“The library?” I whisper. So, James wasn’t totally tactless. He didn’t let Summer know I was at his place.
“Yeah, like you were passed out on the floor. You fell right by a shelf and nearly toppled all the books onto you.” She gives a forced laugh. “Wouldn’t that be something? On top of all this, having a few broken bones, as well?” She manages a smile. “I guess we have to be thankful for that.”
“Yeah,” I say, trying to meet James’s gaze.
He won’t look at me.
I turn back to Summer. “So what the hell is going on?” I ask. “What did the doctors say?”
Summer bites her lip nervously. “They wouldn’t tell me anything. Us anything,” she corrects, sweeping a hand back to include James. “They just said you’re stable and let us wait for you to wake up.”
“Okay,” I nod. A sinking feeling forms in my gut. I have a dark suspicion of why I’m here… but until it’s confirmed, I’m not going to think about it.
A nurse pokes her head through the curtain. “I heard voices,” she says. She smiles at me. “I’m glad you’re up. How are you feeling?”
“A little unsteady,” I say, “but otherwise fine.”
She nods. “Let me just check your vitals,” she says, stepping into the room. Summer backs away from the bed to give her access.
After she completes her procedure, she squeezes my hand and says, “I’ll let the doctor know you’re up. He’ll come in and discuss your condition with you.”
My condition.
Just like that, the suspicion is confirmed.
Summer frowns after her. “What did she mean by that?”
“I haven’t the slightest clue,” I lie.
Summer’s lips make a straight line. She sits down again in her chair. James remains standing. He still hasn’t said a word. I can tell something’s digging at him.
It’s not hard to guess what it is. He probably thinks this is his fault. I want to reassure him that it’s not –not at all. But, I can’t do it with Summer in the room.
An uncomfortable silence fills the air.
Summer clears her throat. “I’m so glad Professor Landon called me,” she says.
“How did you get her number?” I ask, forcing James to converse with me.
“I have all my students’ numbers,” he says tightly. “I remember the two of you sat together first class. After meeting you and Ms. Blair again in the library, I thought she’d be a close friend. I called her after the paramedics took you away.”
“Isn’t he so thoughtful?” Summer gushes. Fangirl mode is back on.
“Yeah,” I say. I swallow. “Just swell.”
Another silence drops.
It’s interrupted when a doctor steps in. He’s consulting a clipboard. “Ms. Adams?” he says, looking around the enclosure before setting his eyes on me. “Are either of these two immediate family?”
“No,” I say.
He looks at them both. “I’m going to need privacy with my patient.”
James nods and puts a hand on Summer’s shoulder. “Come on. Let’s wait outside.”
“K.” Summer stands up. “We’ll be in the waiting room, okay, Celeste?”
“Yeah,” I say.
When they’re gone, I sit up, look the doctor in the eye, and cut right to the chase. “So. How bad is my heart?”
19.
I’m released from the ward a half hour later. The doctor didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know… or at least, nothing I didn’t deeply suspect.
I find Summer right where she said she’d be. She bounds up. “So? What did he say?”
“Not much,” I lie again. I hate piling on deceit after deceit after deceit, but I’ve got no choice. “Dehydration or something. I’ve got a mineral imbalance. Some people get muscle cramps. Others… pass out.”
The story sounds paper thin to my ears. Passing out from an electrolyte deficiency? It’s almost laughable.
But Summer nods and considers it. “Can it happen again?” she asks. “Is there anything you can do to prevent it?”
“I’m coming in for more tests next week.” Not a lie. “I’ll find out then.” Another lie. I already know, more or less, what the tests will show.
I doubt it’s going to be pretty.
But I don’t want Summer to know any of it. I don’t want anybody to.
I hate it when people feel sorry for me. I hate looking into their eyes and seeing the sadness reflected there: Oh, there’s the sick girl. I hate the pity, the inherent sense that having a medical condition like that makes you somehow less. Oh, they won’t say you’re less. Not to your face. God no. They’ll blabber on and on about strength and survival, and they’ll grip your arms and tell you to Just hang in there and that God’s looking out for you and that you have such courage and strength and shit like that.
Fuck. All. That. Noise.
I want to live a full life, unburdened by false sympathy. Maybe it’s not false in the eyes of people giving it, but it always comes across like that to me. It sounds empty. It makes me feel tainted.
And it’s never my condition that makes me feel tainted or different or less. It’s other people’s knowledge of it.
I’m not one of those delicate flowers who needs to cry her heart out at every piece of bad news she gets. I take whatever life throws at me and roll with the punches. Don’t dwell on mortality. Don’t think about how I might get fewer years here than the next person. For all I know, the next person is going to get run over by a bus tomorrow. Did she spend all her days stressing and worrying? No. Did all her friends start mourning for her while she was alive, because they knew that the day after tomorrow they wouldn’t see her again?
No.
It came from nowhere. It came from out of the blue. And honestly? When my time comes, I want it to be exactly like that.
Unexpected.
Well, unexpected for anybody except me.
“Where’s the professor?” I ask looking around the empty waiting room.
“Oh. He left. He said now that I was here, there was no reason for him to stick around.”
