Chapter Seventeen
I’m in line to check my bag when my phone rings.
My heart leaps in my chest at the possibility of finally hearing from James, but when I look at the screen, I roll my eyes to see Leonora’s number instead.
“Lose your phone again?” I ask Serena when I answer. “And I already told you that I would use a garment bag for the blazer. There’s no need to call and check up on me. I can adult every once in a while, you know.”
“Juniper,” Leonora says, and it’s just my name but I know everything—well, nearly everything—I need to know in the way squish-all-the-spiders, take-no-shit Leonora’s voice wavers. “Serena is in the hospital. There was an accident.”
I step up to the ticketing counter and push my phone boarding pass and ID across to the attendant.
“I’ll be right there,” I tell Leonora, hanging up the phone. And then to the attendant, “I need to change my ticket to Portland International. I don’t care about the cost: Just get me there. Please. ”
—
I’m starving, but I can’t say so because then Leonora will go into a frenzied excitement of having something to do and will buy out the entire cafeteria.
I also can’t solve the problem myself because Misha has warmed up to the fact that “Auntie Juniper is here to play with you” to such a degree that I am now a three-year-old’s personal toy servant.
There are high hopes for Serena being discharged tomorrow, so there is an ever-revolving door of hospital personnel in and out of her room, which means I really need to keep Misha entertained so Serena and Leonora can focus on medication regimens, follow-up appointment schedules, and referrals.
“And then, and then, Buzz Lightyear goes pew pew, Auntie. You didn’t say pew pew so it didn’t work,” Misha says.
“I’m sorry, bud. I’ll get it right next time.”
“Misha,” Serena says from the upright hospital bed. “Don’t antagonize your Auntie Juniper. She’s very distressed about Mama’s debilitating head injury.”
Leonora swats the arm that doesn’t have Serena’s IV in it.
“It was a debilitating head injury. She has every right to be distressed and so do I, for that matter.”
Serena rolls her eyes.
“A little brain swelling, a couple of physical therapy appointments for my shoulder. Worth it for the free pudding cups and the cool story of how I went up against an electric bike and won.” Serena takes a bite of chocolate pudding before glaring at her wife and then at me.
“ You shouldn’t have called her, ” she tells Leonora.
“And you shouldn’t have missed your interview when she called. ”
Leonora blusters at that as I say, “You were hit by a bike going like twenty miles an hour on hard concrete. You were unconscious in the ambulance—”
“For, like, literally five minutes, ” Serena interrupts.
“You were unconscious,” I continue. “And don’t talk to me about literality when you have literal brain swelling. ”
“Minimal and practically already nonexistent,” Serena interjects. “And of course I was unconscious. I was alone in a relatively quiet bed and we have a toddler at home. I was going to nap one way or the other.”
“And there was no way in hell I wasn’t going to come,” I say. “And the swelling must be much worse than the doctors say it is if you thought any differently.”
As peeved as I’m acting at her nonchalance, I feel like I can breathe again when Serena frowns at me and voices her main concern: “But what about the cute blazer with the polka-dot lining?”
“I’ll wear it to my next interview,” I say. “There will be others. Even if it’s just me interviewing to water plants for Leonora.”
At that, Serena rearranges her pillows in a way that draws Leonora’s attention, and the two share a long look.
“Misha,” Leonora says, rising, “do you want to come on a walk with Mommy to look at the pigeons out the big window in the lobby again?”
There is much merriment at this news from Misha and an eye roll from me.
“Subtle,” I deadpan.
Leonora does a shallow mock bow at me before leaning over to kiss Serena’s cheek.
“Sort her out, my love,” she stage-whispers. “I can’t hire her. The plants would never recover.”
“I’m going to have the entire vending machine of candy ready for him when you two get back,” I say as Leonora uses a gentle hand to push me toward the chair beside Serena’s bed.
The moment they’re gone Serena reaches over to take my hand.
“Look, maybe it’s my bulbous brain talking—”
“Not funny.” I sigh.
“It is, actually,” Serena corrects. “But even if it is the head injury talking…I still think you ought to reconsider the whole publishing thing.”
I take my hand back.
“Reconsider for what ?” I ask. “And look, we do not need to be talking about this now. You’ve got an IV for god’s sake.”
“No better time than the present.” Serena grins. “I’ve had a few naps, been given an absurd amount of chocolate pudding cups, and my kid is having the time of his life exploring the hospital and riding the high of his pudding cups. Never been better.”
