Seven Days of Friday (Women of Greece Book 1) (13 page)

H
er brain doesn’t wait
– it begins its assault in her first moment of consciousness.

Melissa bleeding. Melissa unconscious. The long-short ride to the hospital. The broken doll, spread on the bathroom’s marble slab.

That’s never going away.

Vivi lifts her head and checks her girl. Still sleeping, face pale with pencil-colored smudges under her eyes. Vivi’s hand snakes around her wrist and finds an enthusiastic pulse. Eyes closed, she mouths:
Thank you
.

Her gratitude goes out to all who eavesdropped on her silent prayers.

Now she can step away from her vigil.

The chair squeaks as she unglues her backside from its fake leather. A blue blanket slides off her shoulders, drifts to the floor. One of the nurses must have taken pity on her during the night.

Last night she was too scared to notice much of anything except Melissa, Melissa, Melissa. The room has six beds and three – not including Melissa’s – are full. Those children also have their mothers close by, although she’s the only one who slept in the chair. The other mothers are curled around their much younger children, punctuating their declarations of love.

Her body complains when she stretches. Empty protest – feels good to move. Then she peers out the door, looking for life signs. It’s early and the sun is taking its sweet time showing up. The ward is silent. There’s no hustle and brightly lit bustle. No nurses padding in and out of rooms, dispensing medicine and taking temperatures, according to the hospital’s biological clock.

She goes back to Melissa and waits for anything to happen.

M
elissa wakes
. No trumpets and angels, but there should be.

Thankyouthankyouthankyou
. Vivi can’t stop thinking it. She brushes back Melissa’s hair, tries not to cry. She’s successful, more or less.

“You’re here,” Melissa whispers.

“Where else would I be? Nothing matters to me more than you.”

The tears are flowing and Vivi’s eyesight is drowning in them. She wipes them away with the back of her hand, but more replace those that were lost.

“I don't know.” Melissa’s eyes close. “I dreamed that you were mad and you went away.”

“Oh, Baby. I'm not mad at you. I'm mad at me for not knowing how hard you were hurting.”

“You were busy.”

“Mel, I'm never too busy for you.”

“Yeah, right.”

Vivi fishes for a tissue to wipe away her tears. “What happened, Honey?”

Eyes open again. Focusing on some riveting spot on the ceiling. “Nothing.”

“Something happened or you wouldn't be here.”

“It was the sand. It wouldn't come out.”

“You should have told me you'd cut yourself, I could have put some antiseptic cream on it.” Vivi lowers her voice, tries squeezing the darkness out of the conversation. “I bet
Thea
Dora has some weird Greek potion for cuts. Probably something like goat saliva. Or freshly-squeezed donkey’s feet.”

“That's silly.” She’s not laughing.

“Mel . . .” Vivi starts. She has too many questions. Sorting through the pile isn’t easy. Push some aside and others fall into their place. She reaches, grabs any old question. “Mel, is that the only cut?”

Still looking at the ceiling. “Mind your own business.”

“You are my business. I love you.”

“I don't care.”

Vivi’s heart cracks. A new fault line is born.

“That’s okay. I care enough for both of us.”

The morning passes in stifling silence.

D
r Andreou shows
up after breakfast. He looks important in the daylight, with a string of doctors behind him. Some of them are new, devotees of his every word. The others are every bit as seasoned as the guy up front, but slightly more dismissive. Like most doctors with a few years under their belt, they’ve seen it all; they have lost and they have found. Melissa is more of the same.

Which isn’t bad. It means they know how to fix her broken parts.

They go through the doctor routine, do their song, their dance, then they take their show to the next child in the room.

When they’re gone, Melissa’s bitter mouth says, “I guess they’re not letting me going home today.”

What did she expect? They don’t let suicidal teens walk out the front door with their incompetent mothers – at least not until they’re sure said teenager isn’t going to bungee jump cordless off the nearest bridge. But she doesn’t say it, because right now Melissa is a delicate crystal bowl, and Vivi feels like small silver hammer.

And anyway, Dr Andreou is striding back into the room, something clearly on his mind.

“Go home,” he tells Vivi.

