Soft fingers intertwine with mine on cool, crisp sheets. Bright lights, antiseptic smell, a steady hum of voices and beeping, punctuated by calls over an intercom.
I’m back in the hospital with Nor, trying not to faint at the sight of her blood—they’ve stripped off her clothes while she stands in the middle of a sheet we have to hope will gather physical evidence, because god knows a girl’s word isn’t enough.
Except now I’m the one in a bed. My eyes drift down the length of my arm and land on the leather cuff encircling someone else’s wrist.
Mom’s only accessory is her simple wedding band.
I force my brain to do the work that’s normally automatic, but under the haze of whatever they’re pumping through me, it’s a conscious effort to turn my head and see a sheet of jet-black hair falling over a face bowed low.
Jess is here. I manage to form words. “Are you praying?”
Their head snaps up. “Why, yes, yes I am. Praying to the goddess that you will survive so she can then smite you for reckless endangerment of my nerves!”
My brain isn’t functional enough to wrap around Jess’s words. “I’m fine.” I squeeze their hand. At least I try. “You’re here.”
“In the flesh.”
“I was such a jerk and you came from Saipan.”
They laugh. “You were a total jerk. Terrible friend.”
“Jess, I—”
“But I only came from San Francisco. And I was pretty shitty too, not responding to any of your messages or telling you where I’d gone.”
“I saw a picture of you on a boat. With your mom.”
Jess’s brow furrows, then realization dawns. “Not my mom. Though if Dad has his way, she’ll be my mom’s replacement soon. That was Vanessa. In San Francisco Bay.”
“You went with your dad?”
They shrug. “Mostly so I could go to a Guild of Cookery feast.”
They ramble for a while about some young, medieval-obsessed chef duo that prepares eight-course meals in San Francisco based on period-correct recipes and cooking techniques.
That can’t be the only reason they chose San Francisco over a tropical island, but who’s to say how Jess’s brain works. Whatever the reason, when I needed them, they were a short plane ride away. Even though I hadn’t been there for them when I was only a couple miles away.
“How did you know . . . ?”
Jess waits, giving me a chance to articulate what happened. When I don’t, they say, “. . . that you literally fell on your sword?”
“My sword?”
“Dagger, actually. But falling on one’s dagger isn’t a thing. Though turns out it can cause similar damage.”
“I didn’t fall . . .” At least I don’t think so, but it’s hazy what happened before I woke up here.
“You did eventually,” Jess says. “They think you fainted at the blood. I realize I’m not the one who deserves sympathy here, but do you know how shitty I felt when your mom called me, asking if I knew how you’d gotten your hands on the deadly weapons under your bed?”
“My mom called you?”
“I was starting the third course of the feast: roast suckling pig, thank you very much, and sitting next to a lovely and charming silver fox named Antonio when my phone buzzed, and I wasn’t going to answer it, but then I glanced at the screen and it was you, so how could I not? Because by that time you’d stopped trying to contact me, so of course I was desperate to hear from you. Only it was Kath.”
“On my phone?”
“Not the pertinent detail here.”
“She interrupted your special old-timey feast?”
“She didn’t know. She still doesn’t, so don’t you dare tell her. I went straight to the airport.”
I want to tell them they shouldn’t have done that. That I’m sorry, for all of it. That I was an idiot for trying to master the rondel dagger because I’m a girl in a world where the knights can’t be trusted and I don’t deserve Jess and I’ll make them all the suckling pig and pottage they want as soon as I’m out of here. At the very least, I’ll go with them to the Medieval Faire out on the peninsula, and even wear a costume.
But I’m being pulled under yet again, so I squeeze their hand as my eyes drift closed.
The next time I wake, it’s pitch-dark outside. I have no idea what time it was when Jess was here, but now it’s Mom at my bedside, snoring softly in the uncomfortable hospital chair.
The fog of medicine is clearer now. I try to sit up, but my brain says no thank you. Back to the pillow I go. The thing is, I have to pee. When Nor was recovering from a burst appendix in seventh grade, a catheter allowed her to stay in bed while her urine collected in a bag at her side. She thought it was revolting but I thought it was the coolest thing ever.
I don’t have a catheter, as far as I can tell. That seems like a good sign. It’s slowly coming back to me now—Marguerite confronted by a soldier who recognizes the crest on her ring, dagger at the ready, my own rondel at my side, in my hand, protecting Marguerite, Elinor, my mother—
I don’t want to bother Mom, but I also don’t really want a strange nurse helping me pee—and I think the ship has kind of sailed on bothering my parents.
“Mom?”
I barely whisper, but the second I’ve spoken, she’s on her feet. “I’m awake! I’m up! Marianne? Sweetheart? Are you okay?”
