The nurse puts a hand to her chest, visibly relieved. “Oh good.” She looks at me apologetically. “I’m sorry—I don’t mean good that you’re hurt, just that Colton here—”
“Used to be kind of a regular,” he cuts in. “I’m sorry; it was rude of me not to make any introductions.” He smiles tightly at me and gestures to the nurse. “Quinn, this is Mary. Mary, my friend Quinn.”
Mary holds his eyes for a moment before she looks at me again. Long enough for something—a question maybe, or an opinion—to pass between them. It makes me straighten my shoulders when she turns her attention back to me. “Well, Quinn, it’s a pleasure to meet any friend of Colton’s.” She extends a petite but firm hand to me.
“It’s nice to meet you too,” I say, shaking it.
“So have you two known each other long?” she asks, my hand still in hers, still shaking.
I look at Colton.
“We just met,” he says with a quick smile.
I nod, and the moment when it seems like he or I should explain further stretches tight between the three of us standing there, with Mary still holding my hand in both of hers.
Colton clears his throat, then gestures at the clipboard in my hand. “Why don’t we go sit so you can get those filled out?”
“Yes, yes,” Mary says, finally releasing my hand. “You two go and sit down, and as soon as you’re finished, we’ll take you back to a room.” She smiles kindly at me, and it feels like an approval of sorts, one I’m sure I don’t deserve.
“Thank you,” I say again, and we turn to find a seat, but Mary’s voice spins us right back around.
“Colton, honey,” she says, looking at him with moist eyes. “You look so good; you really do.” She shakes her head, and her eyes fill. “I can’t believe it’s been over a year now. It’s just so good to see you so . . .” She steps into him and hugs him tight to her before he can do anything else.
It takes him a second, but he puts his arms around her in a hug that’s awkward and tender at the same time. “It’s good to see you too,” he says.
Watching this moment feels like an intrusion when he so obviously was trying to avoid the subject. I turn and scan the room for a seat. There are only three other people in the ER waiting room: a guy slumped in his blue plastic chair like he’s been there for far too long, cradling his arm in his lap, and an elderly couple sitting quietly side by side, each reading a different section of the paper. The man rests a hand on the woman’s knee, a gesture that is so familiar and so clearly second nature for them both that it stops me where I stand. I can’t remember the last time Trent rested his hand on my leg like that. But I do remember that every time he did, his fingers drummed like it was impossible for them to be still.
Colton’s voice brings me back to the present. “Hey. Sorry about that.”
I pull my eyes away from the couple as he sits down next to me and exhales roughly.
“It’s okay; she was nice—once she saw you.” He looks at me and tries for a smile, but I can feel tension in it. “Anyway,” I add, trying to lighten it, “seems like you might be a good person to know around here.”
It’s not a question, but it leaves room for a response. For an answer, if he wants to give one.
He doesn’t. Just gives another tight smile and a nod and sits back in his chair, arms crossed over his chest. And just like that he’s a million miles away next to me in his blue chair, and I am alone again. I search for something else to say, something that will change the subject, maybe even make him laugh, but I don’t know what to say because, well, I don’t know him.
So I don’t say anything. I pick up the pen at the end of the little chain and start the forms. It’s probably better anyway, this distance. Better that we don’t go beyond this. I fill out the forms in silence while Colton sits next to me, feet absently tapping the floor, fingers thrumming on the arm of the chair, and in those moments we exist in separate universes, like we did before I came here and they collided.
“You don’t have to stay here with me,” I say when I finish with the last one. “I mean, if you want to go, it’s okay. I’ll be okay. You’ve done enough by getting me here, really.”
This snaps him back from wherever he was. “What? No. Why would I go anywhere?” He shifts in his chair so he’s facing me, and his jaw softens. “I’m sorry. I really don’t like hospitals, is all. Spent too much time in them already.”
He pauses, like he knows he’s left himself open for me to ask why. I can feel how much he doesn’t want me to, and it’s the last thing I want to talk about right now, so I don’t ask. Questions are dangerous territory for us, and somehow we both seem to recognize this.
He offers an explanation anyway. “Accident-prone,” he says. “Like you,” he adds with a smile.
I see the whole sequence of events: me knocking over the coffee, running out of the café, crashing my car. And it makes me laugh—how it all must’ve looked to him. “I was pretty ridiculous back there, wasn’t I?”
“No.” Colton tries to keep a straight face as he shakes his head. “Not at all.” He shrugs. Cracks a smile. “It was nothing. Nobody saw.”
“You saw. And I was a total mess.”
Colton laughs now too. “No, you just seemed . . .”
“Crazy. I seemed totally crazy. I’m sorry. This whole thing is really embarrassing.”
“Not crazy,” he says. “A little dangerous, maybe.” He smiles again. “It’s okay, though. I’ve done worse in front of people.”
He looks at his lap, and the smile falters the tiniest bit. “I passed out once, in front of my whole class, in eighth grade. Traumatized them all when I hit a desk on the way down and ended up having to get twelve stitches in my head. I had to walk around looking like a bald Frankenstein for a while after that.” He laughs again, but it fades quickly.