“I’m not hungry,” I say again.
“Then the ham and cheese for you,” he says, handing it over. When I don’t make any motion to unwrap it, he says, “If you want me to talk, you’d better start eating. I mean it.”
After a heavy sigh, I peel the plastic away and nibble at the corner of the sandwich. My taste buds light up, transmitting signals to my brain,
and before I know it, I’ve eaten the whole thing without even stopping to breathe.
“Not hungry, huh?” He hands me a bag of chips and a soda. “So here’s the deal. When that car hit Brice, it was like dropping him from five stories up. Maybe higher. The car moved through him, so something had to give. And that something was his bones.”
I had just brought the first chip up to my mouth when he says this. I stop, dropping it back into the bag. “How bad is it?”
“Look, you seem nice,” he says. “Like I said, you remind me of my daughter. She’s about your age. A freshman in university, so maybe a few years younger I’m guessing from the patient’s—Brice’s—age. Her name is Rachel, by the way. She’s a real in-your-face, get-it-done, Type A personality. She always does what needs to be done and hates dealing with bullshit. If she were in your position, I know she would want to know exactly what I know, with not an ounce of fluff to soften the blow. But I don’t know you. So I have to ask. Do you want the optimistic answer or the real one?”
Brice’s face pops up in my mind. I can almost feel his hand still in mine. Then the car rips it—and him—away. I know what I want to hear, but I also know what I need to hear. “Tell me the truth.”
“You probably didn’t notice this, but he wasn’t wearing shoes when he was brought in. This is something I’ve actually seen before in car collisions involving pedestrians. This happens when they get hit so hard that they’re literally knocked out of their shoes.
“That said, he’s suffered so many breaks and fractures that I can’t even remember the exact number off the top of my head. That’s all thanks directly to the car. But after the car came the pavement, and it wasn’t any less forgiving, I’m afraid. On top of a concussion, he’s lost four teeth, cracked his left clavicle, and sustained a number of scrapes across 25% of his body.”
I don’t speak, because what can I say? Besides, my heart is aching as though it were the sole victim of this accident. Up until now, my brain has been protecting me from the sheer horror of the event, but as Dr. Heyman describes the specific injuries, especially those to Brice’s face, I begin to remember more. Like the way that Brice seemed to regain degrees of consciousness as I kneeled on the ground beside him. The gurgles through the blood leaking from his lips. Gurgles that might be words I’ll never know if he can’t hang on.
I want to believe that modern medicine can put Brice back together again. TV shows have shown me countless times that surgeons perform miracles on a daily basis. As long as I don’t ask Dr. Heyman what Brice’s outlook is, in his professional opinion, I can go on telling myself that everything will be fine. That if I just stick by Brice’s side through all of this, we’ll be walking out of here together in three months tops.
But feeding my delusion will only leave less of me to take care of Brice. I need to know the truth so that I can be strong. So in a barely audible whisper, I ask. “What’s going to happen to him? Really?”
“So you want the whole truth, huh? You really will have to meet my daughter. You’d be like two peas in a pod.” He clears his throat. Up until now, we’ve both been staring across the lobby, watching the flashing lights of ambulances across the way pulling up to the Emergency Room. Now the weight of his stare is on me. “If he survives the next week, he’ll be in the clear. But that’s where the hard work begins. He’ll have to come to terms with his new reality while his body mends itself. Only then can he reach the foot of the mountain.”
“Don’t you mean the peak?”
Dr. Heyman shakes his head. “Sadly, no. The mountain is physical therapy. Many give up along the way. It’s horrible because you don’t just have to lie there as doctors do all the work. You have to force yourself, every day, to give it your all. Push through pain and doubts. Not for months, but for years. Even then I can’t guarantee he’ll ever walk again. We’re waiting for the swelling to go down to see the condition of his spinal cord. It’s just a waiting game at this point.”
