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Usually, I tried to train extra hard before I went, tried to get the excess energy out, tried to exhaust my body in the hopes that it would be cathartic emotionally.
It really didn't work at all, but I kept hoping.
Hell, if nothing else, when I went into work arched over like an old lady with whole-body arthritis, the guys there tended to overlook the fact that my eyes looked red and swollen.
The tequila was just a way to forget for a little while, to get rid of some of the stress that I carried with me every second of every day.
If I made some stupid choices while escaping, well, I guess that was a fair trade.
At least I didn't sleep with him.
First time I get laid in about a year, yeah, I wanted to be able to enjoy that with a clear head.
If I were being honest with myself, I would admit that Edison was totally the man I would love to break my dry spell.
The why could be looked at shallowly or with depth.
He was hot. Case closed.
But also, there was just something there. There was a connection. There was the odd feeling like maybe, just maybe, he got me.
No one ever got me.
Hell, people barely even tolerated me.
I didn't even blame them for that.
I was a bitter shot to take with no salt or sugar.
I certainly never thought any less of you if you didn't want to be around me for any longer than was absolutely necessary. And very few people would even want to put up with me.
Meryl did for who-knew-what reason.
Maybe just because I was the only woman willing to work there, and he liked seeing tits and ass around. Maybe it was more. I didn't know.
I couldn't, however, figure out what the deal was with Edison.
He could have literally any woman.
Why would he bother with little ole damaged me?
It was a question that was not answered a few hours later, after having spent another hour with him, this time being the one inflicting pain that he took with an admirable hiss when I had cussed him savagely.
He said nothing at all about the night before. In fact, it was like nothing at all happened.
For reasons I was choosing not to analyze, I was somehow offended by that.
I tried to shrug it off as I went home for a quick shower and change.
I didn't eat.
I couldn't eat.
I almost never did on these days.
The visiting days.
My stomach rolled too much to even entertain the idea. Before or after.
The drive was one I could do in my sleep, having done it every single day for three months, then three days a week for the next three months. It was a drive I was maybe terrified never to do again, no matter how much it made my gut hurt, how much it made my heart crush to dust in my chest.
The drive would be easier to accept than the reason I would no longer have to make it anymore.
I parked in the lot, taking my ticket, pocketing it in a way that was all-too-familiar. Taking a deep breath, I pulled the sour and salt scent of the Navesink River into my chest, hoping it could steady me as I let myself in through the revolving doors big enough to fit a small bridal party in each little section.
I never used to hate hospitals.
How could I, when I spent so much of my youth in them?
I was forever falling out of trees, breaking things, bloodying things, knocking into things hard enough to need X-rays and overnight observation.
I knew the exact sensation of the scratchy paper they pull over the exam tables and the faded, squishy, yet firm leather beneath it. I knew the coldness of the X-ray and CAT scan tables as well as the mechanical clicking noises they made while they peered inside you. I knew the antiseptic smell I almost found comforting, and had my mother not convinced, evidenced by how frequently she went over to the hand sanitizer dispensers that were attached to the walls, and scrub on some of the cold liquid that she would later complain dried out her skin.
I never had anything even resembling a phobia about the place that used to give me grape Advil and bubblegum-flavored Amoxicillin, and let me pick crazy colored casts.
They were actually memories I liked.
Which was rare.
But that all changed that night.
That horrible, life-changing, soul-crushing night.
Me, dead inside, cold-as-ice me, had sobbed until I had lost my voice, until all the skin on my cheeks became raw and red and painful.
That night when words that once meant nothing to me started to mean everything.
Words like coma.
And brain waves.
And cerebral swelling.
Words that said she became a doll in a bed with machines poking out of her wrists, her nose, her crotch.
