Текст книги "Sing"

Автор книги: C. D. Reiss

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Sing
by
CD Reiss
Songs of Submission – Book Seven

Take my hand, my love.

On sinews of air we tread

Aught but distance our guide

With no tempo to our gait

No endpoint drawn

Neither plot nor plan

By the thorns of a compass rose

We bound toward the horizon

CHAPTER 1.

MONICA

Dr. Thorensen had put up his Christmas lights on December first, two weeks ago, decorating his wood detailing and redwood fence with tiny multicolored dots. No fat inflatable snowmen. No Santas. No elves, just classy little spots hanging around the edges of his property like a joyful little fucking aura.

I rang the bell again. The house was the biggest on my incline of a block. The door itself was four feet wide, deep mahogany, set in with a lead glass window.

It was too early in the morning to ring Dr. Thorensen’s bell. He was a single guy in his mid-thirties, and it was Tuesday morning. He should be at his office, or the hospital. Maybe nuzzling one of the women I saw come around periodically. But I was losing my shit. I couldn’t wait another minute, and I’d noticed he kept odd hours.

I saw him through the glass in a polo and jeans, carrying a coffee cup. When the door opened, he looked grave.

“Monica,” he said. “Am I blocking your driveway?” Then he looked at me. I must have been a sight. “Are you okay?”

“Not really?”

“What happened?”

Suddenly, I felt silly, as if I’d become a story he’d tell his friends. I’d become the annoying girl next door. He’d told me once that he didn’t put an MD license plate on his car or hang out a shingle because he wanted to avoid random advice-seekers and neighbors with a sniffle. I’d laughed with him at the story of the Montessori mother two doors down who wanted him to look at her son’s scraped knee. This was why I’d avoided ringing his bell for five long, lonely, friendless days.

But he was a cardiologist, and when Santa brought me a gift, I figured I shouldn’t try to cram it back up the chimney.

One long sentence poured out. “I didn’t want to bother you, I mean it’s not like he can’t afford the best doctors in the world, but I’m afraid to tell them what I think or I’ll look crazy so I was wondering if you had privileges at Sequoia?”

“I do.”

He paused for a second, and I feared he’d say something like, “sorry, I’m not working right now. I deserve to be at home in peace as much as the next person, and the fact that I spent a quarter million dollars on school doesn’t make me public property.” But he stepped aside and said, “Come in.”

I’d never been inside his house, and though I’d always been curious, when I finally did see it, my curiosity was dulled. I’d been blind to details for a week, my brain had somehow narrowed out what it thought important to three things. Breathing. Worrying about Jonathan. Desire to kill Jessica. But when I passed the living room, the flashing lights caught my eye. Three huge flatscreen TVs were up, with a leather chair set to see all of them. I recognized the steampunk settings and the particular burnished brass and wood finishes from a party I’d attended before Jonathan. In another life.

“You play City of Dis?” I asked. The online multiplayer game was highly competitive, complex to a fault, and if you had the brain power to keep up with it, more addicting than crack.

“Yeah.” He seemed a little embarrassed. “Need to wind down sometimes, you know.”

“I know this guy who wears Depends when he plays so he doesn’t have to get up to go to the bathroom.”

“I’m potty trained, even in character. Coffee?” he asked as I followed him to the marble and glass kitchen.

“No, thanks. I’m more of a tea person.”

“So,” he refreshed his cup. “If it’s not the driveway, and you’re asking about Sequoia, must be a medical call?”

“I’m so sorry to bother you.”

“You’re fine. Sit.” He pulled out a tall chair by the marble kitchen bar.

I sat, feet wrapped around the legs, a coiled tension in my hips.

“You did the place nice,” I said. “It’s probably the best house on the block.”

“It’s an investment.” He put a pot of water on the stove. “Coulda got something in Beverly Hills or Palisades for twice the price and half the aggravation, but where’s the fun in that?”

“It’s quieter and cleaner?”

