As if knowing what I’m thinking, he whispers in my ear, “There will be more nights like this, I promise.”
I smile and let him drag me through the sea of desks.
My phone starts buzzing when we reach the car, and I manage to get it as I slide in the car.
Jess is calling. I press answer just as James starts the engine and the voice at the other end of the invisible line instantly alerts me that there’s something wrong. Very, very wrong.
“Parker? Why do you have Jess’s phone?”
“Don’t panic, please,” he says in a tone that screams for me to panic. “I’m with her at the hospital.”
A paralyzing coldness takes over every limb, every organ, every thought, as if I’ve just fallen into the depths of a melting iceberg.
It’s only after a long pause that I manage to mumble, “What happened to her?”
“The moron she was with last night… I’ll explain everything when you get here.”
I dig my nails deep into my palm. “Which hospital are you in?”
“The one where you volunteer. We’re on the fourth floor.”
“I’ll be there as soon as possible.”
I close the phone and turn to a concerned James. “How fast can you drive?”
Hospitals used to terrify me. When I was six, I sliced my knee open on the playground, and kept it a secret from everyone, including Kate, for two whole days, using kitchen towels as bandages. I gave in to fever on the third day. Mum nearly fainted when she discovered the infected wound.
I despised hospitals and their incompetent doctors after Kate’s death. But I despised them in a masochistic, self-flagellating manner that made me return to care for those who were confined inside them. I eventually accepted that Kate’s death was not the doctors’ fault. What can doctors do for someone who flirted with death so often?
Now, as I look at the concrete building towering over me, I’m terrified again. And I pray that I won’t be forced to despise them once more.
I barely feel James’s arm over my shoulders as we walk in. I stopped hearing him a while ago in the car.
Dani greets us as we get out of the elevator on the fourth floor.
“Where’s Jess?” I ask.
“They’re doing her some tests right now, you can’t see her,” Dani says.
“What happened?” James asks, looking at Dani concerned, scanning her as if checking to see if she has all her limbs.
“I don’t know,” Dani mumbles, staring at her feet.
“Dani?” I press.
“I really don’t. I was outside the club talking to… someone.”
James instantly tenses up.
“Yes, a guy,” I say impatiently. “Please continue.”
“There was some kind of fight inside the club.”
“The moron Jessica was with started it,” Parker says, appearing from a narrow corridor. “The whole place
was in chaos before long.”
I gasp. He’s got a black eye, and his lower lip is split. I’m suddenly not sure anymore that I want to see Jess right now.
“What happened to Jess?” I ask.
Parker looks from James to me, then says quietly. “She fell through a glass wall behind the bar. There was a ladder on the other side.”
I cover my mouth with both hands. James puts a comforting arm around me.
“How is she now?” he asks.
“No idea,” Parker says, obviously frustrated. “They won’t tell you anything if you’re not part of the family. The doctor talked to her mother, but she doesn’t seem capable of talking.”
“Jess’s mother is here?”
“I found her number in Jess’s phone and called her,” Dani explains.
“I think you should talk to her,” Parker says.
Dani looks at me wide-eyed, balancing from one foot to the other. I nod. She leads me through the labyrinth of corridors until we reach a waiting room. There are only two people in it. An elderly woman, reading what looks like the Bible.
And one of the dearest people to me, Jess’s mother. She’s curled into a seat, her thin frame looking more fragile than ever. She’s staring into space, twisting a strand of hair between her fingers.
“Mrs. Haydn?” I call, sitting next to her.
“My poor girl,” she says almost inaudibly.
I take her free hand between my palms and rub it energetically because it’s ice cold.
“What did the doctor tell you?”
“Two broken ribs, a collapsed lung and her left leg is fractured. I saw her before they took her for some more tests, I never-”
“Where is Mr. Haydn?” I interrupt, because her voice trembles to the point of breaking.
“His boss couldn’t find someone to replace his Sunday shift so he didn’t allow him to take the day off.” She breaks into tears.
