If I Stay (20 page)

“And don't worry, Gems. I'll be home to man the fortress.”

Dad gave me another quick peck, gathering up mom's purse and the teddy bear that Sacha and Brandon had given me. While he waited outside, mom briefly sat down, stroking my hair as she reassured me that everything would heal up quickly.

“And you have someone to keep you company while I'm gone,” she said. “Ben's here. He brought your father and I coffee, the gentleman.”

Mom looked at me, and I felt nervous. Really nervous. Obviously, she must have known that Ben taught one of my classes. That he was an author. Those topics must have come up at some point during whatever they were talking about in the hallway.

“I saw an article about him in the Tribune,” she said. “He's has quite the list of accolades. And his book is going to be turned into a film, I hear?”

“Yeah,” I said. “It's really something else.”

She smiled.

“He seems quite fond of you, Gemma,” she said. “Will you promise me something?”

“Anything.”

“Just please wait until the semester is over before things get serious between you two,” she said. “But I'll leave it at this: when he came in earlier, after your visit with Brandon and Sacha, he asked my permission before seeing you again. And he asked my permission the first time, as well. That matters, Gemma. A little respect goes a long way in my book.”

She kissed my forehead, and I told her that I loved her (times a million) and when she left, I thought about pressing the pain medication button again because the spot where I'd hit my head had provided a pretty sufficiently monstrous headache. The nurse came in to check my fluid levels, and Ben returned with his suitcase and what looked to be a strawberry smoothie. He handed it to me, I took a sip, and discovered that I was indeed correct.

And somehow, he knew
. I set the drink aside, happy to have indulged in something other than ice chips.
Strawberry is my all-time favorite.

“I asked the nurse, and she said it was alright. I figured this was an easier way to get something into your stomach other than ice chips.”

“You're much too nice to me, Benjamin Hugo Lawson.”

He chuckled, pulling over a chair and sitting himself down.

“Confession Time,” he said. “My middle name isn't Hugo.”

“Is it something even more embarrassing?”

“Maybe,” he smiled. “But it's William. My middle name is actually William.”

He picked up his suitcase, asking me to close my eyes as he searched for whatever it was that he was searching for. It felt good, to be honest. I hadn't realized just how much work it had been keeping my eyes open for those few hours.

“Call me insane,” I murmured. “But I might just keep them closed. I never realized how exhausting talking to people could be until now.”

“Well, then my last request will be for you to be pick one of two books that in my quick break I managed to hunt down. Are you ready?”

“Yes,” I told him.

“Alright.” he said. “So,
Goodnight Moon
or
Where the Wild Things Are
?”

“Excuse me?” I opened my eyes, and he held both the books in his hands. “You found those for me? You remembered?”

“Of course,” he answered, dark eyes glistening. Or maybe it was just the garish florescence. “I try to make a point of remembering the things you tell me.”

I smiled. It was a tired and weak one, but a smile nonetheless.

“
Goodnight Moon
.” I selected, closing my eyes again as he flipped to the beginning. “But Ben?”

“Yes?”

“Will you stay with me?” I asked. “Just until I fall asleep.”

“Of course,” he said.

I closed my eyes, trying my best to find a comfortable spot as my body started to give way, my eyes heavy even though the room was bright and the bed was uncomfortable.

“
In the great green room, there was a telephone, and a red balloon
...”

I tried to stay awake. I really did. But in the end, It was Ben's voice, as he read, that carried me away.

NINETEEN

Things You'll Quickly Learn During A Hospital Stay

(
If You're Lucky Enough, That is
)

#1 Taking your clothes off in front of doctors becomes a weird kind of normalcy, and is also never
not
uncomfortable no matter how many times you do it.

#2 Don't let the fancy-looking menus deceive you – the food is actually crap. Which is fine, really, because the simultaneous feeling of hunger and nausea might make you feel like you want to eat, but the fear of vomiting all over yourself afterward works really well to suppress that urge. I should know, because I let it happen once. And only once.

#3 Healing is a special hell in and of itself. Never had I experienced anything worse (aside from my broken ribs) than the itching of my stitches as they started to scab over from underneath the damned bandage that I wanted to rip off and claw at approximately one hundred-zillion different times. If the stitches hadn't been tastefully zig-zagged down my forehead, I probably wouldn't have held back.

#4 The right pain-killing medley can somehow remedy all of the insufferable situations listed above.

They kept me for a few days to supposedly check for any internal bleeding. I say
supposedly
because they ran the tests days before, and yet even after the results were back and it was deemed that (aside from the broken ribs and some incredibly fantastic-looking surface bruises) I was not at risk for immediately dying, they insisted I should stay put. Even if was technically alright to go home and continue suffering on my living room couch instead of a hospital bed. The conversation went a little something like this:

“Well, Gemma, it looks like there's no internal bleeding...how is your pain on a scale of 1-10?”