“No potential, though. Nowhere to go but down. This neighborhood’s going to be Beverly Hills in ten years. And I get to live next to people like you. Interesting people. It’s all lawyers over there.” He glanced at me quickly, as if checking on me. “So, what brings you?”

“You’re a cardiologist. I’m sorry but—“

“Stop apologizing.”

“My...I guess you’d call him a boyfriend? He’s at Sequoia.”

“A patient, I assume.”

“They say he has a heart problem. That he damaged his valves when he was younger and he...”

Was I betraying a confidence? There had been so much talk of his suicide attempt that it seemed like old news already, but the talk had been within the confines of his family and doctors.

Dr. Thorensen waited, leaning on the counter, cup warming his hands.

“He took too much Adderall once when he was a teenager.”

“This is Jonathan Drazen?”

I felt a tingle of shock, like an adrenaline rush, that he knew, and that he mentioned his name right there in the kitchen, as if Jonathan’s condition and how he came to be so sick, was public knowledge.

He must have seen it on my face. He put his cup down and opened a chrome canister on the counter. It was full of teabags.

“That explains the car.”

Was I just being sensitive? Because it sounded like he thought I couldn’t possibly have bought a Jaguar without fucking someone. I didn’t have time to decide if I was mad, because Dr. Thorensen continued as if he knew he’d implied something that could twist my knickers in a knot and wanted me to forget it.

“We have a weekly meeting on the high risk cardiology patients,” he said. “Just to check diagnoses and make sure we’re on the same page about treatment. I’ve seen him.” He held up a hand as if the reassure me. “I’m not his doctor or anything. Dr. Emerson is with him. He’s highly qualified.”

“And you agreed a sixteen year-old overdose gave him a heart attack? That makes no sense.”

“Adderall is basically legalized speed,” he continued. “Taking a fistful will damage your valves, and the slightest blockage will give you a heart attack. No question. It’s a miracle he made it this far.”

He handed me my cup. I didn’t want it, but found my hands clasping it anyway.

“Are you sure?” I asked.

He raised an eyebrow, but said nothing in his own defense.

“I don’t mean to question you,” I said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t go to medical school. But before it happened, we were at a party, and he was gone a long time. I think...” I felt so stupid even saying it. I’d only told Margie my theory, and she’d dismissed it. “I think he was poisoned.”

I stared into my teacup.

“That’s a pretty broad accusation.” He said it softly and kindly, but under it all was a hint of condescension, as if what he really wanted to say was that I was crazy.

“He has enemies,” I said.

“Yes.”

“His ex-wife was mad at him.”

“Okay.”

“He was fine just before.”

“No, he wasn’t.”

“I was there, you weren’t. I’m sorry, but he was fine.”

He put his cup down, and I felt the weight of my intrusion. He was playing a video game at eight in the morning, getting a moment’s peace from a high pressure job, and here I was dragging his work into his kitchen. And he didn’t believe me. I wanted him to believe me, even as I was feeling crazier and crazier.

“There was nothing on his tox screen. I sat with his attending for two hours looking at EKGs. He had a massive coronary event. There’s a pretty good chance he’d been having small heart attacks in the days previous. His valves are shot.”

He stopped his sentence as if catching himself. He’d been talking about a man’s heart like it was a carburetor.

“I should go.”

“He has a very good prognosis.”

“Thanks for the tea.” I put it on the counter.

“Monica, listen—”

“Dr. Thorensen—“

“I’m Brad.”

“Brad, it’s been a rough five days. He’s got seven sisters and a mother and they...most of them...act like I’m no one to him. I’m on his list, so I’m told everything, but I’m surrounded by strangers. And seeing him like that, with the IV and the tubes and just waiting to get cut open. Everyone’s worried and no one wants to listen.”

“I understand the desire to blame someone, but he wasn’t poisoned. I promise you.”

He was right, of course. There had been no evidence of poisoning, and Jessica had been in my sights, or in the bathroom most of the time, but I was looking for a ten second interval where she could have...What? Fed him something? Slyly injected him? Did I think I was living in an Agatha Christie novel where conceptual artists moonlit as chemists?

