Enjoy Your Stay

by Carmen Jenner

  The baby seems to be doing fine, but I’ve already put the little guy through enough so I listened to the bitch nurse, even though my heart was breaking in half. I climbed back into bed, and there I stayed. Until today. Until now.

  Ana brought me some clothes from home earlier, but I still feel underdressed for the occasion. It’s stupid. Jackson has seen me loafing around the house in my trackies. He’s seen me with bedhead, and toothpaste covering my zits, and he’s seen me completely naked—a number of times. Thanks to the coma he’s in, he won’t be seeing me at all, but I still want to look nice for him.

  Sharon helps me dress, and tame my crazy-arse hair back into a ponytail, and then she wheels me down to intensive care. I gasp when I see him, and throw my hand out against the doorframe to keep her from pushing me further into the room. I pestered the poor woman for a day and a half to let me visit him, and now that I’m here, I no longer want to be. Seeing Jack this way: so still, so lifeless … it’s wrong.

  A lump forms in my throat. Slowly I let go of the doorjamb and allow her to wheel me closer to the bed. Once I’m settled, Sharon steps back and quietly chats to the nurse sitting in the corner of Jack’s room. I sit there in shock, listening to the shrill beep of the ECG machine, and the whoosh of the ventilator that’s keeping him alive.

  He’s so pale. Ordinarily his hair shines like spun gold thread, but now it hangs limp over his forehead, a dull honey-wheat colour. His beard is thicker today, but oddly, it suits him. I want so badly to see the beautiful summer-sky blue of his eyes, or the flash of white teeth as he grins at me. Instead, he just lies there, inert. It’s so un-Jackson of him that I expect at any minute he’ll sit up, and poke fun of me for crying like a little girl.

  He has tubes taped in both his mouth and nose, and there are cords and wires everywhere. It’s hard to believe he’s the same guy who argued with me—who made love to me—in our tent yesterday. “Can I touch him?”

  “Yes,” the nurse says. “Just be careful not to move any of the lines.”

  The bite on his arm hasn’t been covered. I lean forward and trace my fingers over the two tiny holes that started this whole thing. I sniff, and swipe at my tears with the back of my hand. Taking a minute to make sure I wasn’t going to pull out any of the myriad wires running from his body, I wheel my chair as close as it will go, and carefully lean over the bed.

  For a good long while I cry, and then I dry my eyes and decide that the only way to get him to wake up is to annoy the shit out of him. After all, it’s what he would do for me.

  “Looking hot, Jackarse.” I reach out a hand, and gently scratch at his beard. “No, really, the lumberjack look is really working for you. You should see the bitch nurse checking you out. She’s lucky I haven’t shanked her skanky arse yet.”

  One side of his face twitches—don’t get excited, Sharon warned me that shit happens all the time with coma patients—but it still kinda made me feel like maybe somewhere in that big swollen head of his, he was listening. Of course, I wouldn’t put it past him to choose to stay in the bloody coma just to piss me off.

  I run my fingers through his messy hair a few times, and then, being careful not to touch any wires, I rest my head on his arm. “You should know the baby’s doing well. I have a placental abruption, so I’ve been told to put my feet up until things calm down. They made me sleep with this annoying belt strapped to my stomach so they could monitor the McNugget all night.

  “Apparently not everyone gets their own private suite. It’s a pretty dope set-up you’ve got going here, Jackarse. Wanna trade?” My voice cracks, and then the tears start up again. I should wipe them away so I’m not drowning his bed sheets, but I don’t want to move. I just want him to wake up. Why isn’t he waking up already?

  “The doctors said it could have been a lot worse,” I say, and rub my cheek against his palm. “I saw that superhero move you pulled, by the way. Throwing your injured arm out to protect the baby? That was some swoony shit right there, Jackarse. If I hadn’t been almost pulverised by your suck-tastic Ute, I might have rolled over and raped you right there on the seat, Spiderman.”

