“How do I know you aren’t some sort of psycho or that you didn’t abuse me or something? I mean, why did I break up with you?” Her concern was palpable and reasonable. But still, it was so completely and utterly off base, I was having a hard time not coming clean. Except coming clean would wreck her.
“Mostly it was work that kept us apart. You were busy and it just didn’t work out. Do you really think Dean would send you home with someone who was crazy? He gave you an entire dossier on me, for chrissake.” She looks like she wants to argue, so I rush on. “I have a spare room. I can keep an eye on you. Plus Katie, my brother’s girlfriend, lives with him a floor above me and can keep you company and help when I’m unavailable. You’ve met her before and you liked her.” I think she liked her—I’m not completely sure—but everyone likes Katie, so…
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Okay,” she concedes with a defeated shrug. And then she suddenly groans.
“What? Is it your head?”
“No. My stomach’s been hurting. All night and most of today. Probably just the painkillers and antibiotics they’re giving me. It’s fine.” She turns onto her side, closes her eyes, and goes back to pretending she’s asleep so that she doesn’t have to deal with me.
April
My entire body aches and I swear I think I felt less pain when I was hit in the head with a bat than I do now. I am hesitant to move because I might throw up.
“You okay?” A deep voice has me whipping my head to the side.
“What time is it?” I ask Matt, who is sitting uncomfortably on the mint green chair. He has stubble on his face, and there’s sleep still in his eyes.
“You were in pain when I came back last night, so I stayed. It’s almost five in the morning.”
“Uh…okay, that’s nice of you. Thanks.”
He nods, then stands to stretch. He’s so tall, and his T-shirt clings to his body in all the right places. He is so handsome and—wow, I’m struck stupid at how attracted I am to him. I’m also not exactly in a position to greet someone as good-looking as he is. I’m in a gross hospital gown, and my ass will stick out of the gap in the back if I get up. My hair is undoubtedly a mess, I haven’t brushed my teeth or washed my face yet, and worst of all, no one has given me a mirror. I requested one yesterday and the day before, but the nurse seems to have forgotten to bring it. The same thing with Dean.
“I want to talk to you,” he says, sitting at the edge of the bed.
“Uh…do you mind if I go to the bathroom first?”
“Yeah, sure, of course.” He stands to help me up. My stomach rumbles in protest and I have to close my eyes, forcing myself not to throw up. It must be all the meds they have me on.
“Can you call a nurse and just…wait outside, please?”
“Let me help you.”
“No. No,” I protest, shaking my head and holding out a hand to stop him. I can’t talk right now or I’ll throw up. “A nurse, please.”
He seems upset about this but doesn’t argue. Instead he presses the call button, and within seconds Gladys is there, gently nudging Matt out of the room.
“I feel terrible. Everything hurts,” I tell her.
“You were hit pretty hard, honey. Of course it hurts. Anything other than your head and arm?”
“Everywhere, Gladys. Everywhere. My joints, my muscles…God, my stomach feels like I have razor blades stabbing me.” Before I have a chance to say anything else, I’m bent over the toilet throwing up.
After I’ve cleaned up and am feeling slightly less grimy, with a new gown, my hair brushed, and the sheets on my hospital bed changed, Gladys takes all my vitals.
“Are these medicines supposed to do this to me? I feel like I’m getting worse.”
“I’m going to talk to the doctor about this. Yes, the meds can mess with your stomach, but not like this. And what you’re describing seems like more of a flare-up than a side effect of the medications we’re giving you.”
“Flare-up?” I ask. I have a vague feeling in the back of my mind, like a memory trying to push forward.
“For your Crohn’s disease,” she explains. “Matt told us just now. We didn’t know this part of your medical history, so you’ve gone without your meds. They’ve already been ordered, but it takes a few hours.”
“Crohn’s disease. Yes, that’s right.” I remember that now. “I do have Crohn’s. And Matt knew this? And Dean?”
