Authors: Kate Rockland
“Fine. It’s really not a big deal, you know, I could have just taken a cab. I feel bad that you had to interrupt your cooking class. You won’t get paid now.”
“What, and let you never find out what scorpion sauce is?” he asked, raising an eyebrow at her.
Oh. She hadn’t realized he’d been listening.
“So, what’s your name?” he asked, pulling into NYU Medical Center’s emergency entrance.
“Alexis. Alexis Allbright.”
She realized she’d introduced herself the way her father had taught her to do when she was little, and inwardly cringed.
Always reach out and shake hands, Alexis. Then look the person right in the eye and state your full name, first and last.
“I’m sorry to bleed all over your car. What year is it?” Her finger really hurt and it relaxed her to quiz him.
“I don’t know, to tell you the truth.” He grinned at her, and it was like the sun coming out. She was surprised by the effect it had on her. “I won it playing cards with a buddy back in Colorado, where I’m from.”
What kind of guy didn’t know what year his car was? Interesting. “So what else do you do, Noah, other than chauffeur girls around who cut themselves in cooking class?”
A taxi cut him off. “Big dummy!” Noah yelled out the window, shaking his fist.
Alexis raised a perfectly manicured eyebrow. “Is that the worst insult you can throw?” she asked. “Wow, you really are a country bumpkin.”
“Sorry,” Noah said sheepishly, pushing a stray curl off his forehead. “I can’t stand the way people drive here.”
Looking for a place to park near the emergency room entrance, Noah was squinting, which made him look even cuter, like a sailor. The wipers worked sporadically, and he had to manually roll down his window and stick his arm out to wipe off the windshield.
“Sorry,” he said again, as they waited for someone to pull out of a spot. He reached over and put one of his large hands on her shoulder. “Just another minute and we’ll get you right in there and fixed up. That must hurt.”
She didn’t say anything. His hand had brushed against hers a few times when he shifted gears, and it felt as warm as it did now, touching her sweater. It made her forget about the pain in her finger.
Alexis felt silly going through the big revolving doors with the loud red
EMERGENCY
sign above them. Surely there were people here much sicker than her. But she had bled all the way down the front of her sweater, which she attempted to wipe off as she strolled into the emergency room.
Noah walked very closely to her as she gave her name to a plump and cheerful Hispanic nurse named Inez who wore purple scrubs with Goofy on them. Noah had to help her get her wallet out of her purse to present her insurance card. She was led to a small, curtained-off area where she could see the shifting of shapes and colors through the flimsy white mesh meant to give patients the illusion of privacy.
“I’ll wait right here for you,” Noah said, taking a seat in a blue plastic chair at a low table meant for children in the waiting room. He looked oversized, like a giant. His legs were a mile long. On the table was a wooden game with different-colored balls you ran over a wire, and a stuffed bunny. Noah held up the bunny. “Just call us in if you need us. The bunny has a strong stomach.”
Alexis giggled. “Um, you look really uncomfortable in that chair.”
He shifted around. “What do you mean? It’s great. Me and this chair are copacetic.”
“Let your boyfriend hold your purse for you,” Inez said, before she turned and said something about going to get the doctor.
“Oh, no, he’s not—” but Inez was already gone in a flash of colorful scrubs.
“Just think, we can tell this story to our grandchildren,” Noah said. He nonchalantly picked up a copy of the children’s book
Leonardo, the Terrible Monster
and riffled through it.
“What story?” Alexis asked.
“The tragic tale, of how you hurt yourself in my chili-making class, and how I heroically whisked you over to the hospital for stitches. It will make a very romantic story, I assure you.”
She rolled her eyes, but secretly felt a little spark of excitement. “You’re crazy,” she said.
“I remember being in the hospital when I was a kid, I was always breaking something and my mother would drive me, yelling and pinching my ear, she was so mad I’d hurt myself. I was more afraid of her than of the doctors. I broke the same arm three times in the third grade.”
“Doing what?”
“Oh, you know. Rollerblading. Biking. Doing backflips.”
“Backflips?”
“Of course. Off the roof of our garage. And one time I had to be brought in because I had one of those bugs in my ear, an earwig?”
Alexis sat in one of the little plastic chairs opposite him. It hurt her butt. “I thought that was a myth,” she said.