“Yeah,” I said. “I guess.”

“Tell you what. This is fun. Why don’t you play City of Dis with me for a little while? I’m in the eighth circle. I’ll build you a character from my profile. You’re not getting an opportunity to play at that level anywhere else. All your problems go away.” He snapped his fingers. “Magic. Come on.”

“I can’t.”

“An hour.”

“I haven’t done laundry in two weeks and I have to go to work.”

He put his cup down. “Rain check?”

“Yes, and thank you, Brad.” His short name sounded, at once, overly familiar and coldly detached in my mouth.

“Any time.”

He walked me out and I went home to wrestle with the laundry. Maybe I’d hang out a Christmas light myself.

There was a letter taped to my screen door. No envelope, just an open sheet.

NOTICE OF PUBLIC AUCTION

The rest was legal bullshit, but I scanned the page for the handwritten parts. My address. Thirty days. Non-payment.

“Shit.”

I looked at my house as if there might be an answer there, but it was just a dark wooden box with a crumbling foundation. I still hadn’t gotten the papers signed to fix it, but if the permits had been opened, my mother had gotten the notice in the mail. So she knew something was going down. Now, this, which must have been the result of my failure to send her a check two months running.

I had to call her.

I didn’t want to call her.

I stared at my phone. The number was right there. I’d missed the rent twice before. Once when Kevin and I broke up, and once when Gabby had tried to commit suicide. Both times, I’d just sent two month’s rent in an envelope with a thank you note. So when Gabby died and I was short, I just figured I’d make it up. And I could have, except I was in Vancouver December first and forgot and then I stopped working when Jonathan collapsed into my arms, so honestly, even if I’d had the cash in there, I was too preoccupied to manage any practical aspect of my life.

That’s what I get for living in her house. Really. How long could I mooch off someone I wasn’t speaking to anyway? How old was I?

I hit her number while I unlocked my front door. It was easier to do difficult things if I multitasked through them.

My house was exactly the same every time I went into it to shower or grab something, as if it was a museum of my life. Nothing moved. The blanket on the couch was rumpled in the shape of an opening rose. The curtains draped over the back of the chair like perfectly-trimmed bangs. The dishes in the rack were filed and waiting for archiving in the cabinets.

The phone stopped ringing and there was a click. Mom’s voice still had the slight Brazilian accent that had been carefully chipped away, but never smoothed off completely. My heart skipped a beat, an adrenaline rush in preparation for the confrontation.

It was a message.

“Hi, Mom. I got a notice the bank is auctioning off the house? Should we talk about it?”

God that was stupid. I hung up. Shoulda paid the fucking rent. Shoulda called her to let her know I was in a pinch. Shoulda had Darren move in. One more stupid shit thing in a long line of other stupid shit things. I folded the notice and wedged into the corner of my notebook. Fuck the Christmas lights.

CHAPTER 2.

MONICA

I was nearly out of gas, and I had five dollars in my pocket, one maxed out credit card and a bank account dangerously close to scraped clean. I could get to work and make some cash, but without that eighth of a tank, I’d be taking the bus to the hospital for the duration and paying the fare with change found between couch cushions.

I didn’t dare tell Jonathan things had gotten that bad. I went to him every night with sunshine in my voice and rainbows in my pocket.

But when I wasn’t at Sequoia, I let the panic come. Slamming my locker closed, I painted on a customer service smile for no one in particular.

“Monica?” Andrea came up behind me, her hair dyed blue that week. It was always something new with her, and I seemed to have missed this change, because the color was already fading back to green.

“Hey, how are you? Love the color.”

“What are you doing here?”

“It’s my shift.”

She rolled her eyes and twisted her mouth around. “Uhm, we’re kinda in the habit of swapping you out. So, I’m working.”

“No,” I heard the squeak in my voice. “I need the cash.” God, I hated sounding like that. I hated whining about money.