He’s nuts. First she thinks it, then she says it. Because this isn’t a day where her mouth has a direct line to her brain. The back and forth signals are taking some dark back roads, striking a lot of dead ends.

“Sorry,” she says. “It’s been that kind of year.”

“Tell me about it.”

She thinks he’s joking, but . . . maybe not? Man looks like he wouldn’t say no to poking through her baggage.

None of this is following any script she knows, so she shuts up.

“Backing up,” his perfect white teeth and their accompanying smile say. “Melissa is stable and you need a shower. Go home, put on some clean clothes, eat something. You want to take care of Melissa? Take care of yourself first.”

“Wow,” she says. “Are you always this bossy?”

Nods from the three other mothers in the room.

The doctor laughs, but it’s a good laugh. “Guilty,” he says. “But seriously, go home.”

Vivi looks at Melissa. “Will you be okay?”

Translation: You’re not going to jump out that window while I’m gone, are you?

Melissa shrugs. “Sure.”

“Okay,” Vivi says, “I’m going.”

“Can you bring me some books?”

“You bet.” Vivi kisses her forehead. Melissa feels warm, alive. Thank every deity ever. “Anything else?”

“I don’t care. Whatever.”

O
n the bus
, nobody
sits near the bloodied woman.

Why would they? She looks like bad, bad luck.

Vivi’s cool with that, doesn’t mind being in a bubble. Melissa is crystal, but it wouldn’t take much for Vivi to shatter. A touch could do it. A word.

She gets off the bus in Agria. Her seat stays empty until all her witnesses are gone.

H
ot water is magic
. Pink curls circle the drain and – presto! – goodbye, Melissa’s blood.

Speaking of magic tricks: The floor is cleaner than clean.

A person could eat off something that clean.

Someone scrubbed while she was watching the doctor stitch Melissa’s frayed edges, made it like Melissa never wuz here.

Vivi needs a closer look.

Her knees say: Lady, you only think you’re walking out of here. You want out?

Craaaaaawl.

Too many years on her hands and knees (”C’mon, Vivi, you know I love it this way.”) to be happy about it. But this isn’t sex; it’s a fact-finding mission. Vivi wants evidence. Towel bandaging her core, hands roaming the marble tiles, she gets down to the dirty business of proving Something Bad Happened Here.

She tells herself a nice story. No blood means the whole shebang was a nightmare. Melissa is out in the kitchen, nose stuck in a book, devouring watermelon by the chilly pound. And after Vivi’s dressed, she’ll go out there, hug Melissa, and say zip about her shitty dream.

Too bad her story is a lie. Because there it is, a thin red-black line between two tiles.

She attacks it with a towel point dipped in shower water. Goes at it the way a dog goes at a bone. Until her shoulder screams, “Stop!”

Clean. Shiny.

No blood. The whole shebang was a nightmare.

Now Vivi is happy, happy, happy.

Everything is fiiiiine.

Pay no attention to the crying woman in the mirror.

“
Y
ou look like a gorgon
.”

Thea
Dora is so helpful. She all but shoves Vivi into a kitchen chair. “How is our girl?”

If Melissa is their girl, why isn’t
Thea
Dora at the hospital?

“She’ll be okay.”

“
Frappe
?”

She’s already rattling the shaker, so
frappe
is inevitable. Vivi’s getting it whether she wants it or not.

Good thing she wants it. She takes a long drink and waits for the neurological magic to happen.

“
Thea
, can I ask you something?”

“Anything, my doll.”

“Your bathroom. How would you feel if I remodeled it for you? As a ‘thank you’ gift for letting us stay here.”

She looks confused. “What is the problem?”

Oh, she has no toilet. That’s all.

“It might be nice to have new colors, and maybe even a new toilet. I’ll pay for it – and do the work myself.”

Thea
Dora spends the next two minutes bustling around the kitchen, cleaning clean things.

“No,” she says, finally. “This is the man's work. A women does not need to do such things.”

Vivi’s done it before, gutted the downstairs bathroom in their old house. Dismantled and reconstructed over a long weekend, when John was too busy (sucking dicks) to be home.

“It's not that hard.”