“Dean didn’t say anything and you’ve been here for almost two weeks, which leads me to believe he didn’t know.”
“But Matt did.”
She nods and types something into her rolling computer. “I’ll let you know what the doctor says. Can I send Matt back in?”
“Yes, that’s fine,” I say, bringing the blanket higher up on my body and maybe even perhaps smoothing out my hair a little. I assume he’s going to come right back, but it takes almost half an hour before he walks in with a big Styrofoam cup of coffee in his hand. “Bring me one too?” I ask.
“Is that a smile? Been a long time since I saw one of those on you,” he says somberly. He sits back on the bed. “Coffee’s not good for you. You told me that once. I didn’t even think you liked coffee, to be honest. Never seen you drink the stuff.”
He sits on the edge of the bed and takes a sip of his drink. “You feeling a little better?”
“Not really,” I say honestly. “You wanted to talk?”
“I did. Dean said you remember some things but not everything. What do you remember?”
“I remember everything until maybe a few years back. Like, I remember the ceremony where I got my badge.”
“So you know you’re a cop.”
“Yeah, but Dean said that was ten years ago. I don’t remember meeting Dean or you. I can’t remember where I live, although I do remember I lived in a foster home when I was a kid and I remember the small, crappy apartment I lived in throughout college.”
“Do you know your medical history?”
“That I have Crohn’s disease? Yeah, Gladys just reminded me.”
He exhales. “Good. I remembered what medication you were on.”
“So,” I say, looking anywhere but at those deep green eyes, “we must’ve been close, you and I. I mean, no one else but you seemed to know.”
He holds my stare as if daring me to look at him. Challenging me. “I told you, we dated.”
There’s a knock on the door and Gladys walks back in. Before she begins to speak, she looks at me and then back at Matt. It’s obvious that she’s asking me if it’s okay for him to be here while she says whatever it is she needs to say. The polite thing would be for Matt to graciously excuse himself, but he doesn’t. He stands there, resolute, his arms crossed, as anxious for the information as I am. “It’s okay, Gladys. Whatever it is, you can say it with him here. Obviously he knows more about me than I know about myself.”
With a final glance at both of us, she begins, “I spoke with Dr. Parker and he’ll be in later when he does rounds. But he reviewed your labs from this morning. The markers that indicate possible inflammation are elevated, which is an indicator that your Crohn’s is flaring up and you have an active infection, which would explain those flu-like symptoms you’re experiencing.”
Yes. Exactly. “Flu-like symptoms” describes it best.
“We’re going to run some more tests today,” Gladys goes on, “but meanwhile we’re going to start you on some prednisone to help with the inflammation. We’ll also double the dose of your regular Crohn’s meds and monitor you for a few more days. I’m not sure how much you remember, but Crohn’s is chronic. In other words, just because your illness is active doesn’t necessarily mean you have to stay here, unless you have an obstruction or are getting worse, of course.”
“So I can’t leave tomorrow?”
“I’d say the day after next, to be safe, but let’s see what Dr. Parker says later this afternoon and how you start to feel on the prednisone, okay?”
“So you’d just let her go home in pain?” Matts interrupts.
“We can give her something for the pain to take at home.”
“That makes no sense. She’s not feeling well.”
“She is in a hospital and has been here for almost two weeks. We are well aware she’s not feeling well, but Crohn’s is chronic.”
“You already said that. What does that mean, exactly?”
“It means that it’s not curable,” I interrupt. “It means that being in pain or in some kind of discomfort may very well be part of my life and I’m not going to hang out here in the hospital forever.”
“I don’t like this,” he protests, glaring at the nurse.
She gives him a big smile, then winks at me. “He’s a keeper,” she says with a chuckle before leaving.
Matt lifts his coffee cup and takes a big drink. My mouth is salivating at the smell of the warm brew, which makes me think I love coffee and maybe he doesn’t know me after all.
