Reese
When the nurse with the bouncy ponytail walked out after taking down an initial medical history from me, Smith was scowling.
No, it was more of a glower, the way his whole forehead and nose were puckered too.
Because, yeah, I hadn’t thought the whole ER visit through. I didn’t lie to doctors. Ever. They couldn’t effectively help me if they didn’t know the real story. And I had too much respect for them after my childhood to fib and make their jobs more difficult. I just kinda sorta maybe forgot that Smith would overhear that I had leukemia as a kid, or that I’d fallen down two dozen concrete stairs in the middle of a thunderstorm.
“Tell. Me. What. Happened.” His expression hadn’t wavered, his jaw clenched.
I shifted my wrist to a more comfortable position on the pillow I’d propped it on while we waited for the doctor. As luck would have it, the ER was pretty empty because of the rain and I’d been taken back to a room immediately. The exam room was more modern than I expected, with a glass wall facing the hallway that could be curtained off and a flatscreen TV perched on one wall above a whiteboard.
“Just a little bit of hazing gone wrong. You know how Marco is around me.” I tried to shrug off the rest of the story, but Smith wasn’t having it.
“Tell. Me. What. Happened,” he repeated, leaning forward and gripping the bedrail.
I shivered, still soaked to the bone. What was it about hospitals and overactive air conditioning systems?
Smith softened long enough to fetch me a pair of warmed blankets from the nursing station before he resumed his position, scowl and all.
But the doctor came in before I could speak and I recapped the night’s events a third time. And she wanted more details.
Did I hit my head?
My jaw, but not my skull.
Did I ever lose consciousness at any point?
No.
Did anyone witness the fall?
I hesitated before nodding.
And did he call for help?
I studied the growing bruise on my wrist, the way it extended over the heel of my palm now. My silence was answer enough, and Smith growled beside me, his hands in tight fists on his thighs.
We followed the rest of the timeline until I arrived at the hospital, including the fact that Smith was a friend I called for a ride and that he hadn’t been present when I’d been injured, and then the doctor led me through a series of range of motion exercises, both passive and active, before ordering x-rays for my hand and wrist.
“After the tech gets the images, the nurse will start cleaning up some of your other scrapes while we wait for the films to be read. There are a lot of bones in the hand and we want to make sure you didn’t fracture anything. Some of them, like the scaphoid, you have to be careful with. Are you allergic to anything? We’ll go ahead and get you some pain meds ordered too.”
I shook my head. “No, nothing. And thank you.”
She smiled, but glanced at Smith suspiciously. No doubt I looked like a possible domestic abuse victim. “Is there anything else you’d like to tell me?”
“No, ma’am.”
The nurse with the bouncy ponytail brought me a pair of pain pills along with a nitrile glove full of ice to hold on my jaw while we waited for x-ray, and I couldn’t help but notice the way she surreptitiously checked out Smith’s hands while she fussed over me.
I felt bad for the things they were probably accusing him of in their heads, but his knuckles were smooth and clean, the skin unblemished and unbroken, so they’d realize soon enough they were barking up the wrong tree.
While the tech wheeled me to radiology, he continued the line of questioning they’d started earlier, probably to see if I’d answer differently now that I was alone—if I felt safe, if I needed help, if I needed to speak to a social worker or the doctor privately. He finally point-blank asked me if the guy who brought me here had hurt me, which I adamantly denied.
I admired their thoroughness even as embarrassment flooded me.
But after the imaging was done and my body adorned with bandages in half a dozen places where I’d been bleeding, Smith wouldn’t be put off any longer.
“The doctor just went in the room with some old guy who was wheezing. She’ll probably be a while. Talk to me, Batman. Let me in. Leukemia? You had it too? Like Laird’s brother?”
I closed my eyes. “Yeah. I guess. I mean, I didn’t know until yesterday that Garrett had had cancer, let alone that he died from it. And since I’m still here, it’s not quite the same, is it?” My brow wrinkled as I thought about it more. “I don’t even know if he had the same kind of leukemia. Laird isn’t really talking to me right now.”
“Why? Because of your question after practice the other day?”
I shrugged, a flush creeping up my neck. “I guess? Maybe? He said he had to finish his video game project too. I know he’s been busy with that all week.”
“Oh, yeah.” Smith’s shoulders relaxed. “His project. I’m sure it doesn’t have anything to do with you. There’s no doubt, that guy is crazy about you.” He pointed toward my phone on the other visitor chair in the room. “Do you want to call him?”
That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it?
I licked my dry lips, my emotions a jumble. “What time is it?” Hospitals didn’t put clocks on the wall in patient rooms.
Smith checked his watch. “A little after ten.”
“His project deadline is midnight. He’s probably still working.” I clung to that excuse so I wouldn’t have to examine why my gut felt leaden, my chest a little too tight as I thought of Laird hunched over a computer, his fingers flying as he debugged his program in one of those weird computer languages that just looked like gibberish to me. “I’ll text him when we get out of here.”
It was a lie.
I wouldn’t.
But Smith nodded, looking relieved.
“And the stuff with Marco? It’s been worse than you’ve told me, hasn’t it?”
I scrolled through my memory, trying to sort through the events that he’d witnessed versus the ones he hadn’t.
“He tripped me a few months back during band camp. I’m sure he’d claim it was an accident or I was clumsy or something, but I bruised my hip pretty bad when I landed on a curb.”
