“But did you pee?” I asked, and both of us leaned in slightly closer, waiting for the answer.
“Don’t ‘member,” she shrugged. “Maybe a little.”
Shooting her a small smile, the doctor turned to face me. “Rose will bring through the prescription for you. She insisted on getting it sorted out before y’all leave. Maybe give her one tablet to begin with,” and then he muttered something that sounded suspiciously like, “for your own sanity,” and continued, “and move it up to two if she’s still in pain.”
“That’s a great idea,” Zuri agreed, nodding her head rapidly as she tried to get up off the bed properly. “I get terrible munchies with pain pills. It’s like I’ve been smoking the maree-jooo-han-nah all day. I just eat, eat, eat, eat, eat—”
Clapping my hands, I broke the cycle. “We get it, you get cravings.”
Looking at me wide-eyed, she said earnestly, “I put on ten pounds last time I had to take the good shit, my guy. This ain’t no joke, that stuff in there is like crack for my food whore stomach.”
Apparently, it also made her sound more like she was from New York because her accent had slipped from her normal soft one to more of a Bronx sounding one.
“It make you change regions, too?”
A grin started to make its way across her mouth, but then it dropped, and she frowned instead and rubbed her stomach. “I’m hangry. Can we stop for a burger with chocolate sprinkles on it?” When we both just stared at her, she added, “With some popping candy on it and jelly beans. Do they still do popping candy?”
Glancing at me over his shoulder, the doctor kept a straight face as he muttered, “I’m wishing you the best of luck with that. You’ve got a prescription for antibiotics for your shoulder coming, and if you need pain meds—”
“I’ll be fine with acetaminophen and ibuprofen.”
“Both of you steer clear of aspirin. It thins your blood and might make you bleed more. Plus, it won’t really do much for your pain.”
As someone who hated aspirin for this very reason, that wasn’t going to be an issue for me.
“’Pirin sucks,” Zuri agreed. “But it makes my job easier sometimes. Slippy little suckers veins are.”
Pinching the bridge of my nose, I took a deep breath to get the patience I needed and also to stop myself from laughing.
Once I had it, I opened my eyes to a grinning Zuri. “Okay, Yoda, let’s get our asses outta here.”
Fortunately, Rose arrived at that moment because in the thirty seconds or so since I’d been told by the doctor that we had prescriptions, I’d forgotten we had them. Zuri was a great distraction, what can I say?
But, in she came with two bags and a wheelchair, rubbing her pregnant stomach with the hand holding the medications. How she was still working with that bump, I had no idea.
Once we had Zuri situated in it, Rose gestured at me to go in front of her, as Zuri yelled, “Where we’re going, we don’t need roads.”
“Huh,” Rose snorted. “She can remember a line from a movie, but she can’t remember the words to Hotel California?”
Looking over her shoulder, Zuri scowled at her. “I just made that up.”
“No, it’s from Back To The Future.”
“Oh my God,” Zuri breathed, turning to face forward again. “I write scripts for movies. That’s so freaking cool.”
Gently nudging a now tired-looking Rose to the side, I pushed Zuri in a wheelchair out to my truck, listening to her sing her own version of Smash Mouth’s All Star as she waved at the people in the waiting room.
When we got to the door, she swapped into Blink 182’s All The Small Things, patting my hand sympathetically as she said, “small things,” making me growl again as people started snickering as they walked past us.
After that, I literally wrangled her into the car as Rose stood there, laughing her ass off, and prayed for patience as I drove us back to my house. I didn’t want to leave her on her own after the reminder from the doctor about concussions, and I also didn’t want to risk loose lips Lucy getting up and walking over the glass while she was under the influence.
For half of the drive home, she sang and warbled her way through Celine Dion, some opera-type shit, and then in the blink of an eye, she fell asleep, scaring the fuck out of me. Fortunately, Raoul was at my house when I got there, so he carried her in for me and helped me get her into bed.
Where I joined her after cleaning the inside of my truck out. And not just because of her concussion.
Chapter Three
Zuri
Something hard, hitting me repeatedly in the forehead, woke me up. It was like someone had a Thor hammer and was just smacking away at me.