Chapter 19
CHAPTER 19
D arby was predictably confused, when she finally woke. Her big eyes blinked at Eli, and he had to physically resist the urge to brush her tumbly hair off her disoriented face.
“What’s going on?” she croaked.
“You showed up in my bedroom again,” he started.
Slowly, her eyes traveled around the room, taking in her surroundings. “Your bedroom is a hospital now?”
“I’ve been doing some decorating,” he said. He realized it was probably the wrong time for humor, but it had been his go-to defense mechanism so long he didn’t know how to survive without it. And he was relieved to see Darby’s shoulders relax slightly as a smile tugged the edge of her lips.
“It’s less sterile than it was before,” she said, smiling wider when he snorted a laugh.
“Ouch. Just for that, I’m stealing the pudding off your tray, as soon as it gets here,” he threatened before leaning forward to rest his fingers on her forearm. “You collapsed.”
Her brows rose, confused all over again.
“You showed up in my room and collapsed. It was very traumatizing for me. In the future, please refrain from causing me so much worry.” His fingers rubbed a soothing little trail on her forearm. “The good news is that they figured out what’s going on with you, what’s been causing all your confusion and blackouts.”
Her wide eyes widened impossibly farther. “How did they diagnose my crazy while I was unconscious?”
“It’s a really good hospital,” Eli said. He took a breath. “Do you want to wait for the doctor to explain it, or do you want me to mansplain, cobbling together a dumbed down version of what I was able to understand?”
She rested her hand on his. “Obviously I want you to mansplain it. Bonus points if you’re condescending and abrupt.”
He latched his thumb over her hand and gave it a squeeze. “You have this weird kind of tumor on your ovary. Sort of an alien thing, it’s been secretly communicating with your brain and telling it to do crazy things. They don’t think it’s cancerous, they’re going to have to operate, they’ll take an ovary and a fallopian tube. If my knowledge of female anatomy is correct, you’ll either regrow some new ones or you have more than one.”
Her lashes fluttered and she swallowed hard, but she didn’t look panicked. “So…so there might be a physical reason I’ve been acting weird? I’m not crazy?”
“Not any more than the other people we know,” he assured her. “Maybe less than Mack, who tried to snap secret photos of my teeth when I wasn’t looking.”
She laughed and groaned, pressing a hand to her midsection.
“Does it hurt?” he asked, concerned.
“I’m not sure if it hurts or if the alien tumor is tricking my brain into believing it hurts,” she said.
“Heads up, I think your doctor has a diagnosis crush on you. Whatever this is called, it seems pretty rare. He’s probably holed away somewhere, practicing his weird disease of the year acceptance speech.”
“If he doesn’t thank my weird tumor by name, I will be personally offended,” she said.
“You should sue,” he said.
She nodded her agreement, then paused. “Maybe I’d better wait until they operate, so they don’t mess it up on purpose to punish me for being litigious.”
The moment of levity faded when she took a deep breath and faced him. “I’m so sorry that I apparently showed up in your room again. At least now I can say the tumor made me do it.”
“If I had a nickel for every time a woman used a tumor as an excuse to sneak into my room in the middle of the night,” he said.
She gave a soft little laugh that faded. “Seriously, though. You don’t have to stay here. This is…” she motioned to the room around them, the one she’d been transferred to at some point in the night. “This is too much, especially given our lack of…knowledge of each other?”
“It’s okay, and I have nowhere else to be,” he said.
“Work?”
“I quit. I’m a fulltime weird tumor wrangler now.”
She laughed and groaned. “Stop it. There is no way you can stay here. I don’t even want to stay here.” Her eyes drifted around the tiny room and the lostness and fear he saw there pummeled his heart to smithereens.
“Darby, hey, it’s fine. I’m here, let’s work with it.”
She let out a breath and sagged into the bed, a strange mix of relief and mortification. “This is…”
He understood all she left unspoken. This was weird and awkward and embarrassing, but also necessary and right somehow. Someone needed to be there for her, to take care of her. Why not him? At the very least he was her neighbor, and this was the sort of thing neighbors did for each other. “If it makes you feel better, I’ll let you get my mail the next time I go out of town,” he said.
She giggled again, a pure sound that went straight to his chest and made it thump. He brushed it away, not wanting to be attracted to her when she was desperate, ill, and at her worst. It seemed wrong somehow, as if he were preying on her vulnerability. In real life, when they were both at their best, she would never go for him. It would be unfair to take advantage of her dependence on him, and he vowed not to do it. “Do you want anything? One of those large print crossword puzzle books I saw in the gift shop, perhaps?”
