Langley looked from one of us to the other. “What about dinner tonight?”
“I can’t come.” I watched Langley’s face for a sign of how angry she was, but it was impassive. “I would if I could, but I seriously have to go see David.”
“To tell him about the Getty internship,” Kate explained. “Where by ‘tell’ I mean use her mouth but not with words.” She crossed her arms and leaned back as though waiting for fireworks.
Langley nodded slowly. “Keeping the course of true love running straight is more important than one dinner.”
“Thank you,” I said, hugging her. “I knew you’d understand.”
“Of course, jelly bean.” Over her shoulder I saw Kate’s face register disbelief at how easily she’d taken the news.
Now as he pushed my wheelchair down the hospital corridors at an impressive speed, Pete said to me, “Are all your friends preparing to have their own reality shows? Because they certainly go in for drama.”
“And yours don’t?”
He swerved around a slow-moving gurney, eliciting a shout from the nurse. “Sorry,” he said, waving over his shoulder. “Problem patient.” Then to me, “My friends? They’re not so much into the yelling at each other in lobbies and making out in stairwells, no.”
I would have turned around at that news, but I was too busy gripping the armrests. “Who was making out in a stairwell?”
“Some of the people who were here yesterday.”
“Some of the people?”
“Some girl and some guy. I just assumed they were friends of yours.”
“What did they look like?”
“Hang on, I’ll show you. I filmed it.”
“You did?”
“No, doofus, that’s the point.” We were back on my floor. “When people are making out, you turn quietly and walk away. You don’t note their distinguishing characteristics so you can relate them to the hot patient in room 403.”
My pulse started to race at his words. “Is that me?”
Or maybe it was the fact that as he said it, we rounded a corner on two wheels, nearly knocked down orderly, and narrowly missed taking out a garbage can.
We zoomed past the sitting area outside my room. I caught a glimpse of the girl with the coloring book, but the dark-haired husky-looking man had been replaced with a bald husky-looking man reading the Daily News and drinking Tab.
“Yes, roughage. And speaking of room 403, here we are. Three fifteen p.m. and all is well. We beat that slowpoke boyfriend of yours by a mile.” He pushed me through the door. “Would you like to be reinstalled in your bed or would you prefer the comforts of this delightful throne?”
“Bed, please,” I said.
Pete wrapped me in his arms and picked me up. I nestled my nose into his neck. He smelled like blueberry pancakes.
“Do you really think I’m hot?”
“Right now,” he grunted, “I just think you’re heavy.” He heaved me to the bed.
“Coward.” Blueberry pancakes and smoky bacon and long breakfasts with lots of crumbs and sticky fingers that had to be—
“I never said I was brave,” he told me, breaking into my day-dream.
For a moment I was totally flustered—what was I doing, thinking about other guys when my boyfriend, my awesome boyfriend, was just about to show up—but then I remembered the drugs I was on. Probably this, like the hallucinations, was another side effect. Pete didn’t mean anything to me.
“Do you have a girlfriend?” I asked.
“Yes.”
And I didn’t mean anything to him.
“Is she hot?”
“What”—grunt—“do you think?”
Pete was leaning over me to tuck me in when David got there.
“Uh, am I interrupting something?” he said, sounding tense.
“Just getting it on with your girlfriend,” Pete told him. His face was a mask of innocence, but his eyes were very blue and very mischievous. “No, I’m joking, man. I’m the orderly here. Tucking her in. But she’s quite a girl.” He high-fived David. “See you later.”
I watched him go. I did not, I told myself, feel a twinge of disappointment that he had a girlfriend. I looked at David. “How are you?”
“How are you?” he said. “You look even better than yesterday.”
“I can move my arms.”
“Nice.” He nodded to himself, looking around. Today he was wearing his Snoopy 4 Pres T-shirt and dark-brown suede Vans. His pants were slung low on his hips and although I couldn’t see them, I would have bet he was wearing his Captain America boxers. He liked to wear them with the Snoopy shirt, both of them being so patriotic, he’d explained. That was love, I reminded myself. Knowing what underwear someone is wearing without having to see it.
Knowing their every mood. Which was why I could tell there was something on David’s mind.
“You seem distracted,” I said.
“Me? No. Well—” He pulled up the chair and spun it around, then sat on it backward next to the bed. “I didn’t get to say this the other day, lady-girl, but I’m truly sorry you didn’t die.”
Chapter 23
I stared at him, not sure that I’d heard him correctly.
“I mean, if that’s what you wanted.”
More staring.
“Langley told me—” he started to say, then stopped. His left leg bounced up and down. “You know, you’re right about her. She’s really great.”
“I know. What did Langley say?”
“She told me how upset you were that night. About me and Sloan.”
“Sloan?”
I leave David’s lap and head for the stairs. I turn and see Elsa talking to him. I turn back and walk into—
Not the banister. A person. Sloan.
David said, “She told me how you were running around talking about how you wanted to end it all. She thought, you know, you meant break up with me. But I—well, I hear it different.” His fingers started tapping on his thigh.
“What do you mean with Sloan?”
“I’m sorry” I say.
“No problem.” Sloan smiles shyly. “Party foul.”