I stare at her, searching for the right words, any words really, that might comfort her. But the truth is I’ve never really been able to comfort anyone. My words have a habit of transforming completely on their way out of my mouth, losing all their meaning, so I put my arm around her shoulders in a tender embrace, hoping the gesture conveys everything I don’t say.
James’s voice makes me leap to my feet. He’s walking toward us, accompanied by a doctor-a tall, balding man in a white coat, carrying a thin file under his arm. Dani trails in silence behind them. Mrs. Haydn stands up too beside me and I turn to her, forcing myself to come up with something, now at the last moment, but the sight of her contorted eyes and trembling lips blocks the words in my throat.
“You can see your daughter now, Mrs. Haydn,” the doctor says.
“How is she?” I ask him as James comes by my side, gently squeezing my hand in a silent encouragement.
“She will make a full recovery. But it will take some time,” he answers in an official, not unkind tone.
I turn to Ms. Haydn, expecting to find her as relieved as I feel but her expression hasn’t relaxed one bit.
“Mrs. Haydn, do you want to go see Jess?” I ask.
She looks at me terrified, as if I’d asked her to walk on burning coal. “You go first, my dear. I’ll go right after you.”
“Okay,” I stutter, looking questioningly at the doctor. He gestures for me to follow him and after a brief hesitation, I do.
“Please take care of her,” I whisper to James over my shoulder.
We don’t walk for long before the doctor stops, in front of a door. “She is still asleep now. Please remember, it looks worse than it really is.”
On that cheery note, he takes off. I stare after him for a few seconds, wondering if going in alone is wise then take a deep breath and push the door open. One glance at the bed and I understand Mrs. Haydn’s horror at the thought of seeing Jess. Any part of her body that isn’t covered in white bandages is bruised. I force myself to put one foot in front of the other, until I get to the head of her bed. There is a long, slim bandage on her cheek, and I dearly pray it won’t leave a scar behind. How could this happen to her? I should have never agreed to go to that godforsaken tap house. I should have never left her alone there with that bunch of idiots. I caress her non-bandaged cheek, reminding myself that the doctor said it looks worse than it really is.
I don’t know how, but my eyes end up gazing at the vein on the inside of her elbow. Of course they do. That’s all I could look at the last time I was in a room not very unlike this one, years ago. I bite my lip, refusing to let any of those tormenting memories invade my thoughts. But they do. One by one, they start pouring in, forming the horror movie I’d give anything to forget. Hot tears fall on my chest. They cut raw gashes into my heart. New ones, right next to the ones that never really healed in all these years.
My dearest Kate. Whom neither my parents nor I could ever really understand. Who retreated in a world of her own, so consuming and self-destructive, no one could reach her. There was nothing left of my Kate toward the end. Not a smile, not a joke. She was like a ghost, like a dry opal, devoid of all of its shine and beauty, so dry and mangled with creases it could shatter at the slightest tap. And shatter she did.
It wasn’t the drugs that killed her. At least not directly. My parents, like me, always secretly feared that one day she’d lose any wisp of control she had left and overdose. But she didn’t. She got shot. Ironically, she looked so much better than Jess when she was in the hospital. She only had one tiny bandage, right above her heart, and when I tucked the bed sheet over the bandage, also hiding beneath it her arms… her veins-the undeniable proof that there was much more poison in her body than the bullet they couldn’t get out-she looked as if she were asleep, ready to wake up any minute.
Only she didn’t.
But this won’t happen to Jess. She’ll get out of the hospital, and probably limp for a while and certainly be cranky, but she’ll be all right. I just wish she’d be awake already.
I brush my tears away and leave the room without a last glance at her. Stupid and absurd as it is, I can’t stop the tears from forming behind my eyelids when I look at her.
Her mum is leaning against the wall outside the room. To my relief, she looks like her usual self.
“She’s still asleep,” I say.
“Oh, the doctor said she’ll be asleep for a few more hours. I’ll just wait by her side until she wakes up.”
