“Seems kind of mean.”
“He doesn’t mind. He’s the cute kind of fat. Anyway, he had a huge thing for me, but I never gave him the time of day because he was so doughy and had that mullet-y haircut? Well, he’s not exactly fat anymore—more ‘chubby.’ He’s cute now! He got cuter! Or maybe my standards went down. Anyway, I’m staying at his place, on the sofa bed, but I can tell he still likes me, and I’m sure I’ll wind up sleeping with him before long if I don’t get out of there.”
I didn’t meet her gaze. Was this her argument for why she should be here? So she didn’t accidentally screw a guy called Fat Benjamin?
She shrugged. “I wish I could stay here instead.”
“Don’t ask me again.”
“I’m not asking! I just said, I wish.”
“We can’t all get our wishes.”
“I just think it would be a bad idea to sleep with him.”
“Then don’t.”
She shrugged. “I’m terrible at saying no.”
I met her eyes. “Well,” I said. “I’m not.”
She was not going to suddenly reappear in my life after three years and make me talk about boys, of all things. She could not just show up like this and expect to pick up in the same na?ve place we’d left off.
“Anyway,” I said. “I’m pretty tired, so…”
“That’s fine,” Kit said, rejecting the hint. “I brought some magazines.”
I shook my head. “You need to go.”
She stepped a little closer. “I’d really like to stay.”
But I just shook my head. And then I turned my face away until she gave up and left.
Eight
THE NEXT MORNING, I learned something new about my hospital room: It had great acoustics.
This was after all the morning rituals: sponge bath, tooth-brushing into a bedpan, medicines, catheter change, bowel evacuation, breakfast of oatmeal and Jell-O, and OT with Priya for three breathless rounds of getting in and out of the chair and two failed toe-wiggling attempts.
My door was right next to the nurse’s station. For the first time, I noticed I could hear voices talking about medicine and medical orders. I could hear someone typing on a keyboard. Someone was making a run to Starbucks. An orderly tried to flirt with one of the nurses, but she shut him right down.
Then I heard Nina’s voice, a little louder than the others. “I need to talk to you about this schedule.”
A man with a slightly nasal voice replied, “Okay, shoot.”
“You gave Ian to this patient.”
“Yes.”
“I’ve made several notes in the chart that she should have someone else.”
“I saw those notes.”
“And you just ignored them?”
“Look, Ian’s wide open right now.”
“Yeah. There’s a reason for that.”
“Are you saying Ian is incompetent to work with this patient?”
“I’m saying he’s not a good match for her. And I think you know it. I’m wondering if you might be kind of hoping it’ll blow up in everybody’s face.”
“What are you saying, Nina?”
“Exactly what you think I’m saying, Myles.”
Sheesh. This guy Myles was a wiener.
“You think I’m trying to bring Ian down? You think I’m sacrificing this patient’s well-being so we can all watch him self-destruct?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I don’t have to. The man’s a time bomb. He’s going to self-destruct all on his own.”
Nina wasn’t having it. “Not with my patient, he isn’t. She’s right on the edge. She’d just gotten engaged. She just lost everything. You need to pair her with somebody kind and encouraging—April, or even Rob.”
“I’m not redoing the entire schedule for one patient.”
Nina’s voice tightened. “She needs someone else.”
“Everyone else is full.”
“So switch somebody out.”
But Myles—some kind of supervisor, maybe—apparently didn’t like being told what to do. In the silence that followed, I could hear him bristle. “It’s not your call. It’s my call. And if you make trouble for me, I promise I’ll make trouble for you. The schedule stays as it is.”
He must have walked off then, because after a few seconds of silence, several nurses, including Nina, started talking trash about him, using words like “jealous” and “control freak” and “little Napoleon.” I might even have found it funny, if I could find anything funny anymore. If it weren’t so clear that the patient she’d been talking about—the one who had just lost everything that mattered—was me.
That’s when I heard a Scottish voice out at the station. “I tried to switch, if it’s any consolation. I talked to Myles yesterday.”
“You didn’t try hard enough.”
“He never gives me anything I want.”
“You never used to let him push you around like that.”
“He never used to be the boss.”
Nina’s voice was all business. “You’d better be nice to her, Ian.”
Ian’s voice was, too. “Nice doesn’t make you strong.”
Two seconds later, the door to my room pushed open.
“Time for PT, Maggie Jacobsen,” Ian said, not meeting my eye. He wheeled my chair close to the bed.
“It’s Margaret,” I said. When he didn’t respond, I said, “I go by Margaret.”
“You don’t look like a Margaret,” he said. He was dead serious.
“That’s not really your call, though, is it?”
“Okay, Maggie. Whatever you say.”
He grabbed the transfer board and lowered the bed, as well as the chair arm, and then he arranged the board as a little bridge between the two.
Then he turned and walked toward the door.
Wait—what? Where was he going? Had I made him mad with the Maggie thing? Was he really a time bomb? Was he about to self-destruct right now? “Aren’t you going to help me?”
He paused but didn’t turn. “Nope. Press the call button when you’re ready.”
Then I was alone—just me, a board, and a chair. Oh, and a catheter bag strapped to my thigh.
It was a problem to solve, I’ll give it that.
I found the control for the bed and maneuvered it into a sitting position. Then I edged my butt closer to the transfer board. My yoga pants had a bit of a bell-bottom, and one cuff got caught in the bedrail, but I worked it out. Perched at the edge, about to shift myself onto the board where there’d be nothing below me but stone-hard hospital floor, I felt frightened for the first time since the crash. In fact, I felt something for the first time since the crash. I paused, out of breath, and wondered why my first feeling couldn’t have been laughter. Or joy.
I edged a little closer, putting all my weight on my palms. The muscles in my trunk were atrophied, yes, but still functioning, which helped—but the dead weight of my legs threw me off balance. I wobbled a little, then hunched down until I was steady again. The chair was maybe twelve inches away, but it might as well have been a football field. I eyed the distance, ooched another inch, lost my balance, hunched down. Then again, and again. After a bit, I noticed that the fabric of my pants had two wet blotches on the thighs, and that’s when I realized that I thought I’d just been concentrating—but instead, I’d been crying. Possibly for some time.
I decided to take a break, halfway across the board.
That’s when Ian walked back in. “God, are you not finished yet? I had a cup of coffee and read the paper.”
If he’d been someone else, it might have been okay. If we’d been friends, if I’d known he was on my side, if we’d built up a rapport—he might have been teasing me in a fun way. As it was, he was just a mean stranger.
I looked up, and when he saw my face—no doubt puffy and slick with tears—I saw the hardness on his falter, just for a second, before he came gruffly over and steadied my shoulders.
“I’ve got you,” he said. “Keep after it.”
With Ian there, it went much faster—and before I knew it, I was trailing along after him as I rolled myself down the hall toward the therapy gym. I tried to think of another time I’d been with another person and felt so alone at the same time. He didn’t speak. He didn’t look at me. You’d think he was out for a stroll all by himself.