Chapter 24 #2
My breath catches on a laugh that turns into something suspiciously like a sob. Perfect. Great. Exactly what I need, feelings in the trauma bay. He squints, watching me like I’m a TV show he refuses to change the channel on.
“You crying?”
“No.”
“YOU ARE,” he accuses, hot, fast, and excited.
“It’s just sweat.”
“From your eyeballs? I’m not that dumb.”
I wipe my cheeks with the sleeve of my scrub top and dig out a stubborn sliver. He barely flinches.
“Shut up, Nene.”
He beams, triumphant. “Oh shit! You’re crying over us. See? You missed us. You LOOOOVE us. You want to have a thousand babies. Let us both jizz inside you, ah, all the creamy donut holes I could ever want and —”
“One more word,” I warn, raising the tweezers in warning, ready to stab them somewhere that will hurt more than his hand. “Say one more thing like that in here, and you won’t be eating Cinnamon Toast Crunch anymore.”
“But it’s my favorite,” he whines and then pouts, and I bring the tweezers closer.
He huffs and immediately locks his mouth with an imaginary key. Tosses it over his shoulder. I get two more slivers removed when he breaks the invisible mouth lock.
“I knew you didn’t hate us,” he loudly whispers, scratching lightly at the sheet over his leg with his clean hand. “I just thought maybe you forgot how good it felt. The three of us. I didn’t want you to forget.”
I close my eyes. The guilt is crushing. Heavy and hot, pressing under my ribs. I’ve had memories all week of us. Too many. Doing my charting at the end of my shift. Sitting on the train going home and folding laundry while Paco watches.
“I didn’t forget.” My voice wobbles, and I wipe the tears that didn’t fall on the back of my wrist. “That’s the problem.”
His smile turns slow and smug. “Knew it.”
“You’re ridiculous and smug. Too obnoxious and—”
“And you love it.”
“Unfortunately,” I mutter, going back to his hand because it’s easier to deal with wood than with my own heart.
Another splinter. Then another. Each one is a tiny reminder of how far he’s willing to go for the people he cares about and how far I tried to run from that.
“You scared him badly,” I say quietly as I drop another bloody sliver onto the gauze. “Massimo. He was shaking like a leaf when I first saw him.”
He swallows.
Some of the manic light drains out of his eyes.
“I know.”
He sighs as if he really does know. As if he could feel it within him. Twin things he called it. Maybe that’s how. I wait for him to say more, but he doesn’t. Maybe the guilt I am feeling, he is too. Hopefully, he is.
“Good. Maybe next time you’ll use your words instead of your bones.”
He gives me a sheepish shrug.
“Words weren’t working. Space was winning. I had to try something big like they do in those chick flicks.”
I get the last visible splinter out. Spill out more chlorhexidine, which makes him hiss. Then line them all up on the gauze. A little graveyard of his bad decisions.
“There, that’s all I can see for now.”
He lifts his hand, turning it over like it’s a magic trick. “Look at that. You fixed me again. You must really love me, my angel.”
I tape fresh gauze over his palm. “Algo así.”
He grins like I just proposed.
“What does that mean? Is it I love you in Spanish?” He repeats it several more times, committing it to memory. Again, I don’t correct him. The nurse returns with a tech.
“Let’s get some films. Make sure you didn’t break anything new, champ.”
“No more needles, though, right? Sofia, will you tell them no needles? I am scared of them.”
“Not if you behave, Nene. But if you don’t, she’ll find the biggest, fattest—”
His eyes go wide, like a kid heading into a scary movie, and he covers his ears, wincing when the hurt hand presses down too hard.
“Are you heading back upstairs or staying?” his nurse asks, but I’m not sure.
“She’s not going anywhere,” Emilio answers for me, insisting I stay put.
My charge nurse knows I have family in the emergency room. Even with the odd look she gave me, knowing I’m from the island and don’t really have family here. But she didn’t question it. Just said go and waved me on.
She nods once, like that’s all they needed to throw open the curtain. They start rolling him away. I pull the sheet over his legs when he passes.
“Don’t go far,” he calls down the hall, craning his neck to maintain eye contact. “Family meeting when I get back. Very important business.”
“Just behave. Show them what a good patient you were for me.”
I keep it professional for those that are watching or listening, but my chest does a stupid little flutter over that word.
Family.
I drop back onto the plastic stool. It squeaks under me.
