The Savage Wild

by Roxie Noir

  The nurses make me get back in the bed every time they want to check me for something. I’m really starting to hate the bed, which isn’t even comfortable for five minutes.

  “Well, besides the obvious, which is that you’ve got great insurance because you’re American, and they want to bleed that honeypot dry before sending you back to the states,” she says. “You know, the same thing happened to Nancy years ago when she went skiing up in Banff and ran into a tree. Just a little concussion, but they absolutely insisted on keeping her for two nights for observation or some nonsense instead of just letting the poor woman go home…”

  I don’t respond. My mom’s been going on like this for a while now, annoyed at everyone and everything, and the best I can do is just ignore it while wondering when I can get away to visit Imogen again.

  She’s probably not supposed to be moving her leg a whole lot yet, but we can work around that. Maybe tonight I’ll even close the door for my visit, so she doesn’t nearly pull my hair out by the roots as she tries not to make too much noise.

  “…I mean, honestly, don’t you think you’ll be recuperating better back at home? You can come stay with us for a few days, sleep in your old bedroom…”

  Having a cast on shouldn’t keep her from putting her legs over my shoulders, and with the adjustable hospital bed I can still—

  There’s a knock on my open door, and my mom and I both turn.

  “Wilder!” Amy says brightly.

  I forgot about her. I completely forgot that Amy even existed, let alone might be worried about me, but now here she is, wearing her flight attendant uniform and standing in the door of my hospital room with a very large stuffed bear holding a heart.

  The heart says GET WELL.

  My mom looks at her suspiciously, both eyebrows raised.

  “I knew you weren’t dead,” Amy says, ignoring my mom. “A touch of the sixth sense has always run in my family, and I knew you were still alive somewhere out there. I knew it, and I’m right! I told them not to give up on you and that poor girl.”

  “No one was considering giving up,” my mom says, speaking up for the first time, and Amy looks over at her like she didn’t realize she was there.

  She blinks, like she’s confused. Not that it’s hard to confuse Amy. I wasn’t seeing her for her brains, after all. I wasn’t really seeing her, to be honest, at least not outside her bedroom.

  Shit.

  “Mom,” I say, standing. “This is Amy.”

  “Oh gosh of course you’re Wilder’s mom! I’m so pleased to meet you, Mrs. Flint, though I wish it were in better circumstances if you know what I mean!”

  She beams, her white teeth practically fluorescing. My mom takes her hand and shakes it, though she gives me an obvious who is this girl look.

  “Wilder and I are—” Amy’s voice drops to a whisper “—dating, even though I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone since we sort of work together and didn’t want anyone to know, but after all this, you know how it is…”

  “Isn’t that lovely,” my mom says, her tone perfectly flat and neutral. “And what brings you here?”

  Finally, Amy seems to realize that something is slightly off, that maybe she got off on the wrong foot with my mom by suggesting that she was the only one who wanted to find me.

  “Well, we’re dating,” she says again, as if my mom didn’t hear her the first time. “And, I, you know, had this feeling about him, and one of the girls switched flights and took my Vancouver to Edmonton route so I could take her Calgary to Prince George route and then one of the air traffic controllers from that airport lives down here, so…”

  Amy keeps explaining how she got here to my mom, which isn’t the why that my mom wants to know. I’ve got a feeling that I’m going to get grilled about Amy the minute she leaves, and since Amy’s obviously not someone I was ever going to bring home to Mom and Dad, I’m not looking forward to that conversation.

  I wish she weren’t here. I want her gone. I’m human enough to feel kind of bad that she somehow got all the way here, just to see me and give me this fucking ugly bear, but I wish she’d leave so I can tell my mom that she’s just some girl.

  And I don’t want Imogen to see her, because the last time the three of us were in the same room I was so desperate to show Imogen that she didn’t mean shit to me that I practically stuck my tongue down Amy’s throat, and… yeah.

  Shit’s changed.