She shrugged and walked out to the floor. I went to Debbie’s office.

“Come in,” she said after I knocked. She was alone, behind her desk, shuffling through God-only-knows. She looked up as if she was pleased to see me, standing and putting her arms out for a hug. “Monica. How are you?”

“I’m fine. I came to work, but Andrea says she’s got my shift?”

“You’ve missed five shifts, Monica. And you were out the week before. I need to run the floor.”

“I need my shift.”

She put her hand under my chin. “You’re in no condition to work. You lost weight. You have circles. A little lipstick?”

“Please.”

“What’s happening? Sit. Tell me.”

I lowered myself in the leather chair. Debbie sat on the arm of the one next to it. The nightly mist that descended on Los Angeles dotted the window. It was the wettest year in history. The bar would be slow, tips scarce, tourists who had nowhere else to go and regulars who came out of habit. The Hollywood hitters would be in clubs Downtown or Silver Lake venues.

“They’re trying to stabilize him so they can do a valve graft,” I said. She looked at me blankly, as if she was waiting to understand what I’d just said. “He damaged his heart when he was sixteen—” I stopped abruptly. I knew Debbie and Jonathan had been close, but I couldn’t be sure he’d told her about the fistful of drugs he’d taken. He hadn’t known he was broken. He’d been fine, until the stress of the past weeks broke him.

“Here,” Debbie said, handing me a tissue. “Go ahead.”

“They have to replace parts of his heart.” I felt strongly that I didn’t know what I was talking about, because I didn’t. “He hasn’t been stable enough for the surgery.” I pressed the tissue to my eyes. It came back with blobs of mascara. Now I really couldn’t work the floor. “I go in every night and talk to him, but I need to work tonight.”

“No, you need to go in to him.”

“I need the money. I’m sorry. I know it seems gross.”

“He can’t give you money?” She seemed shocked at the idea, as if he wouldn’t, which wasn’t the case. Money would sully the sunshine and rainbows.

“I don’t want him to worry.”

“What about his family?”

“Outside of Margie, they all tolerate my existence. Which is fine. But I’m not asking.”

“He hasn’t given you something you can sell?”

Had he? The title for the Jag, which was my only transportation, had been in the glove compartment when Lil drove it to me. The platinum lariat that symbolized our bond twisted around itself on my dresser, binding sea and sky between it. The diamond navel bar was where he’d put it when he committed to me.

“No,” I said. “I have nothing to sell.”

Debbie got up and walked behind her desk. Bending at the waist, she opened a drawer and pulled out her wallet.

“I don’t usually do this,” she said.

“Don’t. I’ll manage.”

She took a pile of bills out and folded them once, coming around the desk.

“We can cover your shifts another couple of days before we have to put you on personal leave. That’s unpaid.” She picked up my hand and slapped the bills into it. “Figure it out.”

I squeezed the money. I couldn’t refuse it, and taking it meant I could see Jonathan.

“You’re very nice to me,” I said.

“Jonathan helped a friend of mine through a rough time. You make him happy. So helping you, is helping him. Now go. I have work to do.”

CHAPTER 3.

MONICA

One hundred fifty seven dollars in smallish bills. God bless Debbie, I loved her. I put gas in the car, first thing. Then I bought a container of cubed cantaloupe at Ralph’s for dinner. I parked three blocks away so I wouldn’t have to pay for the lot, and walked. Night was falling and it was getting cold. I was bundled in a scarf and light coat, having forgotten a hat in my rush to get to work.

Sequoia was huge. Half the babies in LA were born there, and everyone else managed to die there. The charge nurse in the cardiac unit knew me by sight, and nodded at me and my cantaloupe.

“Hi,” I said when I walked into the room of bland pinks, beiges, hard edges and the smell of sickness and alcohol. I’d gotten him a little light-up Christmas tree for the table by the bed, and every night he made sure it was on.