My purse has flown open and she kneels and helps me get my cash and mascara and keys back into my bag. I’m still looking for my lip gloss when my phone buzzes again, Kate texting Where r u? 911 upstairs bathroom!!!!”
“If you find a lip gloss, you can keep it,” I say.
Her face lights up. “Seriously? Wow.”
David took my hand from the hospital bed and started stroking it. “Look, babe, we can get through this. For your sake, you’ve just got to breathe it out. All the pain. The anger. You need to choose what to stress about and what to chill about, right? Like sure, I was with Sloan at the party, but that was only because I was mad at you because of what Elsa said. I thought you were going behind my back, so I went behind yours.”
Time, so much time has passed. I step into a room and see two bodies on a bed. One of them is David on top of a girl, kissing her, wearing only his boxers. He leaps up when he sees me. I’m shocked and afraid. He’s coming toward me, with his hands out.
Someone is pushing—or are they pulling—me out of the room. I back away, stunned.
In my head I heard Dr. Tan saying, “We bury what we don’t want to know. And sometimes it comes out in odd ways.”
Yes, I’d definitely buried this.
But there was something missing. Something shady around the edges I wasn’t seeing.
“You were with Sloan,” I repeated, still looking for the flaw.
“Yes, but it was nothing, you know? I mean, it was only because of what you did. Or what I thought you did. You’re my lady, you know that. And things had been rough between us.” He leaned toward me, smiling and curling a piece of my hair in his fingers, his leg still vibrating. “I was really out of it. But being with her just made me appreciate you more. Plus it was better because you know how my temper is and if I’d seen you that night—” He shrugged.
“I mean I saw you when you walked in on me doing my thing. But not other than that.”
What if that was a lie? What if he had lost his temper and tried to run me over? Was that possible? I didn’t even know.
“Look, lady-girl, don’t be mad. That’s what I mean, about you being able to—”
“I think you should leave.”
He slid his sunglasses down his nose to look at me with bloodshot eyes. “Don’t do something you’ll regret.”
“That’s why I want you to go now.”
“Okay. You just get better and when you’re out, everything will go back to being exactly how it was.”
That had been what I wanted more than anything. But now—now I wasn’t so sure.
“Stay soft,” he said, flashing a peace sign.
“That doesn’t mean anything. Why can’t you just say goodbye?”
“Frisky,” he said, nodding. “I like.” He paused in the doorway, one big hand wrapped around the doorjamb. “Oh, and babe. I thought of 140.”
I looked at him standing there. He was so handsome. His shirt rode up and I could see I’d been right about the Captain America boxers. I knew him so well. We were good together. And there were 140 things that he thought I was better than. “What is it?” I asked. I couldn’t not.
“Cherry Slurpee.” He pulled down his glasses to wink. “And that’s a big one.”
I managed to keep myself from crying until I heard his footsteps disappear down the hall. I wasn’t crying about Sloan, although I probably should have been. I was crying about what he’d said. Number 140.
Because cherry Slurpees were something David loved. And he thought I did too because I always got one so he could finish mine even though I liked Coke better.
In a way, that said everything there was to say about our relationship.
I was still sniffling a little when the phone rang. At least I thought it did. But maybe I was just hallucinating it. Maybe the altercation with David had been—what did Dr. Tan call it?—a trigger and there was no phone ringing at all.
“Loretta!” I yelled.
“Yes, sweetheart. Why aren’t you answering your phone?”
Aha! She heard it.
I reached for it.
Chapter 24
“Hello?”
“Jane Freeman? Is that you?” a voice whispered.
“Yes. Who’s this?”
“It’s Elsa. Hi!” She was still whispering.
“El—”
“Shhh. Don’t say my name. They can’t know I’m calling you.”
“Who?”
“The Know-it-alls. They hear everything you say.”
“What do you mean?”
“I heard them talking on the stairs. They’re listening. They know if you’ve been bad or good so be good for goodness’ sake. Or is it goodness’s sake?”
Elsa had officially lost it. “Thank you for the warning. How are you? I heard about your accident.”
“I’m not supposed to be doing this. I’m under the desk. It’s so cozy here. Like a little mouse in a little mouse house. Isn’t that right, Reginald?”
“Who’s Reginald?”
“The mouse. Who’s Reginald?” she repeated like it was the end point of hilarity, and started laughing so hard she snorted.
“Where are you?”
“At Reginald’s, I told you.”
“Is it nice?”
“If you like spiders. Which I don’t.”
“Oh.”
“Shhh, someone is coming.”
“Why did you call me?”
“I did? Why would I call you? You were so mad at me at the party.”
“I was?”
“I couldn’t help it. I didn’t know what would happen.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I shouldn’t have taken the picture. But there’s something else.”
“What picture?”
“Shhh, I’m thinking. God, I don’t know what they have me on here, but man, is it messing with my mind. Oh, I remember. At first I didn’t see you there. And then there was nothing I could do. I tried. I tried to help you. To do what you would have wanted. To help you make the pain go away.”
“Where? Where did you see me?”
“I have to go.”
“Did you run over me?”
