26. Heidi
I laid in the bed in a fog, all that gray pierced only by the white blinding pain that radiated from my back. Still only half-conscious from the general anesthesia and barely aware of my surroundings, I started to move, amazed by the shrill scream that tore its way out of my throat. An army of nurses instantly descended on me, holding me still and checking my dressings.
“Okay, now. You done moving, Miss West?” came an irritated voice to my left. I mumbled my assent through the hole in the face pillow that I was resting on. It was like someone had taken a gurney and fused it with a massage table, and let my doctors work on my back without twisting my spine at the neck and shoulders. “Now. I want you to answer me clearly so I know you understand, okay?”
“Okay,” I mumbled, after running my tongue over my sticky teeth and gums. My mouth defied my attempt to make a discernable word, and it came out in a hum. I coughed and tried again, “Okay.”
“Good.” She slipped some ice between my lips and I groaned in relief as the cold hit my tongue and melted over it. “I put something in your IV for the pain; you should feel relief very quickly, okay?”
I tried to say okay, but as the glorious numbing IV fluid dripped into my already sludge-filled veins, the bed I laid on consumed me. It absorbed my lax muscles and refused to let me think as a human. I was the bed, and the bed was not concerned with insignificant human matters such as the hot agony in my back that wasn’t so much dulled by the meds as it was ignored by them.
I felt a nudge at my elbow, and it was as numb as when I was ten years old and went to the dentist, who promptly berated my for the state of my chemo and radiology-weakened baby teeth and pulled four of them
“Leave my goddamned teeth alone,” I heard my bed say to the nurse who, I was certain, was supposed to be nice to me, but was being a bitch instead.
“Okay, she’s not quite with us yet,” I heard a male voice chuckle. I knew that voice, and it made me angry that I’d become one with the bed.
“We know you!” we exclaimed, still muffled by pain meds and that strange sunspot of pain on my spine and the cushion that had become my face.
“We?” he replied, and I saw a sliver of Logan in the opening of the face cushion, just creased blue denim and a cowboy boot. But, it was definitely him.
“We are Bed,” I declared proudly, while a little voice in my head was getting louder and louder, telling me to, “Just. Shut. Up!” I frowned, and it was my face that crinkled, not the bed. I wiggled my toes and fingers and they moved on command. “Never mind,” I added. “I think the bed gave up on me.”
I heard the sexy, gravelly bass of Logan’s laugh and it made my heart speed up, painfully pushing my thick blood through my veins.
“You comin’ around then, Slugger?”
I groaned and started to nod. “Is that jerk nurse still here?” I asked, trying to whisper. It sounded loud in my ears, and from Logan’s answering chuckle, I knew it was definitely louder than I intended.
“Yes, she’s still here. She’s making sure you’re okay to move before they take you to your room.”
“She had some ice; may I have another piece?”
Logan’s fingers came into view with a small chip of ice. He placed it into my mouth, and I closed my lips over his damp fingers as he slid them across my chapped and cracked lips.
“She is Jenny,” the irritated voice snapped from somewhere over my shoulder. “And she is at the end of a sixteen-hour shift that was supposed to be twelve hours.” Her voice softened, and she added, “But I’m not irritated with you, Sugar. You were a trooper. We’re all very proud of you.”
Logan’s fingers appeared with another chip of ice, and I gratefully accepted it.
I heard them talking about moving me to my room and putting me in a real bed so I could get rest, and then the floor beneath me started moving. I watched the wheels of the gurney roll over the metal strip into the elevator and down another hall, too fast for me to count tiles but not fast enough to overcome the sluggish sensation I had where my arm met my IV.
In my room, I watched shoes shuffle by me as they adjusted my bed, moved machines and my IV cart, and got more nurses in to help transition me to the bed without damaging or opening my surgical wound. I tried to lift my face out of the headrest, but a hand gently held me down.
Logan bent down to look at me from under the gurney. “Don’t move, baby, I know you’re getting antsy, but if you shift too much, you could cause a leak.”
“You’re full of shit, Logan,” I drawled.
He chuckled. “Okay, but they do have a lot of tubes to move at the same time as they move you.”
I sighed and blinked slowly. “Tell me you can’t see the catheter,” I whispered.
He chuckled and stroked my cheek. “No, baby. All I see is a small patch of skin around your incision site, where they cut away the sheet and taped it down. Those stitches look pretty badass though.” He smiled at me, and I laughed.
“I can sit and compare scars with George, but he’ll still win,” I laughed.
“He knows what a rock star you are. Don’t you worry about that.”
“I wiggled my toes,” I mused. “Did they move?”
He tilted his head and glanced around my side. “What do you mean?”
“Watch my toes.” I wiggled them again.
“They moved,” he chuckled. “You’ll be running five-minute miles, and I’ll be eating your dust in no time.”
He was pushed back by the nursing staff and, in moments, the world was right side up again. I glanced up at ceiling tiles, which were remarkably like the floor tiles I’d been forced to stare at for the better part of an hour, and listened to the instructions the head nurse gave me. Then, suddenly, it was just Logan and me, alone in the room. Neither of us spoke for a few minutes, but he held my hand and rubbed his thumb across my knuckles.
“My toes work, which means that in a couple of hours, my legs should carry me right to that bathroom to clean myself up and use a toilet.” I sighed and leaned back with my eyes closed.