I’ve stopped eating at this point. The bag of chips sits limply in my lap, the soda on the bench beside me. I’m staring at the tile floor, but each time I blink, I see Brice’s face. Bloodied. Broken.
Dr. Heyman looks over at me. “I know that telling you to go home is going to be useless, but you do need some sleep.” He points up. “If you go up to the fifth floor, you’ll find the maternity ward. That waiting room has the most comfortable couches in the hospital. Why don’t you try to get a bit of shut-eye? We’ve got your number, so if anything happens, I’ll be sure to give you a call. I’m on call the rest of the night so I’ll be around.”
When I open my mouth to tell him that I’d rather wait outside the ICU, a yawn cuts my argument short. I don’t even know what time it is, except that it’s so late as to be early morning now. So instead of giving back excuses as to why I couldn’t possibly sleep at a time like this, I nod and stand to leave.
“Take this,” Dr. Heyman says, handing me the chicken sandwich. “You need it more than me.” He accentuates this statement by pointing at his belly. The brief tired smile he gives quickly falls away. “Look. I know this is hard to believe, but you’re going to be okay. Life is never going to be the same, but one day you’ll look around and realize that you’re happy again. But before that happens, both you and Brice are going to have to suffer a lot more. But I believe you’re strong enough to make it through. So don’t give up hope, okay?”
The corners of my mouth struggle to produce a convincing smile. “Thank you, Dr. Heyman.”
“Not a problem.” He tosses all the empty plastic wrappers in the nearest trash can. Then he’s turning a corner, heading for the elevators. Although I said I would try and sleep, I haven’t moved. It’s as if I can’t focus on my body when all I can think about is Brice’s. The worst part is that I haven’t seen him since they wheeled him away for surgery, so I don’t know how bad he looks. I try to imagine him wrapped up in gauze and stitches, but each time I do, all I can think of is the carnage hiding under all that sterile cotton.
Chapter 10
Four days later, Brice opens his eyes.
I’m not there to see it, but the news is relayed to me by Dr. Heyman when I come back to the hospital after my first full day out of the suffocatingly sterile building. Suddenly I regret getting the idea in my head that I should try and get our affairs in order sooner rather than later. I should have been here so I could be the first thing he saw upon waking. What if he thinks I’ve abandoned him?
As much as I hate having missed out, today needed to happen. I’ve been ignoring Greg’s calls for too long. The funny part is that when I finally got back to him, he wasn’t upset in the least. Looking at him—how we met and what he does for a living—one might assume the man to be on the wrong side of understanding. But the reality is that he’s been extremely accommodating, even going so far as to insist that the contract not be canceled, but put on hold until Brice can return. The only thing that bothered me about our meeting was his final say on the matter:
“I do hope he recovers quickly,” Greg said in the nondescript lobby of his porn factory. “But in the unfortunate event that he’s unable to return, perhaps we can tweak the terms of our agreement to more suitably fit your new situation. After all, I wouldn’t want to lose my new star.”
At the time, I’d just smiled and thanked him for his time. I wasn’t going to be working without Brice, which is what I assume he was saying in a roundabout way. There’s simply no way I could do scenes with anyone else. I wouldn’t subject myself or our relationship to such a hideous strain. Especially not at a time like this. There are always other ways to make money.
The rest of my afternoon proved this to be demonstrably false, however. Scanning through hundreds of job listings turned up nothing that really fit. I considered modeling at first, but the gigs were all just smokescreens for escorts. Then I searched office jobs around the area, but they all either started out as unpaid internships or required years of experience I didn’t have.
On my way back to the hospital, the money worries temporarily overtook my concern for Brice. Money isn’t something either of our families has an abundance of. I’ve been as good as an orphan since my family stopped talking to me after I left the Jehovah’s Witness community. It’s been years since I’ve heard anything from them, much less received any sort of financial aid. For all I know, my parents could have died in some cruel plane crash, and I truly am an orphan. All I know for sure is that they wouldn’t spit on me if I were on fire, and that tells me all I need to know about my once family.