  I hear a tap on the glass, and I crane my neck around. Sharon and the other nurse stand outside with steaming cups of coffee in their hands. I hadn’t even heard them leave, and I’m pretty sure it’s illegal to not have at least someone in here monitoring him the whole time. But I’m not complaining. Sharon taps at her watch. I hold my hand up for just five more minutes, and then I lay my head on Jack’s arm and watch the steady rise and fall of his chest as the ventilator pumps air into his lungs. I ignore the beep of the monitors, and the ECG machine, and pretend like he’s just sleeping, and that I’m not terrified for him. Then I gently kiss his cheek, ease myself up off the bed, and allow Sharon to wheel me back to my room.

  For the past twenty minutes I’ve been relaying all the ridiculously farfetched details of today’s episode of The Bold and the Beautiful to Jackson—laugh all you want, but I know he loves that show, or he wouldn’t come sauntering in at 4:30 pm every day just in time to watch—when I decide the stubborn arsehole isn’t going to wake up if I keep updating him on this shit, so I try using a different tactic.

  “Hey, Jack?” I whisper as I lay my head on the bed, the way I did earlier today. “Remember that time in your mum’s car? When you drove me home, and you pulled into the empty lot beside the mill? We laid the seats flat, and watched the smog from the chimney drift up into the night sky, and you told me you wanted to be different from your dad. That you didn’t wanna check out early.

  “You already are different. You saved my baby’s life. You saved my life. But I need you to come back. I need you to come home.”

  I don’t know whether it’s the stress, or the fact that the smell of hospital-grade disinfectant makes me high, but I pop my head up, and give my best impersonation of Rose in Titanic. “Come back, Jack. Come back.”

  Well, I guess we can rule out the fact that he’s just pretending to be in a coma, because ordinarily, me getting my Kate-Winslet on makes him hysterical.

  “Doc’s given me the all clear, so Ana’s coming to take me home. Only, it’s not going to feel like home if you aren’t there. I miss you, Jack,” I whisper, and kiss his cheek as the tears stream down over mine.

  His eyelashes flutter, then still. His heartbeat is steady. His chest rises and falls with each push of air from the ventilator into the tube taped to his mouth, but there’s no change.

  A knock at the door startles me, and I crane my neck around, expecting to see Ana. There’s a smoking-hot blonde in the doorway, alright, but it’s not Ana. Her hair is cut just above her shoulders, and she has a sort of sweet-and-innocent vibe about her. Sweet and innocent, coming to visit Jackson Rowe? Thank God he’s comatose, or he’d think all his Christmases had come at once.

  “Sorry to interrupt.”

  “Can I help you?” I ask.

  “I’m here to see Jack.” She walks further into the room, and tears fill her eyes when she sees the state of him. She covers her perfect Cupid’s bow mouth with her manicured hand. She’s tall, and gorgeous, and totally rocking the hell out of the skinny jeans and kitten heels she’s wearing. I glance down at my day-old yoga pants, grandpa cardigan, and Captain America T-shirt, that’s now two sizes too small thanks to the baby bump. I can’t help but feel inferior next to this Amazonian beauty. Disdainfully eyeing the potted plant in her hand, I sit in the chair beside the bed, and wait to find out who this perfect bitch is and why the hell she’s crying all over my Jack.

  She catches me staring, and motions her head towards the flowers. “Cymbidium orchids. The pink ones are his favourite.”

  “Of course they are.” They look like a woman’s snatch … wait. How the hell does she know what his favourite flower is? I didn’t even know what his favourite flower is. “Who are you?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I’m Chelcie.” She waits a second for that to sink in, and then prompts me with, “Jackson’s fiancé … Or, ex-f
iancé, I guess.”

  “Right.”

  “And you must be Holly?” she says, sticking her hand out for me to shake. He talked about me? To his fiancé? That’s … weird, considering he’s never said a word to me about her. I knew about her, of course, I just didn’t know that this is what he’d left behind when he’d left her.

  “Hi.” I shake her hand, noticing how satiny smooth her skin is in comparison to mine, then I stand up, because it feels weird being so close to him when his ex is right in front of me. My cardi falls away from my waist and she looks down, taking in my swollen belly.

  “Oh, you’re … you’re pregnant.” Chelcie’s not being snide; at least, I don’t think she is. She seems genuinely surprised. “Jack didn’t mention that.”

