Chapter 45: Chapter 45
Blair
It had been two days since I arrived in Istanbul after being informed about my parents' accident.
Receiving that call late at night was not pleasant enough, but it got worse when I arrived at the hospital after taking an emergency flight the next morning and found out that the accident had occurred because my father had a heart attack behind the wheel and would need coronary artery bypass surgery.
My mother, who was with him in the car, had broken her foot and suffered a concussion, and had been admitted for observation for further tests, since she constantly complained of pain in several places, but I was beginning to suspect that she was doing this to avoid being discharged and to get away from my father.
I approached the nursing station, deciding to talk to the nurses in charge before going to her room.
" Good morning," I greeted them with a smile.
" Good morning, Miss Ozkan," Ayça, one of the nurses greeted me.
" You can call me Ayeleen, how is she?”
" The doctor has already signed her out, they were just waiting for you," she reassured me.
I understood her desire to be close to her husband, but I needed to get her out of that place and have one of the two of them at home. She couldn't even visit him, as he was recovering from the catheterization in the ICU.
" Your father is awake, if you want to see him before you take care of your mother's paperwork.”
I thanked her with a smile before walking to my father's room. He was well known in the hospital, as he often had surgeries there, so I was sure that he was being well taken care of.
I hurried down the corridors with my heart hammering in my chest from anxiety. I needed to make sure that my father was okay.
As soon as I reached the door to his room, I knocked softly before opening it to find him lying on his bed, hooked up to various devices, looking beaten up.
" Ayeleen, I didn't expect to see you," he declared with a weak smile.
" You wouldn't have seen me if you hadn't made up your mind to have a heart attack. What were you thinking? " I smiled indulgently, approaching the bed to take his hand.
I had never seen my father this vulnerable, and that sight did not please me one bit.
" Well, my life was pretty much at a standstill, so I decided to shake things up a bit," he let out a weak laugh.
" I almost had a heart attack when I got the call," I confided, still caressing his hand.
" I'm so sorry.”
I brought his hand to my lips, placing a soft kiss on the back of it, feeling relieved that he was okay.
He would recover!
" Blair, if I ask you a question, will you be honest with me? " he gave me a fearful look, causing me to frown.
" What is it?”
" Your mother, is she hurt? They say she's fine, but I think they're just saying that to keep me from recovering," his voice was weak and haunted, showing all the fear he felt at losing my mother.
For a moment I thought of her in that room acting like a child just to not leave the same place he was in, as if just his presence was enough to make her feel better.
Why can't I have something like that for myself?
" She's fine, I'll take her home soon," I reassured him with a smile.
He breathed a relieved breath, resting his head on the pillow with a small smile on his face.
" For a moment I thought I had lost the woman of my life," he confided, making me smile.
" That's not going to happen. I'll tell you what, I'll go get her, so you can see that she's okay with your own eyes, while I take care of her discharge paperwork," I proposed, watching his face light up.
I left my father waiting anxiously before going to my mother's room, hearing a small argument as soon as I got near the door.
" I'm telling you, it's not natural for my foot to hurt like this, I need more tests," my mother scolded one of the nurses who was trying to get her into a wheelchair.
" Mrs. Ozkan, everything is normal with all your tests, there is nothing wrong.”
" Of course there's nothing wrong for you, you're not the one feeling it," she dramatized.
She can be worse than a child!
I entered the room, receiving a relieved look from the poor nurse.
" Mom, what's the matter? " I moved closer, kissing her head, as she had done countless times to me.
" Blair, she can't believe I'm in pain and wants to send me home!”
The nurse gave me a tired look, but I knew just how to handle the situation.
" And you're really in pain?”
" Of course I am! " she returned energetically.
" All right, let's go back to bed," I sighed, receiving a surprised look from the nurse, "I'm not going to accept your discharge.”
" Really? " she asked hopefully.
" Of course. It's a shame, because I was planning to take you to visit Dad while I took care of the paperwork, and he personally asked me to take the love of his life there, so you could spend the next twenty minutes?”
" Thirty," the nurse corrected.
" Thirty minutes with him, but if you're not well, you'd better go back to bed and rest.”
I watched the expression on my mother's face light up for a moment before indecision took over, but I knew Lauren would choose well.
" Damn it, Blair.”
" Come on, Lauren. To bed! " I commanded.
" I'm not five years old, you know that," she murmured, propping herself up in her wheelchair.
" Then stop acting like a brat," I stood behind her, kissing the top of her head.
It felt good to see their faces light up when they saw each other, it was as if they were incomplete away from each other, and unfortunately for the last few months I had been experiencing that feeling. I often found myself wondering if I had made the right decision with Dimitri, not that I could take it back now that he was with someone else. I wouldn't lower myself to the role Olga lent herself to!
But still, I thought more and more about how it would have been if I hadn't been so extreme about the idea of moving to Russia. Maybe we would have come to an agreement?
These are questions that linger in my mind and that I will never have the answers to!