Chapter 18

Only a Flesh Wound

Two months later, I shortcut across the campus of Northeastern University in the muggy heat of August. When I cross onto his block of Mass Ave, I get off and walk my bike up the sidewalk, looking at house numbers—but then I see him. He’s sitting on his front steps, waiting for me. He smiles when he sees me and waves with a splinted hand as he gets to his feet.

“What time do you call this?” he calls. He walks toward me with his hands in his pockets, grinning madly as I walk faster to him, taking off my helmet. When I reach him, he puts an arm around my shoulders to hug me.

“Sorry I’m late,” I say, hugging him with the arm that isn’t holding my bike. He’s bearded—I feel it against my cheek—and I smile up at him. “Mountain man.”

“Let’s go climb some rocks,” he says, and leads me back to his steps, where his bike waits. We ride to the rock gym, and it’s as easy and comfortable as if we’d been doing it since forever.

“Annie Coffey!” Linton calls across the rock gym, putting on the American-white-girl voice he uses to tease me.

“Linton Adams,” I call back. As he walks over to me, I point behind me with my thumb. “I brought the guy I was telling you about.”

“At long last!” cries Linton, extending a hand to shake. “She’s been promising me someone who’ll talk cricket with me!”

“If you loathe Australia, we’ll get on like a house on fire,” Charles says, and he takes Linton’s hand in his splinted one.

“And my job here is done,” I announce, and I leave them to it.

For half an hour I climb with Sylvia, glancing periodically toward Charles and Linton. Linton climbs first with Charles on belay, then they switch. I watch Charles’s first few moves, marveling as always at the ease and grace of his body when he climbs—then I realize I should be watching the climber I’m belaying and I turn my attention to Syl. She’s climbing a really difficult route. I try to help her from the ground, and I’m so focused that I miss the minor ruckus happening behind me. It’s only when Sylvia’s back on the ground and we’re switching ropes that I turn and see that Linton is being belayed by another guy.

When he’s lowered back down, I call, “Dude, where’s Charles?”

“Oh man,” Linton answers, untying his knot. “He fell off the overhang and his hand broke again. It was sick.”

“Oh my god!”

“I had to untie his knot for him.”

“Where is he?”

“Emergency.”

“Alone? He didn’t come and get me—or at least tell me?”

Linton just shrugs.

Men. Honestly.

So there goes my plan. I wanted Charles and me to go climbing and then get coffee and talk about The Thing, about which no explicit decision has been made. See, I’ve been thinking about everything that happened and everything Charles said, and I’ve concluded, tentatively, that The Thing is a risk factor for Disaster and he must avoid it for his own well-being. And that would be fine. We avoided it for a year in Indiana; we can avoid it some more. We’ll be friends, like before.

Except now it seems like Disaster will happen even if I’m just in the room.

So, do I leave him alone with his broken hand at the ER, safe from me and Disaster?

Or do I go take care of him, like I would any other friend?

I decide to compromise. I text him.

That does not go very well.

 

Dude let me know if you’re okay.

Also let me know if you’re NOT okay.

Y U NO TEXT U MAD BRO?

Basically just let me know you’re not dead.

Or whoever finds this phone on Charles’s mangled corpse, please let me know.

I’M GOING TO SIT ON YOUR FRONT STEPS UNTIL YOU GET HOME.

I’m not kidding. I’m sitting on your steps.

Awesome, you’re dead and your mom is going to come collect your body and find your phone full of crazy texts from that American chick she met that one time.

I might order a pizza. Let me know if you want anything.

 

It’s past sunset by the time a taxi drops Charles off at his front step, where I’m sitting, reading by the light of my phone’s flash. I look up at the sound of the car—then stand up.

“Oh my god! What the hell happened?” Charles is gingerly getting out of the car, his arm in a sling. He limps toward me. The look on his face says he’s in nine kinds of pain.

“How long have you been here?” he asks.

“A couple hours. You didn’t get my texts? What happened?”

“My phone died.” He climbs the steps carefully.

“Dude,” I insist, “what happened? Where are your glasses?”

“Still in hospital.” He fumbles one-handed to unlock his front door.

“Here, let me,” I say, and I take the key from him. I let us both in. “Where’s your apartment?”

“Fourth floor,” he says. “You don’t have to go all that way.”

“Of course I will!” and I march up the stairs ahead of him, saying, “You look like you got hit by a bus.”

“Nearly,” he answers, following me slowly. “Car hit my bike while I was walking it in a crosswalk. Mild concussion, whiplash, slightly broken arm. On top of the re-broken hand. Various scrapes and bruises. My glasses and bike were totaled. I’m fine.” There is only one apartment on the fourth floor. I unlock it and wait for Charles to hobble up behind me, then I follow him in and switch on the light as he cautiously drops his gear to the floor.

