“Yeah, that’s what I meant,” he says.
I laugh at him as he turns around to bring me back inside, but I’m fixated on a sheet of ice in the parking lot.
“Hang on,” I say, and I can’t stop staring at it. The ice calls out to me, it wants me to show off my amazing sliding abilities.
I drop Luke’s hand, and next thing I know I’m running at full speed toward the ice in my flats, ready to treat it like a Slip ‘N Slide.
“Watch this!” I call out, and not only Luke but a few of the guests who are waiting for cabs turn to watch.
I’m oh so graceful sliding across the ice at turbo speed.
Until I’m not.
And I fall through a crack in the ice and have to put my hand and my knee out to break my fall and not land on my head.
And that’s the last thing I remember before I pass out from the pain.
I might move on from a lot of things in life, but I’ve never moved on from how much I hate hospitals, and especially that hospital smell.
It all started when I was four years old, my mom spent a bunch of time in one, and that was the beginning of ‘the troubles’ with my father.
He wasn’t the worst man, he tried to be around, but he was never able to hold down a job.
Even being just five years old, the experience of the hospital is crystalized in my brain.
“Mommy, where’s Daddy?”
“I don’t know,” she told me honestly, herself a total wreck from the car accident she had been in.
And no one knew. As I got older things started to make more sense. He didn’t react well to the pressures of fatherhood. Sure, he was a little young to be a father, twenty-two. My mother was two years younger though, and she was definitely the one who kept things together.
So when I open my eyes, immobile and alone, I can’t stop the deja vu that kicks in as I realize I’m all alone.
Luke…no Luke. Where is he?
Maybe Janice should be here? But how would she know what happened to me?
As I rack my brain for my last memory, it comes back to me, and the bottom falls out of my stomach.
Ah yes, Drunk Sky thought it would be a good idea to go “ice-sliding” at two-thirty a.m., many drinks in.
Way to go, Drunk Sky. You really fucked over Future Sky on this one.
I sigh and even that hurts.
My right leg is up in a sling, and so is my right arm. Dear goodness I am like a human shipwreck.
Except worse. I’m all alone.
I simmer, then press the button for a nurse to come in.
A few minutes later, one does.
“Hi,” I say.
“You’re awake,” the nurse replies.
“Yes. I was just wondering if you could tell me what happened?”
“You slipped and fell on some ice. You blacked out from the pain, but luckily, we got an ambulance out to you stat. You suffered three fractures, in your tibia, fibia, and wrist.”
“My face…” I catch sight of myself in the window. My stomach drops. “What happened there?”
“Do you want to see it?” the nurse asks.
“Yes.”
She grabs a small mirror and hands it to me.
I cringe in horror at what I see.
“Holy shit.”
“It’s just bruising. It will recover eventually. It’s just swollen right now from the fall you took.”
The nurse looks around, then closes the door.
“Your boyfriend came in with you. He said you slipped and fell on the ice. Is that true?”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m just verifying the story with you.”
“Yes. That’s what happened. Although it doesn’t rub me right that he’s not here.”
“Oh, we’ve been keeping him out, because he’s not a blood relative. We need your approval for him to come in.”
My spirit raises. “Where is he?”
“Luke—that’s his name right? He’s in the waiting room. We had to call security when he broke in here last night. I would have let him sleep in here, but the guards are strict and they found him in here.”
“Let him in, please.”
The nurse leaves, and a minute or so later, Luke comes in. He looks disheveled as he practically trips running in, then pulls a chair up.
“Frick. Don’t look at me,” I say. Suddenly I’m self-conscious about my face.
“Christ, you’re not worried about your face, are you?”
“I look like Frankenstein.”
He takes hold of my hand.
“Fuck it feels good to hear your voice. You had me worried there for a minute.”
“You’re not still worried?”
He looks my body up and down, considering my injuries, then looks me in the eye. “First, you’re going to heal.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I know.” He squeezes my hand and the way his eyes pierce into mine, he makes it feel like a certainty.
“What about my Frankenstein face?”
He laughs.
He fucking laughs.
Anger stirs within me. “What the fuck is so funny?”
He grabs onto my ear gently, on my good right side. Not the swollen left side.
“You think I give a fuck about your face?” he says, then recants. “Sorry. Shit, that came out so wrong…I haven’t slept a wink all night.”
“Not a wink?”
“How could I? Knowing you hadn’t talked to the doctors yet.” He rubs in the gentlest way on the spot behind my ear. “The point is that I was afraid I wouldn’t get my Cielo back. The essence of you is still freaking here. I can tell talking to you. You’re all there. And Jesus, after that fall, I thought you might not be back. It was bad, Sky. Really bad.”
“Did I cause a scene?”
He shrugs. “Well, it did look like a horror movie out there on the ice. And you should have seen the looks on all the doctors’ faces when I tried to explain to them how it happened.”
“They thought you…”
“They thought I did it to you, yeah.” His expression turns stoic, and he swallows deeply, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “Apparently, that happens a fair amount here. Fucking crazy that stuff goes on.”
A beat passes. I reflect on the fact that although my reality right now isn’t great, at least it isn’t as grim as some women might have it.
“Anyways, enough about the depressing shit. The doctors say you’ll be bedridden for a week in here, with the Frankenstein slings.” I roll my eyes and he grins.
“What? Can’t a guy make a joke?”
“Too soon.”
“You look kinda hot with your Frankenstein face, I gotta say. I’ve never been into that but…you do things to me, Sky.”
I giggle. “Too bad it’s going to be a little hard to do that thing we talked about.”
“What thing?”
I roll my eyes again. Even that hurts. “Oh come on. Don’t act like you aren’t thinking about how we were going to have sex last night.”
He smiles faintly and rubs my hand with both of his. “I’m just glad you’re okay. At the end of the day, Sky, we’re friends first. We’ve always said that. I feel really guilty for last night.”