“Oh, no. They crawl inside your ear and eat your brain. That’s why I’m so crazy now.” He crossed his eyes and stuck out his tongue.
Despite the pain, which was now creeping up her hand, Alexis laughed out loud.
Inez had come back. “Come, dear, the doctor’s almost ready for you.”
“Knock ’em dead,” Noah said. “Rabbit and I are rooting for you.” He held up the stuffed animal and made its paw wave to her.
Inez put her arm through Alexis’s and steered her down a hallway with green footprints and a sign that read
FOLLOW THE FEET TO ER.
She sat her on a cot and drew a curtain around her in a circle so she was finally alone for the first time since she’d left her apartment what seemed like forever ago. Alexis reached for her phone to call Billy, only to see that she had no bars, and therefore no reception. A bright red splotch was coming through the paper towel on her finger, like a Rorschach test. She scooted on the cot, holding her finger in the air. The sheets felt scratchy beneath her.
The squeak of a gurney being pushed down the hallway filled her ears. Far off, someone was screaming, and the sound carried to her muted, like she was underwater.
A chart taped to the wall read
WHAT IS YOUR PAIN LEVEL, ONE THROUGH TEN?
The levels appeared to coincide with smiley faces, which ranged from very happy, to maybe you didn’t get the Justin Bieber tickets you wanted, all the way to your boyfriend is screwing your best friend.
The screams faded out, and the sound of a heart monitor’s beeping once again rushed into her ears. There was an elderly Indian woman lying inert behind the next curtain over. Someone, perhaps her son, slumped over the side of her bed, asleep. The woman stared at the ceiling, her chest rising and falling to the rhythm of the monitor. She seemed defeated, somehow. Like life had let her down. The red dot on the middle of her forehead matched the color seeping from Alexis’s bandage.
Alexis knew how the woman felt—not alone, and yet very much so. She felt hungry and tired. Estranged from her parents, and making a living out of telling people a message they didn’t want to hear (“You’re overweight and it’s killing you!”). Noah was in the waiting room and Alexis wished he’d leave. She was exhausted and felt awkward about him being there. Alexis was quite used to doing things on her own. Sometimes Billy accompanied her grocery shopping, or scouting for a bathing suit, or for a glass of wine at a new restaurant she’d read about in
New York
magazine, but most of the time it was just solo Alexis. She prided herself on walking around this great city without needing a gaggle of people with her.
Just last week she’d tried a new noodle bar in the East Village for dinner, sat on the counter with her elbows propped, and read
The Sun Also Rises
while enjoying ramen soup. All the while, as couples held hands on the sidewalk and she received a few glances while eating her dinner, inwardly she’d felt pride, a shameless pride, that she was able to enjoy herself, by herself. You can read all the articles in women’s magazines that tell you to be independent, but actually living with very few people in your life can be hard to do. After dinner she went to the Sunshine Cinema to see a foreign film with subtitles, which she enjoyed. (She liked the big, overdone expressions and wild gesturing.)
Alexis lay there on top of stiff, starched sheets and people rushed past her curtained-off cot, and machines beeped, and wheelchair wheels squeaked past her, and all the while she hated this seedling of an emotion that had been growing inside her since she walked through the doors to the hospital. She took pride in fending off loneliness but as she lay on her back Alexis suddenly felt the overwhelming urge for Noah to come sit with her. It must have something to do with being in pain; her defenses were down, Alexis mused. She’d bounce right back to her old bitchy self in no time.
She startled when the curtain whisked back and a short, chubby man who had a pudgy baby face strode confidently over to her cot. White hair stuck up on either side of his head like waves. “I’m Dr. Whisk,” he said. His smile lit up his whole face, relaxing Alexis immediately. “Like the tool you use to make a cake.”
“You must have to say that a lot,” she said dryly, shifting on the cot to sit up. Her finger throbbed.
“Never get tired of it,” he said, still smiling and not missing a beat. He’d dealt with cranky gang members with multiple gunshot wounds. Alexis with her attitude was nothing. “Now, what happened here?” he asked.
“I cut my finger during a cooking class,” she said, gingerly holding it out to him.