My stomach sinks a little. “He said that?”
“Yeah. I still can’t believe he had the foresight to ring me. Can you? Oh well.” She throws an arm around my shoulders. “Thank God he found you when he did. And let’s hope the tests next week give us some good news. Wanna head home?”
“Yeah,” I say. I nod. “Yeah. That sounds like a plan.”
20.
Just as I’m falling asleep, my phone buzzes with a text.
I pick it up. It’s from James. It’s labeled as from James, even though I never, ever remember putting in his number.
James: What happened?
Me: You put your number in my phone, you ass.
James: Not funny. What did the doctor say?
I roll my eyes. Dammit, this is exactly the type of concern that I want to avoid. From anybody.
Nothing, I text back. Sleeping now.
Not half a second after I hit send, my phone starts to ring.
The caller display shows James.
I hit decline and shove it under my pillow. “Not talking to you,” I mumble.
But the phone rings again. I put it on vibrate. It rings a third time. I put it on silent. A fourth. A fifth. He’s blowing up my phone, and I have no reason to expect that he’ll stop unless I answer.
So I bite the bullet and pick it up.
“What?” I snap.
“I want to know what happened to you tonight, Celeste,” he says in a very calm, very controlled voice.
“Nothing happened. It was a fainting episode. Big whoop.”
“You and I both know that isn’t the truth.”
“Yeah? Well, so what? It’s what you told Summer, and it’s the story I’m sticking to.”
“I did that for your benefit,” he growls. “I didn’t think your friend would want to know you were at my place after the way she behaved when we met in the library.”
>
“Well, thanks for being so astute.” I lace my words with sarcasm. “James. I need to sleep. Stop calling me.”
“No.” Anger flashes in his voice. It’s the first time I’ve ever heard him like this. “You tell me exactly what happened, Celeste. There’s a reason the doctor asked if we were family. I want to know what’s wrong with you.”
“Why? So you can fix me?” I remember Brad. I’ll never leave your side, he promised. He said he was in love, and I believed him.
The fool I was.
Shit hit the fan. I had my first procedure, and he tucked tail and ran, leaving me broken, alone, scared, and worst of all, betrayed.
“I don’t want you to fix me.” I rage on. “I don’t want anyone to fix me. I don’t need you or your sympathetic shit. I’m just fine on my own, understand? I’m just fine, James, and I don’t need to tell you anything!”
I thrust the phone in front of my face and stab “end.” I slide it to the far corner of the room, stuff my head into my pillow, and force myself not to cry.
21.
The next morning, I act like there’s absolutely nothing wrong. I’m all smiles and sunshine as I greet Summer for breakfast. I have my usual egg white omelet, which earns me a disgusted look from Summer.
“Still eating shit, I see,” she tells me. “Must mean you’re feeling better.”
“Right as rain,” I say, stuffing a spoonful in my mouth. “Did you get anywhere with that paper?”
She looks around the room. “Not really,” she admits.
“Summer…”
“I know, I know! I’ll do it today, okay?”
“You can’t just focus on Professor Landon’s class. All of them are important.”
She snorts a laugh. “Yeah right. It’s not like either of us has many career paths available after this.”
I smirk. “You said that before.”
“And it’s still true!”
“Yeah, yeah,” I tell her. “C’mon, let’s get out of here. Time to start our second month as graduate students.”
***
By the time four p. m. rolls around, I’m just about ready to crash and forget the last eight-odd hours.
Today has been utterly craptastic. I got into an argument with Summer at lunch after I received a call from the hospital. They want me to come for CT scans and bloodwork and to discuss my prior medical history. They want to do it now, not next week. Summer only heard my side of the conversation, thank God, but still insisted on coming with me.
I told her hell no. Maybe I shouldn’t have been so brusque, but the last thing I want is for her to find out what’s really going on.
It’s almost as if the sickness –or any sickness –compels people to view you differently. All their “good nature” comes out. And you start to live in a make-believe world full of rainbows and unicorns and kindness and fairy dust and, in the words of one comedian, golden piss of excellence.
Fuck. That.
I don’t want my life seen through a blurry filter. I don’t want to live my life through a blurry filter.
When people start doting on you, life becomes fuzzy. And my life? However much of it I have left?
I want it to be crystal clear.
So, obviously, Summer didn’t understand my reaction. How could she? She thought she was only doing what a good friend would. After all, I’m just dealing with a mineral imbalance, isn’t that right? So what’s the big deal?
I told her she’d miss class if she tagged along. She said fuck class, she wants to be with me. And then I dug my heels in and really told her no, and voices were raised, and mean things were said, and names were flung back and forth like scraps at a food fight.
In the end, she stormed off, and I was left all fired up. I felt angry more than anything. Angry at myself for piling on lie after lie to my roommate and best friend, with whom I thought I’d share this amazing grad school experience.
I have no one to blame but myself. But, it’s not like I can do things differently.
When the final class ends and we’re let out at 4:10, I see Summer in the throng of people leaving. Our eyes meet for a split second… Then, she turns her nose up and pretends I don’t exist.
