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“I need you to look at me. How many fingers?”
“Fingers, uh…” They wavered, then came into focus. “Three.”
“How many now?”
“Four and a thumb.”
“All right.” She straightened. “You have a mild concussion. We’ll do a CT scan as a precaution, but it looks like you got lucky. You should be okay.”
I drifted awhile as my stitches went in. I didn’t really feel them. They must’ve numbed me. What I felt mostly was pain in my head, and a low, constant nausea creeping up my throat. Sick waves of dizziness came when I moved, so I tried not to. I lay still and breathed.
At some point, they took me for my CT. I might have passed out for that, because it went by in a blink. One minute, the tech was there, situating my head. The next, they were wheeling me back through the halls, the ceiling lights blurring over my head. Then I was lying by myself in that white room, or maybe a different room, but just as white. I wasn’t alone, but I felt like I was, voices talking over me but never to me.
“—says he saw it. Awesome game, but?—”
“—his face. Yeah, wipe it off.”
Someone swabbed my right cheek with a wet cloth. It was too cold, and a shiver ran through me.
“See? There, much better. That ought to?—”
“No, you don’t get it. I need to see him.” One voice cut through the others, and my senses sharpened. I tried to sit up, but strong hands held me down.
“Izzy,” I croaked.
“Of course he knows me. Look at my driver’s license and then look at his. You’ll see our addresses match. You’ll see we’re?—”
“Izzy!”
“Oh my God, Spencer!”
Someone leaned over me. “Do you know her?”
“Yeah. That’s my, uh, roommate.” It hit me I’d been about to say something else. Girlfriend, maybe. Wait, had I said it? My thoughts were still muzzy, like wading through mud: I could get where I needed to, but not fast or clean.
“Spencer,” said Izzy, and half my pain drained away. It felt like my limbs all went loose at once, and when my tension went, it took my hurt with it. I gasped with relief and she took my hand.
“Shh.”
“It’s so good to see you. I thought— I thought?—”
“What?”
I laughed. “I don’t know. I have a concussion.”
“Yeah, yeah, you do. You fell pretty hard.” She folded my hand in both of hers, bumped her thumb over my knuckles, stroked my cold palm. “I heard them say at the nurses’ station you needed forty stitches.”
“Forty, that many?” I squinted up at her face. With my vision still blurry, she had a halo, a gentle white aura over her head. She looked like an angel, and I felt myself grinning.
“What are you smiling for? You scared us all half to death.”
“Us all? Who else?” I strained to see past her.
“Leon. Your friends. My phone’s been going crazy.” Izzy brought my hand to her lips and kissed it. “Leon’ll be here right after work. He’d be here already, but he needs to find cover. His sous chef skipped out, so?—”
“It’s okay.” Another thought struck me, and I looked around for a TV. “The game, did we win?”
Izzy’s laughter was shaky. “Yeah, you won. The Owls got in a goal or two once you were out, but with the score you already had, they never stood a chance.”