“I thought you were working tonight,” Jonathan said. He was sitting up, reading by a single lamp. I’d seen him in that bed every might for the past week and a half, and he’d gotten better and better. I couldn’t believe they wouldn’t let him just walk out with a pat on the head.

“It’s raining. Debbie didn’t need me.” I sat on the edge of the bed taking his hand in mine while trying not to disturb the IV in it. Machines beeped and hummed. The stylus scratched on paper, tracing the lines of his heartbeat. “How are you feeling?”

“Like I want to punch someone. You?”

“The contracts are signed. Margie was a hero, seriously. I couldn’t have done it without her. I’m finalized to record tomorrow. I’m singing Collared with full production value.”

He took the cantaloupe container from me. “They getting the LA Phil in?”

“I know you’re joking,” I said, compulsively putting my hands out to help him open the container. But in the past couple of days he hadn’t needed me, so I pulled them back. “But yeah. Fifteen pieces. String-heavy. Like, real. Then, next week we’re doing Craven. I laid down some scratch on a few others and they’re going to pick two more for an EP.”

He plucked out a piece of melon and held it up. I leaned forward and opened my mouth. He brushed the juice on my bottom lip before letting it touch my tongue. “Orchestras cost a lot of money,” he said. “They must believe in you.”

I took the cantaloupe gently into my mouth and closed my lips around it, catching his fingers, sucking them on the way out.

“We’ll see.”

“Is this what you brought for dinner?”

“I ate stuff at home,” I lied. If he knew my fridge was empty and I didn’t want to spend Debbie’s money getting takeout, he’d worry. Or he’d lose his shit all over the hospital room. He’d already had a code blue over his mother trying to shut me out.

“You’re supposed to have dinner with me,” he said, feeding me melon. He wasn’t mad or scolding. He missed me during the day when his family was here and I hung around in the shadows. That was the deal. I didn’t have to be front and center with his sisters and mother, but I came to him at night, alone.

“What did the doctors say? Will you be out for Christmas?” I changed the subject, deflecting away from dinner, which would lead to talk of my financial distress. “I have no idea what to get you, by the way.”

He paused, picking through the fruit, eyes cast down.

“Well?” I asked.

“Not yet,” he answered, holding up cantaloupe. I took it, but I sensed he was hiding something. I chewed slowly. As if sensing my recalcitrance, he said, “I’m strong enough, but the arrhythmia’s still there.”

“It was gone yesterday!”

He shrugged. “Eat. I want that body ready for me when I get the hell out of here.”

That was Jonathan. Focused on getting the hell out of what he perceived as a prison.

“This body’s always ready for you,” I said, parting my lips for his fingers. He pulled the fruit back an inch, and I followed, then he let it touch my tongue, then pulled it back. We played the cat and mouse game with the melon until he popped it in his mouth and grabbed me by the back of the head, kissing me. Our tongues tasted of cold fruit. I kissed him as if I’d almost lost him, pushing myself into him as if he was a delicate creature, living only by the grace of God and modern medicine. His tongue wove around mine as if he was as healthy as ever. As if an elevated heart rate wouldn’t kill him, or at the very least, send nurses running in with paddles and carts of beige machines. He could deny what was happening all he wanted. He was getting stronger, but if his doctors were to be believed, every day without that graft brought him closer to another heart failure.

“Goddess,” he whispered. “I have to have you.”

“No fucking way.” We’d tried two nights previous, and the word disaster would be used if we were underplaying the results. I’d gotten an earful from Nurse Irene on the matter, and had cried for hours from the stress and the scolding.

He pushed his finger under my waistband. I could feel the tubes from the IV on my skin. “Undo these,” he said.

“No.”

“Open your jeans and pull them down.” He spoke as if I hadn’t just refused him, and the command send waves of lust below my waist. “I swear to God I won’t get my heart rate up.”

“I’m scared,” I said.

“I’m not. Come on. Trust me.”

