Chapter 4 #4
“If I don’t get to a bathroom now, I won’t be able to stand up at all, Kell.”
“Here.” Luke guided them to a single-stall bathroom. “Go ahead.”
He lifted the jacket off their hands, all twenty or so people in the waiting room, plus every staff member, watching curiously.
“How?” Rachel hissed. “Kell can’t stand outside, it’s too far.”
“I have to go in there with you.”
“This is so gross!”
“Or,” Luke said slowly, patiently, like he was talking to a small child, “you can wait until the nurse detaches you, and then you can go.”
The distinct splashing of the beautiful floor-to-ceiling waterfall display, part of the hospital’s renovation two years ago, came into Kell’s consciousness.
Rachel’s, too.
She crossed her legs and pulled on their hands. “Fine. You’ll just have to turn away.”
“I said I’d do this when we were back at the car.”
“I didn’t think it would come to this, then!”
“And now you’ve got an audience,” he pointed out, unable to suppress a chuckle.
“You said you’d turn away!”
“Not me. Them.” He gestured to the waiting room, where literally every pair of eyes was on them.
“Hmph!” she grunted, opening the bathroom door, Kell in tow. As it closed shut, he turned away, then felt his hand graze her belly.
“What are you doing?”
“Unbuttoning my jeans.”
This, he hadn’t anticipated. His fingers followed hers on the zipper track down, and then:
“Turn around.”
“Already am. Don’t have to ask twice.”
Then… silence.
Might as well check his phone.
Five messages from Allen, three of them asking about a grandfather vine removal job at Oldham’s farm.
Two messages from his mom.
And so many notifications from Instagram that he wanted to immediately delete his account. He could only imagine the photos already circulating in town. Hopefully, they got the logo on his truck when they snapped a pic of Rachel riding in his lap.
What was that old phrase? Even bad publicity is good publicity?
He answered Allen, ignored his mom, and got his other texts under control.
More silence.
Awkward silence.
Achingly weird silence.
There were only so many breaths they could take together inside the tiny space before he had to ask.
“I thought you had to go?”
“STOP!!”
“What did I do?”
“I… I can’t. It’s too embarrassing. It won’t–I can’t relax enough to pee.”
“Then we can wait.”
“I can’t wait!”
He began making a pssssssh sound.
“That isn’t helping!”
“I’m closing my eyes and moving to the sink, Rachel.” Before he shut his lids, he checked the distance to the faucet. Going on instinct and memory, he found the handle and turned on the water full blast.
Instantly, he had to pee.
But he wasn’t desperate like her.
“Cover your ears,” she demanded.
“What?”
“Cover your ears!”
“I only have one free hand.”
“Then cover one ear and start humming.”
“Humming?”
“Yes. Then you’re less likely to hear.”
“I’ve heard people pee loads of times in my life, Rachel. Your urine isn’t special.”
“It is to me! This is the first time I’ve peed in front of someone in ages!”
“That tells me an awful lot about your love life.”
“What does peeing have to do with sex?” A sharp intake of breath followed that question. “Hold on. You really, really don’t have to answer that. I do not want to know.”
He wasn’t taking the bait on that comment.
“When you’re in a relationship and you spend the night, sometimes you hear each other pee. Or you share a bathroom.”
“Not me!”
“Interesting. High maintenance, huh?”
“I hate that term.”
“You hate it because it’s true.”
“Not wanting to pee in front of other people does not make me high maintenance. And stop talking. You’re just stressing me out and I can’t pee when I’m tense.”
“Then when do you ever pee?”
With that, he covered his ear and began humming, as loudly as possible, the beat to “Uptown Funk.”
Complete with a little dancing.
And then he sang the words.
Between the faucet, covering his ear, and singing, he drowned out her nattering, until finally she stopped. He knew it would work, because what Rachel didn’t understand about herself was that focusing on her problem was her biggest problem.
Her need for control wouldn’t let her let go, even when it was what her body needed.
“Kell? KELL!”
He stopped humming and dropped his hand from his ear.
“Yeah?”
“I’m done.”
“Con-grat-u-la-tions!” he said in a sing-songy voice normally reserved for toddlers. “Rachel peed on the potty! Do you want a princess sticker or a pony sticker?”
“You’re such a jerk.”
“Yeah, but I’m the jerk who helped you.”
“You have a funny definition of help.” He felt his hand graze her bare flesh again.
“Now what?”
“Pulling up my pants. Have to zip up and button. Sorry.”
“No problem.”
His hand no longer felt like it was part of him.
It was more like a puppet’s arm with fingers and flesh.
While his mind worked on ignoring the image of what she was doing, the rest of him tried to stay calm and ready to take whatever Luview, Maine’s townsfolk were going to throw at him–for a long, long time.