Chapter 11
April
I spend the rest of the day sleeping, watching television, and then sleeping some more. Between the pain meds, the nausea meds, and all the other crap I’m taking, I haven’t felt as bad and haven’t even needed to throw up again. Granted, I haven’t eaten much, but still, I’m feeling better.
Matt’s phone rings a few times, and each time he steps out of the room to take calls. I’m not sure if he’s doing it so as not to disturb me or so that I don’t hear the conversation. I can’t help but wonder if he’s talking to a woman. Maybe he has a girlfriend.
Damn!
Maybe he has a wife. But why would he be here with me if he had a wife?
He walks back in quietly and sits back down. He puts his feet up on the foot of my bed and gets comfortable. I’m watching him closely for any signs of distress. Is his wife upset he’s here with me?
“Why are you staring?” he asks, his eyes on the television.
Quickly I avert my gaze. “I wasn’t,” I lie, but quickly add, “Was that your wife?”
I feel rather than see him turn his head and look at me. “You think I’d be sitting here with you for almost two days if I had a wife?”
I turn my head back to him. “I don’t know.”
Matt
Is she fucking with me? I almost want to look around to see if I’m on Candid Camera. She’s the liar, not me. I’d never abandon a wife—hell, not even a girlfriend—to sit with an ex at a hospital for two days. But then I see how sincere, how lost she is, and I realize she’s dead serious. “No. That wasn’t my wife. I’m not married.”
“Girlfriend?”
Rolling my eyes, I answer. “No, I don’t have a girlfriend either.”
Then she purses her lips. “Boyfriend?”
At that I chuckle. “No boyfriend either. No significant other, April. It was my brother on the phone. He had some questions about a shipment that arrived at the club today.”
“Shipment? Club?”
“I own a nightclub and we had some liquor delivered.”
“Oh. Okay.” She looks back at the television.
A few minutes later she asks, “What’s your brother’s name?”
“Nick. Nico, actually. But we call him Nick,” I answer, and she nods, looking at the television and biting her bottom lip. I can tell she has something on her mind, but I don’t push her. I heard the nurse explain to her that she needs to remember things in her own time.
“I don’t have siblings,” she says matter-of-factly a few minutes later.
“I know that.” But really, I didn’t know that. She could’ve been lying.
She turns her head and tries to sit up a little. “You did. Of course you did. I don’t know me, but you know me. And I look at you, but it’s not like I have this sense of recognition or a sudden pang of awareness deep in my soul or any such nonsense like that. I look at you and I see a complete stranger. Absolutely nothing about you is familiar. Do you know how scared I am that I’ll be leaving the hospital with you and the only other person in the entire world I’ll know is Dean, and Dean is on the other side of the country?” She stops talking, and her lips quiver.
Of all the things I remember associating with June, fear is not one of them. She was the most self-assured, brave person I know. An allure of badassness surrounded her like a cloak. Hell, the first time I met her, she was pouring a drink over a man’s head. A man who could’ve easily snapped her in two.
This vulnerable April—yeah, I don’t know how to navigate this. And I’m not supposed to upset her. So I can’t say to her what I really want to say: You’re a liar! That’s why I don’t know whether you like coffee or not! I barely know your real name! All those things would upset her. But the person I really want to yell at is June. April, not so much. It doesn’t make sense, yet it does. It makes my head spin.
So I tamp down all the anger and bitterness I’m feeling. “Maybe you forgot you didn’t like coffee,” I mutter, as if coffee was the end-all and be-all. “You didn’t like coffee, as far as I know, before your accident. Now maybe you just don’t remember you hate coffee. That’s a good thing, April. Maybe things you disliked before, you’ll start liking them now. Maybe you just avoided it because it upset your stomach. I don’t have an answer for that. I can tell you, though, that I know you. You may not remember me, you may not remember you. But I do.”
She turns to face the television and makes a little noise, as if to say, Interesting.
“Maybe now you’ll hate olives.”
