Chapter 149 - The Briefest Consciousness (2/2)
They all laugh. The doctor looks as if he has no plans of leaving, until his pager buzzes. ”The ER beckons,” he says, reading off the pager. ”Glad to have met you, Gabriel, Claire. As I said, I love stories like what you have. It brings light to this darkness. It gives people hope that there are good, beautiful things that still exist in the world.”
”Oh, thank you, Doc,” Claire gushes, glancing at Gabriel.
”I just hope I continue to be lucky,” Gabriel says.
They watch the doctor walk away to his next appointment.
”Do you think we should wait here until Miguel wakes up again?”
”Sure,” Claire says. She smiles. ”I wouldn't want to miss the next time he opens his eyes. There's a lot of catching up to do.”
”That could take hours, you know. He might wake up late tonight.”
”I'm fine by that as long as you're here with me.” She takes his arm and wraps it around her waist. ”There, you can never escape now.”
”You truly are inescapable,” he laughs. Then his mood grows pensive. ”There's only something that worries me a bit.”
”What is it?”
He pauses and looks at her. ”Nah, let's not spoil the moment. I'm sure we'd encounter no more curveballs after this. We can be happy again.”
And yet, somewhere, at that very moment, in an island paradise a few hours of airplane flight from where Gabriel is, Matilde Tan watches the TV with amazement. The matriarch of the Tan family is just having a little layover before she proceeds to her next destination somewhere in Asia, to visit one of her company's smartphone manufacturing centers. But the events unfolding on the TV have caught her attention—a re-run of yesterday's press conference. ”Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Matilde mutters, watching Gabriel say things about love. And if there's anything she understands from the context of this little stunt, it's that Miguel, her younger son, seems unwell, and all because of some unknown woman—whom she's quite sure is nothing but some gold-digging hussy.
She tries to grab her tall glass of pina colada on the table beside her, but her trembling hand sends it tumbling into the wooden floor. And yet she pays it no mind. ”Albert,” she says aloud. ”Albert, where are you?”
A man with salt-and-pepper hair and a thin moustache appears almost magically by her side. ”I'm here, Madam.”
”We're leaving,” Matilde Tan says, her face dark. ”Have my jet ready at this very minute. My two sons are going 'loco' over some girl.” She glances at what remains of her cold beverage on the floor as she stands up. ”They need their old mother to slap the madness out of their heads.”