Last Call (Cocktail 5)

“Yes! But I haven’t spoken to anyone since I landed. How is he? Do you know?” I asked, wiping my face as the elevator door opened on the fourth floor.

“I think you better talk to his doctor. Let me get you to his room, okay?” she said, ushering me toward the nurses’ station. Once there, she spoke quickly to the nurses, who pointed us toward a room. Not even bothering to thank her, I raced for the door, seeing his name on the chart just outside.

I prepared myself. I took a deep breath, steeled myself for whatever I might find inside, and opened the door. Strong, strong, strong. I’d be strong. Whatever I found on the other side of that door, I’d be strong for him.

Yeah. Not so much. Because when I saw Simon lying in a hospital bed, surrounded by tubes and machines and buttons and beeping, I almost came out of my skin. He lay there with bandages wrapped around his head—asleep? Unconscious? It didn’t matter, I was grateful for two things. One, that he wasn’t awake to see me fall apart against the doorjamb. When he did wake up—and there was no “if,” only when—he’d find a pulled-together Caroline. And two, and more important, I was just . . . grateful. Grateful that I was here, now, with Simon. So I allowed myself two more minutes of losing it, said the quickest of thanks to whoever might be listening, then swept his hair back from his forehead, gently, barely touching his skin. His face was covered in tiny cuts and scrapes, butterfly bandages covering the deeper ones on his left cheekbone. Bruises bloomed here and there, and down along his neck and upper torso, surgical tape was wrapped tightly. I let my breath out in a slow shudder, then pressed the tiniest of kisses on a cheek that still smelled familiar even under all the antiseptic. Then I started looking for a nurse, a doctor, anyone with a stethoscope who could tell me what was going on.

I checked in at the nurses’ station. Benjamin had already made sure that I was cleared as a visitor, and that I could speak with the doctor as fully as he could. Since Benjamin retained power of attorney, he’d have to be the one to communicate with the hospital staff if any decisions needed to be made. I knew that any decision would be made with me, but my brain could only accommodate this thought in the abstract, not as something that would actually happen.

I spoke with the doctor who was caring for Simon, and he explained more about what Benjamin had told me. They were waiting for the results from his most recent MRI. Simon had been waking up intermittently all morning, and if I wanted to catch him when he was awake, I could stay in his room, and the doctor would come get me when the results came in.

So I did just that. I checked in with Benjamin back home, plopped my bag down, sat in the chair next to Simon’s bed, and watched him sleep. I held his hand, marveling once more at the length of his fingers, the strength in his hand, the handsomeness of just his forearm. I ran my fingertips up and down his arm absently as I held his hand, watching as his eyelids fluttered a bit. Was he dreaming? What did he dream about? Likely the photo he was getting when he took his fall . . .

As I was thinking these random thoughts, I felt his hand squeeze mine, as it had done a thousand times before. I looked from our hands to his face, where those sapphire eyes were open and blinking at me.

“Hey,” I whispered, and watched as his eyes wandered confusedly for a moment, then focused on mine.

“Hey, babe,” he whispered back, and my eyes filled with tears. Hey and babe were now officially the most beautiful words in the English language. “You look pretty.” Go ahead and add three more words to that list.

“I’ll grab your nurse, okay?” I said, reaching for the call button.

“So glad you’re here,” he murmured, and was back to sleep before the nurse even left her chair at the station. But that was okay.

Simon slipped between asleep and awake the rest of that day, and most of the night. The last round of scans showed that although he had suffered a significant concussion, the effects would not be lasting and he’d have a full recovery. Benjamin spoke with the doctor as well, confirming that I’d be staying with Simon at the hospital until he was ready to be released.

Simon finally began to really wake up around three in the morning, preceded by the funniest twenty minutes of my life. Wallbanger on pain meds isn’t like any show I’ve ever seen. Starting with:

“Hey. Caroline. Did I ever tell you how much I love you?”

“All the time, babe, but I never get tired of hearing it.”

“I’ll say it more often.”

“Sure, Simon. You can tell me whenever you like.”

“Hey. Caroline. Did I ever tell you how much I love you?”

“You sure did, about two minutes ago.”

“What’s a minute?”

This also happened . . .

“And at the bottom of the cave, it was like, the world opened up, and there were stars . . . but it was like . . . we were the stars . . . there were stars everywhere, but like . . . we were the stars . . . and you know what else?”

“What’s that, Simon?’

“We were them.”

“What?”

“Them.”

“Them?”

“The stars. . . . we were them . . . the stars . . .”

And if you liked that, you’ll love . . .

“Babies. I want to fill you up with babies. Like, make you pregnant with babies. And have some of the babies. Babies. Babies. Caroline? Babies.”

And finally . . .

“Caroline, I’m so glad you’re here. But why’d you bring so many leprechauns?”