was about to jump up to my feet and corner the doctor exiting the door which lead to the lobby where mum was in, but he never came, it was just the cleaning lady exiting the glass doors. She acknowledged us but made no attempt to smile.

"Sir, you can't smoke in here." She said severely, looking at the cigarette in his hand. She nearly flinched when he turned to look at her with the glare that was meant for me but flicked it away in the bin beside us anyways.

Satisfied, she started to move, I held my breath as her cart filled with chemicals and cloths rolled away. The smell of chloroform lingering behind as her steps soon faded away.

"You think I give a fuck whether you care or not?" He smiled and it wasn't remotely friendly.

Before I could even think of a reply, his phone ringtone suddenly blared in the silence and he answered it in one quick motion while getting up from the chair. Then without looking at me, he walked off in the direction of the exit, his voice faltering along with his footsteps until he was no longer visible.

I felt the silence creep around me again, I wasn't going to ever admit it aloud, but I had found hid presence comforting. He still was an overconfident prick...but why did he stay here for nearly an hour when he could've easily left.

He might be...everything I called him, but I wasn't blind to not see he did care about mum like his own mother.

Maybe there was more between my mum and Carlos I could ever understand.

My thoughts were interrupted and I was saved by the asphyxiating silence when a familiar man in a white lab coat appeared from the glass doors with a notepad in his hand.

I scrambled to my feet faster than ever, reaching the doctor before he could reach me.

"Miss. Rhodes...sorry, Eva. " he acknowledged, pushing back his frames and flipping through the pages on the notepad. I had known him for more than four years and he'd done a lot for mum. He was a guy with a genuine heart and I knew good people when I saw them. Every time he called me by the name reserved for strangers I felt uncomfortable, so I'd asked him to call me Eva.

"Dr. Patel," I replied, "how's my mother doing?"

The Indian man looked up and I caught the meaning behind his grim experience before he said a word.

"Not well, I'm afraid. This was the third time this happened in a month am I right?"

"Yes," I breathed out in a panicked voice. I tried to hide it. But I couldn't. I was scared shitless.

"This is not good Miss. Rhodes, you already know the dangers, anemia equals to arrhythmia, her heart must pump more blood to compensate for the lack of oxygen in the blood which in your mother's case it fails to do so, you have to understand this is very serious much more than I thought." Said Dr. Patel, once again pushing back his gold plated, or perhaps real gold spectacles on the basis of the fee I pay him, which were on the verge of falling down.

I already know this is serious this is why I'm at the bloody hospital. I thought but restrained myself from saying it out loud.

"Well," I gulped, "what are the worst outcomes that we should...expect?"

"Since Laura suffers from sickle cell anemia, it can er...lead to life threatening complications. Losing a lot of blood might be quite...harmful." He said looking at me and shutting his notepad, in which he had continuously been scribbling in an illegible handwriting that I still couldn't decipher.

He was playing with words. Stalling. He didn't want to say it but he didn't have to. I already knew. She was going to die.

"How harmful?" I still asked in a monotonous voice, while inside I was dying too.

"The kind of harmful that could lead to congestive heart failure." He answered in one breath after momentary reluctance with so much pity in his eyes, I couldn't meet them.

I knew it.

My heart pounded loudly in my chest so loudly that Dr. Patel could probably hear it too.

After staring at an empty wall, I sighed restlessly and rubbed my eyes. "Okay, okay...so how can we prevent this?"

"I-I-We can surely delay it a bit, I'll prescribe you these specific medicines, it's advisable to include food containing vitamin C in her diet, and plenty of sleep and rest is necessary, I think this will help." He said and opened his notepad again, tore off a page and scribbled more stuff in his indecipherable handwriting, and stretched out his hands.

At that moment I heard the thudding of footsteps resonate along the corridor. I turned around to see an out of breath Adrian reaching Dr. Patel and me with his hands dumped in his pockets. He didn't say a word just breathed out and stared at us.

"Is he with you, Miss. Rhodes?" Dr. Patel eyed Adrian.

Before I could answer Adrian cut in, "I heard you say delay? Why not prevent?"

It was only then that I understood the words and staggered forwards, I realized the doctor still had the prescription in his outstretched hands and despite my impending panic attack, took the paper with unsteady fingers but didn't bother to read it. Not that I'd be able to understand anything. I never could understand the psychology behind all doctors having, for lack of better word, awful handwritings. I shook my head, trying to prevent the words from tumbling out.

"You didn't answer his question!" I demanded.

I waited for an answer but Dr. Patel just sighed painfully and looked away.

