The Truth About Hollywood

I burst through the door to Mom's room, where Dad and Danny were talking softly back and forth. Danny stood up when he saw me walk in and gave me a hug. "Are you alright?" he whispered.

"I'm fine now," I assured him, pulling back and smiling as I rubbed his arm. Gia cleared her throat to remind me that she was there. "Right. Well, Danny, this is Gia, my best friend. Gia, Danny."

"Nice to meet you finally," she grinned. She then turned to my dad. "How's she doing?"

"They just put the chemo in her IV, so it should start working soon. She should wake up soon, too, once it starts to work. They wanted to make sure that she was awake so that she didn't choke on her own vomit."

"Oh," I scrunched up my nose, "how...glamorous."

"That's how Jimi Hendrix died," Danny spoke up. I elbowed him lightly in the stomach.

"No shit, Sherlock," Gia rolled her eyes. "But, um, I'm not so good with vomit, so I think I'm going to go get everyone some..." She stopped to think for a second, examining the ceiling, "sandwiches! Who doesn't love a good sandwich, right? So, um, I'm gonna go get those. Bye."

She hurried out of the room, and we laughed behind her. "She didn't have to tell us that she wasn't good with vomit..." I trailed off, remembering the first time I found out her fear.

"What happened?" Danny wondered, even though he barely knew Gia. But, of course, since I was her best friend and it was pretty much in my job description to embarrass her, I decided to tell the story anyway.

We were in fourth grade at a birthday party together. One of the girls had eaten too much cake and she had a stomachache, but she still wanted to play Pin the Tail on the Donkey. So, as she was spun around and around and around...her stomach got upset and she vomited right in the middle of the lawn.

Gia freaked out and ran away from the party and down the street. When we found her twenty minutes later, she was curled under a park bench two blocks away, crying hysterically.

Danny and Dad let out laughs, and I couldn't help but join them. It was a funny story, though that the time, it wasn't so much. I was scared, for some reason, that Gia was going to cry herself dry and then she'd shrivel and die...

I wasn't a smart child.

Not even five minutes after I finished my vomit story, Mom woke up and made her own. Dad was able, with his super-fast reflexes, to get the basin under her mouth in time, saving the hospital sheets.

It was hard, seeing her so sick like that, and I was forced to turn away. Danny noticed and leaned forward to whisper in my ear. "Do you want to go find Gia?"

Nodding, I stood up, taking his hand so he'd get up with me. "We're going to go make sure Gia's okay," I announced.

Dad barely acknowledged us, but I knew that he heard us. Danny and I were quiet as we made our way to the cafeteria.

"That really messes you up, huh?" Danny finally broke the silence, shoving his hands into his pockets.

"Yeah," I admitted. "It does. Wouldn't it with you?"

Danny laughed, which was probably the strangest reaction I could have gotten. "It did."

I stopped in my tracks, and it took a couple seconds for him to realize it. When he did, he turned around. "What?"

"What do you mean by that?"

He ran a hand through his hair and promised, "I'll tell you sometime, but now's not really the time." To emphasize his point, he looked around to see all the patients, doctors, nurses, and guests walking by.

"Gotcha." We walked into the cafeteria and found Gia eating a sandwich with a pile of similar sandwiches piled up to the side. As I got closer, I realized that there was also a cup of frozen yogurt and three cookies.

"Preparing to be a sumo wrestler?" I joked, sitting down next to her. Quietly, Danny did the same, but he tried to sneak taking one of the plastic-wrapped sandwiches.

"Oh, totally," she replied sarcastically. "I would just love to weigh eight hundred pounds. Bring on the flubber!"

Danny let out a snort of laughter before coughing a couple of times, choking on his sandwich. "Easy. Don't die," I soothed, patting him a couple of times on the back like a person would normally burp a baby.

"Sorry," he mumbled, "that was just hilarious."

"It happens," Gia shrugged. "I have my one-liners."

We talked for a little while longer over eating sandwiches. "So, you think your mom's done puking her brains out now?" Gia whined.

"Um..." I trailed off, glancing at the clock. It had only been twenty minutes. "Nope. They said that they're going to start with a three-hour dosage to see what that does."

"Ugh," Gia groaned. "We have to wait here, eating food, for three hours?"

"The horror!"

Danny snickered again. "You going to add anything to the conversation?" I asked him.

"Uh..." he trailed off, looking over my shoulder out the window, "yeah, actually. There's a guy taking our pictures outside."

"You've got to be fucking kidding me," I hissed, standing up from the table and going over to the window, pulling it open. Anger was coursing through my veins, knowing that I wasn't even safe at a hospital while my mother was dying.

"What do you think you're doing?" I snapped at the pudgy guy crouched there. He looked up at me, scared of what I might do.

"So what are you doing in the hospital, Miss Bryant?"

"That's none of your business," I replied coolly, careful not to show how worked up I was. The last thing I needed was some story about how I was diva already. "Honestly, today has been a long day, and I'd appreciate it a lot if you would go home."

With that, I just assumed that he'd go away, and I closed the window again. Danny had his cell phone out, looking like he was reading a text with his brow furrowed.

"Who are you talking to at almost ten at night?" I questioned.

"Annabelle just texted me. She said that Friday, we have to go to the Burlesque premiere to promote our show, which comes out Saturday."

"That's two days from now," I pointed out.

"Yeah." He had a slight smirk on his face that I knew was from the thought of seeing Christina Aguilera in nothing but, basically, underwear for two hours.

But I just bit my lip, knowing that I had a tough decision ahead of me.