Round 11
ROUND ELEVEN
JANE
Heathcliff loves Catherine Earnshaw. Count Alexei Vronsky lusts for Anna Karenina.
And my favorite so far, Mr. Darcy adores the very ground Elizabeth Bennet walks upon.
The air she breathes. He begs for every minuscule scrap of time she’s willing to give, and dammit, he’ll do anything to secure a single moment more.
These are the things I read, passing time inside a white-walled hospital room while, outside, the world continues to turn and snow drifts from the sky.
While machines beep and hospital staff go about their work.
My entire existence is an exercise in sensory deprivation.
But at least I have books for the hours Ollie is too busy to hang around my room.
Better yet, I know who Elizabeth Bennet is.
And Mr. Darcy. Mr. Collins, even. I know Anna Karenina left her home in Russia and flittered off to be with her lover.
I know these things.
I remember them!
Thrilled with my realization, I set Pride and Prejudice aside and pick up Gone With The Wind instead, eagerly flicking through the pages as names—familiar names—stand out against the stark white pages.
Scarlet. Rhett. Ashley.
I’ve read this one, too!
“I want you to try these out.”
“Argh!” I jump and spin toward my door, narrowing my eyes as Ollie dashes into my room so fast, his white coat flaps in his wake. Then I jump again when he plops a paper grocery bag onto my rolling table.
“Dammit, Oliver.” To Kill A Mockingbird topples into my lap, the sharp corner digging into my thigh.
“Can you not scare a woman already struggling with noise and sudden movements, please?” I shift on my bed, straightening my back and crossing my legs, then re-stacking my book pile, I pull the side of the paper bag down and peek inside. “What’s all this?”
He whips the tails of his coat aside and perches on the edge of my bed, digging a hand into his pockets and taking out not one, but two pudding cups.
Chocolate. And vanilla. He extends his hands the way he’s done a million times before, allowing me to choose whichever I think I’d prefer.
So when I select the chocolate, he grins and drops his hand back into his pocket for spoons.
“I’ve had a crazy busy day, ‘cos these kids thought it would be funny to ski down Breakneck Hill, but, like… without skis. Or helmets. Or a single shred of common sense.” He peels his vanilla cup open and licks a smudge from his thumb.
“It’s called Breakneck Hill for a reason. Idiots.”
Mr. Darcy, who? I cast the men of classic literature aside and peel my cup open. “Did anyone break their neck?”
“Nope. But we’ve got a shattered collarbone, three fractured wrists—two of them belong to one person—and a whole buncha parents screaming at me like I’m the one who shoved their babies off a mountain.”
“Did you tell them to shut the hell up?”
He chuckles, his bouncing exhale pulling the tension from his shoulders and allowing him—finally—a moment to relax.
His cheeks warm and his eyes dance, and because I’m not sure he matured beyond a high schooler in the school cafeteria, he licks the pudding lid clean with a long, almost inappropriate swipe of his tongue.
“I told them to go fuck themselves. In my head, that is. I said yes ma’am and no sir out loud, and I promised the kids I’d make it hurt a thousand times more unless they got their families under control. ”
“Pretty sure that’s a crime.”
He snickers. “Only if I get caught. Now I have cast dust in my eyes, not enough caffeine in my veins, and a hankering for pudding. And you…” He looks my precarious pile of books up and down. “Read fast, evidently. How long was I gone?”
“I didn’t read them all from front to back.”
“So you cheated and flipped to the end?”
“No. I started reading one and realized the names were familiar to me. Turns out, I’d read it before.”
“And you remembered?” He drinks his pudding like a shot of liquor, slamming the cup to the table, then he snatches up a book and flips it open. “You’re remembering things?”
“I remembered I love reading love stories, and that I never really cared for Anna Karenina, because she left her child behind.” I scoop pudding up with my spoon and lay the cool, smooth dessert on my tongue.
“She cheated on her husband, which already casts doubt on her character. But leaving her child behind is a line I’m not comfortable with.
I don’t hate her, but I don’t like her either. ”
“Studies show that patients suffering memory loss after a TBI typically regain their memories through emotion and senses. Smells, fabrics, even hugs. Theoretically, the emotion you felt is the memory, and if you recreate that emotion, the memory is more likely to return.”
“So… Anna Karenina?”
