Chapter 98 - The Long Wait (1/2)

”He's very sick, Miguel,” Claire says. ”Whether he's my boss or not, there's nothing wrong if I want to hold his hand to make him somehow feel better.”

Miguel gazes at her. ”Would you hold my hand if I were sick, too?”

She hesitates. ”I…I might. It depends. If you have a contagious disease, I might emigrate to another country just to avoid you.”

Miguel snickers. ”Sense of humor. Now I see what he sees in you.”

”What do you mean?”

”Nothing.” Miguel sighs. ”I think we're sitting ducks here. Would you like to have coffee while we wait for the medical results?”

”I've just had coffee,” she says. ”With Michelle.”

”Michelle?” His eyes go big. ”She has set up at the office, right? She's there now?”

”Yeah,” she says. ”We were both waiting for him to show up. But then I got a phone call from Gabriel's butler.”

”Does Michelle know what happened to him?”

She shrugs. ”I didn't have a chance to tell her. I came here as soon as I learned.”

”So,” he says. ”Do we wait here all day while Gabriel's in there?”

”Go ahead, Miguel. If you need to be elsewhere, you can go. I'll just stay here.”

Miguel stops. He looks at her and he sees she's on the verge of tears. He shrugs and leaves quietly.

Claire restlessly paces the waiting area, waiting for the doctor or anyone to return. She can see through the small glass window that a nurse is posted inside the ICU, and that somehow gives her some relief. But not much. As long as they don't know what's wrong with Gabriel, she cannot rest. She's trembling with worry. Whether she admits it or not, what happened to Gabriel has made her realize how fragile happiness is—one moment you're in bliss, the next moment, everything can be taken away from you, just like that. She tries hard not to think of all the terrible possibilities, but her mind has no effective compartments, where different thoughts can be safely kept from each other to avoid scrambling into chaos.

After a while, Miguel reappears with two paper cups of beverage. ”Tea,” he says. ”To calm the nerves.”

Claire looks at the offered drink. She takes it. ”Thank you,” she mutters, but her voice is so hoarse it comes off as a groan.

He sighs and gazes in the direction of Gabriel's room. ”I'm sure my brother will be fine. He's tough as nails.”

She says nothing.

”When we were kids, he also got very sick. He'd never tell me or my mother about what he felt. He told no one. He just stayed in his room wrapped in layers of blanket. One morning, as my Mom was about to go out to attend to our little store downtown, she saw Gabriel's room was still closed and eerily quiet. Curious, she checked on him. She was shocked to find him burning with fever. I was in school that time. I learned about it only later. He almost died.” Miguel smiles as he turns to her. ”He almost died because he didn't tell anyone how he was feeling. We later learned he had typhoid fever, that if we had failed in bringing him to the hospital, it was merely hours before Gabriel would have come to the point where it would be impossible to save him. My mother was furious and heartbroken and terrified at the same time.”

”Is that what happened this time?” she says.

Miguel shrugs. ”That's very likely. Maybe Gabriel had been sick in the past many days. Maybe he was sick when we were at the amusement park, you know. That's how he'd always been. It takes a lot of effort to convince him to open up. But the thing with the two of us brothers is we know each other's intentions without actually saying it out loud.” Miguel gazes at her. ”For instance, I know he likes you.”

Claire's heart jumps in her throat. She keeps her mouth shut. Is this the right time to tell Miguel of the real score between Gabriel and her? Maybe not.