She rolled her eyes. “I have like ten of those at home.”
“They said you’re not allowed to eat, but maybe you’d like an overpriced stuffed animal or a twelve dollar rose that has probably been doused in pesticides and bleach to keep it alive?”
“Are you listing everything you can remember from the gift shop?” she asked.
“I haven’t gotten to the mood rings or umbrellas yet, so hold tight, we could be here a while,” he said
The team of doctors arrived then. Eli hovered uncomfortably, not certain if he should stay while they explained her diagnosis and treatment plan for her, but the room was so tiny the mass of medical experts blocked his exit. Trapped, he sat back and tried not to look as uncomfortable as he felt. Not that anyone noticed him. Darby was dazed, trying hard to take it all in. And the doctors shared that buzz of excitement an unusual diagnosis must bring. Each of them seemed intent on getting a piece of the action. A few asked questions, and several took notes. Eli guessed the hospital had some kind of policy about taking pictures of patients or they probably would have done that, too.
“See, what did I tell you?” Eli said when the doctors finally cleared out. “You’re the bell of the sick girl ball. Everyone wants a piece of Darby. Literally, like, they want to cut out a piece of you and keep it.”
She made a sound that was halfway between a laugh and a croak. He eased closer and rested his hand comfortingly on her forearm again. “How are you holding up, kid?” She wasn’t that much younger than him, only a couple of years, but in this moment she seemed like a child—vulnerable, innocent, and overwhelmed.
“I’m, uh, I don’t know.” Her hands twisted the sheet back and forth between them. “It sounds like I definitely have to have the surgery, right?” Big eyes rested on him.
“No. You don’t have to do anything. It’s your body.” She relaxed a little until he continued. “But it does sound like they think surgery is the best option, even if you can disregard their unhealthy interest in your tumor. It doesn’t sound like the kind of thing that’s going to disappear or get better on its own.”
She swallowed hard.
He patted her arm. “What’s going on? What are you so afraid of, specifically?”
“I’ve never had surgery before. I had never been to the hospital before Ham…and then he didn’t come home.” Her eyes welled with tears and she blinked them away before they could fall.
Eli searched around for a box of tissues, opened it, and handed her one. “Surgery is scary, but this is a really good hospital. I wasn’t just saying that earlier. My patients fight over going to this hospital. It’s primo, the good stuff.”
“You know you sound like a drug dealer right now.”
“How would you know?” he asked, eyebrow quirked.
“TV.” His reassurance worked, and she relaxed. “Speaking of, do you want to watch something? All this silence is unnerving.”
He handed her the remote.
“What do you want to watch?” she asked.
“Whatever. I don’t watch much, so I have no idea what’s on.”
She rolled her eyes. “Oh, you’re one of those.”
“One of what?”
“One of those highbrow snobs who thinks you’re too good for TV.”
“You make me sound condescending. That means you think I talk down to people,” he said and smiled when she laughed.
“Fine, I’ll admit that I’m a TV addict, the stupider the better. I can’t tell you how many hours I’ve wasted on reality TV. It’s pathetic.”
“I once spent seven days immersed so deeply in a role-playing game that I forgot to shower and had to go to the emergency room for dehydration because I also forgot to drink anything. Trust me when I tell you this is a judgment-free zone.”
“You’re easy to be with,” she said, sounding slightly surprised.
“Aren’t most people?” he asked.
“I don’t know a lot of people,” she confessed as she breezed through the channels. “My husband was easy to be around, as long as everything went his way.” She frowned. “That makes him sound bad, maybe even borderline abusive. I don’t mean it that way. Ham was good, but he was also kind of selfish. He liked to be babied and spoiled. Probably why he married someone half his age, because I was young enough to be easily trained.”
“Hmm,” Eli said, unable to take his eyes off her as she made the statement so casually. Her childhood had been stunted by becoming a bride to a much older man, and what had she done with the intervening years? Hidden in her house and watched TV. “When this is over, we maybe need to get you out a little more.”
She bit her lip, pondering that. “Maybe,” she agreed, tentatively.
They watched TV in strangely comfortable silence until an orderly came to retrieve her for surgery. They didn’t say goodbye, but Darby stared at him, doe eyed, lip between her teeth again.
“It’s going to be okay,” Eli said with certainty.
She let out a little breath, gave a tiny nod, and disappeared out of sight.