I hate that scale. I hate it so much. How in the name of Mithras is possible to accurately describe my pain on a numerical scale? Still, I tried.

“A solid 6.5,” I told him. He smiled tightly.

“I'll write down eight,” he said, jotting whatever he was jotting down on his clip-board. Brandon sat next to me, in a wheelchair of all things, that he'd located in the lobby and decided to steal. The Doctor cut him a quick, confused glance.

“What?” Brandon shot. “My legs are broken.”

If I could have extended my arm far enough without having to roll over and risk a wave of unbearable pain, I would have punched him.

“So does this mean I can go home today?” I asked, admittedly hopeful.

“No,” Doctor Man shook his head. “Not today, unfortunately. We're going to keep you for another day or two, just for observation.”

After he left, Brandon stared at the doorway. I followed suit.

“I have a feeling that the whole observation thing is bullshit,” he said. If I could have groaned without wanting to die, I would have.

“Yeah,” I said. “Me too.”

Brandon then proceeded to wheel around the room doing Steven Hawking impressions, and I tried not to laugh when he wheeled himself straight into the wall, and the whole thing wasn't so bad, considering that I could certainly have been in a lot worse places. Like a casket.

So I spent the time sucking up whatever rest I could get while enjoying the littler perks like
the television with more channels than I had at home, or the fact that I didn't really need to move – which meant no work, or class, and was sort of boring – but whatever. I was dealing with it.

The visits weren't all that bad, either. Sacha made a point to stop by every day, usually with Brandon, and every time after the Steven Hawking incident I had to tell Brandon not to talk or even really do
anything
because any and every word from his mouth resulted in a bout of laughter. And with broken ribs, that just couldn't happen.

But there were gifts. Lots of flowers, and lots of people from school stopping by and telling me that they'd apparently witnessed the accident, and that everyone was screaming, and that nobody thought I would actually walk away from the entire fiasco alive.

I responded similarly to each one of them: with a slow, tight-lipped smile.

“Well, I guess I'm especially glad to not be dead and everything.”

However, there were two instances that are very important to note. Mostly because they were hilarious and ridiculous and nostalgic-ly terrible all at the same time. The second visit was more the latter, though. But I digress.

The first was from my father, who actually decided to bring a lawyer along with him. Now, you need to imagine me here. My hair, to be complimentary, was about as attractive as a rat's nest. I hadn't even been able to wash it since I was shipped off to the hospital via ambulance, and the thought of having to get up and move to take said shower made me want to cry. I was wearing one of those too-thin hospital gowns, although my mother was nice enough to bring along one of her bathrobes, which the nurse fished out from my giant over-night bag. I could barely sit up without wincing and making a face that definitely looked astoundingly unattractive. And when they actually showed up, I had just been given some way-cool drugs that had made me kind of drool a little.

You get the picture.

But this guy, the lawyer, was one of those people who just
looked
important. You know when you see someone, and you think,
holy shit –
they're wearing a fitted suit, and their shoes are nice, and their hair is all perfect – they must be important. Well, that's how this guy looked. And my father, oh, my father – he was in one of those states where he was so wound-up that he wouldn't just drop it.

“Honey,” he started. “I just want you to know that you have the option of pressing charges against the man who hit you.”

The lawyer immediately started going on about the potential claims that I could hold against the thirty-five year old idiot that had slipped-up and sped through a red light because of all things, his girlfriend had broken up with him through text message, and he was devastated.

I raised my hand, during which the IV had started going off again, and I had to hold myself back (still drooling, mind you) from choking the thing like it was actually alive and not just machine that pumped liquids through my body.

“I don't exactly think that I want to take him to court, dad.” I said. “I'd rather not drag this out any longer than necessary.”

Dad just wouldn't have that, though, and I immediately started worrying about his blood pressure after his face turned red as a freaking tomato.

“But Gemma,” he tried to remain calm. “It would be incredibly permissive, after the trauma you've experienced, to just let this guy walk away with no ramifications.”

Was I feeling the emotional after-effects of the collision? Of course. There was no doubting, no skirting around that fact. When I'd woken up, Ben having left, and mother was sound asleep in the corner of the tiny hospital room, I was emotional for a few quiet moments. The realization
that I'd been knocked unconscious during that the span of time between the speeding car and opening my eyes in the hospital, in some ways, was just a small taste of the inevitable unconsciousness that I would face someday. Except there wouldn't be any waking up from that forever kind of unconsciousness.

Yeah, it clutched me. I shed a few tears in that dark, quiet room. And then, after the nurse came in to check my vitals and administer a shot of something sweet, I fell asleep again.

I looked at dad, moving my shoulders in a half-attempt at a shrug.