  “Hey, Mom, could you give Amy and me a minute?” I ask.

  “Sure,” she says, the hint of a smirk around her lips, and she leaves the room, closing the door behind her.

  “Listen,” I tell Amy.

  She’s still holding the bear with the heart on it, her lips in a pretty red pout. I don’t know what the hell she was thinking coming here, but now I have to make our relationship status crystal fucking clear in a hospital in the butthole of nowhere, Canada, and I really really wish she hadn’t bothered to make this journey.

  “We’re not dating,” I say bluntly. “We’re fucking, and we’re not even doing that any more as of whenever the last time we fucked was.”

  She looks puzzled. Then she frowns, her pretty face slowly scrunching together.

  “You used me,” she says.

  “You had a pretty good time too,” I counter.

  “You used me for sex and now you’re throwing me away. Here. After I came all this way to visit you in the hospital, after I told everyone that you were still alive and they kept looking—”

  “I’m sure that was your doing and your doing alone,” I say.

  She picks up on the sarcasm just enough for her mouth to flatten into a line.

  “I should have known you just wanted an easy lay,” she says, eyes flashing.

  I just shrug, because I can’t argue with her. That was precisely the point — she’s hot and I only had to buy her two drinks before getting into her panties.

  “You men are all the same,” she accuses. “You only want what’s between our legs, you never care about anything else, about our brains or personalities. I should have never let you sleep with me without at least going on a date first—”

  “That wasn’t gonna happen,” I tell her.

  She looks unsteady.

  “What wasn’t?”

  I snort.

  “A date, Amy,” I say. “If you weren’t interested I was gonna move on, not try harder.”

  Both her hands are white-knuckled on the bear. She’s practically murdering the poor thing.

  “And you tell me this here?” she hisses. “Now?”

  I just hold my hands out, palms-up, as if to say: yes, I’m obviously telling you here and now.

  “You’re an asshole, Wilder Flint,” Amy says, her jaw set hard.

  She takes a step backward, toward the door, and relief prickles through me.

  “You’re an asshole because the least you could do is wait until we’re back in Solaris because now I’m here and I’ve got nowhere to go, everyone will know I’m humiliated…”

  She trails off, like she’s waiting for me to offer some solution.

  I don’t.

  “I hope you crash your stupid plane again and the next time it’s way worse,” she spits at me.

  Amy stomps to the door, her heels clicking against the tile, flings it open, and marches through with her head held high.

  I roll my eyes.

  Of all the fucking things, I think.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Imogen

  I take a step, frowning. The weight distribution on my walking cast is weird, and so is the way it rolls a little bit back-to-front in a way that normal feet don’t.

  I’ve still got crutches until I get used to it, but I’m trying to practice so I can shed them. The summer research season is pretty short in the Arctic, and if I’m going to do any useful observation, I really need to get up there, stat.

  I take another step, then another. I hobble in a small circle around my hospital room, glad that my parents hav
e finally taken a break to go do whatever there is to do in McBride Mills. I love them and I’m glad they came, but they were starting to drive me a little crazy.

  The window in here overlooks the parking lot. I’ve already spent a couple hours staring down there, waiting for something interesting to happen — it’s better than TV, which isn’t saying much — but it hasn’t yet.

  Until now.

  Because now, crossing the parking lot, is a woman in a red flight attendant uniform, complete with long shiny hair and high heels.

  I limp closer to the window, the hairs on the back of my neck starting to prickle.

  You’re being insane, I tell myself. There are tons of flight attendants in the world.

  Wilder said they weren’t dating. He wouldn’t have called her, there’s no way for her to have gotten here, right?

  But I can’t shake the bad feeling in my gut, the gnawing suspicion that this has happened to me before. The feeling that history just repeats itself if you let it.

  The flight attendant down below turns, glances up at the hospital, and for one moment I see her face perfectly.

  It’s Amy.

