Seventeen #2
“But you can make any decisions for me. You’re my husband, my domestic partner. It’s all legal, and registered in Cook County so—”
“I know, the hospital knows, but just … we gotta wait for Dane.”
“Where am I?” I asked, looking around the pleasant private room.
“You’re at Queen’s Medical Center. It’s downtown, close to the capitol and Iolani Palace.”
I smiled at him. “There’s a palace?”
He nodded. “It’s pretty. We should go through it before we leave.”
“Tell me why Dane is coming.”
“He just is.”
“Sam?” My voice rose.
“Shh,” he said, leaning down so I could put my face in his shoulder and he could hold me. “It’s all right. Whatever happens, we’ll deal with it. Everything’s okay.”
I was crying. I knew it was stupid, but I couldn’t help it. He just held me, and after a few minutes, my eyes drifted closed.
“Rest for a little while,” he told me. “I’m just gonna stand here and hold your hand, all right?”
I thought I answered, "Okay," before I fell asleep.
When I woke up, it was late and dark in the room. I looked for Sam, and he was there, at the window, standing in the moonlight streaming in through the glass. As I studied him, I saw how broken he looked. I needed to fix him.
“Did you think I was dead?”
He turned his head to me. “When I got there, to the accident site, I was really out of it, really sick, but I could tell … they were cutting you out of the car. When I saw what it looked like—yeah, I thought you were dead.”
This was the problem. He was having trouble coming back from that horror.
“I’m sorry, Sam.”
He nodded, just barely. “When they had you secured on the board, I heard you call my name,” he said haltingly, looking at me. “I won’t ever forget what you sounded like at that moment, J. Some things just stay, and that’s gonna be one of them. I couldn’t even stand up.”
I reached a hand out for him, and he crossed the room fast to take it.
I pressed his warm palm to my heart. “You need me.”
“I more than need you,” he replied, trembling. “I don’t work without you. I just don’t.”
“Same here,” I assured him, closing my eyes.
I was tired again, and it just sort of washed over me. I was just going to rest my eyes for a second.
It was late. Sam was asleep on a cot next to my bed. I wanted to sit up, but I was at a weird angle.
“What are you trying to do?”
He yawned, and I looked down at him, watching him stretch before getting up to come to my bedside.
“How are you doing this?”
“Doing what?”
“You are so not this light of a sleeper.”
“I am when I need to be.”
“Gonna come in handy for kids, huh?”
He grinned sleepily. “What’re you trying to do?”
“Sit up.”
“Okay.”
He yawned again, shaking with a stretch for a second before pressing buttons on the side of the bed. I came up slowly.
“There. How’s that?”
“Good.”
“You want some water?”
“No.”
“You want me to go out and get you something to eat? They took the catheter out today—which I could barely watch, Christ—and they said you could have real food tomorrow, but you can probably start tonight if you—”
“Tell me what’s wrong.”
He shook his head.
“Why? Afraid if you say it, then it might come true?”
His brows furrowed, and his eyes narrowed; he was really working hard to hold it together for me.
I took a quivering breath. “Spit it out.”
“Dane will—”
“Dane hates delivering bad news as much as you do, and it’s not fair to make him.”
“It’s not that. I just want him here for you.”
“I have you. I don’t need anybody else to hold me up.”
He nodded and took my hand. “Okay, so there was trauma to your spine, and they think it’s okay, but spines are tricky, and right now, as it stands, you can’t walk.”
I had not tried to get up. I’d had a catheter in me, I was hurt, and I had not even thought about moving. But now I was thinking about it.
“What are you doing?”
I was trying to do anything—wiggle my toes, lift my leg, or bend my knees—but there was nothing. I was dead below the waist.
“J?”
I absorbed everything he’d said.
“Baby.”
“Lemme think.”
“Okay.”
I cleared my throat. “So, maybe I’ll be fine.”
“Yep, it could just be when you wanna walk, you will. They don’t know. They can’t tell.”
“Did they do surgery on my spine?”
“No, but it was compressed in a way that there was no blood, and I guess it needs that, just like your brain.”
“But there’s no actual spinal cord injury.”
“There is and isn’t.”
“That’s crap.”
“That’s medicine.”
“Explain.”
“Right now, you’re in what they call spinal shock, and it can take up to two months for all the fluid and swelling to go down so they can really figure out how bad the injury is.”
“Okay.”
“Your doctor, she’s good, and she thinks if you have a spinal cord injury, the one you have is posterior cord syndrome.”
“And?”
“And if you have to get one, that’s a good one ’cause it’s not as bad as some of the other ones. It’s what they call an incomplete spinal cord injury, not the total never walk again version.”