“Run over you? I wasn’t wearing my running shoes!” I heard her laughing and then the sound of her hanging up.
My hand was shaking as I put the phone down. Had Elsa just confessed?
I picked up Officer Rowley’s card and dialed her number and left a message on her voice mail.
As I waited for her to call back, I tried to make sense out of what Elsa said.
“You were so mad at me at the party.”
I thought back, groping for a memory of her. I hadn’t been mad when I saw her downstairs with David, I’d hardly—
As I stumble out of the room where Sloan and David are making out, I run into Elsa.
“Watch it, Freeman, wouldn’t want anything to happen to you,” she says, brushing past me.
I clutch at her. “It’s David. He—”
“Why would I care about your boy problems?” She brings her hands up like she’s going to strangle me, but instead she pushes me. “Get out of my way.”
I stagger against the wall.
I have the sensation of moving—being moved?—from carpeting to something cool, but I can’t see anything. It’s dark, dark in my head. Slowly things start coming back into focus. I’m in a—
I’m surrounded by eyes. Everywhere I look, everywhere I turn, are eyes. Staring at me. I feel them above me, next to me, behind me. Watching me. Laughing at me.
Hating me.
“Goodbye, Jane,” a voice says.
I have to get out of there.
I force myself to my feet. My palms tingle with the feel of the brocade wallpaper beneath them as I clutch at the wall to stay steady. I’m in a hallway and the Oriental carpet slithers up and down like a snake beneath my feet, making my ankles wobble with every step.
Keep going! I tell myself.
Behind me I hear people talking, laughing. Someone says my name.
“Stop, Jane!”
I shook my head out of the memory, but the feeling of being pursued—and watched—stayed with me. The eyes were so familiar. I knew them but couldn’t place them.
My head echoed with a cacophony of voices, one flipping to the next like radio going haywire. Elsa: “They’re listening. They know if you’ve been bad or good so be good for goodness’ sake.” Annie: “Ollie has all these toys that you can use to listen to other people’s conversations.” Officer Rowley: “You have a generous boyfriend.” Me: “They’re not from my boyfriend, they’re from—” Elsa: “They’re listening.”
The wheelchair was next to the bed. If I could get myself into it, maybe I could use it to get me to the window, to get—
Loretta caught me as I was about to fall on the floor. “Sweetheart, what are you doing?”
“I have to get to the flowers,” I said.
“What flowers?”
“The big ones. I have—I need to look at that big bouquet of flowers. It didn’t make sense he sent such big flowers, but now I understand.”
“Okay, you sit in bed and I’ll bring them to you.”
She picked them up and carried them to the table next to my bed. “They are beautif—what are you doing?”
“Hello!” I said into the flowers. “Are you listening?”
“Sweetheart.” Loretta approached me obliquely.
“I hope you’re listening because I want you to hear this, you bastard.” I held the vase over the side of the bed and dropped it onto the floor. It made a glorious smack and shattered, flooding the floor with water and scattering flowers and pieces of glass.
“Happy now?”
I yelled into the mess, and started to laugh. “I am!”
Loretta looked at me with horror. She put one hand on my chest, holding me against the bed, and pushed a button on the phone. “I need Dr. Tan up here stat.”
I stared at her. “What are you doing? There was a bug in there. I was just getting rid of the bug.” I was still giggling a little. “God, that felt good.”
“Shhh. It will be okay soon,” she said. “You just hold tight.”
“No, I’m good. I took care of it. I’m better now.”
“Quiet, sweetheart. It’s going to be okay.”
Her tone, the expression on her face, made me realize how what I had just done must look. First I’d talked into a bouquet of flowers like they could hear me. Then I destroyed them.
Insane. That was how it must look.
Oh God. Oh no. “I’m not crazy, Loretta,” I said, the adrenaline of what I’d done beginning to wear off. I started to shiver. “I’m not.”
“Shhh. It’s okay, love.”
“His family is in surveillance,” I said. It was getting hard to breathe enough air. Was I crazy? Everyone thought I was crazy. “It makes sense,” I assured her. “I can explain it. It all makes sense.”
“Breathe, sweetheart,” Loretta said, slipping an oxygen mask over my mouth. “You just breathe now.”
“It does,” I said, but the words were muffled. “I’m not crazy.”
By the time Dr. Tan came in, I was breathing normally. “So, Miss Freeman, you’ve had quite a day,” he said.
Loretta had sent Pete in to clean up the vase, which as far as I could see contained no bug. “Do you want me to leave?” he asked as he removed the oxygen mask.
I shook my head. “I don’t care.”
Dr. Tan settled himself in the chair next to my bed. “Tell me what just happened.”
I told him about Elsa’s phone call suggesting someone was watching me and what Annie had said earlier about Ollie’s surveillance toys and he nodded and made a few notes.
“And what else have you been up to today?”
“I met the head of the hospital.”
“Nice.”
“And I found out my boyfriend cheated on me.”
“Ah.”
I could tell what he was thinking, because it’s what I’d thought before too. When I thought the phone call was made up. It hadn’t been, but learning about David and Sloan could have been a catalyst toward paranoia.
Rosebush Page 19