Brawler

by Tracey Ward

  “Kellen, I should really get the doctor,” Jenna continued. “I don’t know how much to tell you or if I should tell you anything.”

  “You should always tell me everything.”

  “I don’t want to…”

  “You don’t want to what?” I demanded, losing my patience with her. With everything.

  She threw her hands in the air, looking as frustrated as I felt. “I don’t want to break your brain! You’ve been in a coma for three weeks and you were speaking French to me like I was your mom and asking for ice cream,” something about those words made me break out in a cold sweat, “and we didn’t know if you’d know us when you woke up, if you woke up at all, so I’m a little scared of what to say because what if it sends you back to sleep or something?”

  I stared at her blankly, “I don’t even like ice cream.”

  “Yeah, you do,” she told me patiently, calming down. “You don’t like frozen yogurt. Or gelato.”

  “Gelato and ice cream are the same thing.”

  “Clearly not ‘cause you hate the hell out of one and you love the other.”

  I frowned. “Are you fucking with me?”

  “Are you fucking with me? How do you not know your own likes and dislikes? How is it that I have to know these things for you?”

  I ignored her question, glancing around the room again. The window came into focus. It was raining and overcast, not very California. We were still in New York. I spotted a purse on a coffee table. Coach. Definitely not Jenna’s.

  “Is it just you?” I asked carefully.

  “No. Mom is here. She’s getting coffee. Laney is at the hotel sleeping. She caught a cold and can’t come in to see you until she’s over it.”

  I swallowed hard, frantically trying to piece things together. We must have been in an accident either on the way to or from the restaurant. “She’s okay then?”

  “Yeah. She’s perfect.”

  “The driver?” I asked absently.

  “Both fine, though one is in jail. You got the worst of it.”

  I scanned the room again, feeling pent up and wild, and not even sure what I was looking for. Maybe an escape.

  “I should really ring for the nurse,” Jenna said softly.

  “Wait.” I reached out with my right hand to stop her from hitting the button, to buy myself a few more minutes of peace with her, but it didn’t cooperate like it should. I hadn’t noticed it until now; a huge cast, stark white and foreboding.

  I scowled at it. “How bad is that?”

  “Pretty bad,” she admitted reluctantly. “They’re hoping for the best but they think you’ll still have some sensitivity.”

  “It’ll ache when it rains?” I asked wryly.

  “Or burn like fire when you hit someone.”

  Motherfucker.

  The good news just kept on coming.

  I let my arm drop heavily onto the bed, chuckling bitterly. “Well, it’s a good thing I don’t do that anymore, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t know about that,” she muttered.

  “What were you reading to me?” I asked her, desperate to change the subject.

  Jenna knelt down slowly to pick up her phone and I watched her long, lean body bend in half then rise back up to her full height. She was so tall. So lithe and goddamn graceful. It killed me. It always had. Watching her move made me ache in a hundred different ways.

  “Nothing,” she said flippantly.

  “It wasn’t nothing. I heard you reading before you fell asleep. What was it?”

  “A comic.”

  “A comic book?” I asked, surprised. When had she started reading comics?

  She shrugged, looking at me defiantly like she was ready to fight about it. It was a sure sign she’d had this conversation with her mom before. “A graphic novel, but yeah.”

  “What one?”

  “V for Vendetta.”

  “Sit down. Keep reading.”

  She shook her head as she set her phone down. “I need to get the nurse. I should have done it already.”

  “God, Jenna, please don’t,” I groaned in annoyance, scrubbing my face hard with my left hand. I was sick of her trying to pawn me off on other people. I wanted her to just sit down and be with me. I wasn’t ready for anyone else yet. “I need a minute, okay? It’s a lot to take in finding out you’ve been out of the game for weeks. The last thing I remember is…” I remembered a lot of things. A lot of dreams. Nightmares. “I remember the night of the accident. It’s shattered and weird, but it’s the last thing I remember. A lot of crazy, loud noises, a whole lot of fuckin’ pain and then you sitting here in a silent room reading to me. I’m getting some serious whiplash here so please, give me a minute before you call in nurses and doctors. Especially before your mom and Laney.”

