need the other shoe.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“Why the fuck not?”
“Because you’re bleeding and your arm is broken and you’re working up to a helluva shiner on that left eye?”
“So?”
“So take a load off.”
“Skwarecki, what’re you, gonna make me guilt you into this?”
“Into what?”
“I’d like to have something to show for having gotten run down by a car this morning, okay? If it weren’t for the damn shoe, I wouldn’t have been there.”
I didn’t mention the part about how I’d been out on that corner waiting for her to show up.
“Of course I’m going back,” she said, in this cheesy soothing voice. “Soon as they get you squared away.”
“You’re just waiting around to see if I cry once they start yanking on this arm to get the bones set, so you can tease me later for being a total pussy.”
“Oh, like you’re not already crying?”
“Fuck yourself. Showed up an hour late and you didn’t bring doughnuts?”
“There was some shit going down at the precinct. We gotta get you a beeper or something.”
“Yeah, maybe it would have taken the impact.”
“Jesus, if I’d known…?”
“It’s not like you ran me over, Skwarecki. And I’m grateful as all hell you showed up when you did, but I still want you to get your tits out of my face and go find that shoe.”
“And you’re planning to, what, take a taxi home?”
“Subway,” I said.
“I don’t fucking think so.”
“Try and stop me.”
“I handcuff your good wrist to the gurney here, Madeline? Not like you’ll be breezing through any turnstiles. In your underwear.”
“Fine. I’ll call my husband. Ask him to take off early.”
“He’s at work?”
“Yeah. North Jersey.”
“Got a car?” she asked.
“Might be able to borrow one.”
“Better leave now, even still. What’s his number?”
I recited it. “Ask him to bring me some pants, will you?”
“I’ve got a pair of sweats out in the car.”
I said “Great,” then waited to hear her footsteps fading well away down the noisy hall before I closed my eyes against the pain and started crying for real, which only made everything hurt worse. Plus which now my nose was all runny and I didn’t want to wipe it on my blanket.
“Here’s a tissue,” said Skwarecki, leaning into view as she pressed a Kleenex gently against my upper lip.
“Oh, perfect,” I said, “you’re still here?”
“Shut up and blow.”
“Not unless you promise first that you’ll go find that shoe… with someone along who’s got your back.”
“Or what? You gonna snot me to death?”
“Damn straight.”
36
Three hours later I had a spiffy air cast and sling, seven stitches in a newly shaved oval on the side of my head, a fully realized black eye, and a bellyful of painkillers.
Skwarecki was gone, and I lay propped up on my gurney back in the ER, waiting for Dean to arrive with Christoph’s Jeep. I couldn’t feel a goddamn thing except for a velvet opiate glow floating around and through my entire body.
I had on cop-issue sweatpants and a hospital smock. A nurse had tucked a pillow under my damaged arm to help the swelling go down, explaining that I couldn’t have a real cast for at least twenty-four hours.
My fat, bruise-dark fingers seemed adequate proof of that thesis, sticking straight out from the end of the whole splint shebang like stiff little breakfast links.
I didn’t care. I was in fact wasted to the point of being awed by the soulful beauty emanating from each person whom fate had contrived into ER with me: Dr. Hairy Hands, all the nurses, the little boy puking into a green plastic pan next bed over—even the homeless-looking dude with blood gushing from his flattened nose.
One love, Jah guide.
“Bunny?”
I looked up at my husband’s stricken face and smiled. “Hey, it’s so great to see you.”
“What happened?”
“I got hit by a car,” I said.
“I know. Your friend Skwarecki told me on the phone. Are you okay?”
“I’m really, really good. Really.”
“You’re on really, really good drugs right now.”
“Mm. Yes! Innnnndubitably.”
“Not to harsh your buzz,” he said, “but you also look like you got beaten to shit.”
“I fought the car and the car won. Doobie-do.”
I closed my eyes, grooving on how the fluorescent lights made the inside of my eyelids glow pretty and scarlet. “ Wow.”
“I’m going to go see how I sign you out. Then we’ll get you home.”
“You’re amazing. Thank you so much for being so amazing… all the, like, time.”
He smoothed a strand of hair off my forehead. “Bunny, have you eaten today?”
“Food,” I said, “ wow.”
I dozed off until he came back with a