"She's-she's resting now, but she's free to leave whenever she wants, although I would advise her to leave tomorrow." He said nonchalantly and began walking away, not before stopping to turn back, "Take care, Eva."

That obviously was a clear message. She wasn't going to make it she was going to die.

"Dr. Patel, wait," I glanced unsurely at Adrian, hesitant to asked the question in front of him, but he would find out sooner or later anyway. "I have another question."

Dr. Patel paused in his tracks and turned back around. Pushing his spectacles back for the hundredth time.

An unwilling sigh. "Of course?"

"How...how long does she have?"

He looked at me with his eyes full of the same pity, he'd known me for years, breaking this to me might be harder on him than I thought. he stared at his feet and while shaking his head muttered.

"Don't make me do this Eva."

"Please?" I asked which was a mistake because my voice cracked. And when I heard it. The salt water started gathering on my lids.

I wasn't the only one with tears, Dr. Patels eyes glazed and he shook his head, "I'm sorry...Laura knows, she'll tell you if she wants...you can visit her when the nurse is done."

And before I could ask something else he disappeared behind the exit doors.

But I remained standing there. The prescription paper almost wet from my sweating hands.

The silence screamed.

A salt drop threatened to fall but I forced it not to. Like I'd been doing for years.

I must've done something really awful to deserve this, I thought.

My throat suddenly felt dry, and a lump formed in it. It felt like someone was squeezing my chest, invisible fingers wrapped around my esophagus until I couldn't breathe. My heart was now hammering against my ribs and my vision was getting blurred because of the unshed tears welling up in my eyes.

I heard someone clear their throat and only then remembered Adrian was here too.

"She's going to die. She's going to die." I told him slowly, making myself understand more than anything else.

Adrian Gallagher looked nervous, something I never thought he could be, he gulped slowly and then turned to me, "You don't know that."

I laughed and I didn’t care if I looked like a mad woman, "Did you see his face? Did you see his fucking face? She's going to die and I can't do anything about it."

And then the waterworks started, the salty tears just flowed and flowed and I fell on my knees. I covered my mouth to stop the sobbing but I just shook and shook on the hospital floor not caring if it was dirty, or that I looked disgusting or that I was crying in front of someone I hated.

And then suddenly I was not on the ground.

I was lifted up effortlessly like a rag doll and pulled into someones body. I felt arms wrap around me tightly and a chin rest on top of my head.

And I didn't care about what he had done the other day. Or that I hated him. Or that he was a complete asshole. I clung to his arms and cried my eyes out and he held me patiently without moving.

When minutes had passed and there were no tears left and my throat was so hoarse I though I would be coughing up blood, I slowly pulled myself away and wiped away my snot and tear covered face. I looked up to see him starting intently at me and blushed in embarrassment when I saw the stains on his shirt.

"Sorry." I whispered and made an attempt to get out of his hold but he didn't let me move.

He grimaced at the mascara stains on the white shirt but looked into my eyes once again, "I'll fly in one of my best doctors tomorrow and we will make sure she gets every single medicine or treatment that she can but yes, despite that she will not be with us one day...but until then you have to make sure you don't give up, no matter what. Laura's a fighter and I know she'll stay with us for longer than you think."

I frowned at his words and he seemed surprised at saying them. I couldn't believe he had actually helped me calm down, but he had. He confused me more and more by each passing second and I still didn’t know a single thing about him, I had no idea who he was or why he was doing and he would be stupid if he thought I actually believed his story.

I knew my words would be harsh, especially after he had just...done what he had done, but I needed to this, he needed to know I was in control and nobody could take advantage of me or my family, so I nodded at him, "Yes, you're right, and thank you for the concern but we honestly don't need your help, you can visit her if you want, but other than that Mr. Gallagher, you stay the hell out of our lives!"

He looked shocked too but he was saved from replying when a door opened and a nurse came closer to us, "The patient is conscious. One visitor at a time please."

I didn't have the energy to reply and simply nodded.

When I turned to look at him, Adrian Gallagher was already walking away. I stared at him as he picked up his coat, glasses and hat and kept walking until he became a silhouette in the distance. Before disappearing.

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Hey guys!

This chapter was more of a filler it was just to show that her mom is seriously sick ...please do comment your opinions, I honestly love reading your comments even if it's something stupid just comment it! Don't be afraid! yeah! Unleash your inner beast!! that's doesn't even make sense but whatever!! Comment and vote guys!!!

Sorry I'm high on chocolates right now!

Xoxo
-z