  I turn away from the window because I can feel myself starting to sweat.

  What are the chances? I think. Don’t bother being rational, it clearly doesn’t work.

  I take a deep breath. I can feel the prickle of perspiration starting in the valley between my breasts, on the back of my neck, the skin all over my body hot with nerves and anxiety and the horrible feeling that I’ve been humiliated, again.

  Go talk to him. It doesn’t mean anything that she’s here, maybe the airline sent her because…

  I blink, unable to come up with a reason. My palm is sweaty against the handhold of the crutch, and I wipe it on my hospital gown, grab the crutch again, hobble out of my room and into the hall before I can think of a reason not to.

  It takes forever. I’m slow, and I’m gimpy, and I’m forcing myself not to turn around with every step because I don’t want to talk to him about this, I want to go hide in my room and avoid the topic forever, maybe move to a cabin in the middle of nowhere and become a total hermit rather than face humiliation again.

  It’s tempting. I don’t know where I’d get a cabin, but I’m tempted nonetheless.

  I hobble past other hospital rooms, past the nurse’s station, past medical professionals bustling to and fro until I’m outside Wilder’s room, and I take a deep breath.

  The door’s open. I go in.

  Two heads turn, and the room hushes instantly, the kind of sudden quiet that makes it obvious I interrupted something.

  “Hey,” Wilder says after a moment. “Imogen, this is my mom—”

  Mrs. Flint has her arms crossed over her chest, and they were clearly mid-argument about something. She gives me a long, hard look up and down, then shoots a glare at Wilder.

  “What, are you a collector now? I’m going to go get a coffee across the street,” she says, grabbing a jacket from a hook on the wall and huffing out of the room.

  I have no idea what to say, so I don’t say anything. Neither does Wilder, his mouth an annoyed, flat line until his mom leaves.

  “Sorry,” he says. “She came all the way here just to get on my fucking case—”

  “I saw Amy,” I blurt out.

  “Shit,” Wilder mutters, and that one simple word feels like it closes a hand around my airway.

  “You said she wasn’t your girlfriend,” I say, the words coming out a whisper. “But, I mean, she’s here and why else would she have come all the way here if…”

  “She’s a flight attendant, it’s easy for her to get places,” he says. “I didn’t know she was coming, Imogen, I didn’t ask her to come. I broke up with her, just now, I swear.”

  There’s a stuffed bear on his bed, lying askew like it was tossed there. I blink back tears, trying to shove away a memory: Valentine’s, ten years ago, Melissa prancing around the halls of Solaris High School with that stupid build-a-bear from Spokane.

  “You broke up with her?”

  “Yeah,” Wilder says, stepping forward, reaching a hand toward my shoulder.

  I step back.

  “I was serious when I said it was different this time,” he says, his eyes flicking over my face. “I fucked up before when I was young and stupid and I’m not doing that now. I promise.”

  “You broke up with her,” I repeat. “Meaning you were dating.”

  “I told you, we weren’t dating, we were just sleeping together. It was different.”

  I glance at the window. A tear falls out of my right eye, and I brush it away angrily.

  “Squeaks,” he says. “This isn’t the same.”

  I want to believe him. I do. I want to look into his eyes and say yes, of course, but when I do all I can think of is his arm around her shoulders as she looked up flights to Yellowknife. The way he kissed her while I was standing right there, across the desk from them, feeling ugly and invisible and unimportant.

  I’m afraid that we’ll have this conversation a dozen times about a dozen women. That his mom will never recognize me, just forever think that I’m one of his collection.

  Worst of all, I’m afraid that I’ll never believe him, even when I should. Maybe I should right now, but I can’t.

  I can’t look at the past and ignore what it’s telling me.

  I shake my head.

  “It’s okay,” I say, even though I know it’s nonsensical, and I hobble for the door.

  “What?”