His face was inches from mine, his hand on my cheek, stroking my lower lip. Every night I curled up next to him and slept for a few hours before I was asked to get in my chair. Every night I wanted him, and every night I worried. He’d gone from distraught, to annoyed, to depressed, to this. A feeling that he’d lost control. He was using me to feel like he had it for a minute. I just didn’t know if I could trust him to take care of himself.

I unbuttoned my pants. He sighed and put the container on the table, his eyes still locked on mine as I straightened my hips, put a knee on the bed and pulled my pants down.

“Straddle me,” he said. I was restricted by the waistband, but got a leg out and wiggled around the instruments and tubes to get myself on either side of him. I made no move to shift the sheets away or touch him. I only did what I was told.

“The door’s ajar,” I said.

“The curtain’s closed.” He whispered, feeling my ass. “You’re wearing this cotton shit again,” he said, his left hand, the one without the IV, stroking my lower back and finding its way under my panties.

“It feels silly to waste to good stuff when you won’t see it.”

“You miss the point.” He pulled me forward. “Put your hands behind me.” I placed them on the wall behind him. With his left hand, he reached between my legs, caressing me over the fabric of my underpants. “The idea is that during the day, I’m present where no one can see. You dress for the world, but under that, you dress for me. I own your softest places, and what touches them, is mine.”

“How can I think about that when you’re sick?”

“I need you to. It’s the only thing that gets me through the day. Knowing I own you even from here. Can you do something for me tomorrow?”

“Anything.”

“At three o’clock, when you’re in the studio. Exactly three. Put your fingers on your lips and think of me.”

“Yes. I can do that.”

He brushed his thumbnail over the crotch of my panties. My clit throbbed at his touch, and I gasped.

“Remember the office?” he whispered. “On the desk?”

“How could I forget? You were cruel.”

He stroked the nails of four fingers over the cotton he so hated. It was damp already.

“I wanted you so badly,” he whispered.

“You could have had me.”

“Anyone else, I would have just fucked. Not you.” He brushed one finger under my panties, stroking my opening. “You were so wet. So responsive. A quickie on a desk would have been such a waste.”

His finger ran circles around my wettest part, and again, his thumb touched my clit gently. When I thrust forward, he pulled it back.

“You were a bastard.” I spoke through gasps as his fingers teased me. “You could have let me come and fucked me later.”

He pushed two fingers in me. I closed my eyes and groaned.

“Look at me,” he said. I put my nose to his and tried to keep my eyes open. “I wanted you before my trip. I needed you motivated. I had to have you.”

“Have me,” I gasped as he put only the lightest pressure on his thumb while rotating his fingers in my hole.

“You were fantastic that first night. Unforgettable.”

Pulling his fingers out, he slipped them up my cleft, stroking my clit slowly, barely moving, every millimeter of movement a shot of sensation from my cunt out to my knees and waist.

“Oh, God.”

His right hand went to the back of my head. I knew he had his IV in that hand, but I wasn’t going to think about that. I only thought about the excruciatingly unhurried motion of his fingers. “Do you want to come, Monica?”

“Please let me come. I want to.”

He grabbed my hair. “I don’t believe you.”

“Please. Jonathan, please. Don’t let me walk away like this. Let me come for you.” My begging could not have been more sincere. The pleasure and tension between my legs was so intense, so heavy, it was almost painful.

“No.” He slowly dragged his fingers over my clit, then lodged them back in me and pulled them out, rolling around the outside, then pushed them back in again, all the while keeping my head still by holding a handful of my hair in his fist.

“Please,” I whispered.

“Why should I?”

“You love me.”

“I do.” But he didn’t say anything more.

“And I love you.”

“So?”

“I miss your body. I want to come for you. Please.”

He pulled the tips of his fingers over my clit. It was just enough to take me to the next level, where I couldn’t speak as the pleasure soaked my body, yet it wasn’t a full release.

“When you sing tomorrow, you wear something that reminds you of me.”

“Yes.” I would have promised him the World Series, but this, I meant. Under my clothes, he owned me. “Please.”

