The Blessings of the Animals: A Novel - By Katrina Kittle Page 0,64
but then had to leave me there for about five minutes while they chased Muriel out of the ambulance.
They started IV fluids. I’d performed that procedure thousands of times myself and was grateful at how quickly I felt their effect. I listened to Bobby answer questions about insurance, my allergies, and history. I hated to picture Gabriella trying to navigate all of this alone.
At least there was no blood, so he could be helpful. Once, when Gabby was eight, she’d shut her fingers in the car door. Bobby had dropped to his knees, muttering what sounded like prayers in Italian while I wrapped her hand with ice and towels. “It’s a long way from your heart,” I told the brave, gasping Gabby, examining her fingers once the bleeding stopped. “You’ll live.” Gabby, who’d never gone into full-fledged tears over the injury, giggled and sniffed, but Bobby’d been pale and shaken all day.
One EMT reminded me that I’d need ID at the hospital.
“Bobby?” I asked, “could you go get my purse?”
“Sure. Where is it?”
“In the microwave.”
“Uh . . . okay.” I heard him ask Gabby as he stepped out of the ambulance, “Did she hit her head? Are you positive she had on that helmet?”
Gabby laughed. “I know that sounds alarming, but her purse actually is in the microwave.”
“Why?”
“Long story.” Then Gabby’s voice hardened, “Maybe if you still lived here, you’d know it.”
I closed my eyes. This was not my problem. The paramedic started some painkiller in my IV, so I quite willingly floated away.
TURNS OUT I HAD TWO BROKEN RIBS.
Not cracked, mind you, but broken, and slightly overlapping at the broken places.
I wished I’d had Gerald there to purr with me when they did the traction necessary to make the ends meet up again. I called on every colorful combination of the worst profanity I’d ever heard Bobby’s family deliver.
Mimi showed up with Olive, followed shortly by my parents and the Davids. Helen and Hank, too. Then Aurora. My heart lifted when Tyler came with different clothes for Gabby to change into. She was still in her suit, her filthy hose in tatters.
Mimi patted my hand, humming. She kept saying, “It will all turn out fine.”
Vijay strode into the room, looking only at me. “Oh, Cam.” He took my hand, pushed back my dusty hair, and kissed my forehead.
Bobby stood. Vijay nodded to him but kept hold of my hand. He let go only when Gabby crossed to hug him and when my father came to shake his hand.
Fortunately, a couple of nurses and a PA recognized Vijay from his TV show and made a fuss, deflecting the tension. “Are you here for a story?” a nurse asked, looking gleeful.
“No, I’m here for a friend.” He looked at Bobby. “But there is quite a story here, isn’t there?”
Before anyone could speak, my own doctor returned.
“Okay,” I said, wanting to simply get out of here. “What do you do for broken ribs?”
“Nothing,” my doctor said. “You rest. You take it easy. You heal.”
I looked up at my assembled posse. Vijay nodded. Gabby snorted. Helen arched an eyebrow. Davy put his hands on his hips. My mother pursed her lips.
“Don’t say it,” I begged.
Aurora shook her head. “Damn, but you like to do things the hard way.”
EVERY TIME VIJAY LEFT THE ROOM—TO ANSWER A CALL, to talk to a doctor, to get me ice cream from the cafeteria—Bobby would take my hand. Were these guys going to plant flags next?
At one point, while we waited for “care and feeding” instructions—Vijay had gone to try to use his influence to speed things up—I found myself in the exam room with just Mimi, Bobby, Gabriella, and Tyler.
“Where’d you get that three-legged cat?” Bobby asked.
Gabriella’s face lit up. “He came back?”
I smiled at Gabby. “He kept me company today.”
Mimi snorted. “That’s what you need like a goddamn hole in the head, a three-legged cat.”
Bobby leaned close, intimate, in my space. “Cam. You can’t collect every stray in need.”
Is that what I did? Or what he did?
Mimi rubbed his arm. “You should move back in, Bobby. It’s the right thing to do.”
No, no, no. I couldn’t collect every stray in need. I saw his need now. It was a need that I’d never fill, that Zayna couldn’t fill. That a million puppies wouldn’t fill.
Bobby didn’t know how to love me unless I needed him.
“I could do that,” Bobby said, looking back down at me. “For a while. To help.”