by K. L Randis
“You’re right,” he said, making my guilt worse.
I nodded. “How long have you been here?” I asked.
“I haven’t left.”
His loyalty made me swallow hard. Running over the remaining gauze on my head and ears, his eyes were stones. They honed in on the machines beeping around me, a ghosted look on his face. “How could I possibly leave you? I did this.”
“You did what?”
“Trained you, helped you be a better runner. I helped you get to that finish line,” he said, his eyes brimming with fire. “If we never would have met…if we didn’t train so hard to make you faster maybe you wouldn’t have been so close to the blast.”
“I did it to myself,” I said, puffing out my chest. “With or without you I would have made it to that finish line. I wanted the Boston,” I replied.
“Not as much as I wanted you to be safe.”
The sentiment warmed my chest. “You don’t need to stay, Jackson.”
He shrugged, taking in a deep breath, forcing the white thermal he was wearing to hug his chest like I wished I could. “I know I don’t need to be here, Pip. I want to be.”
Just then a nurse walked in with a chart in her hand. She smiled when she saw I was awake, making her way over to my bed. Acknowledging Jackson, the smile faded from her face by the time she reached my bedside. In a stiffened motion she turned from me to him, not saying a word. The way her eyes danced around in her head told me she didn’t know how to deflect from the awkwardness of the situation.
“Are you okay?” she asked, tipping her head to the side to point out Jackson while staring blankly ahead at me. “Did you need…anything?”
She thought he was a threat.
Cross-armed and tapping his foot while he stared out the window, Jackson did look intimidating. He was chiseled, presenting himself like a brick wall among a field of flowers. Nothing on his face at the moment said he was friendly or even open to communication, so I could tell his presence confused her. I wondered if she thought he had somehow swindled his way into my room uninvited.
“We’re fine,” I assured her. “This is Jackson.”
“Thank you for taking such good care of her,” Jackson said at the mention of his name, stepping forward with an outstretched hand and taking the nurse by surprise.
She stared at it, nodding instead of taking it. “Yes, well, I know this has been hard for…” Her voice trailed off, the silence amplifying the curiosity of whether or not Jackson was supposed to be there. It was clear she didn’t understand his presence and the tension in the room heightened tenfold.
“I have other patients to check in on. If you need anything just buzz.” She turned on her heel—a polite smile drawn on her face—and didn’t look back as she scurried out the door.
“Must be a busy day or something,” Jackson said, watching her exit. “Hey, you’re a nurse. Was she acting funny or was it just me?”
“You should probably go. Go get some rest,” I suggested as my phone buzzed. I glanced over a text from Meg saying that she just got to the hospital for a visit.
Jackson nodded without looking at me. He shifted his weight from one foot to another, glancing back at the window behind him for only a moment. Stopping at the end of my bed, he hesitated just long enough to let me consider whether or not he was going to try and kiss me goodbye. He decided against it and instead made it to the door, pausing in the doorway as he turned to face me.
“I’m not the only one relieved you’re okay, you know that?”
I froze. “What do you mean?”
“In your sleep, you said Phoenix’s name a few times. You said a bunch of things but you mentioned her more than once, I know you and Meg spend a lot of time with her. Meg has been a mess, she puts on a good show but she was terrified. I know you’re not used to being waited on, I just wanted to remind you that I’m not the only one who would have wanted to be here twenty-four-seven to make sure you were okay.”
He’s talking about Dylan.
I nodded, blanketing over the statement. “I do spend a lot of time with those two, ever since Cheryl…”
His lips pushed together, eyes darting to the side to hide the uneasiness of mentioning Cheryl. “Yeah, I knew that,” Jackson said. “So, do the hard thing, okay?”
My heart jumped into my throat, my eyes widening. It was exactly what I had said to him when I had walked in on him the first time he was hospitalized, a cord wrapped around his neck. “What did you just say?”
“I said do the hard thing. You don’t like other people taking care of you. Do the hard thing in this situation and just let us be here for you, okay?”
I nodded, checking his face for any signals that he was provoking me.
“I’ll see you later, Pippa. Let me know if you need anything.” He disappeared, getting lost in the hustle of doctors and nurses outside my door. I exhaled, slow and steady into the center of the room, when Meg walked in with a vase full of flowers.
“Oh good, you’re practicing your Lamaze. When are you due?”
“Very funny,” I said, not opening my eyes. “Rough day, how’s yours?”
“Just another day in paradise,” she said, slugging her Burberry onto the chair next to the bed. What’s new in recovery land?”
“Good news is it’s going to rain later.”
“Mmmmm yeah, I do adore a gray, soggy sky.”
“When else is it acceptable to sit in the bottom of the shower with a beer if it’s not raining?”
“Tuesdays, mostly,” Meg said. She pretended to look under the hospital bed. “And where are you keeping the beer?”
“You mean you didn’t bring any?”
“Negative, friend. I am rooting for full functionality of your brain before we ingest the liquid of the Gods again.”
“Oh, so never then.”
“Funny. You’re feeling better then? You got your Pippa-tude back.”
“Just another day in paradise,” I repeated. “And since when do you give flowers?”
