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“Sure,” I tell her. “I’ll give anything a try at this point.”
She smiles. “Ok. I’ll be right back.”
True to her word, she comes back within minutes, and hands me a bottle.
“Keep them all,” she tells me. “I don’t use them.”
“Thank you.” I gulp two down with whiskey. Natasha stares at me.
“I don’t think you should take them with alcohol.”
“I think I’ll be fine. I weigh two-hundred pounds. These were prescribed for you, and you weigh… what... a hundred, soaking wet?”
“You flatter,” she smiles.
I wasn’t trying to.
“Should I make a doctor appointment for you tomorrow?” she asks. “I can be discreet, and Mrs. Tate won’t know.”
She almost sounds conspiratorial and I rush to set that straight.
“I don’t like keeping things from Mila,” I tell her. “I just don’t want her to be worried. Especially after tonight.”
“I understand completely,” she answers. “I’ll do my best to help you.”
She glances down at my leg, and I realize that I’m in a t-shirt and boxer-briefs. It’s almost indecent because you can see the bulge of my penis, but she doesn’t seem to notice, thank God.
“Your knee is swollen,” she points out. “I’ll get you an icepack.”
She’s on her way out the door before I think to protest. When she comes back, she settles it on my leg, and damned, if it doesn’t feel better.
“You should keep that iced,” she advises. “The more it swells, the more it will hurt.”
“That makes sense.”
“You never said if you want me to make an appointment?”
I shake my head. “No. They’re only going to tell me that I need surgery. There’s nothing more they can do until then.”
“So you’re just going to grin and bear it?”
“Well, I doubt I’ll be grinning, but yeah.”
“Good night, Mr. Tate.”
“Good night.”
I sit with the night a while, staring out the windows. The grounds here are manicured and lush, and they are quiet now. I smile, thinking about how Zuzu and her future brothers and sisters will run and play in the gardens. They will have the childhood that I never had. Of that, I am sure.
I think about that for a minute, my childhood.
I spent it with my father, and I always thought he resented me, that he didn’t like me.
But it turns out, that wasn’t the case. He just really missed my mother.
And I miss her too. She died when I was young, but I haven’t forgotten the way she smelled like honeysuckle, or the way she smiled at me like I was her whole world.
Mila is the kind of mother to Zuzu that my mother was to me. And I guess I just want her to have more chances to share that love. She’s got so much of it to give. I’d give anything to keep her from harm.