He went to a gleaming white cabinet behind her cot and opened it. He reached inside and pulled out a kidney-shaped metal bin. “Well, what’d you do that for?” he joked cheerfully.
Alexis sighed. She didn’t do banter. Not well, anyway.
“Sorry,” Dr. Whisk said. “Started my day over in pediatrics. So I’m a little jazzed up and still have the happy face on.”
Alexis decided to extend an olive branch. “How long have you been working here?”
He cheerily unwrapped her finger, whistled at the cut, and dumped the soaked bandages inside the basin. “I’m sixty-one,” he answered. He winked at her. “I’m retiring to a small Rhode Island town soon, to deliver babies. I can’t wait. The emergency room can wear a man down.”
He gently took off the wrap she’d received when she first arrived (now soaked through with cherry-lollipop-red blood), then got down to the paper towels given to her in Noah’s class.
“I have three sons. Two are doctors, and one is in clown school at Coney Island.”
Alexis burst out laughing. “Well, it could be worse. He could have done what everyone else in his family did, and not follow his heart.”
“You are a very wise woman,” Dr. Whisk said.
Suddenly the sound of pulling back her curtain.
“Hey, is this where I can find New York’s next top chef?” Noah peeked his head around. “Hey there, Doc,” he said.
She felt a rush at seeing him. Suddenly the white of Dr. Whisk’s coat looked brighter. She smiled, then hid it with her hand. The day tilted on its axis, seeming less sad, less dreary. She felt a shot of optimism course through her. If only he wasn’t so damn
cute
.
“I told your boyfriend it was fine for him to sit with you, this will only take a minute,” Dr. Whisk said, busying himself with rummaging around in the nearby cabinet.
“Oh, he’s not my boyfriend,” Alexis said, laughing nervously.
Noah angled his large frame in front of the curtain and sat down in a chair to Alexis’s left. He crossed one long leg over the other and sat back. He looked too big for the small space, like that black-and-white Diane Arbus photograph of a giant with his parents in the Bronx. “I’m her knight in shining armor,” he said.
“Hey, got you these,” he continued, handing her a box of raisins. “Thought you might be hungry since you missed out on my chili.”
“Oh! Thanks.” She opened the lid with her good hand and dumped them into her mouth. She was starving. To hell with inputting their calories into her phone.
“You’re not worried about missing the Yankees spring training coverage on the tube tonight?” Dr. Whisk said jokingly to Noah while rooting through a cupboard behind Alexis. His voice came out muffled.
“I DVR’d it, of course,” Noah said.
Alexis rolled her eyes. Did men have to bring up sports any chance they got? Could they get back to her wound, please?
“Ow!” Alexis yelped. Dr. Whisk had walked back next to her and was examining her finger. The tip had gone nearly white, and light pink near the wound. It had stopped bleeding, but the cut was deep. She could see a shining sliver of bone.
“Sorry, sorry.” He clapped his hands together. “What do you say we stitch you up and send you on your way?”
Alexis gulped, then squared her shoulders. She’d once broken her leg during cheerleading practice and not cried a single tear. She’d always had a high threshold for pain. She was her father’s daughter. Tough.
“Sure,” she said.
Noah scooted his chair around the table and nonchalantly reached out to take Alexis’s other hand. He had keys in his pocket that jingled when his leg moved.
“Um. What are you doing?” she asked.
“Holding your hand,” he said. “I got forty stitches on my back once. Fell rock-climbing on Flagstaff Mountain. Fucking killed.”
“Er … thanks, I guess,” Alexis said.
It didn’t hurt as much as she’d thought it would. Whisk injected her with pain meds. It was more of a tugging sensation, with a prick of pain every time the needle dipped into her finger. The stitches looked like a line of shiny black ants. She blew air out of her mouth, which made her wispy hair go up and down, and tried to hold her finger out straight.
“Don’t look at it,” Noah said. “Look at me.”
So she did. She stared into his eyes, which felt a little like swimming naked in the ocean at night. He had a tiny ring of gold inside his left iris.
Fifteen stitches and approximately one zillion forms to sign later, Alexis found herself sitting in a very uncomfortable green plastic chair in the hospital cafeteria across from Noah, doing something she never thought she would do: licking the sides of an ice-cream sandwich.