Rubbing my clit in earnest, he held my face close to his. “Who do you belong to?” Like a glass of water on a hot day, my cunt drank him, getting what it had craved, every inch of wet skin receiving the touch it wanted like the answer to a prayer.

“You. I am yours. Oh. I’m—”

“Come, darling.”

I bit back a cry as the orgasm ripped through me like a fire hose had been turned on, thrusting my hips forward, sending bullets of pleasure through my nervous system, squeezing the air from my lungs, shutting out every sense, but the sensation of his fingers between my legs, his breath on my face, his eyes on mine.

He slowed, but kept his hand on my stroking me down until I felt like I could think again.

“Again, goddess. And quietly.”

He pushed in me, gathering juices, then put his fingers to my clit again. The waters rose like a flash flood.

“Fuck,” I groaned, clenching, thrusting, a grunt stopped in my throat as I came for him again. My eyes closed involuntarily as I released, the fireworks between my legs taking up every sensory input.

A machine beeped. We froze. It double-beeped once, twice, then stopped. He patted my ass, and I knew what that meant.

I scurried off him and pulled my pants up, getting them buttoned just as Irene Kzowlicz, RN opened the door.

“Mister Drazen,” she said in her thick Hungarian accent. “You are okay?”

“We’re fine.”

“I didn’t know if I should be getting the crash cart again.” She joked, shuffling in on her clunky padded shoes, hands like risen dough pulling Jonathan to a sitting position so she could mess with his pillows. Her grey hair was cut short, and her lower lip seemed to extend a good seven inches from her face.

“For two beeps?” Jonathan said. “I’m going to start thinking you want me to live.”

“When I started to nurse, we had rules. No girlfriends in the room alone, with door closed. Now patients can make request. And request is like law, so I have machines beeping twice all night.”

“I don’t think it’ll beep again,” I said meekly.

She went to the computer and tapped away at it with two lightning fast fingers. “You ready for tomorrow, Mister Drazen?”

“Like any other day in paradise, Irene.”

She took his blood pressure and I sat by and held his other hand. “What’s tomorrow?” I whispered.

“Wednesday,” he whispered back.

Irene snapped the belt off his arm. “Okay,” she said, tapping his IV bags. “You’re fine.” She looked at me over her plastic trifocals. “You be a good girl.”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

She scuttled out.

“I love how it was my fault,” I said.

Jonathan shrugged and held his left hand out. His left side was the side without IVs or tubes, and it was the side I’d slept on since the third night of his stay. I slipped onto the mattress next to him. I couldn’t move much on my slice of bed, but I didn’t want to. He turned the light out and I rested my head on his shoulder.

“I’m selling my house,” he said.

“Why?”

“I bought it with Jessica. It’s not relevant any more.”

“I have some nice memories of that house.”

Curled up against him, I could feel his smile in the dark. “Me too,” he said, voice heavy with those same memories. “We’ll make new ones somewhere else.”

“Where were you thinking?”

“I don’t know. Where would you like to go?”

The machines whispered dreams of a future I’d given little thought to, blinking lights of hope and trepidation.

“I live in Echo Park. If you stayed close, I’d like that.”

“I’ll stay in the basin. More or less. Not the west side. Too many people I know. And it’s far from you.” He turned his head, pressing his lips to my hair.

I didn’t think he could get up and walk me down the hall without collapsing, but he still managed to make me feel protected. That hospital room, that bed, his body next to mine, had become my world in the previous week. I came at night and when he turned the light off, he was my beautiful, healthy Jonathan again, and I his goddess. The troubles of the day melted away. In that dark room, with only the light pollution of Los Angeles coming in through the windows, he told me about a losing game he’d pitched at Penn, walking in home a run in the ninth. He told me about the out of control years before his suicide attempt, he and his friends drifting their cars on rainy nights in the Valley, breaking onto schooners on the piers of Seal Beach; and Westonwood, where he got into a fistfight over a French fry his first night and, over the course of the next months, learned to maintain the tight control over himself he exhibited to that very day.