Smith swore loudly, and scooted his chair a little closer to me, reaching out to squeeze my ankle at the bottom of the bed. “What else?” he pressed. “There’s more, isn’t there?”
I started to scrunch up my face but it made my jaw hurt so I settled for shrugging instead. “You know I clean his room—wait, speaking of that.” I fixed Smith with a penetrating stare, as if to make better sense of what I’d seen that day before I’d scrubbed it from my mind. “The other week I found grape lollipops and two condom wrappers near the trashcan. Different brands. Different sizes. Anything you’d care to share with me, Robin?” I tried to shift the focus back to him.
But Smith just furrowed his brow as a telltale flush tinted his cheeks. “Nothing worth sharing. After too many beers one night, Marco hit on me. And…and…” Smith faltered, tightening his fingers around his knees and not making eye contact with me. “Look, when the guy focuses all his attention on you, it can be downright flattering. He’s a hot senior, and yeah, it’s obvious now he’s a fucking prick, but he’d noticed me. And it felt good, you know?”
His words came faster, as if he just wanted to get them out and say it once and put the whole thing behind him. “But he’s the most self-centered guy I’ve ever gone to bed with, and let’s just say we didn’t both have a happy ending that night. Then of course, the next day when I alluded to it, he looked at me like I was crazy and he didn’t remember any of it and I sure had an overactive imagination and he didn’t swing that way.”
“Smith…” My voice fell to a sympathetic whisper. “You can do so much better than him.”
“No shit. Have you seen me?” He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his palms and laughed humorlessly. “But I thought about it later. With him, I don’t think sex is about pleasure. I mean, it is, but I don’t think that’s what really gets him off. I think it’s a dominance thing. He’s turned on when he controls someone, whether in the bedroom or the practice field… or even this whole creepy situation with you. I honestly think deep down he’s a scared, insecure little kid, and he tries to grab any resemblance of power he can to make himself feel like a man.”
I stared at Smith as I turned his words over in my head, nodding slowly when I realized his insight was spot on. “That’s fucked up, you know? Building himself up by tearing others down? A real man—”
“—doesn’t need to do that shit. Period,” Smith finished harshly. His knee bounced in agitation.
The door creaked open and worn tennis shoes squeaked on the floor as the doctor returned, putting a momentary halt to our conversation.
She smiled at me halfway, like she was too tired to fully commit to the motion. “Ms. Holland, how are you feeling? Pain meds kicking in some? I see your minor scrapes are taken care of now.”
“I’m fine,” I replied automatically, trying to read her body language for some clue of what the x-rays showed.
“Well, the radiologist didn’t see any fractures, so it looks like you’ve just gotten yourself a nasty sprain there.” Her intonation changed slightly as she delivered a spiel she’d obviously given countless times. “We’ll give you a brace and an ortho follow-up next week, some anti-inflammatories and pain meds, and get you out of here shortly. The nurse will go over basic RICE therapy when she brings the discharge paperwork, but you’re going to want to take it easy for the next few days. If it gets worse, your fingers turn cold or pale, or the pain increases out of proportion to what you expect, you need to come back immediately for further workup. You can take the brace off to shower, but you’re going to want to wear it for support for the next couple days until you can get in with ortho. Any questions?”
“No, ma’am. Thank you.”
Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.
The doctor left as quickly as she arrived, moving on to the next patient.
Smith looked at me somberly. “What are you going to do about Marco? And all this? If nothing else, he should have to cover your medical bills.”
“Me?” I snorted. “You think I can get Marco to do anything? And anyway, he’ll say I tripped, which is technically true. He didn’t push me, he didn’t hit me. He just happened to be there when I had an accident.” The thick sarcasm wasn’t lost on Smith.
“We both know he’s responsible for this.”
“And he’ll say I’m a weak girl who couldn’t hack it and you’re a jealous one-night stand.”
“Fuck that.” Smith was quiet for a moment. “What about Laird? He’s going to be livid.”
I took a deep breath. “Not if I don’t tell him.”
“You have to tell him, Reese. Besides, he’ll see the brace.”
“And I will tell him. That I tripped. Which is the truth.”
The nurse chose that moment to enter, sheaf of papers in hand, and she blinked at the vehemence of my outburst, eyeing me in concern once again. “Everything okay in here?”
“We’re good,” I hastened to reassure her, and listened attentively as she went over the aftercare instructions, the prescriptions, and gave me the card with the orthopedic appointment neatly printed on it. As she talked, she wrapped my wrist in a reinforced black brace and secured the Velcro strips.
“Want a sling? It’s more for comfort than anything else, but I’m happy to send one home with you.”
“I’ll pass, thanks.” There was no way I was wearing a sling for the next week. And either those meds were really starting to work their magic, or my wrist wasn’t nearly as bad as I first thought.
I turned to see if Smith was ready to go and the room spun for a moment.
Yeah, the meds were working.
Surely that was the reason I wished, despite everything, it was Laird here next to me, Laird who was taking me home, and Laird who, in my imagination, stayed with me all night, holding me close and helping me forget about secret dead brothers and asshole snare lieutenants.
I blinked back hot tears, refusing to let them fall.
“Take me home, Robin. I don’t want to talk about Marco anymore. Or Laird. I’m tired. It’s been a long night.”
He collected my phone and bag without arguing, and helped me to my feet.
“Let’s get you to the Batcave so you can sleep. We’ll fight the bad guy tomorrow.”