“I have to pee.”
The look on her face morphs from severe anguish to slight confusion to a mixture of relief and amusement. “Okay, pee. I’ll call for a nurse.”
She reaches for the call button, but I stop her. “Can’t you take me?”
“Oh. Okay.” She brushes hair off my forehead. “Sure honey. We can manage that.”
I’ve never wanted peeing to be a joint activity, but if I have to do it with someone, better my mother than anyone else, I guess. She helps me sit up slowly and pivot my legs off the side of the bed. With each movement my entire right thigh screams.
“Nice and slow,” Mom coos.
My bladder isn’t going to wait. I sling an arm around her shoulder and let her hoist me to my feet. I thought my thigh hurt before. I let out a moan and Mom drops me back down, which doesn’t exactly help.
“I am going to wet the bed,” I say through gritted teeth. “Please.”
We try again and this time make it the few feet to a room barely bigger than an airplane bathroom. There are convenient handrails all around and another call button for the nurses’ station in here as well. Because I guess not everyone has their mom at their side when they suffer a self-inflicted medieval dagger wound.
Mom settles me on the toilet and squats down in front of me, ready to catch me if I should topple off. It’s sort of the most vulnerable thing in the world to pee like this, with her right here, but it’s also sort of okay? She’s my mom—she grew me inside of her, washed my diapers, changed my peed-on sheets. She got bloodstains out of the white skirt I was wearing the first day of seventh grade when I got my period.
We’ve shared everything. Except that she left out one huge part of her life, her experience of being a woman. Which she didn’t owe me, but at the same time, if we had known, maybe it would have changed things somehow. Maybe Nor would have made another choice, maybe I would, maybe . . .
The next time I wake, both Mom and Papi are there and bright sunshine streams through the windows.
“Hola, mija,” Papi says, leaning over to kiss me on the forehead. “Jess sends their love.”
Mom’s still on the chair where I guess she slept the night, her skin ashen and the circles beneath her eyes an alarming shade of gray.
No Nor.
“When can I go home?” I ask. Papi sits on the edge of the hospital bed and I try not to wince at the searing pain in my leg.
“Hopefully today,” he says. “They need you to talk to one more doctor this morning, and if all goes well, vamos para la casa.”
“Just talk?”
Mom shifts in the chair, clearly agitated. “Go on and tell her, Andrés. Better she be prepared.”
Papi sighs. “It’s a psych evaluation.”
I thought my brain was clearer this morning. I even jotted a few notes on where I left off: Marguerite comes face-to-face with the man she’s been betrothed to since she was twelve. A good man, but not good enough to understand what she could possibly be doing in the camp of the king’s army.
Still, I can’t quite put it all together. Some of it came back in pieces through the night when I woke up to change position, take a pill. Frantic between the dagger and the pen, working out how Marguerite would protect herself, face-to-face with someone who could ruin everything. She’d be outmatched in brute strength, but not cunning and agility. She could wield a dagger as an extension of herself, she could send it slicing through the air until—
“They have to make sure you’re not a danger to yourself,” he says more softly.
I blink at him. “A danger . . . ?”
Mom rubs her face. “It’s not generally the most well-adjusted individuals who stab themselves with a medieval sword worth thousands of dollars.”
“Kath.”
Mom stands abruptly. “Sorry. I’m going to get some coffee.”
She doesn’t return. Papi’s the one who stays with me when the psychiatrist comes, tablet in hand, less warm and fuzzy therapist than clinician checking off boxes to absolve the hospital of liability if I get out and impale myself more effectively the next time.
I try to stay calm. That’s the whole point—to show them I’m mentally stable. I wasn’t trying to kill myself. Or even hurt myself. There was an accident. And blood, apparently, and I passed out.
But it’s almost like she’s trying to press my buttons. Maybe she is. She brings up Nor’s case and the notorious video—I feel like learning how to use a fucking sword; she wants to know where I got the weapons. I don’t see how that matters until I realize she’s hinting they might be stolen.
But I don’t want to get Jess in trouble.
Finally I lose my temper. “First of all, it was a dagger, not a sword. And if I was trying to kill myself, wouldn’t I have gone an easier route than stealing antique weapons and trying to impale myself?”
She doesn’t rise to the bait. “So they are stolen?”
“They belong to her friend, Jess,” Papi interjects. “I believe Marianne was storing the weapons for her friend.”
Coming out of someone else’s mouth, I realize how dumb that sounds. It’s not my weed, Mom! I was holding it for a friend! But my parents know Jess and they know me, and they trust us both. At least they did until now.
There are more questions, but finally, with follow-up appointments scheduled and pain medications prescribed, we’re on our way home.