“I don’t want to talk about publishing,” I say.
Serena, damn her, doesn’t miss a beat.
“Fine.” She crosses her arms, which makes me wince thinking it’ll hurt with the IV, but apparently it doesn’t because she says, “Then tell me what happened with James. And if you say nothing, I swear to god, I’ll buzz a nurse and then club you with this Stanley-sized plastic water bottle.”
“Why would you buzz the nurse first?” I ask.
“So she can sew you back up, obviously. I don’t want you dead. Just cooperative.”
I look down at my hands and knit them together, turning them over to waggle my fingers like an upturned sea creature with eight wiggling legs.
Which, incidentally, is how I feel just now: exposed. Like Serena is about to lovingly but firmly poke at all my soft bits with a stick—or the truly gargantuan hospital water cup—after rendering my shell useless by using her head injury as an excuse to dig around in mine.
Years of friendship will do that to you, damn it.
So I start at the beginning, and as the machines around us beep in a symphony of vitals and measurements, I lay out every single card: the fake-dating card, the not-so-fake-dating feelings, and the myriad impossibilities that make James and me being together if not impossible then at least a very, very bad turbulent idea.
Because publishing. I tell her again about the multiple applications, the radio silence from the dozens of other applications I spent hours perfecting, the cover letters I agonized over.
Even as my stomach sinks and my mouth goes dry, I tell her about how I have to claw my way back to the track because Mom and the plan and what else is there, really?
And it’s not like Serena hasn’t heard everything before in bits and pieces, but it’s so nice to lay it all out simultaneously, it’s like the thoughts haven’t properly organized themselves in my own head until this moment.
When I finish, I raise my eyes to look at Serena’s face. I expect there to be sympathy, maybe a touch of heartbrokenness for her best friend’s woes, but nope. Serena just looks woefully unimpressed. Bored, even.
She slow-blinks at me for what feels like an hour.
“That’s it ? For the love…” She trails off before raising the head of her hospital bed higher.
“Juniper. Why are you trying to force yourself into some sort of third-act breakup with the man you so obviously love and some sort of fourth-act reunion with the job you so obviously don’t want to pursue anymore when there’s literally no reason for it ? ”
Now it’s my turn to blink.
“There’s every reason for it,” I argue. “Mom—”
“Your mom would want you to be happy,” Serena breaks in. “That’s why she suggested publishing in the first place. Do you honestly think she’d want anything else for you other than—”
“But she knew me better than anyone,” I say, my turn to interrupt. “She—”
“Knew, Juniper. You’ve changed. Her leaving changed you.”
The tears are pooling in my nose, but I refuse to let them reach my eyes.
“I know that,” I say quietly. “I’m not stupid.”
“I never said—”
“But if I do something else, then wherever she is—heaven or the great free craft store in the sky or whatever—she won’t know what I’m doing. At least this way there’s still a connection, something that stayed the same before and after she left.”
Serena leans forward then, inelegantly dragging me into a hug that makes a tear or two break free from my endless reservoir.
“Your mother changed her mind more than any other human on earth,” she says into my hair. “Honor her by letting yours change, too. What would you do if she were here and you could just choose?”
I don’t have to think.
“James,” I say. “And podcasting. I’d get it all back. I’d take it all back.”
Serena snorts into my hair. “You’d do James?” she says suggestively.
“I’d shove you,” I say into her neck, “but I’m still worried about your IV.” I pause. “But yeah. That’s what I want.”
There’s freedom in laying the last card on the table. A lot of fear, too, but mostly…deliverance.
“So go, then,” Serena says, finally releasing me from the hug.
“Go where ?” I ask, laughing a little as I wipe the tears with the back of my hand. “James is gone. He’s in LA. And recording is done, so it’s not like—”
There’s a knock on the door, and a nurse comes in for more of Serena’s vitals, so I decide it’s safe for me to take a breather.
I step into the hallway and walk a way to the round circle of benches that overlook the hospital landscaping, stuffing the AirPods in my ears and hoping for a few song lengths of mind-numbing bliss.
I put my library on shuffle, and of course, of course the song that plays is “Holding Out for a Hero.”
Instead of skipping it, I let it play because it is a great song, even if it’s forever going to remind me of James and me and our one day. Our one night.
I close my eyes, squeeze them shut so tightly that a few more tears fall.
Please, I beg in my head. If there’s a way…