Chapter 1: Prologue
While hysterical patients weren't an oddity at Willow Grace Medical Hospital, Marnie didn't want to put up with one today; not after last night's bottles of wine and this morning's sunshine of a hangover.
"I told you I'm not crazy!" Mr. Buford, the old man with ashen hair, yelled. Marnie massaged her temples to keep the headache at bay while they talked with the boy who accommodated his grandfather. At least that's who Marnie assumed him to be.
"Are you okay?" Georgia whispered to Marnie to which she gave a smile.
"I'm good. Thank you." even though she wasn't. She wanted to find the nearest bathroom and just stick her head down the toilet.
"You weren't here yesterday. Were you sick? You still don't look well." Even though Marnie knew that sweet, old Georgia was only asking out of concern, Marnie blushed at the thought that she wasn't as good at hiding her hangover as much as she had thought.
"No, I wasn't sick. I just took the day off." Georgia raised her brows at her colleague's answer.
"And here I thought you lived here at the hospital. Did you do anything nice?"
Marnie's mind quickly flashed back to yesterday. Her dim room, the empty wine bottles, the endless ringing of the telephone.
The shoebox.
Without skipping a beat, she answered with a curt "Yes."
Georgia's gaze lingered for a second longer that Marnie would have liked. She held her breath, hoping that her colleague would not push her for any more questions. She didn't.
"That's great to hear you had a nice time." she smiled sweetly. Marnie didn't know if Georgia was just being nice or if she was convinced that Marnie was telling the truth. She tried to sound as convincing as possible; most especially to herself. They quickly drew their attention back to the current situation when the doctor spoke.
"What seems to be the problem, Mr. Eddie?" Doctor Galahan asked the clearly exhausted — and embarrassed — young boy. It looks like it took a lot of effort just to bring Mr. Buford to the hospital.
"We were in the kitchen and I accidentally knocked over the pans. It created so much noise and grandpa…remembered some things. Then he fell over and crashed on the glass table and it shattered. His arms are bleeding."
"Okay, Mr. Buford. We just want to get the glass debris out and clean your wounds. Nurse Marnie, can you grab a wheelchair for our patient?"
"I'm not that weak and I don't need to be here. I'm not going crazy either! Just because your mother's out of town doesn't put you in charge of me, Eddie." The grandson was clearly frustrated but he didn't seem angry. In fact, he seemed sad for a moment.
"I know, grandpa. I just want to make sure you're okay. After the war…"
"War? What war? You're the one that's going crazy, Eddie. Now, let's go home."
Marnie approached with the wheelchair to stop Mr. Buford from leaving.
"Mr. Buford, if you could please sit down here and we'll quickly clean out your wounds over there." This seemed to tick him off even more. Everyone was startled when he took Marnie by the shoulders.
"I told you I'm not that frail!"
"Mr. Buford, please let go of our nurse." Georgia stepped up
"Grandpa, you can't do this to the nurses. Please let go."
But it was too late. All of that shaking turned Marnie's stomach upside down and the next few moments could only have lived in Marnie's nightmares. She never would have thought that puking in the hospital — much less in the lobby and on a patient's shoes — would be one of the things that she was capable of doing.
After the whole fiasco and an endless amount of apologizing, she was told to go home for the day to recuperate. Though, Marnie knew that Dr. Galahan was pissed and just wanted her out of there. He sort of figured out that Marnie was hungover, after all.
"You're not usually like this. You're competent and I want to hear what happened but I think we're both not in the best state to have a decent conversation. We'll talk once you feel better and I don't feel like getting you fired."
With a heavy heart, a throbbing headache, and a horrible taste in her mouth — quite literally — she left the hospital and headed straight home. In hindsight, that might not have been the best idea because she came back to the unruly state of her living room and the cause of this morning's disaster.
She didn't know what she felt. Anger? Frustration? Sadness? Betrayal? Loneliness? Guilt? But it poured out heavily, like a cry she didn't know she was suppressing, and she started ripping up the pieces of paper lying innocently on the floor. With each rip, it felt like she was ripping out her own heart too. But before she could do further damage to the other papers, she caught herself.
"No, no, no, no, no, no."
She watched as the result of her own doing fluttered to the floor and she loathed herself. What had she done? In a panic, she found some tape and started to piece the paper back together. Then she noticed red stains that weren't there before and realized that she had gotten a paper cut. It stung but she didn't care at the moment as she wiped down the blood on her old skirt.
Once she taped on the last piece, she let out a sigh of relief and melted to the floor. She let the coldness of the ground cool her back, maybe her head too, as she stared up at the ceiling for minutes. Then, she put her hands up to see which paper she had ripped up among the dozens she had in her possession. Amidst all the chaos brewing in her heart, she found herself chuckling at the horrible handwriting and misspelled words. It was quite the old letter and one of the first ones too.
"I found a good rock. Let's go their." she read out loud. She found adoring details that she couldn't have noticed if she wasn't sober.
"Spelling really wasn't your strong suit, was it?" she asked in a whisper and paused, almost like she was waiting for a reply that she knew wasn't going to happen. She sighed and almost as an afterthought, "I guess promises weren't either."
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