8. Harry
8
HARRY
I’m floating the next morning, and it has nothing to do with the meds they’re pumping into me. I wanted Ruby so badly, but there was no way I was screwing up our first time by making her do all the work … in a cramped hospital bed … with my friend snoring in the visitor’s seat.
I miss her presence beside me in bed the way I would miss my right arm. She has left a gaping hole through which I feel my essence gravitating towards her like bees to pollen. My eyes keep drifting to hers, the two of us exchanging glances that no one else would understand, and I already know that this is going to be our thing for the rest of our lives. We’ll be in our seventies and still messaging each other with our eyes.
Something has shifted between us overnight. Until now, the three of us have been a little family, bonding over silly games and telling stories, but now there’s me and Ruby, and Ronnie is like the distant cousin who’s trying to rediscover his niche. If he notices the change, he keeps it quiet.
The nurse comes in with her practical shoes, her ready smile, and her efficient bedside manner. “Morning, did you sleep well?” She aims the question at me, and heat instantly rises in my face. I hope it isn’t going to affect my temperature.
“I did, thank you.” I flash another glance at Ruby, whose expression is completely neutral.
The nurse unwraps the cuff to go around my arm. “The snow is already starting to thaw out there.” She doesn’t say the words out loud, but she means that when the roads clear, Ruby and Ronnie can go home.
“Much longer, and my socks would’ve been walking out of here by themselves.” Ronnie cricks his neck from side to side.
“How long do you think Harry will be kept in?” Ruby asks.
“A few more days.” The nurse records my blood pressure on the chart at the end of the bed and removes the thermometer from under my tongue. “You’re welcome to come back and visit him.”
It’s their dismissal.
The bubble has been popped, and I already feel the pang of loss inside my chest. It won’t be the same without Ruby and Ronnie. I’ll be left alone with my thoughts and my bruises while they go back to their regular routines, and their worlds return to normal.
My world will never be normal again, not now that Ruby Jackson is in it.
The conversation over breakfast is more subdued than it has been the past couple of days. The card games are quiet, and Ronnie doesn’t even cheat at Snap.
So, our ears all prick up when we hear the raised voice from the corridor.
“Where is my daughter? I’ve come to take her home.”
Ruby’s shoulders are hunched up around her neck like she’s already preempting leaving the tropical ambience behind and stepping into the sub-zero temperatures outside the building. I don’t recognize the voice, but it’s obvious this is aimed at Ruby.
The voice comes closer.
“I’ll be having words with whoever runs this place. My daughter has been missing for three days, and where do I find her?”
Ruby stands up, the chair legs scraping across the floor behind her. She doesn’t say a word. She doesn’t need to—the crumpled expression on her face is enough.
“Ruby…” I reach for her hand, but she doesn’t take it.
“Are you leaving?” Ronnie stands too, and I feel so useless stuck in this damned hospital bed with my arm in plaster and a tube inserted into the back of my hand.
I don’t know what’s going on, or what has prompted her mom’s anger—Ruby called home on the first day to let her know that she was safe—but my veins are already pumping with anxiety.
The door bursts open, and Ruby’s mom stops on the threshold, surveying the room with eyes like bullets. She’s wearing a heavy navy-blue coat and an ivory woolen scarf that almost covers her chin.
Her eyes settle on Ruby, and a shudder of something, disappointment maybe, passes behind her eyes. “Get your coat. You’re coming home,” she says.
“Mom, I told you?—”
“Now, Ruby!”
“Mrs. Jackson, ma’am.” I try to sit up, and Ronnie rushes over to help me, one arm supporting my shoulders and hauling me higher up onto the pillows. “It wasn’t Ruby’s fault. She had no choice with the snow?—”
“I don’t want to hear another word from you.” Mrs. Jackson narrows her eyes and jabs a finger in my direction. “If I find out that either of you two have touched my daughter?—”
“Mom!” Ruby grabs her coat from the back of the seat, and marches towards the door. “Let’s go.”
“Ruby, will you be back?” I hear the pleading in my own voice and pray that Mrs. Jackson is too irate to notice.
“Not if I can help it.” I sense her mom’s eyes linger on me a beat too long, like she’s trying to figure out exactly what has been going on while the three of us have been holed up in a hospital room.
Then she follows Ruby outside to the corridor and closes the door behind her.
Ronnie and I both stare at the door as if waiting for Ruby to come back and tell us that she has changed her mind. She doesn’t.
The silence is tangible, taut, and Ronnie breaks it first. “What happened last night?”
I slump back against the pillows and swallow hard. Did he hear us? Was he awake the whole time and only pretending to be asleep? “What do you mean?” I choose the innocent route.
“This is me you’re talking to, H. You can’t fool me. I saw the way you two were looking at each other this morning.”
I suck in a deep breath and puff up my cheeks, releasing the air slowly. “Nothing happened. It almost did,” I quickly add, “but it wouldn’t have been right. Not here. Not like this.”
“Thank fuck for that.” Ronnie scratches behind his left ear and scrunches up his face. “I love you, man, but I don’t want to be around when you screw the missus.”
“The missus?” I can’t help grinning at him, partly with relief that he didn’t see anything in the night, and partly to distract myself from Ruby’s absence.
“Don’t tell me you’ve changed your mind now that you’ve met the mother-in-law.”
“It’ll take more than an angry mom to keep me away from Ruby.” I get the impression that Mrs. Jackson is used to getting her own way, but Ruby knows her own mind, and won’t let anyone stand in the way of what she wants. I hope.
“So, what are we going to do about it?”
“We’re going to show her that I’m serious. That I meant every word I said.”
Ronnie grins at me. “I like her, even if she did accuse me of cheating at cards.”