Heaping doses of teasing.
Until the day he died.
“You can turn around now. We have to wash our hands.”
“I think that can wait.”
“Eww, gross! Now you’re the one revealing a lot about yourself. You don’t wash your hands after you go to the bathroom?”
“I do. Just not in a situation where you literally can’t do it.”
“We can put our glued hands under the water, Kell.”
“Cleanest radiator hose ever.” He ran his free hand through his hair in frustration, sighing through his nose. “Let’s get this over with. We’ll just go out and–”
Too late. She was already running her left hand under the soap dispenser and covering their connected hands with the white foam.
Fighting it wasn’t worth it.
At least his sister wouldn’t chide him for being too greasy when she separated them. He knew damn well Colleen would make sure they were her patients. Luke was likely filling her in right now.
Rachel washed with a surgeon’s precision. He half expected her to pull out a nail brush and latex gloves. She shook their hands free of droplets and moved to the Dyson hand dryer.
That’s when Kell’s patience ran out.
Grabbing the door handle, he pulled it hard. Rachel muttered something about her wet hands but she didn’t put up more of a fuss. Luke was nowhere to be seen, so Kell walked with Rachel to the intake desk.
Saundra Cooley was there, giving him a wicked grin. Her sister, Melinda, had been his fourth-grade teacher.
“Gotcherself in a sticky situation there, Kell?” she said, clearly pleased with her little joke.
“You know it, Saundra. I’m guessing Colleen’s ready for us?”
“Oh, she sure is. Charged her phone and everything.”
“Her phone?”
“For pictures.”
Kell’s Instagram account was about to get tagged to death.
“Who’s Colleen?” Rachel asked.
“My sister.”
“Your sister’s a doctor?”
“She’s a nurse.”
“Are you related to everyone in town?”
Saundra’s brow scrunched a bit.
“We’re third cousins, right, Kell? Abram Luview married Adelaide, and they had Alexander, Mortius, Nelson, Helen, and–”
Rachel cut her off.
“That was a rhetorical question. Could you please get us a medical professional to take care of our problem?”
Kell could tell she was seconds away from the officious phrase, “and do your job,” which was the fastest way to get anyone in a small town to slow down.
“Insurance card?” she asked Rachel, waving at Kell. “Already got yours on file.”
Rachel used her free left hand to reach into her coat pocket and pull out a tiny wallet, awkwardly unsnapping a clasp with her thumb. She slid a card over to Saundra, who inserted it into a card reader and handed it back.
For the next five minutes, Rachel answered a series of standard questions. He learned her birthdate, that she wasn’t allergic to any medications or food, her address, and started to wonder if he was eventually going to learn the date of her last menstrual period.
Thankfully, Saundra let them loose before it came to that.
Saundra pointed. “Through those doors, curtain three, left side. Have fun. But I heard you already did. Nice lap dance,” she said to Rachel with a big, mocking wink.
Rachel looked like she was about to swallow her own eyeballs.
“I–what–that’s–” she sputtered as Kell nudged her to curtain three, left side, where they found his sister waiting.
Phone in hand.
“Wow. Never seen this before,” Colleen said, smirking at him.
“I’m sure other people have superglued themselves together.”
She pointed at Rachel. “No. I mean her. She’s wearing green and blue in early February.”
“What’s wrong with green and blue?” Rachel looked down at her shirt. “This is Tory Burch.”
“It’s right before Valentine’s Day. In Love You, Maine. If you don’t wear red, white, or pink, you get pinched.” Colleen’s scrubs were pink.
“Like not wearing green on St. Patrick’s Day?” Rachel said with a growl that went straight to Kell’s pulse and kicked it like an angry bull.
“Did you do any research about the town, or just fly first class across the country, rent a car, and drive up here with your expense account and your ridiculous shoes so you can swoop in, gentrify us, lie to everyone, and extract whatever value you think you can get before running back to L.A. for lunch?”
Colleen gaped at him.
Rachel’s face burned with rage.
They were still attached at the hands, hers warming rapidly, as if fury heated every red blood cell. Her heat surprised him.
And set him vibrating.
Turning to Colleen, she said softly, “Could you please just unstick us while I have a few molecules of dignity intact?”
“I can’t promise the dignity part, but absolutely on the glue.”
She brought their hands, and of course the radiator hose, to a large wash basin filled with hot soapy water, the heat hitting his skin like a bee sting.
“Ooo!” Rachel gasped, clearly feeling it, too.
“Too hot?” Colleen asked.
“What’s in here?” Rachel demanded.
“Water. Soap.”
“That’s it?”
“Soak in it for a while. It’ll soften the glue up. Then we’ll use some acetone and that should do the trick.”