I start firing off protests when Youssef suggests going to pick up my prescriptions for me.
“How exactly are you going to get there, Paige? You can barely sit up in bed.”
He has a point; he had to guide me up into a sitting position and create a little pillow nest for me just so we could talk face to face. He might be right, but that doesn’t mean I like it.
“Don’t you have, like, stuff to do?” I ask. “You’ve been here all day. I can’t ask you to—”
“You didn’t ask me to do anything, Paige.” His tone gets serious. “I’m here because I want to be. Because I care about you.”
His eyes are blazing with something I’m not sure I want to see, something that makes my heart cry out as loud as the broken bones in my hand.
I look away.
“You don’t even know m—”
“That’s bullshit, and you know it. We’re not strangers. I don’t care how long it’s been. I don’t look at you and see a stranger, so don’t tell me it’s not my place to make sure you’re all right.”
When I glance at him again, his shoulders are shaking.
“Okay.” I look away again, staring down at my sling. “Okay. Thank you. I appreciate it.”
He lays one hand on my duvet cover, just an inch away from my leg, and speaks softly this time.
“Where’s your pharmacy?”
After getting all the information and making sure there’s nothing else I need, he leaves the bedroom with my prescriptions in hand, and I listen for the sound of the apartment door shutting before attempting to sit up farther in bed.
The pain in my shoulder nearly knocks me back down, but I’ve needed to pee since I woke up. With a lot of grunting and breaks so I can pant my way through the pain, I make it to a standing position and all the way to my bedroom door. I’m a little dizzy from the head rush and what must be the remains of the drugs, so I brace myself against the doorframe until things stop spinning. Thankfully, Youssef left the door open. I don’t know if I could deal with a handle. Walking itself is all right, but anything that involves upper body movement sets my muscles on fire.
I get across the living room and into the bathroom, where a chorus of angels sings in relief when I can finally pee. Getting up off the toilet is a bit of a struggle, but I’m even more relieved when I manage to do it myself. This situation would go from bad to incomprehensibly worse if I couldn’t do that on my own.
I stand in front of the mirror above the sink and get my first look at myself since the accident.
There’s a gauze patch taped to my temple, and a dark bruise in mottled greys and purples takes up half my face, making it almost unrecognizable. My whole shoulder is one giant bruise too, the fabric of the sling a stark white against the angry violet. Both my arms are slashed with some shallow scrapes and dotted with even more bruises.
My hair is greasy and limp, and my skin is weirdly waxy. My eyes seem sunken, like I’ve somehow become emaciated within the past twenty-four hours.
I look like shit, and it only gets worse when tears start gathering in the corners of my eyes and spill down my cheeks. I can’t hold back the sobs, and I hang my head and brace myself against the sink as my shoulder screams out to protest the way my gasps for air shake my body.
I want my mom.
I start crying even harder when I realize that’s not true; I don’t want my mom. I wantamom. I want someone who will rush into this apartment and hold me while I cry before ordering me to get back in bed. I want someone who will stroke my hair and bring me more soup than I can eat, someone who will put all my worries to sleep and tell me this is going to be all right. I want someone who will just do everything for me for a little while.
But that’s not how it works. That’s not howIwork.
I lift my head to look in the mirror again. I ball up a tissue and clumsily wipe the tears and snot off my face with my left hand. The tears threaten to start again when I look at the tissue and stupidly consider how long it’s going to be before I can put makeup on again, but I swipe them away. That should be the last of my worries.
I splash some water on my face and rinse my mouth with Zach’s Listerine since I don’t think I can manage squeezing toothpaste. After I leave the bathroom, I grab my phone off my desk and bring it out to the living room. I lower myself onto the couch as gently as I can, bracing against the impact, and unlock my phone once the pain subsides.
I have two texts, one from an unknown number that must be someone from Shi Bar, telling me my friend called about what happened and that they’ll hold my stuff for however long I need them to. The other is a photo from Ingrid taken onstage last night to show off the huge crowd at some Toronto music hall her band played.
My finger hovers over the textbox.
If she was in Montreal, I’d ask her to come over. She could help me make some food at least, and she wouldn’t make a big deal out of it. I’m already so sick of smelling like hospital that I might even be desperate enough to swallow my pride and ask her to help me shower.
But she’s not in Montreal, and she won’t be back for at least ten days.
I scan through the rest of my text conversations. Most are with music industry people to confirm gig details, and a few are repeat graphic design customers who have my number.