  “Do you want me to go? To give you a minute alone?”

  “No,” I barked. “I want you to sit your ass down and read me that damn book.”

  She glared down at me, her eyes narrowed and her mouth a thin pink line.

  “Say the magic word,” she demanded sharply, “or you can suck it, Kellen Coulter.”

  There are no words to describe how much I loved her then.

  As she stared down at me sternly waiting for me to check myself, I felt suddenly calm. Solid. My racing, frantic, panicked brain slipped into gear under that familiar gaze.

  I smiled at her. "S'il vous plait, Nonpareil."

  She grinned grudgingly and I knew I was forgiven. I also knew the magic word in that sentence wasn’t ‘please’. “Oh, we’re bringing out the big guns now?”

  “I know what works.”

  “You’re the worst. How many women have you called that?”

  “How many have I called Nonpareil?” I asked, my smile fading.

  “Yeah.”

  “One.”

  “Just one, huh?”

  “Just one,” I told her honestly. “You’re the only one. You’re beyond compare.”

  She chuckled at me, shaking her head. “You’re so full of shit.”

  “What? You’re too tough to take a compliment now?”

  “I’m too wise to you to fall for your tricks. I’ve seen you in action. I know what this is.”

  “What is it?”

  “Flattery. Very, very good flattery, especially with those eyes and that smile. Even five minutes out of a coma and you’ve got skills. It’s impressive but it’s empty. It’s just what you do.”

  Empty. It’s just what you do.

  That hurt. Probably because it was true, but to hear it from Jenna, to know she thought I was putting on the mask and doing the act with her, that sucked.

  “Not with you,” I told her, fighting to keep my voice calm.

  “Oh really?”

  “Yeah, really. Never with you.”

  She stared at me for a long time. I stared back, never flinching, barely blinking. I watched with fascination as emotions flickered across her face. Jenna rarely hid anything. It was a form of honesty that shamed the crap out of me, and as I watched so many feelings pass through her eyes, like watching a movie on a screen telling me the story of her, I wondered what that kind of freedom would feel like.

  It looked beautiful.

  And then it was over.

  She put on the stern face again and asked, “Do you want to hear this book or not?”

  I leaned back into my pillow. “Let’s do this.”

  “Don’t go to sleep.”

  I chuckled. “I’m wide awake, Jenna.”

  She settled in the chair beside me. I stared up at the ceiling listening to her voice as she read to me. I didn’t pay attention to the words. I was too far inside my own head hearing her voice. It was like the moment we’d found in the park – the one that’d been so comfortable it’d nearly hurt. I missed being with her the way I missed boxing – like it was an imperative part of me that I needed to feel whole. Like I was dying without it.

  “Oh my God!”

  My eyes snapped to the doorwa
y. Karen stood there, her hand clenched tightly around a Starbucks cup. I worried she’d crush it.

  “Jenna, is…”

  “He’s awake,” she confirmed, standing slowly.

  Karen met my eyes and took a hesitant step toward me.

  “Morning,” I said with a smile.

  “Oh my God!” she cried again, lunging at me.

  It physically hurt when she fell on top of me, but I didn’t complain. I wrapped my good arm around her and whispered to her that I was alright as she cried into my neck. She shook from the force of it and I felt the unfamiliar sting of tears at the back of my eyes.

  “We thought we’d lost you,” she whimpered.

  “I’m still here.”

  “I love you so much, sweetheart. Don’t you ever scare me like that again.”

  I hesitated, afraid to answer. My voice would not be even. She’d know I was choked up and I had never cried in front of any of them. But then I looked at Jenna standing there with that incredible freedom on her face and I wanted to know it. I wanted to feel it too.

