Chapter Twenty-Five #2
“Take care of him for me,” Rye says earnestly. “Tell him…tell him I’m going to break his other leg for scaring us like this.”
A small, almost real smile tugs on my lips. “I’ll tell him.”
“You don’t want to stay and see him again before we go?” Lowell asks Rye as I walk away with my tray.
“He knows I was there. Do you want to see him?”
Lowell shakes his head. “I’ve seen enough hurt people in my life.”
“Take my tray for me and meet me by your car.”
“Yes, sir.”
I blink and look back for a second.
Oh. So that’s how it is with them. I had no idea they knew each other like that.
The elevator doors close on me. The numbers for the floors flash above as I wonder when Rye and Lowell got together, if they even are together, or it’s just some hook-up/game-playing thing they do.
Unexpected. But so is everything about life.
At least Dan didn’t die unexpectedly today.
Though given he’s a free soloist, can his death ever really be called “unexpected?”
When the elevator stops, I step out onto the hospital floor with a weird mix of dread, relief, and anger swirling inside.
The corridor isn’t empty, but no one asks me who I am or where I’m going. I look around numbly. How is it possible there are other people buzzing and rushing about on the floor? Nurses, doctors, and some patients even. None of them at all aware of what I almost lost today.
None of them ask me who I’m visiting or where I’m going either.
I stop outside room 305 and take a slow breath. Dan’s alive. He’s going to be okay. I can handle this.
I step into the room and find him unconscious in the bed with IVs and wires all over. A sheet is carefully draped so his injured right leg isn’t on display. His face is bruised, his lips are busted… and I burst into tears.
Dan’s alive, yeah, but he’s more than a little broken.
In a way, I am too.
*
Dan
My tongue feels like sandpaper. My throat hurts. My eyes feel glued shut. But I hear voices and something inside me tells me I need to be present now. I have to return from the soft place where darkness has taken me.
“Remember he might be a little confused when he does wake up. He was lucid earlier, but he’s on strong medications.
It might take him a few minutes to come fully up out of it.
” A few beats and then. “Are you planning to spend the night in that chair? Want me to get you some pillows and a blanket, hon?”
“I can stay?” Sejin’s voice.
“Of course you can stay,” the unfamiliar woman chirps cheerfully. A gentle warmth pulls at me, trying to keep me from fully waking. “Though if you don’t want to, I wouldn’t blame you. Many more comfortable places to be. Your Dan’s doing well. We’ll call you if something happens.”
Is that a nurse? Yes, I think the other person must be a nurse.
I lick my mouth so I can speak, but it’s rough and dry. A garbled sound comes out.
“You finally gonna wake up and say hi to your sweetheart?”
I pull open my gummy eyes and see a pretty Black lady adjusting some tubing by my bed. Oh. I’m in the hospital. Did I already know that?
“Danny? Danny, are you waking up now?”
Ah, that Appalachian accent. I love it.
To my left, Sejin is sitting with his hair in a messy bun and with a very swollen face. He’s been crying. I feel an odd sense of déjà vu, but I can’t remember from when.
“Dan, you with us, honey?” the nurse says. “You know where you are?”
“The hospital,” I croak.
“That’s right, you’re in the hospital,” Sejin confirms.
“Do you know why?” The nurse asks.
I scan my body. Something about my right leg feels wrong. “My leg,” I say.
The nurse pats my hand. “Good. I’ll give you some privacy now. My name’s Shamika, and it’s written up there on the white board. Just push this button here if you need me. And your boyfriend’s here. He can help you.”
It hits me I don’t truly know why I’m here. Something with my leg, yes, but what? And how? Because if I fell trying to send Heart Route, I should be dead.
Why am I not dead?
Maybe I didn’t fall.
Maybe I’m here for something else entirely. A car wreck? A bear attack? Was I struck by lightning?
I remember being in a medical helicopter. Rye was there. Right?
But when Sejin leans forward, face crumpling with tears, I might not remember, but I know .
I did fall.
I tried to free solo Heart Route, and I fell.
But how?
“What happened?” I get out despite my dry tongue.
“You didn’t make it over the lip on the roof,” Sejin says. His voice is gritty with despair, and it sounds damaged. “You downclimbed and fell, or maybe you jumped. The ledge caught you.”
Fell? To the ledge? Rye and I had worked that downclimb and practiced my leap to the ledge for the “rest stop.” I had it down. What went wrong?
“I’m confused…”
“It’s all right,” Sejin says. “The meds they gave you can mess with your head.”
“I mean I don’t remember why I fell. Why’d I fall?”