“Do you need me to bring you anything?”
“Thanks, dear. Your boyfriend already asked. I’m fine.”
“Oh, my boyfriend,” I stutter.
“He seems like a nice boy.”
I stare her. It took her two years for her to finally stop frowning whenever I mentioned Michael. “You don’t know him.”
“No, but he just ran six blocks to get you Starbucks coffee.” She points to something behind me. “That’s enough to earn him nice in my book.”
I turn around and find James sitting in one of the chairs in the waiting room, carrying two coffee cups and a paper bag, which I’m positive contains my favorite Starbucks grilled vegetable sandwich. I refrain from telling Mrs. Haydn that he most certainly didn’t walk those five blocks, because that doesn’t make it less nice of him.
“Go to him honey,” she beckons, “you look like you haven’t had coffee today.”
“I certainly haven’t,” I say.
“Dani and Parker went to your place to get you something to change into and bring some stuff for Jess. How is she?” James asks when I get to him, handing me the bag.
“Looks horrible, but she’ll be fine.” I open the brown paper bag. There is a grilled vegetable sandwich inside. “I’m glad Mrs. Haydn is holding up so well. She scared me a little before.” I take a bite from the sandwich and a few sips of coffee. “I’ll just stay here for whatever she needs.”
“And I’ll be here for whatever you need,” James says, holding up my chin.
“Thanks,” I say deeply moved.
“You want to go in there again with her mom?”
“No,” I say a little too quickly. “I mean, I don’t really… I’ll go in when Jess wakes up.” I bite into my sandwich again, avoiding his gaze.
“It’s all right, you know,” James says kindly. “To think about Kate.”
My lower lip starts trembling and I grit my teeth because I know what will follow. To no avail. The sobs start before the tears. Loud and choking and I bury myself in his arms like that night in his cinema room.
“Cry, baby,” he whispers. “I’m here for you. Let it all out.”
So much for other worlds. Kate was lost in hers. I, in mine. And what a wonderful world that was.
One populated by numbers and books. Books in which I could get lost and forget about the outside world at a moment’s notice. Even when I was in the outside world, be it at school, college, or one of my countless activities, I was never really anchored in reality. That’s the thing with reality and dreams-fantasies-if we try hard enough, we can lose ourselves in them. Then we can call our lives real even when they’re not.
Much like Kate, I never let anyone inside my world. Not Mum or Dad, not Jess. Not even Michael.
But as a stream of tears burns my cheeks, I know I managed to let James in it. Or maybe he pulled me out of it, making the reality seem like a dream instead. I’m not sure. It doesn’t matter right now. All that matters are his arms are around me, his comforting whispers in my ear.
They are real.
I spend the next two days running from Starbucks to Jess’s room and back. Jess is, as I predicted, in the crankiest mood ever. She insisted on the nurse taking off the bandage on her cheek so she could inspect her wound. She became even crankier afterward.
Her mum is doing remarkably well, taking regular naps on the couch in Jess’s room. I tried it too, but my back hurts so badly when I lie on it, I’ve given up on sleeping altogether. Her dad comes to visit in the evening, after he gets off from work.
James hasn’t left my side at all, and is now chanting apology after apology because he has to leave for a meeting with investors he absolutely can’t postpone.
“I’ll be back in four hours at the latest,” he says.
“I’ll be fine. Please go home and sleep after your meeting is over James. I can take care of myself.”
“Not a chance.”
He leans in and brushes my lips in what was supposed to be a quick kiss. But it transforms, as every kiss did in the past two days, into a deep, longing one.
“Hurry,” I say when we break off. “You won’t impress any investor if you don’t have time to shower before showing up at the meeting.”
“You could use a shower yourself,” he jokes, but I immediately feel uncomfortable. I’ve been wearing the clothes Dani brought me from the apartment for two days.
He cups my face in his palms and kisses my forehead once before disappearing in an elevator.