Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
CLOVER
I’m officially part cyborg.
Dr. Romanescu showed me the post-op X-rays, pointing at the pins and screws with her pencil like she was conducting a symphony about blunt force trauma.
Titanium rod down the femur. Two screws in the tibia.
And that’s just the leg. My arm has its own hardware, a sleek titanium plate and six screws to keep the bone from twisting.
Gotta keep that sucker locked down. Don’t want that inside bone becoming an outside bone.
Ha. Outside bone.
It seems funny right now, what with all the drugs and all, but I know it won’t later.
Later, I’m going to freak out about leaving the house okay, and coming back very not okay—very almost dead, in fact—and with injuries that are going to fuck up my life, and my bass-playing and clothing design dreams, for a long time to come.
Maybe forever.
“Now and forever, forever,” I whisper-sing to myself in a floaty voice. “I’m your man.”
It’s part of a song. A meme song, I think, but I can’t remember the rest of it. Just that. No name, no artist, no context. Just snippets of sound floating in and out of my fuzzy head.
Everything is dreamy and weird, and I’m pretty sure the ceiling tiles are alive. They keep moving, but subtly, so I can’t make out where they’re headed. But they’re definitely up to something. Something shady…
Every one of their beige asses.
But I’m keeping an eye on them. I’ve been tracking their movements for several minutes, in fact. Or hours?
Years?
The morphine turns time into a flexible thing. It’s never and always, and the water stain in the corner is for sure laughing at how broken I am. As if it has any room to talk. It looks like a rotten kidney bean.
Bean…
It’s what Beatrice calls the baby. Thank goodness the baby is okay.
The baby is okay, right?
They told me it was, I think.
“Yes,” I slur to the kidney bean—and myself. “They did, she’s fine. She’s fine, and the baby is fine.”
Talking to myself calms me down.
Not to brag, but I’m a cool head in a crisis.
Take the whole surprise baby thing, for example.
A few weeks before Bea lit out for Scotland, I walked in on her staring at a plastic stick in the kitchen like it was a live grenade and held her while she hyperventilated about being pregnant.
Afterward, she made me swear on my vintage Fender Bassman amp that I wouldn’t breathe a word about the baby to anyone.
So, I didn’t.
Of course, I didn’t.
Even when Nix stopped by to grab some things from the storage area and started nosing around to see if I knew more about why Beatrice had skipped town than I was letting on.
Even when I ran into Blue at our favorite jazz place, lurking at the dark side of the bar, looking like someone had taken his soul apart and forgotten how to put it back together again.
There is no instruction manual for the soul.
Which feels like an oversight.
I mean, religion tries, I guess, but the church’s manual always felt off to me. Too patriarchal. If God had wanted me to be submissive to my husband, she wouldn’t have made me so mouthy and stubborn.
And she wouldn’t have arranged for me to be born to a man who doesn’t have a “head of household” bone in his body.
Poor Dad. He would have been happier as a monk than a father, but he stepped up after my mom died when I was a baby.
I was an accident, too, just like Bean, but one my dad clearly wasn’t prepared for.
So unprepared, he decided to get married “for my sake” and cursed me with a wicked stepmother during some really critical formative years.
It sucked, and things weren’t great at home for a while, but we got by, and we love each other in our odd, awkward way.
He’s going to be so upset when he finds out I can’t play carols with him this Christmas. He loves music, too, and isn’t too shabby on the guitar.
But I’ll be back in action by next year.
I refuse to imagine a future where my fretting fingers never work again. Or where my face looks like I got into a fight in the prison yard.
Yikes, my face. I’m not going to think about that, either.
Female musicians almost always have to be pretty, too, even if they’re just in the band, not on the mic. But that’s a worry for another day. Maybe the scar will be as “minimal” as the other doctor said. Or maybe I’ll be the chick who makes scars as rock ‘n roll cool for women as they are for men.
Then, I’ll develop a raging personality disorder, trash a few hotel rooms, and start dating a male supermodel half my age.
“Gross.” I wrinkle my nose until I remember that makes the stitches pull on my cheek and relax again.
From its new position on the left side of the ceiling, the kidney bean stain laughs.
Before I can demand to know what it finds so funny—or warn it to stop moving around and being a creepy weirdo—the door opens.
Instantly, the energy in the room shifts from creepy-trippy to hopeful-trippy as a breeze sweeps in, carrying the floral sweetness of Bea’s perfume.
“Hey there, honey,” she says. “How are you?”
