Chapter 11
Chris
“How soon..." Daphne gasped for breath. “After the bite…” wheeze, “do you think the radioactivity starts?”
“Shh,” I stroked her hair and fought to keep my voice even. “Please try to stop talking. You need your breath to breathe.”
She stood—barely—doubled over the hospital bed, the pain too much to take lying down. Too much to take standing up. She’d been changing positions every few minutes for the past hour and a half, trying to find something, anything that would provide the comfort the drugs weren’t.
My teeth ground together. The words on my phone blurred together as if I’d removed my glasses. The experience was unique, the chemicals in my body thrashing and surging, blinding me with rage and terror.
“I’m going to try to find the doctor again. I don’t know how this is acceptable to them, but—”
“No, stay.” She gripped my hand and squeezed weakly. “Talking... ohhh, God, this hurts... makes me feel normal. You can always... give them a bad Yelp review later.” Even with her pain, nausea, and swollen limbs she was making jokes. My lips tried to find a way to smile, but they seemed to have forgotten the movement. “One star. Did not perform Christmas miracles.”
I tried to read more, but it was no use. I’d been poring over articles about black widow, brown recluse, and every other type of monster spider bites in the New England Journal of Medicine .
Despite its bad reputation, black widow neurotoxin was no worse than that of any other spider. For most people, the pain ran the gamut anywhere between hardly noticeable to… that grumpy-looking yellow guy on the pain chart under the nurse’s board.
Daphne was one of the very few who were heavily affected. And holy shit, she was affected. In the car, she’d slumped, unconscious, into her seat. I’d swerved off the road, shouting her name, rousing her enough to get her to breathe and say a few words.
“Chris, I don’t… think… I love spiders anymore.”
I’d careened into the ER bay. Her whole arm had swollen to the point the nurses had to cut down the sleeve of her jacket to get it off her. She was puking up her cocoa and kettle corn and moaning in pain. Blacking out when it became unbearable.
They’d immediately hooked her up to an IV with narcotics, muscle relaxers, and anti-nausea meds, but so far nothing seemed to take the edge off.
“Okay then, keep talking.”
“I keep waiting for my amazing spidey senses. Climb walls. Can you imagine how easy it would have been to retrieve that skull from below the ravine tracks. I could have just..." She mimed the Spiderman hand gesture. “And it would be like shooom. Ahhh,” she winced, gripping her head.
When she looked up, all the blood had drained from her face. “That hurt really bad. Do you think that’s the first sign?”
“Of?”
“Of me turning into Spiderwoman?”
I sat, and then immediately got back to my feet. There was nothing else to do but pace, seethe, and rub her back. “If that spider was radioactive, I’m pretty sure we’re all contaminated, and we have bigger problems than defeating the Vulture or the fact that we haven’t seen a fucking doctor in over ninety minutes.”
“Who?”
“The doctor. What is taking them so goddamned long? This entire hospital has twelve parking spaces, and I’m pretty sure one of them was labeled Ambulance Only. What other patients could they possibly be seeing?”
“Other guy. Vulture. Who—?” Daphne asked before dry heaving into the blue plastic emesis bag I held under her face.
“The Vulture.” I stroked her hair. I didn’t know if I should try to distract her or what. Everyone wanted something different when they were in pain.
Once the nausea subsided, I took her pulse. It was fast, but not terribly so, and that was to be expected in her state. I knew nothing of spider bites other than the journal articles I’d been frantically combing through. I took a deep breath and pushed my glasses higher up on my nose. “The first Spiderman villain. From the comics. He has an electromagnetic anti-graviton generator-powered flying harness that allows him to fly up to ninety-five miles per hour and reach an altitude of over eleven thousand feet.”
She blinked at me. Her mouth dropped open.
“I’m a dentist. Does my geekiness come as a shock?”
“I figured you were, I just didn’t know your fandom. I took you for a Superman guy. The glasses and all.”
“DC Comics doesn’t have the moral ambiguity Marvel does. That’s what makes it interesting.”
“You sound like a sixth grader.”
“You wanted to know what kid-me was like. I was a comic book geek.”
I carefully lifted her swollen hand again to check out the bite. Nothing in the tiny black and white pictures in the journal articles had given me any insight into why a spider bite would cause this much harm. I wasn’t this kind of a doctor, anyway. I was just impotent. There wasn’t even a dollar figure I could throw at this problem to get it to go away. It was agony watching her, unable to help.
The sliding door groaned on its track, and a woman in sporty scrubs and a fleece jacket entered the room, her dark hair slicked back into a neat bun. Sneakers splashed garish colors into the anemic space.
“How ya doing, Love?” Her voice was low and calm as she addressed Daphne.
Daphne couldn’t talk but gave a thumbs-up.
Liar.