Suddenly it’s quieter. Not actually because the ER never shuts up, but it’s muffled.
The sounds blur around me. My body sags with adrenaline.
From the phone call. From sprinting through the hospital like the building was on fire.
From seeing them both here again. From almost losing him. Again.
This is what I was afraid of. Not just love. Not just sex. The way my life always seems to take things away right when I start to relax. The way the universe sees softness in me and decides it’s time to snatch.
You did this, Sofia. You told them you wanted space. You decided distance would keep them safe. Keep you safe. Keep you from repeating every stupid mistake you made with your ex. Independence, I remind myself. Boundaries. Healthy choices.
Except that’s not what it felt like these last five days.
It felt like punishment. Sitting in an empty apartment that once held peace and calm, now tainted with my ex breaking in.
Filled with Massimo’s cologne and presence to make me feel safe again, knowing I really wasn’t.
Knowing he’d much rather have me at his home with him and his brother, in a gated community, behind a guard shack and two big guys that wouldn’t dare let anyone in.
Hours spent reading Massimo’s texts until the words blurred. Listening to him cry into the phone while I cried on my end. Watching Emilio’s silly videos with his playful voice. The dick pics that he sent were far too many from unflattering angles.
The curtain rustles.
“Em? Sofia?”
Massimo pushes the curtain over just enough to slip through. His face wrinkles in confusion until it dawns on him.
“X-rays?”
I nod. “They’ll bring him back once they decide the mailbox didn’t win.”
His mouth twitches. He lets the curtain fall. The little room shrinks, just the two of us and all the things we haven’t said. I offer him the chair near the wall while I fidget on the stool. Slowly, he sinks into it, a little too far as the cushions have seen better days.
His gaze flicks to my face. Lingers. My cheeks are still hot. My eyes probably look like I lost a fight with my own emotions.
“Everything okay?”
He stares at me.
Tan eyes going soft and wrecked all at once.
Hope, fear, and relief flicker across his face.
My stomach flips because I think I want to stop avoiding it.
Stop needing space. Stop being so damn independent when someone, two guys in fact, are offering me a place to be taken care of. How nice would that be?
“I need to say something,” I start, and stop when he drags the hinges up to drag his chair closer. Then drops it, sits down, legs open, elbows on his knees like he’s trying to hold himself together with posture alone.
“Okay,” His voice is rough. Just like it’s been all week. “Hit me.”
“I don’t want to hit you, Papito.”
He just waits, doesn’t remark one way or the other. I stare at my hands, flexing my fingers like maybe the words are stuck in them.
“When I said I needed space, it wasn’t because you were too much. It was because I was scared I wasn’t enough.”
His eyebrows knit like I’ve started talking in Spanish. “What?”
I keep my eyes on my hands. Easier than looking at his face.
“I gave everything to my ex. That’s what you do when you marry.
I worked myself half to death so he could ‘try things’.
New jobs, new scams, new ways to lose money we didn’t have.
I believed every apology. Every promise.
Until I was broke, he was gone, and I was left with all this debt and an eviction notice.
It was a mess. I was a mess. It took time for the divorce to go through because he didn’t want to be served, and they couldn’t find him. ”
My jaw clenches. I force it to relax and look at him. He’s angry. Hands rolled into tight fists, pushed together. As if wanting to strike my ex, but unable to.
I continue, “I told myself never again. Never let a man be the difference between having lights and sitting in the dark. Never let someone that close again. They will use it against me. Take everything from me. So, I got really good at pretending I was okay and handling it alone. Sending money home to Mami. Paying my bills. Digging myself out of debt. I never wanted to trust or depend on a man again. No help. No weakness.”
He’s watching me like he’s afraid to breathe too loud.
To say the wrong thing. But he’s waiting for me to get it out.
I like that about him. Like that, he’s patient and lets me take all the time I need.
Respecting my wishes for space was similar despite all the voicemails he started with ‘sorry for calling, I know you want space, but I . . .’
“And then you and your brother show up in the ICU. Chaos kings. Demanding and larger than life. Commenting on DSLs and my curves. At first, I wanted to slap both of you. Maybe smother your brother with his own pillow.”
“We all want to do that.” He snorts, humorless and knowing.
“But the more I got to know you both, more so you than him. I realized you were good men. Wouldn’t hurt me.”
“Not a chance.”