I turn my head on the pillow, relief rushing through me as she bobs toward the bed on silver crutches. I mean, the crutches aren’t great, obviously—neither is the boot on her foot—but otherwise she looks good.
Better than good.
Her cheeks are flushed, her eyes are glittering, and she looks like she just…
“Glad to see you awake,” a deep voice rumbles from behind her.
I glance back to see Blue’s massive shoulders filling the doorway and instantly realize…
Ohhhh, so that’s why she looks so flushed and alive. Blue’s here. He must have come running as soon as he heard she was in an accident.
Aww!
He really is the sweetest, and he loves her soooo much.
She’s crazy about him, too, of course.
Too bad both of them are so oblivious, but that’s the price you pay for surviving hard things, I guess.
Trauma doesn’t let you go lightly into the future with a soft and easy heart, and both of them have been through their share of trauma.
Bea barely survived her malignant narcissist of an ex, and reading between the lines, I’m pretty sure Blue grew up in a cult, not some semi-normal hippie commune like he lets on.
My best friend from high school almost got sucked into a cult when she moved to Los Angeles.
She was so lonely, and then there the culty people were, right on Hollywood Boulevard, offering community and belonging with a side of fun personality tests.
But the personality tests quickly got a whole lot less fun, and Mallory got wind of forced labor, child abuse, and alien souls trapped in a volcano in Hawaii and dipped in the nick of time.
I wonder if Blue’s cult believed in alien volcano ghosts.
I’m about to ask when Beatrice distracts me by leaning down to peer at my cheek.
“Am I Frankenstein?” I ask, the words thick on my still-sluggish tongue.
“Frankenstein’s monster?” I correct. “I know the difference. I read the 1818 version and the new one. The old one’s better.
I liked that the doctor made the monster because he was a maniac for monsters, not because evil made him do it. ”
Bea nods, continuing to examine my wound. “Agreed.”
“Am I a hot monster?” I ask, as Blue tucks a chair beneath her.
She murmurs, “Thank you,” before shooting an amused glance my way. “No, silly. You’re a gorgeous goddess who’s going to heal beautifully. I can tell, already. The stitches are tiny and perfect. But you’re high as a kite, aren’t you?”
I huff. “Yeah. The ceiling’s moving.”
“I’m sorry,” Bea says, sobering. “But it’s probably for the best. You’re all banged up, girl. How bad is the pain?”
I smack my dry lips as I consider the question. “Fine. Mostly. As long as I don’t think about it too much. If I think about it, I can feel all the weird stuff burning in my bones, and that’s…not great.”
Her forehead wrinkles. “I’m so sorry, babes. I wish I could go back in time and take a cab home from the airport.”
“Stop. It’s not your fault. It’s that jerk in the truck, who…” I trail off, brow furrowing as I remember the moments after the wreck. “He drove off, didn’t he? He just drove away, while you were all pregnant and needing help getting me out of the car.”
Her eyes go cold. “He did. But a nice man at the scene got him on video. The police are going to find him and hold him accountable. And if they don’t, I’ll track his sorry ass down myself.”
“I’ll come, too,” I agree. “I think it’s time we take justice into our own hands. The justice system isn’t working, Bea. At least not very well. It’s not nearly as justice-y as I want it to be.”
“Not even close,” Beatrice agrees.
“But we should probably give the police a month to figure things out,” Blue pipes up in his reasonable rumble. “Maybe two.”
I narrow my eyes on his face. “You don’t think we can handle this guy?”
“I think you can handle anything you set your mind to,” he says, seeming to mean it. “But first priority is making sure you heal properly. To help with that, I’ll be moving in with you guys for a while after you’re discharged tomorrow.”
I glance at Bea.
She answers my unspoken question with a nod before adding, “Even if I hadn’t hurt my foot, I’m not sure I’d be able to lift you without the adrenaline rush.
But Blue can, no problem.” Her lips curve.
“Besides, it sounds like fun. Three musicians under one roof? Think of all the cool shit we can come up with.”
The words send a sinking sensation through my gut.
Maybe it’s the morphine. Maybe it’s the reminder that I won’t be making music for a long time, at least not with my left hand. Maybe it’s both, but suddenly, I feel tired, and the kidney bean stain starts popping off again, something about how much fun it is to be a third wheel.
But it’s not fun.
Not at all.
Especially around people who are as hot for each other as Beatrice and Blue.
“I won’t be doing any of that, either,” I blurt out before I realize my inside voice has become an outside voice.