  “I won’t,” I whispered shakily, feeling dizzy. “I promise.”

  She hugged me tighter, my ribs screamed, but then she stood up and wiped at her face. Tears were still streaming from her eyes but she was smiling broadly.

  “What did Laney say when she found out?” she asked unsteadily. “Is she on her way? Can she come in even with her cold? Where are the doctors? What have they said?”

  “I just woke up,” I lied evenly. “Just seconds before you walked in. Jenna hasn’t had a chance to call the doctors yet.”

  “Or Laney,” Jenna said pointedly.

  I nodded, feeling my stomach bottom out. “Or Laney.”

  Karen scowled at Jenna as she reached for the call button. “Jenna, that’s reckless and thoughtless of you. What if he’d gone under again? He still might!”

  “Mom, he’s sitting right here.”

  “And he knows I’m right.”

  “I’m sorry,” she muttered, her face falling.

  “Don’t be sorry. Be smart about things. How hard is that?!”

  “Hey,” I warned, trying to sit up, but my body was too weak. It failed me.

  I slammed back into the bed as a rush of nurses came into the room, their sneakers squeaking on the floor. Jenna stepped back to press herself against the wall out of the way. I could see her face, hurt and exhausted, through the shuffling of bodies. She was being blotted out. I was losing her and suddenly the press of people in the room was weighing on my chest like an anvil.

  “I’m gonna go,” I heard her say faintly. “I’ll go meet Laney in the waiting room.”

  I felt every single step she took as she went.

  When Laney arrived it was tearful. She cried and held me, cried and held Karen, cried and smiled at nurses as they took my vitals. It was quite a production. Broadway quality.

  I was glad to see she was okay. She looked exhausted, probably from the cold Jenna said she had and the stress of waiting for me to wake up. Karen and Jenna looked it too. We all looked worn out. Wasted. And they kept crying. Even as they laughed and held each other, staring down at me with joy in their eyes, they didn’t stop crying. Their watery brown eyes swam in front of me, drowning me, and I wondered where Jenna had gone.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  “How much do you remember, Mr. Coulter?” my doctor asked briskly, settling into a wide stance at the end of my bed with a clipboard in hand.

  I glanced quickly at Laney where she stood beside my bed, hovering. She or Karen had been with me for the last few hours, both of them constantly standing at my side and crying. It was making me edgy. Jenna, they told me, had gone to the hotel to sleep. I wished I could have pulled her into this bed and felt her fall asleep there against me, leaking her never ending, impossible strength into me, but I’d kept that thought locked up tight.

  “Uh, I don’t know,” I answered the doctor. “I remember noises. Laney screaming. Pain in my right side. On my head. Um… before that just lights. Bright lights.”

  “Do you remember anything from the time when you were asleep?”

  “They said I was speaking French.”

  “A bit, yes. Do you remember why?”

  I swallowed anxiously. “I thought I was talking to my mom.”

  “It was Jenna,” Laney told me gently.

  I nodded vaguely, avoiding her eyes. “That’s what she said, yeah.”

  Laney turned to the doctor. “When he started speaking French we brought her in because none of us speak it. She said she could understand him sometimes and that he spoke back.” She beamed down at me happily. “You heard her. You answered her questions.”

  “I did?”

  Laney nodded eagerly. “Yeah. You were talking to her. She was trying to tell you to wake up.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “You thought it was your mother?” the doctor asks, adjusting his glasses as he scribbled furiously over the clipboard.

  I nodded numbly. “Yeah.”

  “Other than speaking to your mother, do you remember anything else about the time when you were asleep?”

  Yes.

  “No,” I lied firmly, carefully keeping that constant distance from the memories.

  “Leading up to the accident, you remember lights and sounds. Pain. What about before that? How far back do you remember before the accident?”

  I remembered the bridal boutique. Jenna in the park. The champagne. More dresses. Dropping Jenna off at the hotel to get changed… I wanted to remember dinner with Laney. I felt angry and uneasy when I tried to think about it, but I couldn’t see it.