“Vivi, it is a nice thought, but I do not need such things. I am a simple woman and I do not need a fancy bathroom. What would I do with it?”

Same clenched jaw as Eleni. No way is Vivi digging out
Thea
Dora’s heels without a backhoe. Today, Vivi doesn’t have that kind of determination.

“It’s just an idea.” She rinses the glass, loads a few paperbacks into her bag. “I’m going back to the hospital.”

“Give Melissa a kiss from me.”

No mention of visiting. Melissa is the family pariah. Last night she tossed a blanket of shame over the lot of them with her faux suicide.

Vivi thinks: Fuck you.

She stomps to the bus stop.

So this is Greece – what a two-faced bitch. One mouth sings a metric ton of love songs, about heaven, and perfect beaches, and all the culture you can stomach, and new, shiny beginnings rooted in timeless tradition.

It’s a trap, a covering of leaves over the snake pit.

People are friendly, but they will never trust you. Fingers point, but never at themselves. Didn’t see that old woman over there? Doesn’t matter, should have waved anyway. Now you’re screwed for life. The sun is warm, but it burns, leaves you too lethargic to give a damn that the things depicted in the travelogue are all shine and no substance.

No more blindfold over Vivi’s eyes. Something has to change, and history makes it clear that Greece never yields.

Ask Xerxes. Yeah he won a few battles, but Greece turned out to be a huge pain in his Persian ass.

Stay or go?

The bus comes and she gets on it. An old rock takes the seat next to her. Vivi’s sunburn screams.

The gulf tries to dazzle her with its sparkling best. Beauty as a diversionary tactic. Look over here! Eyes here! Don’t mind the man picking your pocket, sticking the Kick Me sign to your back.

Stay or go?

Go or stay?

She debates herself all the way into Melissa’s hospital room, and still she can’t pick a side.

Melissa’s hunched over a coloring book. She waves with her good hand and makes something like a smile. She’s got company. Dr Andreou is sitting on the end of her bed, a coloring pen in his hand. He looks sheepish.

Melissa gets kisses and books. The doctor gets a smile.

“Do I have two children now?” Vivi nods at the half-finished picture between them.

Dr Andreou slides off the bed, hands the pen back to Melissa. “I came by to check on Melissa and got carried away. Reliving my childhood.”

“How is she?”

Melissa sticks out her tongue. “I’m awesome. Of course.”

“You heard the girl: she’s awesome.” He leans against the wall. “How you doing?”

“Besides having a complete mental breakdown, I'm peachy.”

“Peachy?”

“American expression. It means I'm fine.”

He smiles all the way to his eyes. “I'll add that to my collection of Americanisms.”

Vivi comes alive.

Good old stress, it crushed her libido into a dormant lump. And before that, all of John’s not-wanting made her not-want, too. After a point, that is. She wasted years wishing he’d throw her on the ground and fuck her – face up.

But now? Her libido is stomping the ground, snorting like a bull. It wants, it wants, it WANTS.

Dr. Andreou is off limits, but do you think her body cares? That’s a giant, italicized, neon NO.

He’s delicious. Face, body, and that mouth.

She looks away. Looks back.

(These two are doing a lot of looking.)

Vivi considers changing the subject, but the subject is already benign.

“Where did you learn English? It’s perfect.”

He grins. “Directly from the source: England.”

“Medical school?”

“All of my education after high school.”

“I'll probably send Melissa back to the states for college.” If they stay. “So, you're practically British?”

“Sometimes. Mostly I’m Greek.”

That smile.

Butterflies in her stomach are rehearsing for Cirque du Soleil. How long has it been since she last had sex?

Um . . . Over a year, definitely.

How depressing. No wonder she’s drooling.

Clanking metal throws an invisible bucket of water in her face. Lunch is coming. Meat and green beans and chunks of rindless watermelon. Melissa picks up a book and dives into the watermelon, but she’s suspicious of the rest.

Hey, Melissa is alive. She can eat or not eat anything she wants.

“Doctor Andreou,” Vivi says, suddenly. “Last night you said you knew of a place where I can talk to God.”

“I do.”

Things could be so much worse. Vivi owes big.

“Can you give me directions?”