LAUREL
I can barely keep my eyes open, awakening cotton headed for mere moments, shivering, and calling Jimmy’s name before lulling myself back to sleep every few minutes. Hours seem to pass by. I find myself weaving in and out of consciousness. The room feels cold and then hot, perceptions having more to do with me and my infection-weakened body than any problems with the apartment’s heating and cooling units. Though I’m dry as tumbleweed, it feels as if the mattress has sprung a leak, for my whole middle section is squishy, wet, and warm, and I wonder if I’ve involuntarily relieved myself, but there’s no smell of pee, no smell of anything, and then I close my eyes again. I want to wake up; I want to drift out of this pampered bed into a normal, happy life.
Opening my eyes, I see Jimmy, still dressed in his gray flannel suit. He’s holding the ibuprofen bottle in one hand and a glass of water in the other. I don’t know where we are. This is not my gloomy basement studio apartment or the hospital room that smelled of iodine and lavender room fresheners. And then I remember that this is my new spacious sun-drenched apartment. And then I remember that it’s only temporary. In six months, when the lease expires, I’ll be homeless.
“How long have you been standing there?”
Jimmy looks at his gold wristwatch. “Twenty minutes. Give or take.”
“And you didn’t wake me?”
Jimmy puts his hand on my forehead to gauge my temperature. He seems different, more somber, as if he’s had nothing but conflicted thoughts and worry for however long I’ve been asleep. He winces, shakes his head. “Your fever’s back with a vengeance. You need something stronger than ibuprofen or aspirin.”
“I woke up earlier and called your name, but you weren’t here,” I say, coughing. My throat’s so dry that it hurts to talk. “Where were you?”
“Trish’s house.”
I suck down a breath and feel the air wheeze through my dry lungs. For a moment, I think Jimmy says he went back to Tricia’s house. But he’s here. Or am I delirious? Can he be in two places at once? I don’t understand. “You’re at Tricia’s house?”
“No,” he says, laughing. “I was at Trish’s house. Now I’m here with you.”
I can’t believe he went back to see Tricia. He promised he’d stay with me. Doesn’t he want to be with me any longer? Why can’t I trust him to do what he says he’ll do when it comes to being with me?
Tricia was right. Jimmy will never change. For all I know, because I’ve been sick and unable to sleep with him, he went back to her to get his rocks off. Here I am, sick in bed. I asked him to stay here in the apartment with me, asked him to look after me while I slept. Why can’t he do something like that for me? Isn’t that the minimum everyone’s entitled to ask of their romantic partners—that they be there when you need them?
“I needed to sort out some things,” Jimmy says. “That’s why I had to go for a bit.”
“I don’t care about ‘things.’ I don’t care about anything except you and me and Zerena,” I say, but as soon as I say Zerena’s name, I start crying. She’s been missing for over twelve hours. If I were healthier, I’d prowl the streets looking for her. Now, my thoughts wobbly with fever, I don’t know who to call or where to check to see if maybe she’s already dead. “Aren’t you scared? Aren’t you worried about her?”
“Of course I’m worried.” James takes another sip of water, wipes his lips, but otherwise appears unconcerned. “But I’ve got a good feeling. Karma’s real. Think positive thoughts. That’s what we need to do. Hopefully, she’ll be back with us before the end of the day.”
“Damn you and your good feelings. Damn you and your inability to keep your word with me.”
“Honey, wheels are in motion. Honest, they are. Things are happening. Soon we’ll have Anne Elise back.”
I step out of bed to better give Jimmy a piece of my mind, but my legs are a pair of squishy licorice sticks, and I stumble and fall and hit my head against the floor. Jimmy reaches down and lifts me up, but then he gasps, and I feel woozy, and it seems like minutes pass before I’m seated on the bed. All the lights are on in the room. Or, actually, I see he’s pulled back the window curtains to let the sunshine flood in. My eyes ache from the brightness. I can hardly keep them open without feeling the pain of a headache.
“Look at all the blood,” Jimmy says. He stutters. I brush my hand over my ears and forehead, but my hand is dry. There’s not a drop of blood where my head hit the floor, but when I tell him this—“Hey! I’m fine!”—he points to the bed. The formerly white sheets look as if they’ve been doused in ketchup. Something catches in my throat. The blood’s thick and, in places, clotted. Am I the damsel in a slasher film? Did Jimmy somehow do this to me? Make me bleed? Wound me?
My throat is gravel, my voice hoarse. I’m a groggy, slow-witted sometime thing full of scattered reflections that scarcely qualify as thoughts. I run my fingers over the bloody sheet and then over my bloody pajamas and feel faint again. I don’t know what to think—but then I do. Jimmy didn’t do this to me. The hospital did. “See! I told you the hospital can’t sew up an episiotomy right. They’re incompetent! That’s why I walked out when nobody was looking.”
“They didn’t discharge you? You just took it upon yourself to walk away? In the middle of the night?”
“If I’d stayed any longer, I’d be dead. That’s how negligent they are.”
Jimmy dips a finger in a mucuslike splotch of blood that stains the sheets, brings his finger to his nose, and sniffs, wrinkling his nose at the scent. “Honey. You can die. You know that, don’t you? You’re going to die unless we do something.”
“You’re not taking me back to that hospital.”
“I told you how Tricia’s been after me to get rid of you, right?”
Tricia? Why’s he always bringing up Tricia? Is she lurking somewhere in the apartment too? I expect Jimmy to laugh, but his face is deadly serious. And still, it’s like a light bulb just went on inside of him.
“I’d be getting rid of you—killing you—if I sat here and did nothing to get you back to the hospital. Don’t you see? You’d be letting Trish get what she wants. Whatever’s making you sick—your infection or whatever it is—is going to get worse before it gets better. Sooner or later, it will kill you. Do you understand? You’ll die.”
I’m shivering from exhaustion and worry, cold and infection. I touch my forehead and am surprised to find that I’m perspiring too, which makes no sense. How could I be both cold and perspiring at the same time? Someone shakes my wrist. It’s Jimmy.
“Hey. Are you listening to me? If you stay here, you might die.”
Jimmy’s logic chills me. He’s the man who I thought loved me, but he keeps bringing up how much Tricia wants to kill me. Is he her minion? Concern isn’t exactly etched on his face. He furrows his brows, looks out the window into the distance as if charting out the different possibilities of what would happen to him if I died from this episiotomy infection. In the shafts of sunlight coming through the windows, I see dust motes. His eyes shift toward me with a glimmer of malice.
“If you were to die, I could sit here and do nothing, and you’d be dead, and Trish would be glad and happy. Do you understand? No one would be able to pin a thing on me. I’d say you refused to go back to the hospital. That’s what I would say.”
I’m a death waiting to happen, a body waiting to wither away. I don’t know why Jimmy just stands there if I’m as sick as he says. I can’t even step out of bed without falling down. Jimmy is standing there. Has he never truly loved me? More blood trickles down my thigh. There’s only so much blood this special snowflake—me—has in her, but he’s doing nothing to help me. Tully—and everyone else, for that matter—is right: I have no business messing around with a married man. Especially a married man I can’t trust.
Chapter Thirty-Four