  “I remember going back to the hotel, arguing about dinner–“

  “We didn’t argue,” Laney laughed.

  I ignored her. “I got dressed and… that’s it.”

  “You don’t remember what you had for dinner? Where you went?”

  “No.”

  The doctor looked to Laney. “How long of a time frame is that?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. Not long. Maybe an hour?”

  “That’s alright,” he said, nodding to himself and making additional annotations to my chart. “That’s not a large chunk and it’s not surprising considering the severity of the injuries you sustained.”

  “How bad are we talking?” I asked.

  He looked up at me with an open, serious expression. “When the truck T boned the cab you were in, it hit on your side. It fractured your right wrist, broke some fine bones in your hand, a few of your ribs, you took some glass to the face, and, of course, the nasty blow to the head. You had a tremendous amount of blood loss, and I don’t know if your family has made you aware of this yet, but your heart stopped while you were in the ambulance.”

  I shook my head. “No. No, they hadn’t told me yet.”

  “I understand why they wouldn’t. It’s a lot to take in. I want to be honest with you, though, because it’s been brought to my attention that you’re a very physically active young man.”

  I held up my casted hand, saying dryly, “I won’t be winning any Gold Medals any time soon. I know.”

  The doctor didn’t smile. “Not only that, you’ll find yourself weakened. Your body will take some time to recover from something so traumatic. Your mind as well.”

  “Why my mind?”

  He cleared his throat. “Not only did your heart stop in the ambulance, but you coded while here at the hospital due to swelling on your brain. That’s twice you were deprived of oxygen. It doesn’t do good things to the brain.”

  “But he’s awake and alert,” Laney protested, taking my left hand in hers. “He knows who he is and who we are. He’s fine.”

  “Only time will tell how affected he’ll be by the lack of oxygen. Maybe only a little, maybe in quite a few areas of your life you’ll find yourself stumbling over previously simple tasks. We really don’t know.”

  “What?” I asked irritably, pulling my hand from Laney’s. “As in I won’
t be able to tie my shoes?”

  “Possibly,” he answered bluntly. “Or you could find it difficult to locate your favorite restaurants. You might forget phone numbers. Birthdays. Books you’ve read.”

  “Or I might forget details in cases I’m taking to trial?”

  “You’re an attorney?”

  “I was.”

  “And you could be again. As I said, we don’t know and we can’t know how much you’ll be affected until you begin to live your life again. Only time will tell.”

  “How much longer does he need to stay here?” Laney asked. “When can we take him home to California?”

  “I want to run a gambit of tests, make sure we’re out of the woods, but I don’t see it taking longer than a few days,” he replied. “He’ll need to meet with specialists once he’s home. More tests, a lot of checkups, physical therapy, but I don’t see why you shouldn’t make a strong recovery.”

  Laney smiled happily down at me and I grinned back, relieved that I’d be getting out of that bed and out of that room.

  A few days turned out to be a week, but soon Jenna was sitting in the corner of my room making all of the flight arrangements to get us back home.

  “Don’t be silly, Kellen,” Karen scolded me. “You can’t go to your apartment alone. What if something bad happens?”

  “Like what?”

  “Alien invasion, World War Three,” Jenna commented absently, her eyes still on the screen. “The release of a new iPhone.”

  “Jenna,” her mom sighed irritably.

  “Another Expendables movie,” I smirked.

  Jenna pointed at me excitedly. “Good one! Yes!”

  “You too are impossible,” Karen groaned. “I wish your father was here.”

  “He’ll be at the airport to pick us up,” Jenna assured her seriously. “He’s borrowing a van.”

  “Good.”

  “Why a van?” I asked, wondering just how much luggage they all had.

  Jenna glanced nervously at her mom before returning her eyes to the computer.

  “For the wheelchair,” Karen answered plainly.