‘It’s fine. I’m fine,’ I reassured her, my vision blurring at the edges as she darted forwards, her arms flinging themselves around me. Her eyes were shining when she finally loosened her grip, lifting her torso from mine but keeping a firm hold of my hand, as though she was afraid to let me go.
‘You’re a total cow for doing this to me, you know that?’ She sniffed. ‘I was scared shitless when they paged me saying you’d been in an accident.’
I managed a weak smile. ‘I know, so selfish of me.’
‘Veryselfish,’ Alice maintained fiercely, before her face softened slightly. ‘Honestly, I don’t even know why we’re friends.’
I laughed and then instantly regretted it, my hand flying to my ribs once more. Alice frowned, grabbing the chart hanging from the end of my bed and flicking aggressively through it, eyes skimming over multiple scans and notes. She held an X-ray up to the light.
‘Fractured ribs. Mild head laceration. Grade three concussion. You’re lucky it wasn’t worse,’ she concluded, her eyes flicking up to read the monitor beside me and giving a brisk nod of satisfaction. ‘What the hell happened? It says here you were in some sort of a collision?’
My eyes dropped to the cheap, scratchy bedsheets, suddenlytaking an unnecessary interest in the arrangement of the pillows behind me. Luca got to his feet, fluffing and plumping them for me, which just made the stone in the pit of my stomach feel ten times heavier.
‘Jenny had gone out to get us some coffee, and on her way back some asshole cyclist crashed into her when she was crossing the Kingsway,’ Luca explained, pummelling one of the pillows. ‘The paramedic must have seen I was the last person to call Jenny so they phoned me, told me what happened.’
‘Hang on, you were at your old flat? Together?’ Alice’s eyes flitted from me to Luca to the plastic bag containing my clothes on the table by the window, the red silk tie of the dress I’d worn the night before peeking out one side. Luca turned to me, unsure if he’d said the wrong thing. But I couldn’t look at him. I couldn’t look at either of them, my fingers twisting a loose thread in my hospital gown back and forth.
‘But why were you on that side of the road? Drew’s is the other way,’ Alice probed, her eyes narrowing suspiciously. My heart began to race, blood pumping in my ears in time to the increasingly rapid beeping of the heart rate monitor. My eyeballs bulged in their sockets, silently screaming at Alice to drop it. Her bottle-green eyes did not miss a trick as they darted to Luca and then back to me, her mouth forming a silent O of understanding.
‘Speaking of caffeine, you couldn’t be a doll and grab me a coffee, could you, Luca?’ Alice smiled sweetly, batting her eyelashes as she plopped herself dramatically on the end of the bed with a sigh, rubbing at a muscle between her shoulder blades. ‘Twelve-hour shifts are a killer,’ she groaned.
‘Oh, sure. Do you want anything, Jenny?’ Luca’s hand came to rest gently on my arm and I could hardly bear the tenderness of it. I flinched, guilt flooding through me at the look of concern that flashed across his face as he withdrew his hand. ‘Sorry, did that hurt?’
I pressed my lips together, forcing a smile. ‘It’s fine.’ The lie felt tacky and reluctant in my mouth. We both watched Luca exit the room, disappearing down the corridor in search of the cafe. Alice waited until he was out of view before she turned back to me, arms folded neatly across her chest. The silence seemed to stretch on forever, the ticking of the clock on the wall opposite marking each uncomfortable second. Tick. Tick. Tick. I could feel Alice’s eyes on me, big and wide and expectant. Tick. Tick. I wound the loose thread tighter around my finger, the tip turning bright red.
‘What’s going on, Jenny? Where were you before the accident?’
Something about her voice told me she already knew the answer, but I couldn’t bring myself to say it out loud. Admit that I’d been lying these past few months whenever she’d asked me about Joe.
‘I was getting coffee.’
Alice sighed impatiently, jumping to her feet as she paced back and forth in front of the hospital bed. ‘That’s bullshit and we both know it. I mean, let’s just skip over your whole little sleepover situation for one second .?.?.’ She paused, clearly hoping I might fill in some missing details, but when I didn’t, she continued her interrogation without even drawing breath. ‘Drew’s is in completely the opposite direction, Jenny, you had no reason to be along the seafront. You were with him, weren’t you? You were with Joe.’
Oof.Alice was still one of the only people that could throw Joe’s name into conversation without an awkward pause or painful wince. She was also the only person who could guess what had been going on. Hot angry tears raced each other down my cheeks, the thread breaking off in my fingers. One look at my face was all the confirmation that Alice needed.
‘Jenny, you told me that you had a handle on it. That thehallucinations had stopped.’
‘They did stop. For a while,’ I added, my voice small. ‘That’s the problem.’
I felt the bed dip slightly as Alice resumed her position by my feet, her trainers dangling several inches above the floor below. She reached out, stilling my fidgeting fingers in hers.
‘Jenny, look at me.’ Alice’s voice was gentle, but she squeezed my hand with an urgency that made me look up. ‘These visions of Joe, I know you think they’re helping but they’re not. If anything, they’re doing more damage. I mean, just look where they landed you.’ I followed her gaze about the room, over the sad magnolia walls with their copious plug sockets, the standard-issue blue privacy curtain that hung from the rail above the bed, the dull strip lights emitting a low buzz.
‘I’m so confused, Alice.’ I sniffed, wincing as I took a long, shaky breath in, a sharp pain twisting in my ribs. ‘This thing with Luca, it’s – well, I don’t know what it is.’
‘Honey, you’ve basically been crushing on him since you met, that’s what it is.’
‘I have not! I hated him when I first met him. For most of the time I’ve known him, actually.’
Alice rolled her eyes. ‘Potato, pot-arto. Put it this way, you’ve been spending a lot of time with him recently, correct?’
‘Well, I’ve had to for work.’
‘And you had a sleepover the other night after your date?’
‘Ergh, can we stop calling it a sleepover! What are we, eight years old?’
‘Fine. You had sex,’ Alice huffed, sounding slightly peeved at my constant interruptions. She held a palm up when I opened my mouth. ‘Don’t even try and pretend you didn’t, you don’t wear a dress like that—’ she cocked an eyebrow in the direction of the plastic bag ‘—and not finish the night with it either torn to shreds or on the floor. What I mean is, being with Luca seemsto make you happy. The happiest I’ve seen you in a long time, in fact. But you’re scared to go all in because that means you’ve got something to lose again.’
