11. Collie
Collie
My hospital stay was supposed to last about a week. But it stretched into two, and then three. I’d started battling a fever and some sort of infection soon after my surgery, and it went away and came back twice. They wouldn’t send me home until they were sure it was resolved.
Even though I was climbing the walls, it was probably a good thing that they hadn’t released me yet. I was still healing, and weak as a kitten. It would have been a lot for Miller to try to take care of me in this condition.
I turned my head to look at him and was overcome with gratitude. I’d just woken up from a nap, and he was right there beside me. The poor guy had fallen asleep sitting upright in a chair, not for the first time.
He’d come to the hospital every single day since I’d been here.
These weren’t quick little visits, either.
He stayed for hours, day after day. Sometimes when I was resting, he brought his drawing tablet and tried to work.
When I was awake, we played cards, watched Netflix, or had long, meandering conversations about whatever random subject came to mind.
I couldn’t begin to tell him what all of this meant to me. He was the only thing that made my hospital stay bearable.
Just then, he woke up with a half snore-half snort, which made me smile. When he noticed my untouched lunch sitting on the table, he asked, “Want me to get you a smoothie from the cafeteria?” I had almost no appetite, and they were just about the only thing I could tolerate.
“Maybe later.”
“Okay. Let me know when you get hungry.” He got up and stretched his arms over his head. My gaze automatically flickered to the bare skin that appeared above his waistband when his T-shirt rode up. Not that I had any sex drive these days, but he was still nice to look at.
As he stretched his back, he said, “You must be happy about finally getting out of here.” I was allegedly going to be released the next morning.
“I would be, if I believed it was actually happening.”
“It should. Your fever hasn’t come back, and you’ve been doing great.”
Great was a bit of a stretch, but I was making progress. The stitches on my huge incision had come out a week ago, the doctor was dialing back my pain meds so I wasn’t quite so loopy, and I’d been able to gradually increase my slow laps up and down the hall.
I knew I was getting better, but it was happening at a glacier’s pace. I had very little energy, and I didn’t know when my appetite would return. Plus, every time I coughed or sneezed, I had to grab a pillow and hug it to my chest, because it felt like my sternum was going to split in two.
I wanted to be back to my old self. Not that I’d been the most energetic guy on Earth, but I’d felt so much better than I did now.
A few minutes later, my phone buzzed. I read the message and told Miller, “Jeannie wants to video chat. How horrible do I look?”
He gently brushed my hair back and said, “You look beautiful, Collie.”
He was a liar. I knew that because he always said the same thing. He’d even said it a day or two after my surgery. Then I’d caught a glimpse of myself and saw that I actually looked like an extra in a zombie movie.
Miller got up and asked, “Are you ready for that smoothie?” I nodded. “What flavor this time?”
“Surprise me, but not by adding kale to it, like that one time.”
“You couldn’t even taste it.”
“But it looked like swamp water.”
“Fine. No kale.” He ran his hand over my hair again. It felt less like he was fixing it, and more like he was petting me. I had zero complaints about that. “I’m going to do a couple of laps around the block first, because I need some exercise.”
“Take your time.” I watched him go, and then I video called Jeannie.
She answered right away and said, “Hi, sweetie. How are you feeling?”
“Okay. They might actually let me go home tomorrow.”
“I’m so glad!”
I pointed at the screen, drawing a circle around her with my index finger as I asked, “What’s going on here? You look like you’re in disguise, but as what I don’t know.”
Jeannie was in her parked car. A floral scarf was wrapped around her head and tied under her chin, and she was wearing a baseball cap on top of that. She was also wearing her biggest pair of sunglasses. “I did something terrible, Collie.”
“I can’t help you bury a body right now, but if you stick it in that huge freezer in your garage, it should be fine until I can come for a visit.”
“I appreciate the offer, but it’s not that. You know that thing you’ve had to talk me out of during each of my pregnancies?”
“Oh, no. Don’t tell me you gave yourself bangs.”
“It’s so much worse than that. My hair was bugging the crap out of me…”
Jeannie was a natural blonde with gorgeous, wavy hair. Ever since I’d known her, she’d worn it long. When I’d left, it had been more than halfway down her back. “What did you do? Show me.”
She took off her sunglasses and the baseball cap before untying the scarf and pulling it off her head. Not only did she have short bangs, but her hair was cut into a chin-length bob that was turned up at the ends. She burst into tears and wailed, “I look like Mrs. Puff from Spongebob!”