Meg looked at the vase in her hand like it was an alien. “Oh, I don’t. The nurse practically threw them at me to bring them in here for you. It says they’re from Dylan. Do you even like these flowers? They’re pretty ugly. Reminds me of the ones I would get in high school.”
“Eh, it’s the thought that counts. Ohhhh, that explains the nurse’s stares then.”
“What?”
“Nothing,” I said, not having the strength to rehash the story.
Meg flipped her auburn hair to the left and crossed her legs, reclining in her seat as she cleared her throat.
“Uh-oh,” I said. “I’m going to get a serious talk, aren’t I?”
She smiled. “You know me too well, friend. Does he know yet?”
“Jackson?”
“Yes. Does he know?”
“Does he know he’s a functioning angerholic? Yes, I believe he’s aware.”
Meg rolled her eyes in response. “Does he know how you really met.”
“Would it hurt or help?” I asked. “If he doesn’t remember anyway, I don’t see the point in hurting him and bringing it up now.” It felt grimy projecting Jackson’s opinion of a similar situation to Meg, but I wanted to know how she’d feel about it, being on the outside of everything.
“You’d know,” Meg said. “And that’s the worst person to know the truth, because one drunken night with Captain Morgan and Jackson in the same room will make your lips flap harder than a birds wings.”
“I don’t want to hurt him,” I whined.
“You’ll hurt him more by not telling him and he finds out. It’s not fair, Pippa. I know you know that.”
I nodded. “I do.”
“Why do you care so much anyway?” she continued. “The last I got to peek at your desolate heart you were turned inside out about Dylan. You were talking about the possibility of you two getting back together and nagging me about if I would see him at the bar. You can’t save Jackson, you can’t fix him,” Me
g continued, her voice softening.
“I never wanted to fix him,” I shot back, feeling resentment build inside of me.
Meg’s eyes widened at the same time a sly smile started to turn the corners of her mouth upward. “Does that mean you…”
“It means I don’t spend time with him because I feel like I need to fix him. You don’t know him like I do, he’s a savagely intricate person, almost to a fault.”
“Almost to a fault,” Meg repeated with sarcasm, her eyes dreamy.
“He has a really great heart, he really sees me.”
“He sees you.”
“And… and I…”
“And you…?” Meg pressed.
I sat there in silence, having a mental tantrum and shooting darts at Meg with my eyes. “And I think I’m tired, so this play date is over.”
I rolled over on my side, my back facing the door. Meg said nothing and stood up, scraping her chair slowly across the floor to draw out the stall tactic she was trying to play.
“Pip?” I heard her say when she reached the door.
“Mmmmm?” I replied.
“Tell him. If you won’t, then I will, and you know I will. He deserves to know that you’ve seen his worst parts and didn’t run away screaming. That’s important to some people, you know.”
The door clicked behind her before I had a chance to answer and I lulled myself to sleep by clicking the morphine drip to its maximum dosage.
A few hours later I stirred in my sleep, feeling fingers clasped around mine in the bed. I tried not to smile at their warmth and the firmness that kept my fingers interlocked in place, safe and protected.
I took a few deep breaths. There was no part of me that wanted to hurt Jackson more than he already was, but I also knew Meg was right and that it would only be a matter of time before he found out if I kept it to myself. He deserved to know.
My lips parted and I squeezed his hand in mine, readying myself for the worst possible reaction but hoping for the best.
I opened my mouth and eyes at the same time, only to see Dylan slumped over the edge of my bed fast asleep, his hand entangled with mine. The rise and fall of his back told me he wouldn’t see the look of disappointment on my face when I realized it was him.
Jackson saw it, though.
And I saw his.
A heart wrenching, confused expression crossed his face as he stared at me from the hospital room door, glancing from Dylan to my hand, then to my face. He stood motionless at the door, a bouquet of Slim Jims in one hand and my favorite flavor of Gatorade in another. I had no idea how long he had been standing there, watching us both sleep.
All at once it made sense. Dylan must have been there more than I remembered, looking over me as I recovered. At the same time, Jackson had been visiting, baffling the nurses about who was caring for me. As they tried to piece together who they were supposed to be addressing as my significant other, both Jackson and Dylan unknowingly rotated in and out of my hospital room like two ships passing in a fog.
I was the fog.
Keeping them both anchored by the choices I made, they both floated nearby with no real destination on the docket— my lies were impacting everything and everyone around me.
Jackson didn’t say a word.
Lowering the Slim Jims to his side, he stepped backward. I watched him through the large windows that funneled into the hospital’s hallway. Making a mad dash to the elevators, he only broke focus momentarily to leave the Slim Jims and Gatorade at the nurse’s station outside my room.
Chapter Eleven
In the weeks that followed, I weighed the prognosis of my recovery based on the volume and frequency of the visits I got. They were dwindling, so I knew the critical period had passed and the recovery to make sure I regained all previous functions had begun. I was in the hospital just shy of two weeks, making the drive back home with Meg as soon as the doctors cleared me.