  “Yeah, twenty-one weeks.” I grab the cardigan, and pull it tightly around my stomach, feeling even more self-conscious than I already was.

  “Wow, that’s … really great. Congratulations,” she says. Her brow furrows, and she swallows hard, and clears her throat. Then she eases past, placing the orchids on the shelf to the left of his bed.

  Chelcie stares down at him, and a tear rolls down her face. Of course her mascara doesn’t run the way mine does. Oh, no, she probably planned ahead and wore waterproof so her perfect face wouldn’t look as though she was imitating a panda.

  Goddamn it, be nice, Holly.

  I force the frown from my face, and shove the nasty thoughts to the depths of my black soul. I know she’s probably feeling a thousand different emotions right now, because I feel them every time I look at him, too.

  “What happened to him? Ana mentioned a crash?”

  “You spoke to Ana?” I try not to sound accusatory, but I’m not gonna lie, it annoys the shit out of me that this woman is here.

  “Jack calls me every Saturday without fail. When he missed this week, I called the house. Ana said he was here.” She gazes down at him, and absentmindedly brushes the hair from his forehead. I clench my teeth, and fight like hell not to punch her in the vagina. Either she’s a mindreader or she just realised the way she’s touching her ex is wildly inappropriate, because she pulls her hand away like she just got burnt, and looks at me sheepishly.

  “We were camping when he got bitten,” I bite out. “I was the one driving his car when we crashed.”

  “I didn’t know you two were involved.”

  “We’re complicated.”

  She gives me a weak smile. “Would you mind if I visited alone with him? This is all just a lot to take in.”

  “Yeah, of course. I have to go meet Ana in the parking lot, or she’s gonna start having conniptions.”

  “Thank you.” She sits down in the chair I was just occupying, the one that’s still more than likely warm from my fat, pregnant arse. “It so nice to finally meet you, Holly. Good luck with the baby.”

  “Thanks,” I say, and steal one last look at Jack before I walk away.

  I WAKE with a start. The first thing I feel is my throat constricting around the tube that’s shoved down inside it. A machine beside me beeps wildly, and the noise slices through my pounding head. I cough and sputter, and reach up and to rip the tube from my mouth. But Chelcie’s removing my hand, and then a nurse is talking in my ear, trying to get me to calm down, and easing me back against the pillow.

  I feel like I’m choking with this damn thing in my mouth. My stomach flips. My chest tightens as I gasp in panic. I blink, and then when I open my eyes again my tube is being pulled from my throat. I dry retch as it slides out, and vomit into the basin the nurse holds in front of me. I feel as if I’ve swallowed sandpaper, and I’m dizzy to the point of wanting to knock myself out again, just so I don’t have to deal with the mind-fuck.

  I gotta say, waking up from a coma kinda tops my list of weird experiences in life. Well, that, and being bitten by one of Australia’s deadliest spiders, having my car totalled by a tiny redhead, and waking up to find my ex-fiancé keeping watch beside my hospital bed. I catch sight of her standing against the wall, out of the way of the swarm of hospital staff that are milling around checking vitals, taking blood.

  Hi, she mouths with a sad smile.

  The corner of my mouth turns up in about as much of a smile as I can muster. I blink, and when I open my eyes again a smoking hot doc is shining her little penlight in my face, and ordering the nurse beside me to have someone run a CT scan. There’s a million different wires running from all parts of my body, tubes and electrodes, and all I want is to have them off, have them out of me.

  “Sir, I’m Dr Ryder, can you tell me your name?” the doc asks.

  “J …” I begin, and have to clear my throat because it hurts like a motherfucker. “Jackson Rowe.”

  “Good. Do you know where you are, Jackson?”

  “Holly,” I grunt as the doc flashes the light in my eyes again, and has me follow her fingers. “Where is she?”

  “Mr Rowe, you’re in the hospital—”

  “Yeah, no shit.” I lift my arm to pinch the bridge of my nose, but several different wires get tangled up, and I yank at them in frustration before the Doc places her hand on my bicep and eases it back down on the bed.

