Chapter 27 #2
This is the trouble with moving away from home: Who do you rely on when things go south?
Perhaps Jane is right to go back to Philly where she isn’t reliant on an annoyed ex-boyfriend.
At least she had someone to call. Jane and I relied on each other so much in New York; being together for so long meant we neglected to build other friendships here.
In some ways, I’m luckier than her; I have Des and Jo, and now Sadie, and I know other people in the office would help me if I needed it.
We’ve built an amazing company. My chest warms with the whole idea of it.
The least I can do for Jane, despite all her strange behavior, is to be here for her now.
“Just as well your work is flexible,” she says. “If this had happened to you and you’d called me at my finance job, no way would I have been able to leave.”
That comment should sting, but somehow it doesn’t, like I’ve slowly become immune to it all.
I would never call Jane now. My mind skips over all the stuff at the office I had to abandon.
Coming out to help could wipe out my entire week.
My inclination is always to give, but I was too amenable with Jane when we were together.
She always wanted a lot from me. After so long, I can’t imagine not being friends with her, but all the stuff lately has made me wonder.
And God, I need to start drawing some boundaries.
“Don’t kid yourself. I still have a mountain of work to do. I’ll have to spend all week catching up.”
And she starts to cry.
Okay, so maybe that wasn’t the most tactful approach. “God, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that to come out so bluntly.”
My phone buzzes in my pocket. Saved by the bell. But when I pull it out, it’s a number I don’t recognize.
“Hello?”
“Alan here. I’m your taxi. I’m on Beach Walk.”
“We’ll be with you in five minutes.”
I detach her lock from her bike, pick it up, and secure it to the railings along the boardwalk.
Not that I think anyone would want to steal it in this state, but she can come back later to collect it.
I wrap my arm around Jane and manage to get her on her feet, and she leans on me, cradling her elbow as we move slowly across the boardwalk to where a portly man is standing next to a white Hyundai.
He scans down her body, frowns, and starts muttering about having injured passengers in his cab.
I talk to him about how we need to take her to the ER, that it’s not as bad as it looks, and he purses his lips but nods.
Once I maneuver her into the back seat, I leap in the front, and then the driver does the slowest trip known to man down the road to the hospital.
When we pull in, a nurse comes out, talks to Jane, and then calls a doctor out.
In minutes, she’s on a gurney going straight back to be seen.
Jane clutches my fingers and begs me not to leave, so I sit through an X-ray and a head scan and then we wait.
Eventually, the doctor tells us she’s broken an arm and her collarbone, and they’ll need to put the arm in a cast and immobilize the collarbone with a sling.
They think her head is fine, but he lectures us both about keeping an eye on it, and I start to wonder whether she could go to Philly for a few days.
It’s not that far away, after all. They treat all her scrapes and give her painkillers, and all the while she doesn’t let go of my hand.
I’m not happy about her clutching my fingers, but it seems churlish when she’s crying and talking about how the hell she’s going to manage, what her work will say, how she’s got so much on her plate, and that Kevin is going to be livid.
“How did you do it?” I ask.
“I don’t know! One minute I was cycling along, and the next minute I was flying over the handlebars.”
“Christ, you’re lucky it wasn’t worse.”
She glances at me. “You think this is lucky? Why do you always have to try and find a positive in everything?”
What? I was trying to make the best of a bad situation. She didn’t break her neck, did she?
She must read something in my face because she looks away.
Then she says, quietly, “I’m sorry, James.
I really appreciate you coming out to help me.
Thank you.” She squeezes my fingers again.
The strange, insensitive Jane I’ve seen more recently has vanished, at least for the moment.
Her eyes scan over my face. “Will you stay while they put the cast on?”
I nod mutely.
After a lot of back and forth, we get out of the hospital, and I pay for an Uber to take us back to our old apartment.
“Will you come up?” she says as she struggles with the door of the building and I push it open for her. “Goddamn this sling … It’s going to be so difficult even to do everyday tasks.”
I’m resigned to the idea that my workday is a write-off.
The gray walls tilt in on me as I walk through the lobby, and my stomach turns over.