“There’s been no change in her pain levels. Why hasn’t she been seen before now? There has to be more you can do.”
“I’m Kelly. I’m the PA.” She addressed Daphne. “Still okay if we talk with him in the room?”
Daphne nodded. “Please.” Her face had paled again. She was in the middle of another painful muscle spasm.
“We’re going to admit you, sweetie. We’ve ruled out MRSA, but since the morphine and the baclofen don’t seem to be doing much, we’re going to go ahead and administer an antivenin.” Kelly turned to me. “She has no history of asthma?”
I paused. “I don’t know.” It felt like I’d known her forever, but the question highlighted how little I actually knew about her. It made my feelings seem… cheap and dishonest. Fuck.
Daphne shook her head once, her face tight with constricted muscles.
“Any other known allergies?”
“I don’t know,” I shouted. “Why have you waited this long?”
“Antivenin has a higher rate of complications and allergic reaction,” she answered calmly, probably used to dealing with people like me. “We have to rule out a number of other things before we give her the hard stuff. It’s hard to diagnose a spider bite, unless you see it happen. You didn’t, did you?”
“No.” I gritted my teeth.
“No one does. Spiders don’t bite where you can see them. Until we get your antivenin, we’re going to try to make you more comfortable by increasing your morphine. But we need to monitor you more closely, and we need the beds here for an incoming casualty event. I’m sending you to the ICU.”
The ICU.
Hearing those words was like stepping onto the ice of a half-frozen lake. Solid footing, giving way as the surface shattered underneath me.
Kelly put her hand on my forearm. “It’s only temporary. Antivenin works very quickly.” She turned to Daphne. “Once we get it in your IV, the pain should be gone in a few minutes. You’ll be out of here in a few hours, okay?”
“Hours? I thought you said it works in minutes.”
“We don’t have any in stock. It’s coming from Knoxville.”
“There’s nothing closer? They can’t medevac it?”
The PA glanced at Daphne’s tight face and gave a sympathetic smile. “It’s not exactly an emergency.”
“Not a—look at her!”
“Chris, it’s okay.” Her voice was weak and thready. “They’re going to give me more painkillers.”
The PA stood at the workstation in the corner of the room and processed the admissions, her fingernails tapping rapidly on the keys.
I shook my head and sighed. “Cilantro jelly.” I crossed my arms and leaned against the wall.
I inhaled slowly, feeling my lungs expand before I let the air go. I didn’t realize how long it’d been since I’d taken a deep breath. “Only you would feel bad for the jelly no one else wanted. It’s probably been on that shelf since the eighties, and that spider’s been using it for a home ever since.”
“I don’t think..." she licked her lips, “Spiders... live that long.” I rooted through her bag for a lip gloss or something to moisten her dry lips. Nothing. I made a mental note to pick up some lip balm to have around for her. Then I canceled that mental note, remembering she wasn’t mine to have lip balm around for.
How could I care for her, how could I protect her if she wasn’t mine?
I trusted that it would be okay. This would be okay because I had no other option. The doctors had a plan. We weren’t out of the woods yet, but we were going to the ICU, a situation that filled me with both hope and dread.
At least she’d be out of pain.
Twenty minutes later I sat in the recliner next to her bed, holding her hand and watching her face contort with pain, even in her opioid-induced drowsiness.
“Is it any better?”
“Yeah,” she winced. “Still worse than getting a migraine and cramps at the same time, but it feels... survivable.” Her gray eyes met mine, but she was too drunk on painkillers to communicate much. “I thought I was going to die. Thank you, Chris.”
“I thought—never mind. I’ll be thankful when you get the right medicine.”
She looked down at our interlocked fingers. It didn’t seem right to withhold my affection. For what? To keep her locked out of my heart. She was already in my heart. A permanent scar in the tissue. And she needed every bit of affection I could give her while she suffered.
“No, really, thank you. You acted so quickly.”
My eyes focused on the IV bag behind her as I replayed the imagery of the past few hours. The thud of her head hitting the car window when she passed out. The stillness of everything in my car, even my heart, when I didn’t know if I’d make it to the hospital in time. I hadn’t thought to call 911 from the road. I just turned around and drove straight back to where I’d noticed the big blue “H” signs on the road. The terror that gripped my guts contrasting the easy glide of the gas pedal under my foot. My arms remembered the weight of her body after she’d lost muscle function; it was a rag doll I carried into the hospital, not the strong, vibrant woman she’d been an hour before. I hadn’t even turned off the car or shut my door. A good Samaritan had realized what was happening, parked my car, and followed me in with my keys.
I didn’t want to think about why I’d reacted the way I did. It was more than fear. More than humanitarian concern. If it had been anyone else, I would’ve kept a cooler head. I wouldn’t have felt like it was my own life on the line.
