“Yeah, yeah,” Ash says, getting up from the bed a second time.
“Thank you,” the man says. At least he’s more polite this time around. “I’m Jack, your radiology technologist,” he says. “We’re going to get you in for a quick MRI to make sure everything looks good and then we should be able to get you out of here.”
He and a couple of nurses release the brakes on the wheels of my bed and they cart me out of the room, with Ash in tow, and down the hall.
Despite the flood of people in the ER, I get right in for the MRI and I’m back in my room before too long. The technician says the doctor will be in shortly and so we wait.
“I didn’t hate you in the objective sense,” Ash says. “It was more a situational thing.”
“What?” I ask.
“We got interrupted before,” she says. “I’m just telling you that I didn’t hate you for anything apart from the fact that you were telling me to let go of something I didn’t feel like I could. It was weird. It almost felt like some kind of accusation.”
“Accusation?” I ask.
“Are you sure you’re feeling all right?” she asks, putting the back of her hand against my forehead.
“You don’t have to take my temperature every time you’re speaking above me,” I tell her, snickering as I pat her on the back, my arm around her. “I just don’t know what you meant by accusation there.”
“Oh,” she says. “I don’t know. I guess it was more like the feeling of being caught doing something you know you shouldn’t be doing. What I was doing was silly and I was mad at you because you called me on it.”
There’s a knock on the doorjamb and my doctor comes in a moment later.
He sighs. “Miss—” he starts.
Ash dutifully gets up from my bed and sits in one of the chairs next to it.
“Your scans look good,” the doctor says. “There’s a little swelling on the side of your head, but it looks like your brain’s all right. Let me get your discharge papers and you can get out of here, but I’d take it easy for at least a couple of days. When’s your next fight?” he asks.
“Two weeks,” I answer.
“Two weeks?” he asks, laughing through his nose. “No, really, how long until you’re supposed to back in the ring?”
“Two weeks,” I answer again.
“No,” the doctor says. “Two weeks is ludicrous. I think it’d be best if you cancel your next fight. Just give yourself a month to let your body fully recover before you try to put it through that kind of strain again.”
“Thank you for your opinion,” I tell the doctor. Judging by the way he’s shaking his head, it looks like he gets what I’m trying to tell him.
“I strongly advise against it,” the doctor says, “but hey, if you want to go out there and get your head knocked off, that’s your business.”
With that, he unceremoniously exits the room, closing, for the first time, the sliding door on his way out.
As soon as he’s out of the room, I’m turned toward Ash, who’s already climbing back into the hospital bed with me telling her, “I’m going to do it—the fight. I’m too close to give it up now.”
This can’t be what she wants to hear, but I’m not going to lie to her. If this is something she’s not going to be able to handle, she deserves the opportunity to walk away.
“I know,” she says, smiling. “I couldn’t stop you if I tried.”
Okay, I wasn’t expecting that.
“Really?” I ask. “You’re okay with it?”
“It’s part of who you are,” she says. “The last few months have been both the worst and the best of my life. I’m not going to lie and tell you that I’m thrilled you’re going to do the fight, but I think I can finally understand why you are. I don’t know if you’ve figured it out yet or not, but what I realized that day at the lake is that, for better or for worse, I love you. If you need to do the fight, I’ll be there. I will go where you go.”
She cuddles up next to me and she doesn’t get up when the doctor comes back into the room with my discharge papers.
Chapter Twenty-Two