I haven’t been back here since Kevin turned up grinning at our door with a bunch of flowers, that fateful night on the roof.
Jane clutches my arm as she limps along, unaware.
Once we’re in the elevator, she slumps against the paneling, face white, then shifts so she can lean on me. All I can think is how wrong it feels.
When we reach the fifth floor, we head slowly down the corridor, and she props herself up next to the apartment door, breathing heavily as her teeth worry her bottom lip. “I’m going to have to call work and tell them what’s happened.”
I nod, taking the key from her bag and inserting it into the lock.
It’s like muscle memory: It sticks in the same way it always did.
I swore I was going to oil it, but I never got around to it.
I blink rapidly at the small room with the worn couch and the mustard-colored walls.
This place has loomed so large in my memory since that day on the roof that I’m almost surprised that it’s just a dingy, cramped apartment—not threatening at all.
I would never have wanted things with Jane to end the way they did, but coming here …
a sudden fierce gladness courses through me.
In some ways, Jane is right: We were too comfortable with each other, and our relationship became a habit.
We shared so many firsts, but over time it shifted into something built on safety and ease rather than anything vital, like how much we enjoyed each other’s company or were attracted to each other.
“I hope they don’t fire me.”
“Your work? Why would they do that?”
“One of my coworkers got pregnant, and they got rid of her. They made up some bullshit excuse that she wasn’t performing, but everyone knew it was because they thought she wouldn’t pull her weight.”
“Christ, are you serious?”
“Yeah, it’s one of the reasons I want to leave.”
She sighs as she moves past where I’m standing and gingerly lowers herself onto the couch. This is the most normal conversation I’ve had with her since I left here.
“Should I make some coffee?”
“Yes, please,” she says. “Sadie’s nice,” she calls out from the living room as I take two mugs out of the cupboard, and I stare at the old Formica of the countertop as I place the cups carefully down on it. Is she fishing? I don’t want to tell Jane anything about what’s going on with Sadie.
“She’s been a lifesaver at work,” I say. Wrong choice of words, James. “She’s an excellent programmer, and people like her are few and far between.”
Silence. I move around the kitchen on autopilot, filling the coffeemaker with water and putting grounds into a filter before switching it on.
“I think she’s got a bit of a crush on you,” she says, and I’m so glad she can’t see my face.
All I can think about is those cool, interesting gray eyes fixed on me.
The way she chews her lip when her book gets exciting, or she’s stuck on a programming problem.
Her soft lips under mine. I hope she has got a crush on me because I’ve definitely got a crush on her.
The machine starts spitting hot water through the grounds and steam curls up around the side of the lid. Don’t say anything, James.
I walk back through to the living room and sink into the couch a respectable distance away from Jane, but she shuffles along and leans on me as the coffeemaker chugs away in the kitchen.
“Her expression whenever she looks at you!” she says, chuckling. “Like you’re some kind of superhero.”
She’s goading me; I just don’t understand why. Did Jane not admire me at all? I always admired her ambition.
“I can’t believe Pops thought she was your girlfriend!” she adds.
Ah. I want to groan out loud. “Why’s that?”
She tsks. “She wouldn’t stand up to anyone about anything!”
Sadie sits with me while I cook and listens to me when I want to talk.
She helped me back to the apartment when I was drunk and ran after me the night of the meal to check I was okay.
What is standing up for someone? Is it confronting scary things on their behalf, or is it standing next to them and giving them support so they can do it for themselves?
A quiet superhero. People like Sadie are everywhere, every day, being ignored by everyone, yet happy in other people’s ignorance of the role they play.
They don’t need anyone’s affirmation. They know exactly what they do.
Jane used to counter every story I told her about work with one of her own.
Sadie’s calm listening and funny comments warm me from the inside out.
But God, I am done with this conversation. “Weren’t you going to talk to your boss?” I say.
She turns away with a long sigh. Then she makes a face, picks up her phone, and presses the screen.
“Paul, it’s Jane. How are you? Yes, I know … I’m sorry to call while the markets are open, but I’ve just left the hospital.”
I listen as she runs through what happened today and her injuries.