“I’m not sure. I didn’t see it happen. The nurse said the trauma might cause a memory block.
Apparently, you couldn’t tell them when they rescued you up on the wall either.
But you don’t have a head injury, aside from a nasty cut on your face.
” Sejin’s fingers touch near my temple, and I wince. “And some chipped teeth.”
My tongue seeks out the sharp edges. Sejin mistakes the movement of my mouth as a request for water. He holds a cup with a straw for me to drink. It’s incredibly welcome, and I take several long gulps. The sensation is cool and relieving.
“You look a lot worse than you are, they tell me,” Sejin goes on, putting the water cup aside. “Your face is bruised up and your body is too. You’ve got a catheter in, so you don’t have to worry about getting to the bathroom for now. How do you feel?”
“Terrible,” I get out, and I’m relieved my mouth is working now. “Like I’m made of crumpled cardboard.”
“You’re made of flesh and bone, and that’s fragile enough,” Sejin murmurs.
I remember he’d said something similar to me once before.
Speaking of looking awful, I’ve never seen Sejin look so ugly—all blotchy and weird, with a wobbly mouth and puffy eyes. I almost laugh because normally he’s the most beautiful man in the world. Except I can’t find real humor in it because I’m the reason he looks that way.
“I’m sorry,” I get out, and it takes more effort than anything that simple should.
Sejin’s eyes fill with tears, and he leans down to kiss my forehead. His lips leave a cool imprint behind. “I love you,” he whispers in my ear. “Just get better. Don’t worry about anything at all but getting better.”
Sejin’s expression says it’s gonna be a long road. I scan my body again. My leg. Shit. How bad is it? Awful, I think.
I also think I need surgery. Don’t I? I remember consenting to scans and treatment. I remember serious faces. I remember Rye saying something like good thing you like a challenge.
Fuck.
“How long until I can train again?” I ask.
Sejin winces and pulls away. “Let’s focus on the present.”
What present? The one where I’m in a bed with no idea of what lies ahead? I don’t want to focus on that. That present sucks. Though I have some idea of the future if I strain for it. I think I remember talk of rods and pins for my leg.
Super fuck.
Whatever. It doesn’t matter. I’m alive, right? So, I’ll recover and come back better than ever.
I observe Sejin as I think. He holds my hand gently and tries to keep from crying. His lower lip wobbles and so does his chin. His eyes, which I love best when they’re hooded with lust or squinted up in a smile, are cast down, lids swollen. I can see how hard he’s working to keep himself together.
“What’s wrong? Am I going to lose my leg or something?” I ask. I’m halfway through imagining how climbing works with a prosthesis, if it can work with a prosthesis, when Sejin shakes his head.
“Unless it gets badly infected, it should be okay. There’s no sign of that right now, so…” He swallows. “The surgery is scheduled for tomorrow morning first thing. They’re going to put in rods, pins, and a metal plate. They anticipate it’ll heal well… they hope.”
“So why are you so upset?”
Sejin laughs but it’s devoid of humor. “What do you mean? You nearly died.”
“But I didn’t.”
“But you could have.”
“That’s true every day.”
Sejin goes silent and passes a hand over his face, and then he slowly stands. “Don’t, Dan. Don’t make light of this. I stood there in that meadow for hours and thought you were dead.”
“You thought I was dead?”
“Or worse.”
“Worse would definitely suck.”
Sejin’s hands clench at his side. “Stop for just one second and think about how you would feel if you had to wait for hours to know if I was okay.” He stabs a finger into his own chest. “To know if I was going to live or die?”
I frown. I don’t want to think about that. I kind of feel like I can’t think about it. “You’re fine,” I point out.
“Don’t be obtuse! You’re not stupid!”
“Everything okay in here?” Shamika’s voice cuts into the room, and she stands in the doorway, hand on one hip.
“Yeah, it’s fine,” I say.
She glances at Sejin with a surprised eyebrow raised, as if she hadn’t seen this coming from him, and I get that.
Sejin is always easy and sunny. Except right now he’s not.
That’s my fault, as well. The nurse looks back at me, confirming that I’m fine, before leaving and pointedly shutting the door.
Hey, at least I have a private room. With only MediCal to help pay for all this, I’m surprised by the decadence.
But maybe they think they can squeeze the cost out of me later.
Hell, they probably can. What do I know about how hospital bills work?
I’ve never had to spend the night in one before.
When Lowell helped me out after my sprained ankle, it was just a very, very, very expensive ER visit that I was eventually able to convince the hospital to mostly write off.
This, though—what with being airlifted off El Cap, tests, surgery, and staying overnight—God only knows what this bill is going to look like.