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“No. It’s fine. You can drive my car,” she said. “The keys are in the front hall.”
I already had my phone out and had dialed my driver. “Yeah, Chris? I need you to come pick me up. We have to take Stella to the emergency room. All right.” I hung up the phone. “He’ll be here in about fifteen minutes.”
She parted her lips to disagree but then shut them. Obviously, the pain was too much for a witty comeback for her.
I looked down at her ankle. “We have to ice it.”
“Okay.”
“You should be off it, too,” I told her. “Can I carry you to the living room?”
She nodded, still with tears streaming down her cheeks.
I walked to my closet and grabbed a gray T-shirt, and slid into a pair of black sweatpants before moving over to her. I held my hands out toward her and paused. “May I?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
I wrapped my arms around her, making certain to be nowhere near her injured ankle, and lifted her into my hold. She didn’t tense up like I’d witnessed her do with other men. Instead, she leaned into me, allowing her head to rest against my shoulder.
I set her down on the living room sofa and headed to get some ice for her ankle. When I came back, she was relaxed on the couch with her eyes closed.
“Ice coming in,” I warned, so she wouldn’t be surprised by the coldness hitting her skin. As I set it against her ankle, she flinched a little before relaxing into it.
It didn’t take long for Chris to show up, and I carried Stella to the car. We rode to the hospital in complete silence. We sat in the waiting room for over an hour and thirty minutes. I was certain the front desk staff was getting sick of me barging up to their desk and asking what the hell was taking so long.
Stella told me it was fine, but it didn’t sit right with me. She had a whole elephant ankle, and they looked at her as if she had a scratch on her arm or something.
When it was time for her to go back to get checked out, a male worker came out to take Stella back.
Stella tensed up a little, then turned to me. “Will you come with?” she asked, clearly uncomfortable but putting on a brave face.
“Of course.”
I offered her my arm to lean on so she wouldn’t put weight on her injured leg.
The employee took us in the back, to where he, thankfully, offered a wheelchair for Stella to sit. I pushed it for her to the patient room that was given to us. The worker informed us that a nurse would be with us shortly.
I took a seat beside Stella. She kept fidgeting with her fingers as she grazed her top teeth across her bottom lip. When the nurse came in and checked out her ankle, we were relieved to hear that it was nothing but a bad sprain. They gave her some pain meds, wrapped it up, and a pair of crutches she’d have to use for a while.
When they left, we waited for the discharge papers. Stella and I hadn’t spoken a word the whole time. I wasn’t much for small talk, and she wasn’t either when she was sober. But when she looked my way, she said, “You don’t know how, do you?”
“How to what?”
“Drive.”
I shifted a bit in my seat and shrugged. “Grew up in New York. Never really had a reason to learn when the subway could get me everywhere I needed to be. And if that couldn’t, a taxi could.”
“That doesn’t really work out great for California.”
“You’re telling me,” I huffed. Even if something was only five miles away, it took about fifteen years to arrive. There were a lot of things about California that I hated, but the traffic situation was at the top of my list. At least in New York, the subways run on a consistent schedule, and we didn’t have to sit at stoplights or at a standstill on freeways.
Her head lay on the hospital pillow, tilted in my direction. She took a deep breath, turned away from me, and said, “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“I’ll teach you.”
“Teach me how to drive?”