She turns her head to me again. “I liked them before?”
“Yep. Loved them.”
“I don’t remember that,” she admits. “It’s like I have a gap. Like a brick wall has been built in my brain and from a certain moment on, it’s all blank. They tell me it goes back three or four years.”
“You probably don’t want to remember the attack. Not remembering might be a good thing. Maybe it’s your body trying to cope with the trauma.”
“I don’t think so. I want to remember.” She yawns widely.
“Well, don’t try so hard, and don’t overthink it. Just relax. Let all those drugs do their thing and get better. You have a long way to go to recover. No sense in stressing yourself to the point where you get sick.”
I sit back and get comfortable.
“You’ll be here when I wake up?” she asks, again with that damn vulnerability.
“I’ll be here.”
“Okay,” she mumbles in that voice I remember so vividly. “Thank you, Matt,” she says as she dozes off.
April
I’m sitting on a beach, fully dressed, and there’s a man next to me. All I can see are his green eyes. He smiles sweetly at me. “I don’t want you to leave,” he says to me.
“But I have to. I’ll be back in a few days,” I say, and look out toward the ocean.
When I turn my head back, his face is a little distorted and he’s not sitting as close as he was a second ago. “Where are you going?” I ask.
“I’m not going anywhere. It’s you that’s running away. Just don’t get on that plane tomorrow,” he implores.
When I look down, I’m standing knee deep in water. I try to run out of the water toward the sand, but the harder I try, the farther away the man gets.
“Wait. Don’t go. I won’t leave. I promise. Make me stay, help me,” I plead. I don’t want him to leave. I’m trying to reach for him, but I can’t get close enough no matter how fast I run. The water is now up to my neck and I can’t see him anymore.
“April.” I hear a woman’s voice. “April. You’re dreaming. Wake up,” she says. “Hold her arm down before she hurts herself.”
I open my eyes, and Matt’s holding my arm, while a nurse I don’t recognize is wiping my forehead with a moist towel. “You were dreaming,” the nurse says. “You okay? I need to check your vitals.” She turns to Matt. “Please wait outside while—”
No! No! No! If he leaves I won’t find him again! Instinctively I try to
grab on to him, but instantly I feel the most horrible, nausea-inducing pain I’ve ever felt before. “No!” the nurse yelps. “April, please calm down. You can’t move that arm.”
“I’m here. I’m here,” Matt says, softly caressing my hair. “Relax. I won’t leave.” His face is awash in concern. He grabs my hands and holds them, preventing me from causing myself any more harm. “Hey, it’s okay. Shh.”
“Don’t go. Please. Stay,” I beg.
“I’m right here, sweetheart. I’m right here.”
My eyes never leave Matt’s as the nurse finishes her checkup. Then she pushes something into my IV, and I fall asleep with those concerned green eyes looking at me.
Matt
The sounds that come from deep within her throat—a painful mewling noise—make me forget about everything except trying to help her. Never in my life have I felt so powerless. I hold her hands, my thumb rubbing her skin, soothing her the only way I know how, until the drugs kick in and she falls asleep again.
“The prednisone is a steroid and she’s getting a high dose. One of the side effects is vivid dreams. She may also experience anxiety and some mood swings. With the sedative I just gave her, she’ll be out for a few hours,” the nurse advises as she walks out.
“Thanks for the warning.” It would have been helpful to know that before April had the nightmare, but at least I’ll be ready the next time it happens.
—
Two days later the doctor tells us that her inflammatory markers are looking better. He lowers the dose of the steroid medication and decides it’s time for April to go home. She has an appointment next week with a neurologist for the memory loss and an appointment with a GI doctor for her Crohn’s disease; the week after that she’ll be getting the cast removed.
“Katie’s set up the extra room in my house for you. I brought you some clothes to change into. Also, Dean called this morning while you were still sleeping. I told him you were feeling better and going home today.”
Make Me Stay: The Panic Series Page 15
