35
Cross
I’M IN AND out of consciousness for two days at University Medical Center, which, so far, is three days fewer than Merri. I’m a big pain in the ass and get myself discharged early, the third day after admission, just as long as I promise to stay off my fractured ankle and let the ICU nurses coming in and out of Merri’s room put an oxygen mask on my face a few times a day. Apparently my lungs are still fried to shit, but I’m told they’ll heal if I suck back this bitter-tasting breathing treatment. I’m glad to do it if I can sit by Merri’s bed and watch her sleep.
While I like being near her, holding her uninjured hand and playing with her hair, seeing her like this sucks. She was in the brothel longer than I was, and because she was at the top of the stairs, she inhaled a bunch of smoke. No one knows how long it’ll take her lungs to heal, and until the doctors feel satisfied with her progress, they’re keeping her sedated, on a ventilator.
Yeah—can you fucking believe that? Someone else is in the bed and I’m in one of these dinky plastic chairs. It takes me about two minutes to realize how much I prefer being the one in the bed.
I drive the nurses crazy with my questions, and the only thing that gives me any peace is that they’re required to answer me. Lizzy had Merri’s fake passport in her purse, still hanging around from when I was in the hospital in El Paso, and when the fire started, Lizzy and Hunter were heading out to dinner—so she had her purse. So far, I’ve used my husbandly rights to micromanage Merri’s sedatives; to demand that she get lip gloss to help heal her chapped lips; to play music from my iPod for her; and to decline a visit from the all-faith minister and select, instead, the hospital’s Catholic priest to do occasional blessings.
I’m allowed in the ICU almost all the time, and during the two hours they do shift change, usually the nurses let me chill here anyway—on account of my fucked up lungs. I need to rest.
By the second night, thanks to the sympathies of a nice, elderly nurse named Martha, I’ve got my very own cot right by Merri’s bed. When Martha steps behind the wall to monitor Merri and the other patients via camera, I push it close to Merri’s bed so I can hold her hand through the metal bars.
The days crawl by. Six days turn into seven before the head pulmonologist starts weaning Merri’s ventilator. She does well, so the next day they cut it down even more, and with it her sedatives. That night, she opens her eyes smiles at me. Then she notices the tube in her throat and starts to cry big, silent tears that rip me up. By the time they take the damn thing out the next day at noon, I’m feeling cagey and helpless. Worried about what will happen when she and I finally talk.
I’ve had a lot of time to think, but I still don’t understand what happened that day in the cottage after we had sex. How she kept acting like she didn’t get why I would want her and then she implied that maybe she had sex with my dad. It was like she wanted to make me say I didn’t want her. Because when I told her it didn’t matter, that didn’t make her happy. It made her leave.
When it’s late at night and I’m lying in my cot, listening to the machines around her bed, the only conclusion I can ever reach is that she just doesn’t want me, and she was using all the other shit as a means to make me not want her.
This is why, on the evening of the day that they removed her breathing tube, I’m hanging out in the cafeteria rather than the ICU, while the nurses do some X-rays on her lungs to see if she’s able to move to a room outside the ICU.
I’m on my second plate of bland potatoes and plastic chicken when a dude about my age, in a long white coat, stops at my booth.
He’s got dark skin; short, curly hair; and the most serious-looking face I’ve ever seen in my life. I’m on my feet before I swallow the chicken in my mouth, because I’m scared to shit that something’s happened to Merri.
The guy steps back, holding out both hands. “Hey, man. I mean no harm.”
“Did something?”
He frowns, then a look of realization spreads across his face and he shakes his head. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to alarm you. I’m here about you. You are Cross Carlson?”
I feel my breath catch in my throat, and I look the guy over, wondering if he was sent here to fuck with me.