“You always cheat at cards.”
“Shh.” Ronnie raises a finger to his lips. “Don’t give all my secrets away.”
With Ronnie’s help, I send a van load of flowers to the library where Ruby works. I know where she lives—I dropped her home in the taxi after the birthday party—but I don’t want her mom to get in her two cents’ worth of negativity. I understand that she was concerned about Ruby’s safety during the blizzard, but I’m still reeling from her reaction to me and Ronnie.
I mean, is there a safer place to be holed up than a hospital?
I don’t know what I expect Ruby to do when she receives the flowers, but I’m disappointed when she doesn’t even call the hospital to say thank you.
The following day, I request that the local radio station plays ‘Wuthering Heights’ by Kate Bush and dedicate the song to Ruby Jackson.
And nothing.
“Maybe she didn’t hear it,” Ronnie suggests. He’s playing Solitaire, alone, the cards spread across the mobile table in my room. “It was a long shot.”
He’s right. The thump-thump of the headache that has been my constant companion since the accident has ebbed away, and although my eyes are still heavy, and I’m sleeping twelve hours a day, when it comes to Ruby, I’ve never been able to think more clearly.
“What about theater tickets?” Ronnie peers up from the card game. He doesn’t seem in any hurry to go back to New York, and for that I’m grateful.
It’s a great idea … for anyone else. But not for Ruby. I haven’t known her for long, but I think that Ruby will be more impressed by thoughtful gestures than by grand expensive ones. Then it comes to me, and I know what to do.
With the help of several nurses, one of whom is the sister of a publisher, we locate a local author who has been compared to a modern-day Emily Bronte, and I arrange for her to visit the library and discuss books with Ruby.
I’ve never been so nervous in my life. I spend the rest of the day eying the door to my hospital room, waiting for it to open and for Ruby to fling her arms around me and tell me that no one has ever made her feel so special.
But she doesn’t come.
We shared something special. I will never be able to erase the memory of Ruby straddling me with her breasts exposed, her hair cascading over her shoulders, the way she kissed me back with such passion.
I didn’t misread it. I know I didn’t.
So, why the silence?
“Do you want me to go and find her?”
Ronnie has been back to the hotel to shower, change his clothes, and get a decent night’s sleep, but he has still been arriving shortly after breakfast with a basket filled with sweet pastries and fruit, and staying until lights out. Flights out of Chicago are still canceled, and he said he has nothing better to do, but I think he’s secretly worried how I’ll react to the news of Alessandro’s death.
And, whether he wants to admit it or not, he’s already invested in me and Ruby too.
I shake my head. I don’t want to hear that she isn’t interested in me. I don’t want her to ask Ronnie to make me stop. I’m not ready for disappointment, not on top of everything else.
When the nurse pokes her head around the door later that same day, my heart almost leaps out of my chest. “Telephone call.” She comes in, pulls the covers back, and helps me onto my feet.
“Who is it?”
My heart is pounding so loudly, I think I’ve misheard her when she says, “Your father.”
I glance at Ronnie who keeps his head down, his face scrunched up in disappointment. He’s nowhere near as disappointed as I am; I can barely drag my feet along the corridor to the phone in the nurse’s station.
The nurse leaves me to take the call in private, and I raise the phone to my ear, my heart skipping erratically with the fading adrenaline rush. “Dad?”
His clipped voice drums home the aching disappointment: Ruby isn’t going to call. “You’re still alive then?”
I don’t respond.
“I couldn’t get a flight. The blizzard,” he continues. “Lizzie and I, we’ve tried to keep things straight in the office, but there are some … issues that require your attention.”
“Okay. Thanks, Dad.” That's all I can manage.
“How are you? When are they sending you home?”
“Soon. I’ll be home soon, Dad.”
I end the call. Back in my room, I climb into bed and roll onto my side with the covers pulled up to my chin—I can’t deal with Ronnie’s questions.
I’m still waiting to hear from Ruby the next day when the doctor announces that I’m ready to be discharged. I want to ask the nurses if they’ve received any telephone messages, but I don’t want to sound desperate. Needy. Pathetic.
Ronnie fetches clean clothes from my hotel room and helps me dress. I take one last look at the room where I first kissed Ruby Jackson and make my way through the hospital to the waiting cab outside.
I’m quiet in the car on the way to the airport. Ronnie has taken care of the tickets and settled my hotel bill, and he doesn’t press me for conversation.
So, I’m caught off-guard when the cab stops outside the library where Ruby works.
“Why have we stopped here?”
“I’m not traveling back to New York with you moping like a kid who lost his favorite ball.” Ronnie leans across me and opens the passenger door. “Go speak to her. I’ll wait here.” When I don’t move, he says, “Go get the girl for chrissakes.”
My legs are trembling as I climb out of the taxi and make my way into the library. This is Ruby’s natural habitat, I tell myself— a backdrop of bookcases overflowing with other universes and magic and adventure. I feel as close to her here as I did in the hospital, because I’m breathing the same air as her, I’m walking in her footsteps, I’m seeing what she sees when she’s working.
At the front desk, I ask the manager if I can speak to Ruby Jackson.
Her eyes twitch behind her spectacles. “I’m sorry, Ruby isn’t here. Can I help?”
My stomach is lurching. This is it. This is goodbye, and I don’t know if I can face not seeing her again.
“No… Thank you.”
“Would you like to leave a message?”
I peer around the library and realize that there are no flowers. Not a single bloom. Not a rose petal under a bookcase, not a lily spreading its pollen like fairy dust across the reading carrels, not even a whiff of their scent.
“No, it’s okay.” I turn around and start walking away.
“Who shall I say was looking for her?” the woman calls out.
“No one.” I salute her on my way out.