  “I know this must be very disorientating for you, Mr Rowe. I’ll try to make this brief. Do you remember what brought you here?”

  “Yeah, a big, fucking-scary spider,” I say, and watch as the doc processes my anger. I flop my head back against pillow, which makes it hurt even more, and decide to play nice, despite the panic rising like bile in my gut. “The redhead that totalled my car. She was pregnant. Where is she? Did the baby make it?”

  Chelcie moves closer to the bed, and places her tiny hand over mine. “Holly was released this afternoon.”

  “I have to see her.” I sit up, and attempt to pull the IV from my wrist. Doc looks like she’s about to pitch a fit. She starts harping on about me moving too soon, and how they won’t hesitate to restrain me if they have to, and then she stomps her expensive-looking shoes out into the corridor to bark orders at more people.

  My aching head begins spinning, so I don’t struggle when the nurse eases me back against the pillow. I don’t have the strength. I just pray like hell that they’re not lying. I silently plead with Chelcie, even though I shouldn’t. Even though I know she’s still not over our break-up, even though I know it hurts her to see me like this over Holly. I feel like an arsehole, but I have to know if Hols is okay, and I know Chelcie would never lie to me.

  “Jack, Holly’s fine. You need to concentrate on you right now.” She smiles, but it’s full to bursting with sorrow. I know she’s trying not to let it bother her, but I also know Chelcie. If you’ve ever broken someone’s heart—really torn it to shreds, and hate yourself for it—then you’ll know how I feel when I look at her. I wish it had been enough. I wish I’d wanted the same things she wanted.

  I nod, but even that hurts. Closing my eyes, I turn my palm up on the mattress. Chelcie places her hand in mine, and I squeeze it as tightly as I can muster. “What are you doing here, Chelc?”

  “Making sure you didn’t kick the bucket without saying goodbye.” She laughs, but then her expression turns into a tight-lipped grimace. “I called your house when I didn’t hear from you on Saturday. You scared the crap out of me, Jack.”

  I give her a lazy smile. “Sorry.”

  She squeezes my hand. “So, what’s going on with you and the pretty redhead? She’s awfully young, Jack.”

  “We’re just friends.”

  “Jack, were you and Holly ever just friends?

  I grimace when a nurse jabs my arm with a needle. “Friends with benefits.”

  “That’s a lot for a pregnant woman to deal with, don’t you think?”

  “I don’t know. It was fine. We were fine, and then something changed. Now I don’t know what to do. I think I just fucked everything up, Chelc.”

  “I don’t know about that …” She begins, but the rest is lost to my ears on account of the sexy-as-fuck redhead walking towar
d us. Holly’s wearing a floaty summer dress that’s just a little too tight across her perfect rack, and she walks along with her head bowed. As she gets closer to my room, she glances up. Her jade-green eyes meet mine through the window. Her face contorts with surprise, and something close to pain, and then she lets out a sharp, slightly hysterical laugh of relief and throws her head back. If the sound of the ECG machine weren’t beeping out a relentless reminder, I’d think I had just flatlined. Jesus Christ. Am I in love with Holly Fucking-Make-My-Life-A-Living-Hell Harris?

  Holly comes running through the doorway, but stops short when she eyes my hand tucked into Chelcie’s. She frowns, and moves out of the way of the nurse exiting with vials of my blood for testing. Chelcie draws her hand from mine, and rests it in her lap.

  “You’re awake?” Holly says, as though she doesn’t quite believe it. There are a thousand different emotions all playing on her face right now. It’s as if she’s having trouble settling on one. I think we’re somewhere between jealous She-Hulk and outright ecstasy—two of my favourite Holly Harris traits.

  “I am.” I smile up at her. Seeing her is both good, and awkward as fuck. Does she remember what I said in the car? Did she say anything in return? I don’t remember much of the drive, just feeling like I had to tell her how I felt before I died, and then the sound of metal folding in on itself in the crash that followed. Fuck, this is weird. I chew my lip and make out like it’s not this fucking awkward. “How you doin’, Mamma? How’s the baby?”

  “Good. We’re good.” She holds a hand over her stomach. It seems like her belly’s grown in the time that I’ve been out.