Kristan Higgins - Now That You Mention It

And Bobby was fondling a piece of Jabrielle’s hair.

“Do you mind?” I said, my voice croaking.

They jumped apart.

“Hey! You’re awake! Take it easy, hon, you’re gonna be okay.” Bobby took my hand—ow, my shoulder!—and smiled reassuringly. He did have the prettiest blue eyes. “You were hit by a car.”

“Beantown Bug Killers,” Jabrielle added.

“Did I die?”

Bobby smirked. “We had to sedate you. You have a concussion—we scanned you, but you’re fine. Bruised kidneys, broken clavicle and a patellar dislocation, which we reduced. It’s splinted, and we’re waiting on ortho to check you out. Can you feel your toes?”

Everything hurt. My back, my head, my shoulder, my knee. I was one giant throb of pain. But whatever they’d given me made it so I didn’t really care.

I guess my tunnel of light had been the CAT scan.

“I want another doctor,” I said.

“Hon, don’t be that way.”

“Bite me. You were flirting over my corpse.” I pulled my hand free. Ow.

He rolled his eyes. “You weren’t dead, Nora.”

Fury blotted out the pain for a second. “Well, I thought I was. Get out. Both of you. Don’t be surprised if I file a complaint for unprofessional conduct. And call Gus to walk Boomer.”

The tug of the sedation or concussion pulled me back under, and before the door had closed, I was asleep again.

* * *

When I woke up, I was in a regular hospital room, Bobby asleep in the chair beside me. Some weary white carnations were in a vase next to me, their edges brown. If that wasn’t a metaphor for our relationship, I didn’t know what was. I sensed that moving would be very painful, so I breathed carefully and took stock.

My left arm was in a sling. A brace of some kind was on my right leg. My back hurt, my abdomen ached, and my head throbbed, little flashes of light in my peripheral vision with every heartbeat.

But I was alive. Apparently, the concussion and drugs had given me that out-of-body feeling.

Bobby stirred, never a good sleeper. Opened his eyes. “Hey. How you feeling?”

“Okay.”

“Do you remember what happened?”

“Hit by a van.”

“That’s right. You were crossing the street, and you got hit. Besides the patellar dislocation, your left clavicle is broken, and you’ve got fractures in the sixth and seventh ribs on the left. Pretty good concussion, too. The trauma team admitted you for a night or two.”

“Did you call Gus?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah.” He was quiet for a moment, then leaned forward. “I’m sorry about Jabrielle.”

Surprisingly, my throat tightened, and tears welled in my eyes, slipping down my temples into my hair. “At least you made it easy,” I whispered.

“Made what easy?”

“Breaking up. I can’t really overlook you hitting on another woman when I’m bruised and battered in the ER, can I?”

He looked ashamed. “I really am sorry. That wasn’t classy at all.”

“No.”

“Roseline came by. I called her. She’s upstairs on L and D, but she’ll come down later.”

“Great.”

We were quiet for a few minutes.

Once, I thought I’d marry Bobby Byrne. Once, I thought he’d be lucky to have me. But somewhere in the midst of our year and change together—after the Big Bad Event—I got lost. What was once a bright and shiny penny had become dirty and dull and useless, and it was high time I admitted it.

Bobby hadn’t loved me for a long time.

I was going to need help for the next few weeks. Concussions were serious business, and with my injured arm and leg, I had mobility concerns. I’d need help, and I wasn’t about to stay with Bobby.

Problem was, we lived together. Roseline was a newlywed; otherwise, I’d stay with her. Other friends... No.

“I want to go home,” I said.

“Sure. Tomorrow. I’ll take a few days off.”

“I meant home. To the island.”

Bobby blinked. “Oh.”

Strangely enough, I wanted my mother. I wanted the pine trees and rocky shores. I wanted to sleep in the room I hadn’t slept in for fifteen years.

I wanted to see my sister.

Yes. I’d go home, as one does after a brush with death. I’d take a leave of absence from the practice and go back to Scupper Island, make amends with my mother, spend some time with my niece, wait for my sister to come back and...well...reassess. I might not have died, but it was close enough. I had another chance. I could do better.

“And I’m bringing Boomer,” I added.

* * *

A week later, still sore and slow, arm in a sling, leg in a soft brace, one crutch to balance me, I looked around our apartment for the last time. Bobby’s apartment, really. Roseline had come over last night, and we got a little weepy, but she said she’d come see me on Scupper. Bobby had thoughtfully made himself scarce and had been sleeping on the couch all week.

I should never have moved in with him. We’d only been dating a couple of months before the Big Bad Event, after which we shacked up. Way too early. But then, going back to my place was out of the question. He said we were moving in together, I said yes. Also, we’d been in love.

And lest we forget, Bobby got off on saving people.

In the week since I was hit by Beantown Bug Killers (who had sent flowers every day), I’d done a lot of thinking. I wanted to stop being afraid, to stop settling for the half love Bobby gave me, to stop feeling so gray. The time had come.

Bobby stood by the door, Boomer on the leash. There were tears in his aqua-blue eyes. “This is harder than I thought it’d be,” he admitted.

“We’ll still see each other. Joint custody and all that.”

He smiled, petting Boomer’s big head. “Thanks for that.”

Yes, we were sharing the dog. After all, we’d gotten him together.

“You want to go for a ride, Boomer?” I said, uttering the most wonderful words a dog could hear. “You want to go in the car?”

Bobby drove us to the ferry station, where people could grab a boat to Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard, Provincetown or, in my case, Scupper Island, my hometown, a small island three miles off the rough and ragged coast of southern Maine. The ferry came to Boston almost every day; it was also the mail boat and could carry all of three cars.

Bobby unloaded my suitcases and bought my ticket. Our breakup had made him once again solicitous; he’d been a prince these past few days, fetching me my painkillers, reading to me as I fell asleep, even cooking for me.

I didn’t care. He’d been fondling someone’s hair in my hospital room, and that was not something I’d forget.

The ferry pulled in, a battered little thing, same as it had always been. Jake Ferriman, the eponymous captain of the Scupper Island ferry, was a fixture. He didn’t acknowledge me, just tied up the boat and jumped off, a small sack of mail in one hand.

I’d hoped my mom would come on the ferry to get me; I’d called her when I was discharged from the hospital and told her I’d be coming home, that I’d been hurt but was okay—I think I used the words expected to recover, always looking for attention where my mother was concerned. Her only response had been a sigh, followed by “I’ll pick you up at the dock when you get here,” and I bit down on all the things I wanted to say. It could wait. I was starting over, after all.

Jake returned from wherever he dropped the mail, carrying the return post in a bag in one hand. He checked his clipboard. “You travelin’ alone?” he asked, eyeing Boomer.

“With the dog here.”

He frowned, glanced at me again, then made a check mark on his clipboard.

“I guess this is it, then,” Bobby said. “Call me when you get settled, okay?”