“Holy shit!” In the full light, I see the purple lump on his temple. I reach out and touch a couple of fingers to it.

“I’m fine, domina,” he says, his voice croaky with exhaustion and pain. Then he says, “Your eyes are pretty.”

I smirk. “You’re stoned?”

“No, just concussed,” he says. “But I ought to lie down.”

I follow him to his bedroom, where he sits on the bed to undress. As I watch from the doorway, he takes off the sling, then pulls his shitty old climbing T-shirt slowly and painfully over his head and drops it on the floor. He looks down sorrowfully at his shoes.

“Need help?” I ask.

“No, no,” he responds automatically, but I come in and sit on the floor by his feet. I pull off his shoes, one at a time, and tuck them under the bed. Then I put my palms on his insteps and look up at him.

“You seem really sad,” I say. His feet are warm and smooth under my calloused hands.

He shakes his head. “Feeling stupid.”

“How can I help?”

“Can you rewind time to about twelve hours ago?” he asks. He sounds sleepy.

“I’ll work on it,” I answer with a grin.

“Meantime, you could get my phone for me.”

“You got it.”

I trot out to the living room, and by the time I rummage through his stuff, find his phone, and get back to his bedroom, Charles is sitting with his pants around his ankles, trying to kick them off his feet. Stifling a laugh, I plug his phone in and leave it on the nightstand. And then—

“Holy shit!”

Along his right leg, a swollen, purple bruise extends from his knee halfway up his quadriceps.

“Nice,” he says blearily. He watches as I untangle his feet from his clothes. “That explains why the stairs hurt.”

“I’ll get ice,” I say.

“Okay,” he agrees. He lies back carefully and drags his legs up onto the bed, and I head for the kitchen. He only has two ice packs. I bring both, along with a couple of dish towels. When I get back, I find him reading on his phone, holding the screen right up to his nose.

“Did you order a pizza?” he mumbles.

“No, but I can. You want pizza? Here, stay still.”

“Mmmmh . . . circulatory turnover,” he says, like he’s Homer Simpson with a doughnut, as I tuck a wrapped ice pack under his neck.

“Do you have spare glasses?”

“In a box somewhere,” he sighs. He’s only half unpacked.

I wrap the other ice pack in a tea towel and strap it to his knee, then sit beside him on the edge of the bed.

“My own stupid fault,” he says. “I’m a plonker. Showing off. Competing—as if climbing that difficult overhang would . . .” He delicately turns his head in my direction and says, “You might have told me about you and Linton.”

“Told you what?”

“He indicated, via wink and smile, that you and he . . . have A Thing.”

I snort. “Linton’s pretty sure every woman he meets is secretly in lust with him.”

“Aren’t you?” He watches me for a moment, then closes his eyes. “You could tell me, you know. If you had A Thing with someone.”

“I know,” I say.

We sit in silence together for a few minutes. Finally, I say, “It’s a relief, in a way, that you got hit by a car.”

“My bike got hit,” he corrects without opening his eyes.

“Right. That. The important thing is that I wasn’t there when it happened. So I’m not necessarily a curse.”

He shifts his intact hand so that his fingers just touch my leg. “You’re not a curse.”

“But if I’m not,” I persist, “it’d be nice to know what I can do to help while you—”

“Just this,” he says. He stops and swallows, brushing his fingers against my leg. He opens his eyes and swallows again, and I’m astonished to see him fight tears before he says, “I need you near me, domina, accepting me as I am—broken and afraid—and where I am—in the pit and on the mountain and all the rest of it.”

“I do,” I say, and I put my hand in his.

He closes his eyes again.

And that settles that.

We sit together in another long silence. I watch the pain in his face. I brush my hand over his forehead and hair, the way my dad does when I’m sick. Charles sighs and the tension in his faces eases a fraction.

“You’re gonna need like eight ice packs to cope with the demand here,” I say. “I’ll go out and get some, and then I’ll see if I can find your glasses. What else do you need?”

“Nothing, young Coffey, I’m fine,” he mutters. “It’s only a flesh wound.”

“It’s not!” I say.

“I’m going to tie you down and force-feed you Monty Python one day.”

And then he’s asleep.

Well, now.

I wait ten minutes and return the ice packs to the freezer without waking him. Then I grab his keys and race home on my bike to get some books and stuff—hurriedly explaining to Syl and Linton that I’ll be staying with Charles because he totally got hit by a motherfucking car on his way to the emergency room, I KNOW, ISN’T THAT CRAZY?—and stop at the drugstore for ice packs.

