9. ADRIAN
ADRIAN
The plastic chair cuts into my back. The edge has found the specific point where bone meets the least amount of muscle and I can painfully feel it.
I've been bent forward for twenty minutes with my elbows on my knees, my hands clasped so tight I can see my knuckles turn white. My head down, while I struggle to breathe. I haven't moved. Moving would require energy I currently don't have.
The fluorescent light makes a sound. A thin high-frequency buzz just at the edge of audible, that penetrates my brain.
The air in here is stifling, not quite reaching the bottom of my lungs. I've been trying to correct it for the last twenty minutes and it keeps not working. All I get is the nauseating smell of antiseptic.
Somewhere down the corridor, the sound of a gurney being pushed on the linoleum floor. The soft percussion of a door seal catching.
I remember all this. The same feeling of an uncomfortable chair.
The same smell, this particular sharp antiseptic edge that cuts through everything else and sits in the back of the throat.
I remember the waiting. For news that had my name on it, when every second the news hasn't arrived is simultaneously a mercy and a prolonging of anguish.
I try to bring my focus into the present. Charlotte. My best friend's sister, who is going to make a full recovery.
That's where I am. That's what this is.
Not the other thing.
A chocolate bar enters my line of sight.
Sienna Cross is standing in front of me with a shy smile and the chocolate bar extended in my direction, holding it out the way you'd offer something to a person you weren't entirely sure would take it.
"You look like you're about to pass out," she says. "Maybe you just need some sugar."
I don't think about it. I just act on the impulse.
My right hand takes the chocolate bar. My left hand closes around hers and I guide her down into the seat beside me.
And then she is sitting beside me. With me still holding her hand.
Her hand is warm. The grip is steady and she doesn't pull away or make anything of it, just lets her hand stay in mine.
The fluorescent buzz is still here, the antiseptic smell is still here, the chair is still cutting into my back.
But something that has been wound tight since I walked in is finding somewhere to go.
I start to breathe.
Not completely. Not in the full-lung way I've been trying to force. But enough.
I look at her.
She's watching me. No pity in it. Just attention, clean and direct.
"Thank you," I say. And then, before I've finished thinking about it, "I just don't like hospitals."
She holds my gaze for a moment. Then she nods once. "I don't either. It's almost like it's difficult to breathe here."
That is the exact thing. Not an approximation, not a general observation about the unpleasantness of medical environments.
She knows this from somewhere.
I look away first.
William is across the room on his own uncomfortable chair, somewhere inside his head. Carter is two seats down, not crowding him but available. The room is quieter since the sergeant and his officer left. Four of us now and the fluorescent buzz and the corridor sounds.
I think back to the moment she held her ground against William. When he all but ordered her out.
She stayed.
She surely is feisty. And loyal. Not at all what I expected her to be.
I turn toward her.
"You know…" I say. "Charlotte will be sedated for hours." I nod toward William. "There are worthier battles than this one in an uncomfortable chair."
I watch her think about it, her eyes going briefly toward William and back.
Then the corner of her mouth lifts. "What do you say," she says. "Should we ditch this joint?"
I can hardly control the laugh that is trying to escape. That would be highly inappropriate given the circumstances.
"Let's go," I say.
We stand. I let go of her hand. I feel the loss immediately. And we cross the room towards William.
Carter looks up when we approach. William looks at us.
"You know how I feel about hospitals." I say it without preamble. William's jaw tightens fractionally. He knows.
"Now that we know Charlotte's okay," I continue, "I'm going. I'll come back when she's awake."
He pulls me in. His hand hits my back once, solid. "I know how hard this was." Said quietly, into the space between us. "Thank you for being here."
I step back. Nod.
Sienna clears her throat and says “I’ll be going to,” and then narrows her eyes at William and says “But, I will be back later… Bill” and without giving him time to reply, she turns and leaves.
I fall into step beside her. The doors slide open.
"You do know he hates being called Bill?" I ask..
She puts her hand flat to her chest. Her eyes go wide with an expression of sincere and deeply unconvincing shock. "Does he?"
We are both laughing when the outside cold hits us.
The fresh air gets into my lungs immediately and I let it.
One full breath, all the way down. Out here the air tastes like early morning and nothing else.
The city is in that grey-dark hour when the night has run out and the day hasn't started.
The parking lot is nearly empty. A couple of cars, a security light at the far end making a column of yellow, the sound of the highway somewhere beyond the building, barely audible.
I stand there for a moment and just breathe.
My nervous system is doing what it always does after hours of holding something down. The tension breaks, and what's left underneath it is restlessness.
The emotional exhaustion has burned through and left something underneath that needs to move, to do something, to feel like I'm still in my own body.
To feel “alive”.
I check my watch. 4:08.
Too late for a club. Too early for a run.
I look at Sienna.
She is standing beside a rusted truck, one hand resting on the door handle but not yet pulling at it. She's looking out at the parking lot, not at me. The yellow column from the security light catches her in a partial profile. She looks tired.
I'm not ready to say goodbye. That's the honest version of it. I can acknowledge that without doing anything about it.
She was better company than I had any reason to expect, and the night has that particular kind of dark that I don't want to take back to my empty house. Two facts. Not a plan.
Reluctantly I take one step back anyway. "Take care. Drive safe."
She nods. I turn and take a few more steps toward the parking structure.
"Wanna go somewhere and—"
I turn around before she finishes.
She's standing with one hand on the door handle and an expression that has more in it than the question. Trying to stay casual and not quite succeeding.
The exhale that leaves me is more honest than I intended. "Yeah," I say. "But where, at this hour?"
Her smile widens. "I know a place." She nods at the passenger door. "Hop in."
I go around to the passenger side and try the handle.
Nothing.
I try it again with more deliberate intent. The metal is cold and slightly rough under my fingers where rust is starting to lift at the edges, and the door is absolutely not interested in what I'm doing.
Sienna appears beside me.
She smells like something floral that clears out the last of the antiseptic. She steps in front of me, fits her hand over the handle, pushes it forward and then pulls sharply right. The door swings open with a complaint of old metal.
"She's particular," Sienna says, matter-of-fact.
There is now an open truck door that cocoons us from the rest of the world. Both of us standing in the space it creates.
"Let's get on the—" she starts.
My hand closes around her wrist. Gently. Grounding.
She goes still but doesn't pull away. Her eyes come up to mine and wait. Not unnerved. Just waiting, with that particular quality of attention she has. The willingness to hold a moment without needing to fill it, and something about it makes it harder to be measured about what I say next.
"There's something you should know," I say quietly. The kind of quiet that belongs to this hour.
A small crease appears between her brows. "Okay."
"I'm not Paula's lawyer anymore."
She holds my gaze. "Why?"
I hold hers.
"Because that would be a conflict of interests," I confess. "There's something more interesting I want to explore."