  “It’s fine,” I say, still hobbling. “Just—"

  My hand’s on the doorknob. Wilder’s behind me, and he reaches out, his hand brushing my shoulder. I straighten my back, stare into the oak-color wood grain and try to collect myself.

  “I don’t think I can trust you,” I say, willing my voice not to shake. It doesn’t work. “This already happened. It’s going to happen again. So maybe we should let it be over, yeah?”

  I jerk down on the door handle, yank it open, stumbling. Wilder catches me, holding my arm.

  “No,” he says, his voice stronger. “No, I’m not going to just let this go because you matter to me, Imogen, everything that happened matters—”

  “Stop it,” I say.

  “This isn’t the same. I’ve changed, I’m different—"

  “Let me go,” I say, just a little too loudly as I jerk my arm out of his grasp.

  The nurses standing in the hallway, discussing someone’s chart, look up, alarmed.

  Wilder lets me go. I hobble out of there as quickly as I can, tears now streaming down my face. The two nurses look at each other, and I don’t need to be psychic to know what that looked like.

  As a small mercy, Wilder doesn’t follow me.

  Ten Years Earlier

  I don’t know why I came to prom. Who in their right mind thinks this is a good idea or even wants to be here?

  Because God, it sucks. The music is awful. The DJ makes me cringe and he’s played the same song three times already. The dance floor is full of girls wearing ugly, sparkly, full-length dresses grinding up against their boyfriends like putting their butts somewhere near a dick is exciting and transgressive.

  I roll my eyes for the thousandth time, lean against the back wall, arms crossed over my chest.

  “I told you I shoulda brought my flask,” my friend Art says.

  “They patted you down at the door,” I say, just as annoyed with him as with everyone else. “Also, you don’t actually drink, you’re just saying that because you’re within earshot of Grant Newport and you want to look cool.”

  Art goes scarlet. Grant is the tall, blue-eyed, blond-haired center of our soccer team, and is completely unaware of Art’s crush on him.

  Though, by the way he’s trying to get a look down Trisha Murray’s dress right now, it wouldn’t matter. I don’t think Art’s got much of a chance.

  “Well, at least I’m not here to moon over someone so unavailable that there may as well be a sign hun
g from—”

  “Shut up,” I say.

  I didn’t tell him about Wilder and me. I didn’t tell anyone, except Melissa at the very end. Even after the huge fight Wilder and I got into the next day, and even after he made it very clear that he was picking her over me for reasons I’ll never understand, I didn’t tell anyone.

  It just seemed… pointless.

  “I’m just saying,” Art says, and goes back to staring at Grant.

  Yeah, going to prom is about the worst idea I’ve ever had, and of-fucking-course Solaris High has one of those ‘no leaving’ policies regarding school dances, because it’s supposed to keep students from doing drugs or having sex or some shit.

  Clearly it never keeps anyone from having sex, and given the glazed-over look plenty of people seem to have tonight, it’s not going great on the drugs front either.

  “You’re not even dancing,” Art says. “I thought you’d at least want to dance, but nooooo.”

  The thought alone sends a chill down my spine. Back here, with the lights pulsing and the loud music and everyone all wrapped up in what they’re doing, no one is paying me much attention.

  Keyword: much. I’ve gotten couple of weird looks, and I’m totally certain I’ve seen a couple of people lean into their dates and say what’s that weird girl doing here, I didn’t think she’d come.

  I don’t need them watching me dance. The thought alone makes me feel kinda nauseous. I just came because, you know, it’s my junior prom and it’s one of those memories you’re supposed to treasure forever, something that will mark a milestone in my life going forward, a day that maybe I’ll look back on fondly…

  Fine. I came because I knew that Wilder would be here, with Melissa, probably getting crowned Prom King, and as much as I hate myself for it I also love to make myself miserable. Dumb, right?

  This terrible song ends, but instead of another one starting, the DJ interjects over the speakers, sending circles of spotlights spinning through the crowd. Everyone cheers for no damn reason at all.