“So, even if I have it, I could get better.”
“If you think of your injury on a scale of A through E—”
“Really?”
“Why are you giving me shit?”
“Sorry.”
He cleared his throat. “Your doctor thinks you’re between a D and a C.”
“I don’t wanna be an A?” I asked because that made no sense. A was always the best.
“No, you don’t, not in this case.”
“Okay.”
“But again, two months before all the swelling goes down and they can do an MRI or whatever and figure it all out.”
“So, I should just wait?”
“Yes.”
“And right now?”
“Right now, it’s like your legs don’t know they’re connected to the rest of you.”
“But my legs aren’t even hurt.”
“Love, you got hurt everywhere. You were checked out completely for two days, in and out of consciousness for another three, and healing now for another three. They also had to remove your spleen.”
The time I had been sleeping explained the beard he was sporting.
“We’re a matching set now. You don’t have a spleen anymore either,” I said with a cackle.
“Why is that funny?”
“Matching set,” I repeated, chuckling.
“You have bruised ribs, and your face and body are covered in bruises and—”
“I get the idea.”
“But how you landed, in the mud, and because the whole side of the hill was wet and slick, the car sort of slid to a stop before it hit, and so the impact happened more in this sort of crumpling around the embankment and you—not on top of you, but more … God, Jory, you should have been crushed. All your bones should be broken. The firemen who cut you out came by to see you because they had no idea how you had come out of that in one piece.”
“Sam—”
“If you saw the pictures of the car—”
“But I’m fine, except for the walking thing.”
“We don’t know about that yet.”
“How can it just magically fix itself?”
“It doesn’t magically do anything. It’s just your body healing and then either working or not.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
“What’re you asking?”
“You know.”
“No, I don’t know—because how dare you fuckin’ ask it.”
“Don’t swear.”
“I love you on feet or on wheels. Don’t be an ass.”
He was mad, and I liked that. I could deal with him being indignant over me asking if he’d stay. I could not deal with him walking out the door. That would kill me.
“So, when do we leave?”
“Soon.”
“I wanna sleep in bed with you.”
“I know.”
“I wanna go home.”
“Same here. Just try and rest for now, okay?”
“Okay. You’ll stay here, right?”
“Where else am I gonna go?”
“I dunno. Out dancing?” I teased him.
“Yeah, right. All I wanna do is sit and watch you sleep.”
I closed my eyes and let out a deep, settling breath. “Wish granted.”
Poor Dr. Ing. She looked befuddled. She was squinting at me, standing between two other doctors, and she had just curled a piece of hair around her ear to keep it from falling in her face.
She had a lovely one. Possibly later fifties, early sixties, with dark brown almond-shaped eyes, delicate features, and a warm smile.
She had tried for upbeat and positive, but I had too many questions, and I was bogging her down.
“Mr. Harcourt—”
“Jory,” I said, cutting her off, pointing at Dane. “He’s Mr. Harcourt.”
She turned to look at him. “Brother?”
He gave her a ghost of a smile, not really in the mood. “Yes.”
The man had breezed into the room two hours earlier and hugged me very tight for longer than usual. And then he yelled, “For the love of God, Jory, I can’t let you go anywhere!”
Yeah, well …
But the yelling stopped, and he calmed, and he and Sam did the guy clench and talked while I flipped channels on the TV.
“Aja is pissed at me for making her stay home,” he told me. “But she just started a new job and cannot be gone.”
“I’m glad you insisted.”
“I didn’t. I wouldn’t have been able to. She saw the logic, and since all she would be doing here was watching you sleep, she came to the correct conclusion.”
I nodded.
“Not that she hasn’t been having second thoughts.”
“Please tell her I love her and that I’m glad she’s not here. Hospitals are the worst.”
“Agreed,” he murmured, and then he took a breath and forced a smile for me. “You look good,” he said before tipping his head at Sam. “Better than him.”
“Yeah, it’s my own clothes instead of the hospital ones that do it.”
And so we had been fine, until the doctor came in. She was explaining when I had cut her off.
“But I could be in a wheelchair for life, correct?”
“Mr. Har—”
“Jory,” I interrupted.
She growled—because it was, like, the fifth time. “Jory, here’s the thing: You cannot let yourself dwell on what could happen when right now is the time to concentrate on physical therapy and—”
“But I could.”
“You—”
“Right? I could never walk again.”
“Yes, but—”
Sam lifted his hand to stop her. “He’s gotta work it out, and he’s gonna ask a ton of questions really fast in a minute, so if you could just answer like it’s a lightning round on a game show, that’d be good.”
“Mr. Kage, I—”