J. Wachowski - In Plain View

“Where did she get something like that?” I recognized the blister packaging. Tonya had something similar for her back medicine. And I’d seen some in the emergency bucket Jenny had pulled out of the garage. “A friend of mine had been visiting this weekend. She has back problems. I know Jenny saw her take something, heard us talking about painkillers.”

“…the pleasant land of counter pane.”

A grinding nausea returned to my stomach. All those questions about pain. Tonya was going to freak.

“Jenny didn’t take painkillers,” he said. “She took something a lot harder to find.”

“My sister is-was-a nurse. Here, actually. She’s got a huge bucket of medicine and stuff.” I rubbed my head. I should have taken the bucket away from Jenny. Put it somewhere safe. It never even occurred to me. “I’ll have to check. That might be where Jenny found them. How many did she take?”

“Not many. More than a couple and her liver-” He frowned, shook his head. He was a young guy with the ashy complexion of doctors indentured to the emergency room. Pale blue eyes behind glasses, he didn’t make eye contact easily; he kept looking toward the window. “She’s going to need more than my kind of doctoring when she comes around. You do understand that?”

“Her mother died a couple months ago.” There was too much to explain. It would take too long for both of us. His impatience to move along to the next patient, next crisis was like the buzz of a live current between us.

“I’ll have to report this to a social worker. She’ll be able to get you a referral.”

“I understand.” Tiredness swamped me all of a sudden. “I need to stay here. Jenny gets nightmares. I want to stay with her.”

“Of course. We’re moving her up to a room. You can stay as long as you want.” He made the effort to meet my eyes and I realized that some of the awkwardness was meant as empathy. He nodded at Curzon and left us alone. Finally.

Curzon announced he was headed down to the cafeteria and promised to return with some warm caffeine-alive, fully sugared for both of us.

Jenny was moved upstairs to a small double room with two empty beds. The last time I spent any time in a hospital, there were crucifixes over every bed. My mother was comforted by the statued suffering hanging on the wall. Jenny’s bed was surrounded by cables, electronics, tubes and sound effects. A television was mounted high on the opposite wall. I left it off, but I had to fight a constant urge to stare at the distorted gray reflection it created.

Nurses clucked in and out, double checking all Jenny’s monitors. They told me she was fine, better, not to worry.

I sat down on the second bed and watched the girl sleep, wondering how she could look so much the same after all that had happened in the last few hours.

Curzon returned with coffee, as well as cups of salty chicken soup and oyster crackers. I made room for him beside me on the bed and when he sat it was a comfort, not an intrusion.

“She’s gonna be all right,” I said, as if I’d always believed.

“That’s good.” He sipped his soup.

“Yeah.” I smiled. “Thanks. For…everything.”

We were having a moment. It’s been a long time since I made a friend. My instincts aren’t always good in that department. I wasn’t quite sure what should happen next.

Jenny’s breathing changed and it caught my attention. Her eyes shifted back and forth beneath the lids, her head twitching with tiny vibrations. Unconscious, she was on the lookout for trouble. The words Grace Ott had spoken to me earlier would not stop looping through my head.

“Do you think Jenny expects bad things to happen to her?” I asked. “Do you think she believes good things won’t ever come again?”

“Kids learn from what they see around them,” Curzon answered. “How about you? Do you expect the worst? Or something better?”

A ripple of something like panic hit me low and deep, but I pushed it off. Who was I to judge Old Man Jost? I had watched while bad things happened my whole career. My whole life.

I picked up our empty cups, stood and tossed them into the trash. He stood too, as if those kind of manners were his habit, and faced me.

“I believe there’s something better,” he said. And then he reached across the space between us. All I could see was that fine warm hand coming toward me…almost…barely, his fingertips touched my cheek.

Perhaps, I closed my eyes.

Maybe I turned my head into his hand.

It’s possible I wanted to feel him against my cheek, my lips. Touching me.

But I never asked for what I saw when my eyes opened.

Longing.

“Jack?” I whispered. “Oh come on now-”

And he did. He scooped me into the wall of his body, arms and thighs and chest making contact, following my clumsy retreat, pressing until I was against the window, nowhere else to go, the metal sill behind my thighs, cold glass at my back. His body was solid and more real than anything I’d felt in months, years, forever.

He pushed his fingers through my hair and tilted my head, my face, my lips up to him.

“You,” he whispered, and then took away those last few molecules of separation.

Mouth soft, everything else hard. What a contrast. Kissing …how long since I’d been kissed? Soft, so softly. Please? Pleasing. Hard as in inevitable. Deal with me. Now.

Just like that, I’m gone.

I don’t even know what happened next. Honestly. I couldn’t tell you. My brain reverted to something lower than lizard-level function. I was all the way back to spineless protoplasm.

Next thing I know, Curzon’s pushing himself back, eyes locked on me. The look on his face-oh! I’m not Maddy. I’m like food.

I’m survival.

I’m it.

Nobody’s ever looked at me like that. Every small hair on my skin lifted. I stood there like an idiot, mouth gaping, lips burning.

Which is right about when I realized Curzon’s cell was ringing, and here comes a nurse shoving her way through the door. I shuffled sideways, the sheriff and I still staring, not even blinking.

“Somebody’s phone is ringing,” the nurse said, glancing back and forth between us. “They will kill you dead if they catch you with that thing turned on anywhere near the telemetry machines. Sign outside says all phones off.”

“Turning it off. Right now.” Curzon pulled out his phone. Breaking the law every now and then was a law-enforcement perk, after all. “Sheriff here.”

The nurse bustled around the room, checking Jenny’s gadgets for her temperature and pulse, while I focused on getting my own vital signs back into the normal range.

“Christ, you gotta be kidding me. Who responded?” Curzon asked. He continued staring at me while listening. “On the way.” He snapped the phone shut. “I’ve got to go.”

“Okay,” I mumbled like a half-wit. “Thanks-”

For everything? The words stuck in my throat, blocking some key artery and causing my face to flush with heat. Junior high social gaff #101.

Curzon raised his hand once again and pointed at me.

You.

He turned and walked out.

I stood there. The nurse did some fiddling with Jenny’s IV. She told me they were pushing fluids to help her body flush the toxic stuff faster. I lay down on the second bed and watched it bubble and drip, counting the seconds, measuring out increments of guilt and confusion.

One one-thousand,

Two one-thousand,

Three one-thousand,

drip.

One-not again,

Two-not today,

Three-not now,

drip.

Jenny slept on. When the ten o’clock news started, I went looking for a can of pop and called Tonya. She was out, so I left a message with the bare bones of what had happened. I knew she’d probably come flying out to the hospital as soon as she heard it, but there was no holding back on this kind of info.