Chip
“Well, well,” a voice says. He opens his eyes and it’s Brenda. “Yup, you’re still with us.”
“Hey,” he says, and looks around. The curtain is closed behind her, and he is hooked up to an IV and has sticky patches on his chest. He sees a bag of blood, and a part of him thinks, Well, this is convenient, I’m getting my transfusion while I’m in the neighborhood. “What happened to me, Brenda?”
She cocks an eyebrow after checking a few things.
She looks for hives or rashes the way she always does and tells him to take Benadryl just in case.
“A case of missing your favorite nurse, I guess?” She gives him a wry smile.
“By the way, thanks for the book. I kind of like it. Lots of swearing.” She grins. “Which is my favorite part, of course.”
He smiles. “Why did I fall?” He feels weak again. “Is it getting closer? Am I almost done?”
She scowls at him. “Oh, Charlie. Don’t be silly.
” She puts her hand to his forehead, then checks his pulse again.
“You just needed a little TLC, more fresh blood. Some rest and hydration.” She scribbles something on a chart and plops down in the chair next to him.
“I’ll find some cookies or some lemon ice for you in a minute.
When I agreed to cover for my friend Gerry today, I didn’t know I’d be running into you. ”
“Lucky for me you’re here,” he says. He sits up, and he does feel better. The sheets are nice and cool. He wonders where everyone went. And the yelling at the end? Did he imagine the yelling? “Brenda, will I get a bill for this? How the heck much will this cost?”
She smiles. “That woman who brought you, the one who looks like a baroness, already marched over to accounting and said any bill should be sent to her.”
“She did?” Something fills him up, something so unexpected and gratifying. These are his people.
“You certainly can charm ’em,” she says and shakes her head.
“Where did they go?”
She looks uneasy. “They’re around. I’m sure one of them will pop up. They keep pestering me.”
Did he imagine what he heard Hawk say? Was he delirious?
A moment later, Rhonda and Nancy appear in the doorway, and Brenda motions them inside. “He’s bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.”
“He looks it,” Nancy says in a quiet, guarded way.
Rhonda walks over and looks down at him, and he feels something powerful he can’t explain. He thinks of her girls and the lightning bugs. He thinks of her paying his hospital bills, and wants to tell her she can keep his paychecks. “I should have told you,” he says. “I’m sorry.”
“That’s yours to tell,” she says, and she reaches down and pats his arm so gently he’s not even sure he can feel it.
“I’m sorry, Chip.” Something in her eyes.
Almost a revelation. He looks beyond her, and sees Brenda still in the doorway, as if she’s making sure these women are suitable for him. She nods and leaves.
“You sure gave us a scare,” Nancy says, standing beside Rhonda.
Rhonda looks at her. “I need to go check on something. You’re in good hands here, Chip. I’ll be back.” She squeezes Nancy’s elbow and smiles.
Chip looks up at her. “I’m sorry, Nance. I shouldn’t have brought you into this.” He looks down at himself. He feels so exposed in his hospital gown. He moves his legs under the covers to make sure he’s still in one piece. “This is a big downer.”
Nancy seems to steel herself. “I’m all aboard, Chip. Whatever you need.” Tears stream down her face so quickly, he wonders if they were just waiting there. A piece of his heart breaks, seeing her cry. But he also doesn’t have time, and he knows what he feels. And what he doesn’t.
She takes his hand and squeezes it. She pauses. “I—”
He puts his hand up. “Please don’t say it. Please.”
More tears. She doesn’t wipe them away. “I love you, Chip,” she whispers.
Movement behind her. Brenda again? he wonders. He feels so laid bare, so flat-footed. He doesn’t want to say he doesn’t love her. He looks in the doorway, and it isn’t Brenda.
“You okay, Charles?” Vicky says. “Brenda called me.”
Nancy turns to him with questions in her eyes, and Chip feels like the luckiest and unluckiest person in the world. What a mess he’s made with his short life. Vicky stays where she is, and Nancy squeezes his hand tighter.
“Thanks for coming,” he says to Vicky. He looks at Nancy. “I’m so glad you’re here,” he says into the air, hoping the right person will receive it.
