Looking confused, Zuri glanced around the room, realizing where she was—again. “Hey, I’m at work. Who needs me next?”
The question was like an off switch for the laughing guy next door. “Wait, that’s one of the nurses?” he asked whoever was with him incredulously.
Moving to get up, she called back, “I’m a phlegm-bot-oh-mast, man. Gimme a second, and I’ll be witcha.” Then, raising her sore hand, she added, “Gonna have to do you one-handed. Hm, I’ve never done it with my other hand. Oh well,” she shrugged and tried to push up against Rose’s hand that was now holding her down.
“Oh, hell no. Get me out of here,” the man snapped, the sound of rustling and squeaking following him.
“Gil, settle down. They said you weren’t allowed to move.”
“Stop pushing me back down, woman. Did you hear her? And she wants to use the hand she doesn’t normally use for whatever it is she does. I don’t even have phlegm. I was in a car accident, damn it.”
Just then, the door to the man’s room opened, and deep murmuring followed it. There was an exchange between whoever it was and the man, and then it all went quiet again until a male nurse stuck his head around the door and gave Rose the thumbs up.
My laughter remained silent, as did Rose’s as she gestured for me to take my ruined t-shirt off.
I’d just gotten the hem above my belly button when Zuri let out a squeal. “Striptease, y’all! I got my own Mageec Mike show. Take it off, take it off! Rose, get my wallet, imma make it rain.”
This time, my laughter was loud, and I felt my cheeks burn with a blush I wasn’t used to experiencing but just kept on happening when it came to this woman.
“Calm yourself, pretty girl,” I snickered, watching as she tried to push herself up with her bad wrist, and collapsing down when the pain registered.
“Owie!” Holding the hand close to her face, she grimaced as she looked at the bruising and swelling before her face clouded in a scowl. “Oh shit, I broke ma nail.”
Resuming the removal of my t-shirt when Rose jabbed me with a sharp prod in my side, I pulled it over my head and then removed my good arm before carefully maneuvering it over the injury.
“Damn,” Rose hissed, seeing the piece of wood embedded under the skin. “That’s nasty.”
She wasn’t wrong there. The shard was roughly an inch long and was pushing the skin up.
“Can we just pull it out? I mean, we can see it clearly, and it’s not that big, so surely if you just grab it and give it a tug—”
“That’s what he said,” Zuri snickered. “I always thought you’d have a big ol’ beef sausage,” she mused, pronouncing it saw-siege. “S’always the ones you never expect to have a teeny little wing wang.”
“There’s nothing wrong with the size of my wing wang,” I growled, rising to the insult. “We’re talking about the wood—”
“Oh, there’s wood, y’all,” she squealed this time, bursting into a fit of giggles. “And he’s nekkie.” Looking beside her, she found a box of tissues, grabbed a handful, and then launched them in the air. “Make it rain, baby. Make. It. Rain!”
What followed after that was ninety of the most hilarious and most painful minutes of my life. I had the sliver removed from my shoulder, eleven stitches put in because Zuri told the doctor that eight was “just cheap”, a tetanus shot in my ass, and she had her wrist put in a cast, choosing red because it was her “sexy arm”.
“I’m going to prescribe you some pain relief to take, Zuri,” the doctor told her as he wrote something down on his iPad. “Have you ever broken a bone before?”
“Sho’ nuff, my guy. I broke my wrist when I was little, falling out of this big ass bunk bed at my grandparents' house. I woke up needing to pee bad,” she told him loudly, “and was scooting to the ladder with my knees together, so I didn’t sissy all over the bed, know what I mean? That would’ve been a bitch to clean,” she added to herself. “Anyway, got to the top of the ladder and started to go down it, but one of those surprise huge sneezes hit me on the third step. It like burst out everywhere,”—she emphasized by flinging her arms out—“and I had to grab myself to stop the pee-pee from coming out with it.”
With a sigh, the doctor looked at me and shook his head, both of us knowing exactly where this was going.
“I lost the grip I had on the steps with my other hand and fell back, broke my damn wrist.” She held her broken hand up in the air, then caught sight of the cast. With wide eyes, she looked between the two of us. “Holy shit, that’s the coolest magic ever. That’s exactly what happened, and I made it come back to show you.”