After a couple of hours, a nurse called his name. Adam’s jaw clenched as he stood, swaying, then shuffled to the admitting area. I followed, ignoring his protest. The nurse raised an eyebrow but said nothing, ushering us into a cramped exam cubby with a tattered curtain for privacy. She asked the usual questions—pain scale, allergies, last meal—and Adam answeredin monosyllables until she left him to put on his paper gown. He undressed, and I stared down at the floor.
“If you’re going to be here, at least help me tie the thing,” he muttered.
I looked up and found him clutching the open back with more dignity than I thought possible.
I rose and began to do the ties, not able to help myself as my eyes drifted over the sinewy landscape of his broad shoulders and muscled back. I felt heat rise to my cheeks as I fumbled with the thin strings at the base of his neck. His skin was clammy, and every muscle in his back stood rigid as rebar, snapping me out of my gawking.
“Oh my god, is that eagle holding…?” I asked.
“Yes.”
On his back he had a tattoo of an eagle and in its talons, it was holding walkie talkies that looked exactly like the ones we had.
“When did you get this done?”
“On my twenty-first birthday.”
I traced them with my finger.
“I missed you.” His quiet admission was barely a whisper.
He shifted from one foot to the other and I realized he needed to sit.
My fingers worked to finish the other three ties. “Done.”
He turned to face me, causing me to stumble back. Instinctively, he reached out and grabbed my wrists, pulling me closer to him, causing him to wince and me to flatten against his body. His flinch melted as he stared down into my eyes. The energy between us shifted as my fingers wrapped around his bicep.
“You saved my life, you know,” I blurted out, not knowing why the words were coming now.
His brow furrowed. “What?”
“The appendix thing. When you crawled through the window, then you stayed with me.” I licked my lips. “I never really said thank you.”
Adam searched my face, what was he was looking for, I had no idea, but after several seconds he released my wrist and took a step back. His voice was deep and filled with emotion as he began, “You scared me that night. I thought I was going to lose?—"
The doctor appeared then, brisk and impersonal, and I sat in the chair in the corner. He poked and prodded and took a million notes. He ordered X-rays and muscle relaxers and an MRI, then vanished as quickly as he’d arrived. Adam’s wit had started to return by the time they wheeled him to imaging, but the bravado was gone, replaced by a pale kind of exhaustion I’d never seen on his face.
When Adam was out of sight, I found a vending machine, bought two bags of pretzels and three bottled waters, and returned to wait. I didn’t look at my phone or read the hospital brochures, just sat there with my knees drawn up, counting the tiles on the floor, one row at a time.
He was gone for over two hours. When they wheeled him back, his arm was in a sling, and he looked half asleep, his eyes bleary and unfocused. I offered a pretzel bag and he took it without a word, popping three in his mouth at once.
“You get in a fight back there?” I joked.
“You should see the other guy,” he mumbled, crunching the pretzels.
He slept a little, or at least pretended to, while I counted his breaths and the beeps of the nearby monitors. The doctor finally returned, he said the good news was they were ruling out surgery for now and he was lucky he hadn’t done any real damage by his “cowboy” closed reduction, aka popping his shoulder back into place. The bad news, he said, was he had not one but two slippeddiscs and that they were sending Adam home with a prescription for pain medication, physical therapy. and four to six weeks of recovery time which he’d have to have his arm in a sling withgreatly reduced activity, including no stairs, no lifting, no sudden movements, no bending, basically he would need help.
I could see in his eyes that he was never going to take the pain medicine, I was pretty sure he would do the physical therapy but had no plans on “taking it easy.” But I’d heard the ramifications if he didn’t follow the doctor’s orders, it could cost hima lotin the future. It could cost him his mobility.
He saved my life, it was time to return the favor.
24
ADAM
It tooka full minute to realize we were home. Whatever they gave me was strong stuff. I never did any drugs or took pain medication, but to get through the MRI, they insisted on loading me up on something in my I.V. Once that was pumped into my system, I was out of it. The world seemed both underwater and backlit. My tongue was so dry it stuck to my teeth when I tried to speak.
Billie eased my seatbelt off with medical-care delicacy, then pressed her palm to my chest. “Can you walk?” she asked, but it sounded low and distorted.