She totally did. All that was missing was the little blue sailor cap. But as her best friend, it was my duty to tell her, “No, you don’t! You look like a blonde Audrey Hepburn. It’s so chic, Jeannie.”
“It’s not! I ruined my best feature!”
“You look amazing,” I insisted, “and you must feel so much better. It had to weigh a ton, and you must have been roasting under all that hair. Plus, just think how much easier it’ll be to wash and dry it now.”
She sniffed and admitted, “It was a pain when it was long.” But because her pregnancy hormones weren’t done fucking with her yet, she burst into tears all over again and exclaimed, “I feel like such an asshole, crying about hair when you’re literally sitting in a hospital after open-heart surgery!”
“Jeannie, I’m fine. It’s been three weeks! The only reason they’ve kept me here this long is because I kept getting a stupid fever. But it’s gone now, and I get to go home tomorrow.”
It took her a few moments to get her tears under control. She dried her cheeks with the scarf and said, “This is why you didn’t tell me ahead of time that you were having surgery, isn’t it? It’s because you knew I’d be a blubbering mess.”
“I just didn’t want to worry you.”
“I’m still mad at you for waiting to tell me,” she said, “and for not telling me right away when you got fake married.”
“If I told you about the marriage, I would have had to tell you about the surgery.”
“Speaking of your fake husband, is Miller in the room right now?”
“No. He went for a walk, and then he’s going to get me a smoothie.”
A smile spread across her face. “He’s so into you.”
“He really isn’t.”
“Come on! He’s been at the hospital with you every single day for three weeks, and after this he’s planning to take you home and nurse you back to health. The man is smitten!”
“You’re wrong. I’m like… his project. His club baseball season ended, and he needed something to do with his free time.
” She sighed, and I told her, “I’m exactly like the stray cat he took in.
We’re both just something to focus his energy on, because he doesn’t have a lot going on in his life right now. ”
“There’s no way. If he needed something to do he’d take up golf, or pickleball. He wouldn’t find some random person and make him the center of his universe.”
“I’m not the center of his universe.”
“Oh, but you are.”
“I wish. He’s such an amazing guy. It’s too bad his ex-fiancé screwed him over so bad that he swore off relationships forever. Although even if he hadn’t, he’s way out of my league.”
“You keep saying that, but it’s just not true,” she insisted. “You’re adorable, Collie.”
“And he’s hot.”
“Yeah, he is. You know who he reminds me of? That chef from that TV show.”
“That’s what I told him! He had no idea who I was talking about.”
She said, “I know what you should do. Kiss him and see what happens.”
“I definitely should not do that.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t want to make things awkward between us. I have weeks of recovery ahead of me, and I’m going to be living under his roof while that happens. That’s already a lot.”
“What if both of you are waiting for the other guy to make a move? You’ll never get anywhere at that rate.”
“He’s not.”
“How do you know?”
“I just do.” She shot me a look and took a sip out of a Chicken Bucket cup. I changed the subject by asking, “Is that a strawberry shake?”
“Of course. We both know it’s the only decent thing they sell at the Bucket.”
“Where are your kids right now?”
“At my mother-in-law’s. I told her I was going to get my hair cut in Boise, so she’s not expecting me back for a couple more hours.”
“Where’d you actually get it cut?”
“Darlene Woodbury did it for me.” Darlene had been running an unlicensed salon out of her trailer since the 1970s.
“I thought we agreed going to Darlene was a bad idea, after she caught Shirley Johnson’s hair on fire with her cigarette.”
“I told her she couldn’t smoke around me, since I’m eight months pregnant. See? Problem solved.”
“Kind of.”
“I should let you go, because I really want to take a nap before I pick up the kids. Do you swear you’re doing okay, and that you’re telling me everything?”
“I swear.”
“And do you swear my hair looks alright?”
“It’s adorable, Jeannie.”
She sighed and muttered, “I guess I’ll get used to it. What choice do I have?”
After we ended the call, I pulled up my blanket and hugged my toy alligator to my chest. Miller had bought it for me.
It was about a foot and a half long, and it was meant as a stand-in for Hubert Humphrey, since he was way too big to bring to the hospital.
I’d named this one Adlai Stevenson, continuing my theme of twentieth century Democratic Vice Presidents.
When Miller asked me why I’d chosen that theme, all I could really say was, “Why not?”