Jackson texted me a few times once I was home—testing the waters. His cryptic messages hinted at everything from wanting to stop by and check up on me to vulnerable defeat. Like me, he wanted to dissipate into the background noise of everything that happened until there was a definitive plan to what we were doing. It felt like we were stuck in this confusing, alternate universe. His short fuse distracted me from exploring a deeper relationship, but I was also privy to why he acted the way he did. Any time I was alone with my thoughts, though, I would second-guess my perceptions of who he was and how we met and the indiscretion of it all would crumble any aspirations I had to text him back.
So I never did.
I monitored television coverage of the Boston Marathon trials very closely. Many days I succumbed to the exhaustion or frustrations of only having one ear I could fully hear out of. Some days the ringing in my ear would be so loud, I’d turn the TV up to its max to drown out the sounds.
There were rallies outside of the courthouse, which was on Courthouse Way in Boston. Protestors were there, suggesting that the one terrorist was only an impressionable nineteen-year-old who had succumbed to his brother’s wishes to plant the bomb. There were other opinions—after learning that he was responsible for placing the bomb on the pavement behind a group of kids, killing an 8-year-old boy—that he would need to be sentenced to death. Charges, including use of a weapon of mass destruction and the killing of an MIT police officer, loomed overhead. Only time would tell what his sentence would be.
Boston rallied with an uprising of inspirational slogans immediately after: ‘Boston Strong’, ‘A Come-Together Moment’, ‘I Stand With Boston’. Rows of sneakers lined the streets, with art and photography awareness campaigns at the forefront of every magazine and newspaper headline.
It was the terrorist attack no one wanted to forget.
The devastation was too close to home.
The lives lost were too innocent.
Too much was taken.
That’s how I felt standing near the nurse’s station on my first day back at work. Getting cleared to come back on light duty required a few mental health tests, some additional scans and a few talks to the hospital higher ups who were truly compassionate about giving me all the time in the world to recover. They probably would have put me back on full duty if I had really pushed for it, but I was still fighting off bouts of dizziness from surgery, something the doctors said would be typical as I continued to recover.
Wanting something to focus on, I followed all protocols to get back to work as soon as I was able—taking only two weeks personal leave after returning home from the hospital.
Perhaps that was a mistake.
Part of me wondered if a portion of my face or skull had disappeared without me knowing it as I walked down the halls. The stares I got from co-workers in my unit were uncanny. The whispers in the hallways were undeniably loud: Pippa had a relationship with a patient, a mentally unstable patient, a patient who needed her medical knowledge not her tongue down his throat.
Surprised that my boss hadn’t mentioned any ethics violations upon giving me my first shift schedule, I started to wonder if the rumors had reached her desk at all.
Until the end of my first day, anyway.
“Pip? Miss Grant asked to see you the end of your shift,” Becca said, eyeing my face as she delivered the news.
“What for?” I asked sweetly, wanting her to voice the concern out loud for everyone to hear.
“Not sure,” Becca said, shrugging. “I’m just the delivery person.”
I took my time filling out the last of my paperwork at the end of my day, hoping the time that lapsed was enough to find she had gone home before meeting with me. I approached her office door, a soft light radiating from underneath it and I sighed, realizing I had no such luck.
I knocked.
“Pippa! I hope your first day back wasn’t too overwhelming, how did it go?” Miss Grant said as I opened the door, peering inside. “Please, come in and sit.”
“It was fine, Miss Grant. Same old, same old,” I said.
“Please, call me Joanne. We’re after hours at this point,” she said winking, moving out from behind her desk to sit on the mahogany edge in front of the chair I was in. She crossed her ankles, revealing the telltale red bottomed heels that were her signature accessory.
She could stand on her feet for twenty hours a day and she wouldn’t be caught dead without those heels. I respected her for her commitment to consistency. She wanted to present herself—at a hospital full of mostly male counterparts—in a very specific way. Always poised and professional, she emitted this aura of superiority that forced you to take her seriously. Even if she were telling us to put rubber ducks in every patient’s toilet, we’d nod our heads and somehow justify it as we obliged. She always had the greater good of the hospital at the forefront of her mind and a reason for every powerhouse move she made, no matter how odd it seemed.
“I heard some things Pippa, some disturbing things. I think you know that, so I wanted to bring you in here to have a frank discussion about it so we can resolve the rumors floating through the halls.”
“What kind of rumors?” I asked, wondering if she would humor me.
“Let’s not,” she replied, tipping her head. “I have a dinner I’m already late to, aching feet, and a bath calling my name later tonight. Let’s put it all out there, shall we?”
“Jackson?” I asked, playing her game.
She nodded. “Jackson.”
“What would you like to know?” I swallowed, wondering if I was truly ready to be fired.
Squinting, she looked past my shoulder, noticing the door to her office was open. She glided over, pushing it gently as she turned around to return to her spot on the edge of the desk. “Honestly? I don’t want to know anything. That makes me an accessory to knowledge I’d rather not be a part of, do you see? Pippa, you’re my strongest employee in the unit, you know that, I don’t want to have this discussion any more than you do. I have an obligation to follow up with all ethical rumors that get dumped onto my desk, though, so humor me in telling me what you think I should know.”