When I get back, he’s still fast asleep, his phone under his palm on his sternum, mouth slightly open. He doesn’t wake when I re-ice his neck and knee. Lying there in nothing but his underwear and his cast and his bruises and his beard, he looks like a boxer after a hard loss. A very handsome, very intelligent boxer. And a very hard loss.

I order a pizza and work in the living room. I keep rotating the ice packs on Charles’s neck and knee, twenty minutes on, twenty minutes off. I sit on the edge of the bed and hold an ice pack to the bump on his head, too, as I watch him sleep. When I need to take a break from studying, I search his place for boxes in which I might find his spare glasses. His apartment is super nice, with two bedrooms, a kitchen full of granite and stainless steel, and shiny old wood floors. But the main thing you notice is that the entire front wall of the apartment is windows, five of them, floor to ceiling, so that the kitchen and living room overlook Boston in a wide-open expanse. There’s a spiral staircase, too, that leads up to a roof deck that’s got two Adirondack chairs and a little table between them. Uh, his glasses aren’t up there.

I find them easily enough, in the boxful of nightstand detritus. I leave them on his nightstand.

Four hours after he fell asleep, I turn on a light and wake him as I’m tying a fresh ice pack to his knee.

“Chaaaruuuuuls,” I sing. “Wake uuuu-uuup. You have a con-cuuuuu-siooooon.”

“Annie?” he mumbles, his eyelids barely lifting. “Time is it?”

“After one.”

“What are you doing here?” And his eyelids drift closed again.

“First aid.”

“Mh.”

“What’s the date?” I ask.

“Fuck knows. Look at a calendar.”

“I’m checking if your brain is broken, dumbass,” I laugh.

“’Course my brain is broken, got a bloody concussion, don’t I?”

I try again. “What’s two plus two?”

“Five,” he says with a sleepy smile. “Two and two make five. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.”

“Arrite, Winston.” Even I know 1984. “Any numbness? Look at me for a sec.” I lift his eyelids with my thumbs and check his pupils. They’re fine. He’s fine. I just like feeling like I’m taking care of him.

He sighs deeply and says, “No numbness. No nausea. No memory loss—as far as I know. Who are you?”

“Ha-ha.” I press an ice pack to his temple and he sighs again.

“’S’nice,” he says, eyes closed. After a little silence he says, “It was fun being a patient. There were these students shadowing Clemente. Clemente’s the psychiatric medical director in Emergency. She’s brilliant, just fantastic. Anyway, I got to teach these adorable little students about defensive responses and self-paced termination.”

“Like my shaking thing after the airport?”

“Mh-hm.” He sighs heavily. “You were ’mazing that day. Your body just knew what to do. What’s it like, just knowing, innately, how to live inside your body and feel safe?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “I don’t know what it’s like not to feel that way.”

“You were beautiful,” he says, so softly I almost can’t hear him.

And then he’s quiet for so long I think he’s fallen asleep again.

“Charles?”

He answers, “Mh?”

“I’m gonna stay tonight, okay?”

“’Kay.”

“And I’m gonna take off the ice now.”

“’Kay.”

“How’s your pain? Did they give you a script?”

“I’ll just take some paracetamol.”

“I’ll get it.”

I take off the ice packs and return them to the freezer. I bring him the bottle of Tylenol and a glass of water, but he’s asleep again.

So I turn off the lights and get under the covers, fully dressed, on my side of the bed, where I’m surrounded by the smell of him.

My alarm goes off five hours later and we do it all again. With the sun brightening the room in pink and gold, I sit beside him again and press an ice pack to his temple. He wakes slowly and his eyes drift up to mine.

“Hey,” he says.

Eschewing the usual questions, I say, “Name for me, please, Dr. Douglas, the cranial nerves. In order.”

“CN one . . .” he says with a lazy smile, “CN two . . .”

“Smart-ass. Touch your nose with your left hand.”

Slowly and carefully, he touches my nose with his left hand.

“Did I do it right?” he grins.

“Yes, you’re very smart. Here, take these.”

He drags himself, wincing, upright enough to swallow water and pills. He scrubs a hand over his face and, with an uninhibited groan, says, “God, I feel about a hundred and eight.”

“Is it too early for coffee? I can make coffee.”

“Bless your cotton socks,” he says.

So I make coffee and carry two mugs back to the bedroom. He takes a sip of his, closes his eyes, and sighs. I watch his face. I watch him breathe. I wonder how his pain is. I wonder what he’s thinking. I aim for silence. It’s hard.

Then he opens his eyes, brimming with The Something, and he says, “Thanks for staying.”

I smile. “I have my study group at noon, but I’ll stay until then, if you don’t mind.”

“I don’t mind,” he whispers, closing his eyes again.