Chapter Four
Elliot
My head pounded as I came to. I curled into the fetal position without realizing it. It was only when the doctor said something about my position that I became aware of my behavior. “He must be in pain. Get him Tylenol.”
My eyes were closed, so the doctor must not have realized I was awake. I just didn’t want to deal with the overhead lights.
“Head hurts,” I mumbled.
The doctor touched the wound. It felt like he was sticking a knife into it. It was the first indication I had of an open wound. I hissed and tried to move away, but I didn’t get very far while lying on the small hospital bed.
“Your headache will go away in a few days. You’ll need to see your primary care doctor. They will refer you to a sports doctor.” The doctor’s words fell short of soothing me.
Was sending Baby Jesus flying a sport? If so, I totally won the award.
I moved onto my back with no small amount of pain. “Why a sports doctor?”
“They’ll be able to assess your cognition. They’ll look for any lasting damage to your brain.”
And what exactly could doctors do if there was brain damage?
It seemed there weren’t many options other than to let the brain heal.
But I wasn’t a doctor. Obviously. If I were, I didn’t think I’d be stupid enough to ride a bike in the middle of the night while I was so high I could literally see the earth spin on its axis.
After that, the doctor didn’t tell me much I didn’t already know. He went on a little too long about the dangers of hitting my head again. It wasn’t as though I had planned it the first time. Why would I plan to hit my head at all, especially a second time? And besides, Baby Jesus needed a break.
After handing me discharge instructions and explaining them further, the doctor began to leave the room.
“Doctor,” I said, sitting up. My head felt like it was splitting open, as if it were a coconut with a knife stuck inside, trying to pry it open. But sitting up was getting easier and a little less painful.
The doctor stopped at the curtain and met my gaze.
“Someone came to visit me. Can you tell me who that might have been?” I remembered how the person had made me feel more than anything. Whoever it had been, it left me with a sense of peace unlike anything I’d ever felt before. I was pretty sure it was a man because he smelled of spicy cologne.
The doctor seemed confused. “I’ll ask the nursing staff, but I don’t think anyone has visited yet.”
Instead of arguing with the doctor, I simply nodded.
The doctor left, and the nurse came in with a bag full of my stuff, including my phone. I thanked him and immediately called Joel.
Joel answered on the second ring. “Dude, where’s my bike?”
Oh, shit. That was right. What the hell happened to it?
“I need you to come pick me up.”
“Where are you?” Keys clinked together, then a door shut.
“The hospital.”
Joel drew a breath. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah, I wrecked your bike. Sorry, Joel.”
“I’m just glad you’re not dead.”
“Not yet,” I said as a joke, but it didn’t come out that way. Instead, it came out much more dramatic.
“You shouldn’t talk like that. That’s not the kind of thing you want to manifest. Money.
A hot dude willing to fuck you. Think that kind of thing into existence.
” Joel was into all that woo-woo stuff. He thought he could manifest anything he wanted.
He thought he was a Pied Piper. All he had to do was play the right tune.
I don’t know if I believed in any of that, but I thought sometimes a person got the exact life they lived, whether they wanted it or not. Hence, my being in debt up to my eyeballs and almost dying. “Great words of wisdom, man.”
Joel arrived in ten minutes. As soon as he saw me, he sucked in a breath. “Holy shit. You look terrible.”
I sighed. “Thanks. I feel terrible, too.”
“Let’s get you home.”
I winced. I had a shift at the restaurant I couldn’t miss, especially with a medical bill to pay. Instead of whining to Joel about my financial problems, I leaned on him and said, “I really am sorry for wrecking your bike.”
“We can fix it, right?”
I was good at fixing things. My house proved that well enough.
But it wasn’t as though I had a choice but to learn.
My family had never had enough money to hire someone else to do things for them.
We had to learn. I could help with anything hands-on.
I had an old car because it was cheaper to fix it myself than to buy a new one.
And my side gig was fixing my friends’ vehicles when something broke.
“I can fix the bike. No problem.” But I couldn’t fix anything if I were dead. Joel might have a point about not joking about something that serious.