I couldn’t have closed my eyes for more than a moment, but when I opened them, the sky outside my tiny window was dark, and Logan was gone. I called for a nurse and asked for help to navigate the tubes and devices I was attached to so I could get up, but I was told I had to wait for the attending to see me on his rounds.
My mother’s tiny form appeared in the light from the hallway. “Are you awake, Heidi?” she asked in a low voice.
“Yes, Mom. I just woke up.”
She stepped in and turned on a light, blinding me for a moment. “I ran into your boyfriend as he headed out. He isn’t coming back, is he?” Her tone was so disapproving I wanted to ask her to leave, but I bit my tongue.
“Mom, I just woke up. That’s why my light was out when you arrived.”
She rolled her eyes and sighed dramatically. “Is that your way of telling me you want me to turn the light out?”
“No, it’s my way of telling you that you should’ve asked first.”
She shook her head and reached over me, her arm banging against my face as she turned out the overhead light.
“Mom, why are you here?” I asked as I used the bed controls to turn on the gentler corner light.
Almost as if he’d felt my distress, Logan walked in with to-go cartons of food from the cafeteria.
“Juliette,” he greeted her with a nod. The sliding tray I needed to eat was tucked behind my mother’s chair in the corner of the room. “Could you please slide the table over here?”
“You’re really going to eat in front of me?” my mother asked, her voice dripping with judgment.
“Heidi needs to eat. If you have a problem with that, you can leave.” Logan sounded angrier than I’d heard his voice since the day he’d almost decked Eli.
“No, no, it’s okay. I can wait a little longer. But I really appreciate you making sure I have something to eat. It’s been what, almost twenty-four hours?” I chuckled and pointed to the table. “You go ahead. I’ll eat after Mom heads out.”
Logan’s jaw worked as he stopped himself from saying whatever it was his eyes were telegraphing at her.
I saw her smirk and his discomfort, and all I wanted was time alone with him to explain why she was that way, and time alone with her to assuage her need to be the center of attention, so she’d go back to ignoring me. Logan set the food on the table and waited by the door, standing with his arms folded across his chest like a bouncer. I wondered if he felt like one, too, watching the tiny, gray-haired troublemaker from across the room, hoping she crossed the line so he could strong-arm her out of the room.
We were like a diorama pretending to be real folks, no one moving, no one speaking. I envied them both for their ability to get up and walk out whenever the deafening silence became too much even if both stayed out of sheer obstinacy. Finally, my mother heaved a sigh and stood, shoving her chair out of the way with a loud thud. I laid there, gaping like a fish, but Logan jumped in and quickly moved the table over my bed and started adjusting it, tilting the head up to sit me up a little more vertically, and raising the whole bed so my food was within easy reach.
He’d bought me all the junk food I always avoided, a cheeseburger, French fries, some fried chicken, and a burrito; all of which were quickly becoming too cold to eat anyway. He opened the other clamshell and showed me the salad inside.
“Thank you.” I smiled.
He shrugged. “I wasn’t sure that you’d want to eat, so I brought something that could sit for a while and still be good.” He set the upholstered chair back where my mother had been sitting and then returned to his post by the door.
My mother glared balefully at him, then smiled thinly and tucked her purse up over her shoulder. “I have to work early tomorrow, but I’ll come see you once you’ve had some time to rest,” she explained, and I saw the real her hidden behind the attitude and the cold shoulder. I’d scared her, and she was waiting for the other shoe to drop. I didn’t know what to say to make her feel better. Just once, I would’ve loved for her to make me feel better. Like she had when I was little, and Dad was still just on a work-trip when he disappeared for weeks at a time.
We couldn’t hug around the table and tubing, even if hugging was still something we did, so she waved goodbye and walked out the door, brushing past Logan without acknowledging him.
He waited a beat, then glanced down the hall in the direction of the elevators. “I think it’s safe for me to sit,” he teased as he pulled the chair as close to the side of the bed as he could get. “How are you holding up? Honestly.” He held my hand, and a stupid smile split my face.
“I’m in a lot of pain, but it’s… manageable. I feel like I was stabbed with a hot poker in my spine. But whatever meds I’m on make it just not matter to me that much.”
Logan’s eyebrows raised, and he blew out the breath he’d been holding. “Can I get you some help?” His tan face was lined with helpless concern. I remembered the same look on my dad’s face once upon a time, before my illness had driven Mom too far off the deep edge for him to stick around.
“No. Just relax and sit with me. I don’t think I’ll be much good as a company though. You’ll be out of here before you know it.” I meant the words to make him feel better, but anger flashed across his face.
My brain was mushy and dull from the medication and exhaustion, and I let him sit silently beside me while I pretended to fall asleep. I listened to him leave, grateful to finally be alone with my pain and fear. The bed was my prison, but also my oasis. I was trapped here until the attending released me. But here in the hospital bed, I was beyond reproach. Not by my virtues, but because of the very illness that trapped me here. It wasn’t that he wouldn’t argue with me. He couldn’t make himself raise his voice at me while every tube that ran from my body to some machine or other was a physical reminder that my life was in danger. That my life might still be forfeit if I wasn’t kept in pristine emotional condition.
Attitude was everything, after all.