Brenda says they are keeping him overnight. “I’m sorry, though, no visitors,” she says, looking at Nancy and Rhonda. Vicky went to make a call a while ago and hasn’t come back.
“Of course. He needs his rest.” Rhonda comes over and pats his arm. “Get some sleep, and we’ll talk more tomorrow.” Her eyes look so solemn. “I’m so sorry you were going through all this, and here we were having you pull weeds in that heat. I feel awful.”
“It was my choice,” Chip says. “Remember, no regrets.” He tries to sit up. “Is Hawk okay? Was he yelling about something?”
Rhonda looks from Nancy to Brenda. “He just had a setback. He should be all right. Nothing to worry about.”
“What happened to him?”
“I just think he’s been under some terrible stress. But not to fret.” Chip feels worse now. Hawk has been taking care of him and Chip hasn’t done anything for Hawk.
Nancy bends down and kisses his forehead. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” she says shyly. She looks at him like she wants to say more. “Don’t forget we have 1950s trivia tomorrow night.” She laughs. “I’m wearing my poodle skirt.”
“I couldn’t forget,” he says and smiles. After she walks them out, Brenda pokes her head back in the door.
“Don’t tell anyone,” she says, bringing him a stack of cookies and some ginger ale in a plastic cup.
“I won’t.”
She snorts. “Not about the food.” She motions her hand and Vicky walks in.
“Don’t tell anyone I let her stay.”
Vicky stands behind her, hands folded, her eyes looking concerned but happy.
“Can I get you anything else?” Brenda says.
“A new body.” He tries to laugh. Brenda smiles politely and leaves.
There are only a couple lights on in the room, and Chip’s roommate snores behind his curtain.
Chip wonders if the man on the other side has something that can be fixed.
He would kill for the luxury of a broken arm, something that would require stitches, even a ruptured appendix.
Outside, the sky is dark. He can’t see the trees, but he imagines the leaves are starting to change. The color deepening, the decay. Soon, the trees will begin to drop more and more. His sheets feel heavy now, and his neck prickles.
Vicky puts her hand out to him. He takes it, and it feels so right that he swears he instantly knows everything is happening as it should.
He realizes in this moment that he’s an optimist. That he didn’t stay home for treatments this summer because he knew, ironically, that they were a sentence to getting worse.
That he came here because he believed he was the music box—broken but fixable. How foolish. How young.
But he feels rejuvenated from her hand in his, something even better when she tells him to scoot over, and she slides into the bed beside him, careful to avoid the tubes and other things.
She wraps her arm around him and lays her head on his chest. She rubs her fingers over the top of his hand, tracing each vein, and he stays still, letting her magic take hold.
Nothing else matters, he thinks. “I love you,” he tells her. “Man, why didn’t we say that sooner?”
“We thought there was plenty of time,” she says and nestles in more closely. “But we always knew.”
“Yeah, we did.”
He looks at the monitor with his heart rate, and he imagines how content his heart feels. Can you have everything, can you feel okay, even if you know it can’t last?
But love lasts, he thinks. He feels like he understands everything in this quiet hospital bed, the bandages and swabs on the counter, the cabinets and sink and the drip of his IV. Her fingers still tracing the veins in his hand.
He knows what he has in this second is something most people search for their whole lives, and wouldn’t he rather have this undeniable moment than live to be ninety and never find it?
He brushes his thumb over her cheek, feeling the actuality, the realness of her.
He cranes his neck and kisses her, and she sighs and kisses him back.
“You’ll have to come home soon,” she says.
“Yeah.” He coughs. “But not yet.”
“What am I going to do with you, Charles Henry Bishop?”
He shrugs. He wants to say just don’t forget me.
He wants to say she has been one of the best parts of his life, that he’s glad fate put them on the bus together that day all those years ago.
He wants to weep right this second, but he can’t.
Because he’s smiling. He’s almost giddy for what he has now: all his levels in good working order, his body doing what it should.
“What am I going to do with you, huh?” she says again.
“I wish I could tell you,” he says, and grips her as tightly as he can, like someone hanging on to the last inch of land before falling from a cliff.