“I suppose, in her case, the emotion was unhappiness. You never agreed with her choices, and the way you felt when you first read her story stamped itself onto your soul. Reading it again now means bringing that old emotion back to the surface.” He sets the first book down and snags Pride and Prejudice.
“Mr. Darcy’s uptight snootiness and unpleasant treatment of Elizabeth probably pissed you off, too. ”
“Absolutely not.” I snatch the book back and cradle my sweet Mr. Darcy against my chest. “He was uptight because society expected him to love a certain type of woman from a certain type of family. He didn’t, because he couldn’t. He loved Elizabeth. Unconditionally. Irrevocably.”
“He was an asshole!”
“He was complicated, and fighting against centuries of prediction. He chose her over everything else. The fact you know so much about this story is…” I exhale a soft, smiling sigh.
“Intriguing. I’m not sure if I’ve had this conversation with other men in the past, but if I did, I don’t know that they would know anything besides Kiera Knightley is hot. ”
“I have sisters, and one of those sisters likes women just as passionately as she likes men. In fact, I’m pretty sure Raquel’s sexual fluidity was Kiera Knightley’s fault. Ultimately, Darcy was a prick, and Elizabeth should’ve smacked him for his judgmental bullshit.”
“He was under a lot of pressure! He needed to be certain his choices were right, not only for himself and for Elizabeth, but for his sister, too. Georgiana required protection from the very society that admired Darcy. If anyone was an asshole in this story, it was Wickham.”
“Mmhm.” Teasing, Ollie snags a paperback copy of Oliver Twist and flicks through a few pages. “You wanted to read a story with my name as the hero? Shucks. I’m honored.”
I snatch that one, too, but for completely different reasons. “I don’t think I’ve read this one before. But every time I take a peek, I keep seeing…” I find the right page and turn the book, pointing toward a name that may as well be highlighted bright yellow. “I can’t stop seeing her.”
“Rose Maylie?” He leans closer and reads a passage in silence, then, taking the book—gentler than I was—he flips a couple of pages along. “She’s the aunt, right? It’s not a romantic relationship.”
“Right.” I nibble on my bottom lip and study him while he reads.
His firm jaw clenching and unclenching under the harsh overhead lights.
Not because he’s mad. Simply because it’s a thing he does.
“I don’t know why I keep coming back to her.
But there’s something there… something tickling the back of my brain.
” Shrugging, I reach into the paper bag and pull out a two-hundred-piece puzzle with a forest design on the front of the box.
And under that, another, but with a world map instead. “Why’d you bring me puzzles?”
“Got you card games, too.” He snaps the book closed and grabs the bag, digging his hand into its depths and pulling out a pack of Uno.
And after that, a standard set of playing cards.
“You need to exercise your brain if you want it to reboot and start working again. Playing low-pressure memory games could be the jumpstart you need.” He sets the Uno pack on my table, and scooping up everything else—the books, puzzles, even my coloring book and pencils—he compiles it all and sets the pile on my bedside table.
Coming back, he tears the Uno packet open and shuffles the deck. “Finish your pudding before I do, ‘cos I’m starving and jittery, and I really wanted the chocolate.”
Frowning, I pick up the cup and peek inside at the half-eaten contents. “I wasn’t even all that hungry. If you wanted chocolate, you should’ve given me vanilla.”
“But we’re still learning who you are and the things you like. If your instincts told you to pick the one you picked, who am I to interfere?”
“It’s just pudding!” I dig my spoon in, careful not to spill on the cards he divvies up between us, but instead of sliding the heavy silver into my mouth, I offer it across and warm under his happy gaze when, without a word, he opens up and accepts.
“So…” Stop blushing, stupid! “Today marks eleven days since I arrived here. Eleven days is kind of a long time, huh?”
“Mmhmm.” He tosses cards, one after the other, until we each have seven, then setting the leftovers down and flipping one—a yellow four—over, he twists and snags the television remote, turning the TV on and flicking through channels.
A weather reporter chatters on one. The news—the police are looking for the suspects of a shooting a few towns over—on another.
He flicks through cartoons and sport and, eventually, stops on a channel spruiking the benefits of a vacuum cleaner with a cyclone something and a HEPA something else.
Call us now and secure your low, low pricing.
“I don’t wanna miss seeing your interview.” Setting the remote down, he comes back around and picks up his cards, organizing them in one hand and considering his options. “I’ll remove your stitches today, too. They’ve been in long enough.”