Finally, she’d fallen asleep. I studied her pained face as she slept, grateful for every rise and fall of her chest. I kissed her straight, unlined brow, above eyes that held the wisdom of a life lived with hardship, despite how much she tried to downplay it.
I wanted nothing more than to curl around her and never let her go. I wanted— I needed —to make it all better for her. To facilitate her dreams. To make our own family traditions. To be her family.
To do that, I needed to give her up.
Two years was nothing. She didn’t realize it. Not at twenty-four. That was the real wisdom that came with age: how quickly life passed. She smiled slightly in her sleep. I smiled back at her. It would hurt to let her go for this little piece of our lives, but she’d be back in my arms in no time.
I felt movement around me. I heard low voices and the buzz of the overhead fluorescent tubes. The IV rack was gone. The bed empty. I reached for my glasses in a panic.
Daphne stood in front of my chair, smiling widely.
“Surprise! I’m all better.” She fell into my lap.
I glanced at my watch. I’d been out for hours.
“What? How?”
“That antivenin is great stuff. I could feel my body coming back to life. All the pain fizzled out of me like bubbles in a can of Mountain Thunder.” Her fingers wiggled in the air like carbonation.
“Why are you smiling like that?”
“It’s dark outside. We can drive through the Merry Lights of Christmas.”
It was dark. We’d been here the whole day. “It’s late. We need to get home.”
“That’s exactly what I was thinking. So, here’s the plan: we get hot cocoas, we drive through the Christmas lights, pick up some Christmas Eve Chinese for dinner so we can eat lo mein with chopsticks out of the cartons like people in movies, then tomorrow we get an early start back to Knoxville.”
“Nice try. Home is Knoxville. We have a three-hour drive ahead of us.”
“Knoxville?” The ICU nurse was unhooking tubes from the wall, scrunching her nose like something had decomposed in the room. “Ain’t going to be no three-hour drive. Ice storm’s coming from the mountains.”
Daphne quirked her head and gave me pouty face. “Holiday traditions?”
She’d been basically starved for holiday joy her whole life. As much as I hated it, I had to be a Scrooge this time and swipe the proverbial pennies from her eyes.
She looked so hopelessly beautiful, even after her Spiderman poisoning and a stay in the ICU. My fingers itched to untangle the snarls in her hair. To rake those strands silky smooth again until liquid silver streamed through my fingers. To grasp her face close to mine and kiss the smirk off her lips. To give her everything she was ever denied because of lack of money, or opportunity, or attention, or love.
I gritted my teeth. “No.”
Her smile didn’t even falter.
“We’re going home. Real home. Knoxville. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky earlier today. We’ll beat the weather.”
“Cocoa?”
I imagined thick chocolate droplets jostling out from a tiny hole in a to-go cup lid, embedding into the interior of my ten-day-old car, and leaving a stench of rotten milk no car detailer could remove.
“Fine.” I gritted my teeth. I couldn’t give her what I really wanted to give her—everything, all the time, for the rest of my life. After tonight, this would be it—saying goodnight at her dad’s front door, our fingertips touching until the very last minute, a final kiss to her forehead. Goodbye for two years. Goodbye forever was more like it, considering she’d probably meet someone else in the meantime.
At least I’d always have the fetid smell of rotten milk as a memory of these perfect two days together.
The ER was bustling when we made our way out of the hospital. People crammed into the waiting area, quietly crying and staring off into the distance. Doctors and nurses slalomed from room to room as we dodged their paths.
“What’s going on?” I asked the only nurse standing still, wrapping the cords around a machine in the hallway.
“Big pile-up on Route 40. We’re the closest trauma center, so everyone’s coming to us.
“A trauma center who didn’t have black widow antivenin,” I said under my breath. “Let’s go.”
“We’re not taking 40 are we, Chris?”
“That’s the fastest way to Knoxville.”
“Not tonight, it won’t be,” the nurse cut in. “Lanes are closed because of the overturned tractor trailer.”
I groaned. “Thanks.”
I grabbed Daphne by the sleeve of my coat she was wearing, steering her through the crowded halls.
“Chris, wait. We have to talk.”
“The three hours in the car aren’t enough?”
“Probably more like four if we can’t take Route 40. And no, I want to talk first. I know you want to put this off until you think I’ve forgotten how much I want to be with you, but I promise I haven’t. I won’t.”
“Daphne. I can’t.” My words came out so rough they hurt my throat. A middle-aged man in a jumpsuit jerked his head toward us, before looking away again, minding his own business. Between the piped-in pop Christmas music and sounds of an overextended ER, of course I’d be the one to draw attention.
I needed to get out of here. Away from the noise and people and the smell of the hospital.
I needed the security of my car, the blare of loud hip hop until we reached Knoxville.
I needed Daphne safe and sound and very far away from me.