ELEVEN

They called a stupid ambulance. I find out when I come to because I must have been down on the floor unconscious for a while, which is totally embarrassing. I guess I didn’t wake up as fast as I should have. Then the stupid ambulance takes me to the stupid Lenox Hill Hospital emergency room like I might need life support, and anyway I totally hate being in those kind of places because who do they put you next to except people dying of cardiac arrest or paralyzed by strokes or burning up with fever from pneumonia or some other raging contagious Ebola-like infection or what have you? And is that what you need on top of what you already came in with?

When I open my eyes again, some EMT guy, who’s blond and surferish and not half bad looking, is holding my wrist and taking my pulse and then shining an annoying flashlight pen thingie in my eyes and lifting my lids, and I really wish he would stop it for chrissake.

“I think she’s probably fine,” he says, “but we should just check her out anyway.”

Another voice above his says, “Christ, do you know who she is? We damn well will check her out,” and then he laughs.

I pretend not to hear that and ignore them because, hello, no surprise. So I turn my head away and rub my eyes, and on the other side of me there’s someone else, and I look up at his face and—oh my god—nearly go into shock because he looks so much like Michael Cross. And then I’m convinced that I’m not okay and I’m hallucinating or delusional because it couldn’t be; but anyway, I blurt out, “Michael?”

“Yeah.”

I sort of can’t breathe then and whisper, “What are you doing here?”

“Riding with you in the ambulance.”

Yeah, that’s, um, obvious—even to me in this condition. “How come?”

“You tripped…over me…over my foot.”

I look at him like what? “Start over.”

“I was assigned to security at the school for the election and you walked into me and I tripped you.”

And I’m like, what? Because I think it was all my fault because I remember walking backward in four inch heels and the eyes behind my head were obviously not working.

But I don’t say that. I don’t say anything because all this time he’s leaning over me, my blouse is pulled up out of my skirt, I realize. And there is a significant amount of naked skin below his full gorgeous lips. I can practically feel his warm breath on me as he exhales. I stare at him and he stares back, and very gently, he reaches up and slides my blouse down, covering my stomach. And something about him slowly pulling the swath of silk across my skin…

The EMT guy interrupts the most erotic moment of my life and starts babbling like a moron.

“Who’s the president of the United States?” he asks, to see if I’m brain injured or what have you, which breaks the steamy staring thing and destroys the mood.

“Abe Lincoln,” I say because I’m pissed.

So that’s it and for like the next four hours I have x-rays and a brain MRI, which is like lying inside an open casket and listening to a sledgehammer on your iPhone. And then they take all these vials of blood and that nearly makes me faint because I hate needles, particularly when they’re sliding into my skin. And hours later everything comes back normal, normal, normal, which I’m clearly not, so that surprises me. But normal or not, I wrenched something in my back when I went down so I move slower than a slug.

When my mom gets the call from the hospital, she goes crazy as usual. But then when I call her a minute later and say, “Ma, I’m fine, the school was just being extra careful because I tripped and fainted, and, anyway, they didn’t want to be legally liable in any way if they didn’t do what they were supposed to do,” she calms down and stops her usual chant of “It’s always something with you kids, it’s always something. If it’s not you, it’s Anthony, and if it’s not Anthony, it’s you.” Then she takes a breath.

“I’m leaving now,” she says. “I’ll pick you up.”

“You don’t have to, Ma, I’m fine.”

“I have to,” she says. “I have to.”

So there goes my plan to have Michael take me home. Anyway, it’s two in the afternoon and traffic on the Upper East Side will fortunately be brutal so that leaves me about half an hour to be alone with Officer Hottie unless he decides to abandon me.

“Will you call me now?”

He looks at me and doesn’t say anything.

“I mean as a courtesy, just to see how I am because I did nearly die falling over your foot.”

He smiles his half smile. “You’re something.”

I try to sit up but my back fights me, so I “ow, ow, ow” a little harder than I have to, and Michael comes over and puts an arm around me, and I lean against him for support and nearly die from excitement being so close. It’s a good thing I’m not wearing a heart monitor because the needle would go off the chart and they’d bring out the paddles to reset my heart.

Michael goes back to his chair and runs a hand through his hair. I watch how his eyes flit back and forth between me and anyone who passes outside the door and I’m wishing, wishing, wishing I could peek inside his head.

Suddenly I think of that old movie I saw called The Bodyguard with Kevin Costner when he was young and seriously hot, and I pretend there’s this bodyguard vibe going on here because Michael’s hunky and protecting me and he could play the part because Costner was strong and silent too. Like Costner, Michael’s presence fills the room and he seems to have laser vision capable of seeing my split ends from the opposite side of the room. I lean back in the bed watching him exist, loving that at least for this moment in time we’re breathing the same air, even if we’re in a depressing hospital room and instead of clothes I’m wearing a shapeless shit gown with the opening in the back that shows my entire ass—not to mention that people who have died here have probably worn this same rag to the morgue or down the runway to hell.

I stare at him and he looks back at me and then he glances down at my feet and notices the jade green polish and the toe ring and I wiggle my toes and he fights a smile. So we keep sitting there and, no surprise, he refuses to chitchat or maybe doesn’t know how, which prompts Miss Motormouth to spice things up with annoying questions.

“Do you think your sergeant is going to wonder about this?”

“Wonder about what?”

“I mean, I assume you had to write up a report and it must look like an awfully strange coincidence that I’m the same girl you brought in two weeks ago.”

He shrugs.

“So how did you end up at my school?”

“Morgan is your school?”

That’s when I know for sure that he’s bluffing. He must have seen the posters.

“Gia—fresh thinking, fresh answers?” I raise an eyebrow.

“I saw the posters,” he says with a half smile. “You got the fresh part right.”

His eyes hold mine and for those few seconds, it feels like the air is as thin as on top of Mt. Everest because it’s hard for me to breathe and it has nothing whatsoever to do with the fall.

“How come you were working there…at my school?” I ask, my eyes not leaving his. “Instead of, say, cruising around and giving tickets or whatever…”

“Extra pay.”

“That’s all?”

“What else?”

Even though it hurts, I get to my feet and walk over to him, perching myself on the arm of his chair. “To see where I go to school,” I whisper, my lips nearly grazing his ear.

He closes his eyes momentarily. “Why would I do that?”

“I don’t know, Michael, you tell me.”

He doesn’t answer.

I lift his chin with one finger. “Maybe to see me?”

He opens his mouth to answer then stops, abruptly turning toward the door.

Gia,” my mom bursts in, hurling her purse to the floor before grabbing me in a hug, nearly smacking Michael in the head. “Oh my god, I nearly had a heart attack over you!”