It’s no stretch to say that I don’t particularly want to return to our apartment and deal with the inevitable confrontation.
So, I wander around campus aimlessly, lost in my own thoughts. My phone hasn’t been on since last night. I don’t want to deal with James. I don’t want to tell him anything. And dammit, I shouldn’t feel obligated to.
I’m avoiding responsibilities like a spoiled brat.
But with James, unlike with Summer, I feel a bit of nagging guilt. I was in his apartment when my body went haywire.
I don’t owe him an explanation, but maybe a thank you? That wouldn’t kill me.
So, just as the clouds start to gather overhead and seal away the sun, I find myself angling toward his office.
I have no idea if he’s there. And if he is, who he’s with. Would he want to see me after the way I hung up on him last night?
But James is the only person I feel safe turning to. That’s not being weak or hypocritical. I feel safe turning to him, because I can be completely certain of his intentions:
He wants to fuck.
And honestly, right now? What better way to purge all the shit storming through my mind than having it fucked straight out of me?
I come up to the steps of the building. I check my reflection in the window. I don’t look half bad, considering all that happened over the weekend.
Should I call before going in? I debate it…
No. No, I’ll just show up, and he can do whatever he wants with me.
His office door is ajar. I can hear movement inside. Do I knock or just go straight in? I hesitate for a flicker of a second. What if I’m interrupting something? I don’t want to look needy or desperate in his eyes.
But we do need to “talk.” That’s enough of an excuse to see him.
I square my shoulders and take a deep breath. Enough stalling, woman! I tell myself. I raise my hand to push the door open…
And stop when I hear a very familiar giggle come from inside.
Summer.
I can recognize her laugh anywhere. What’s she doing in there?
I barge right in.
And there I see them. Summer, leaning back with her hips against his massive desk. James, standing right in front of her, whispering something in her ear.
An ugly wave of jealousy rips through me. I see red.
James looks back at the interruption. His eyes land on me. He gives that cocky, full-of-himself smile.
He steps back from Summer. “Ah. Ms. Adams,” he says. “We were just talking about you.”
“I bet,” I grate. My eyes flash angrily to Summer. She lifts her chin in defiance. But a tiny bit of color touches her cheeks.
“I need to talk to you,” I tell James.
He gestures for me to continue. “Please do.”
I look at Summer. “Alone,” I clarify.
“Why the sudden need for privacy?” James poses. “Ms. Blair tells me the two of you are quite close. Surely anything you have to say can be heard by her, no?”
“Yeah, Celeste,” Summer adds. She crosses her arms and tosses her head. “We don’t have any secrets from each other. Right?”
The emphasis on the last word—and the look in her eyes—makes me freeze. Is she hinting at something? Dammit, did James tell her anything he shouldn’t have?
“It’s about yesterday,” I stress. “About how you… found me.”
“Oh jeez,” Summer rolls her eyes and pushes off from the desk. “If that’s what you want to talk about, I’m out. I don’t need another repeat of lunch.” She bats her lashes at James and runs a hand down his arm as she passes. “Good-bye, professor,” she purrs. “I’m sure I’ll be seeing you soon.”
She leaves the room swaying her hips in the most obvious way.
James goes back arou
nd his desk. He takes out a small bottle of scotch and pours himself a drink. Then he sits down in that gaudy red, high-backed chair, steeples his hands, and looks at me.
“So,” he says.
“So,” I repeat. He didn’t invite me to come closer or sit down or share a drink. “Can you tell me what she was doing here?”
“Trying to strengthen her application for the TAs position, I’m betting,” he notes casually. “Your friend is quite the flirt.”
I narrow my eyes at him. He’s pushing the envelope, trying to see how I’ll react. I know it.
But I refuse to rise to the bait. Jealousy is the ugliest emotion. I will not let him know that he can rouse it in me.
“What did you tell her?” I ask.
“About us?” James leans back and kicks his legs up. “Nothing. I know you don’t want her finding out.”
“How do you—“
“Please.” He holds up one hand. “Let’s not kid ourselves here, Celeste. I’m not a child. I wasn’t born yesterday. And while a bit of competition for my affections would certainly be… dare I say… fun?” He sips his scotch. “I am not so vain as to try to evoke it.”
“I saw you whispering in her ear,” I accuse. “That didn’t look so innocent.”
“Ah, but that was as far as things went. I told you, I have my eyes set on you.” He puts the glass down. Coupled with his proclamation, the sound of it hitting the oak hardwood makes me jump.
He smiles. “You’re nervous.”
“I am not.”
“Why did you come?”
“I told you. To talk.”
“About what? Are you ready to tell me what the doctor said?”
“No,” I say. “I will not. It doesn’t matter what he said. It matters what you know.”
“I know enough to tell that something is wrong. You think it’s not my place to be concerned. Don’t you?” His eyes bore into me. “But, that’s where you’re wrong, Celeste. I told you I would transform you into my lover. You’re not a throwaway, and I’m addicted to your taste. You, Celeste Adams, have evinced your influence on me. But—until you accept that—you and I are at a stalemate.”
Uncovering You: The Complete Series (Mega Box Set) Page 129