“I think the courts will definitely hold him accountable without my pressing additional charges. He did run a red light, after all. What would suing do aside from potentially procuring me a lot of money? I don't want the money, dad. I'm tired. I don't want to deal with courts and lawyers or anything. No offense.”

I smiled at the fitted-suit lawyer guy, who smiled at me, and the two of them tried a few more times to convince me that it was the
right
thing to do in taking this ass-hat to court and grinding him into the ground with The Law's mighty fist.

In the end, I said no. I said it about a dozen times, and dad got emotional, and mom eventually needed to bring him home before he had a stroke. By the time he left, I was exhausted and sore and feeling vaguely disgusting when I got a look at myself in the little compact mirror that was also packed away in my over-night bag. So when Ben showed up, which I knew he would, we watched a hundred episodes of Say Yes to the Dress, and I tried not to move or think about my hair, and Ben only left at one point to get me a smoothie, which I drank and was able to keep down.

“I feel thoroughly mortified, just to let you know,” I said to him after the ninety-ninth episode, where he was almost asleep. He perked up, sitting forward and brushing a hand down my cheek. “I'm very well aware that I look gross.”

“You don't look gross,” he said. “You look like someone who's had an understandably rough few days.”

“And
this
,” I pointed to the bandage that covered my nearly dozen stitches. “This is going to leave a scar. And I'm upset. Like, I know I should be grateful to still have my limbs and be able to walk and still be alive and all that, but I'm sorry. I'm just mildly upset at the fact that I'm going to have this horrendous scar on my face. Does that make me shallow? Wait, why am I even asking...I know it does.”

Ben looked shocked. He opened his mouth, only to close it. This was repeated several times until it seemed that he was finally able to collect the right words. And when I reached up, peeling back the bandage so that he could see, he didn't react much other than to take my hand and squeeze it gently.

“Would you feel better if I promised to tell people that you got that scar by doing something totally awesome, like fighting off a fleet of ninja warriors in an epic twenty-four hour battle in order to save a burning castle full of orphan children?”

“Did I win?”

“Of course,” he grinned. I gave him my biggest smile.

“I feel just slightly better, actually.”

The nurse popped her head in, asking if I wanted the lights out. I told her yes, because the florescence was another thing that was starting to get on my nerves, and for awhile Ben sat holding my hand as we listened to a commercial about some new kind of icy-cool mouthwash. Like it was really any different than the rest, or like ice really had a flavor.

“I had a dream about you last night,” Ben eventually said, his voice low and quiet. “Am I
allowed to tell you about it?”

“Probably not. But at this point, sure,” I said. We both laughed. Ben out loud, and mine was on the inside as his fingers laced gently into mine.

“I had a dream that we were together, living in McMansion, and I wrote my books in a new office that was filled with sunlight instead of the small, dark one that you saw.”

“With the tiny window,” I said. He nodded.

“And your artwork was all over the walls,” Ben continued. “All framed, all over the place. And you sat with me while I wrote, drawing things. It was just a dream, and I'm sure I sound just slightly ridiculous, but you were happy. We were happy.”

“You don't sound ridiculous,” I told him. “That sounds like it was really nice.”

Ben leaned in, pressing a small kiss on my forehead, careful to avoid the bandage.

“It really was.”

He stuck around until mom got back, and I was already nearly asleep. I'm not sure if he had bothered to shut the television off, or if the nurse had, or if it had just shut off on its own...but when I woke up, I felt alone again. I felt achy, and sad, and missing Ben more than I had ever missed him before. Hospitals are great for inducing that feeling, though. Of missing people.

I wanted to be home. But more than that, I wanted to be somewhere, anywhere with him.

The next day it was announced, much to my satisfaction, that I could leave the godforsaken hospital. Mom unfortunately needed to work, but I was able to arrange it so that Brandon could bring me home – which, really, was the most logical choice. I was able to eat a few bite of pasta in some sort of Alfredo sauce, prove to the nurses and doctor that my body wouldn't it send it straight back up, and even showered in the tiny bathroom, happy to at least have my own toiletries. I only cried a few times, too, forcing myself to choke down the tears and reminding myself that yes, even with broken ribs, basic hygiene and also moving was necessary.

When Brandon showed up, he helped me braid my hair and get everything packed away without making too much of a scene. And when all was said and done, we were just left waiting for one of the nurses to give us an okay to go.

“I just want you to know that I'm not even remotely jealous of the fact that you get to ride out of here in a wheelchair,” he said, arms crossed and bed-head looking particularly Robert Smith-esque.

“I think you'll survive.”

So we sat, and waited, and waited, and waited some more. Eventually, I heard footsteps, and was given a small gleam of hope that maybe I would be freed. But as the footsteps grew louder and stopped in the doorway, I was met with not a nurse, or a doctor, or anyone that even worked for the hospital staff.