Page 153 of It Happened on a Sunday
I’m definitely in the hospital. Alarm bells shoot through me at the thought. What’s wrong with me? Except for a slight headache and this damn dry mouth, I feel fine. Hungry and alittle weak but fine.
Those three notes in my head…
There’s a half-empty bottle of water on the table next to my bed. I reach for it, and though I only mean to take a tiny sip to wet my mouth, I end up draining it in one long gulp. I don’t know if I’m supposed to do that, but I don’t care, either. I’m so thirsty.
A wild run, a stolen kiss…
There’s strawberry lotion on the table, too, along with a tube of Aquaphor and a phone. It’s not my phone, though—the case is Twisters blue instead of black. Which means it’s Sly’s. So heishere, then.
I think about pressing the call button for the nurse, but I don’t have a clue where it is. Besides, I figure if Sly left his phone in my room, he’ll be back soon. I’d rather hear what’s going on from him than a stranger.
Long hours safe in bed…
I take a deep breath, let it out slowly, and try to make sense of the cacophony in my mind.
There are all these thoughts as I try to figure things out, but there are also lyrics. For the song I’ve been trying to write for months? Or something else?
Let the light in on a Sunday…
No, it’s definitely the Sunday song I’ve been working on.
I sit up a little farther, wondering where the hell the control to move my bed is. Apparently, if you’re completely out of it, they don’t worry about things like that. But what the fuck are you supposed to do when you wake up—especially since the railings are up on both sides of it?
Let the love come pouring in…
Something moves outside my room, and I lean to the right, trying to see around the privacy curtain. And that’s when I glimpse just enough of the two men standing outside my door torealize it’s Sly and Marco.
A memory from the party tries to break through: me struggling to make my legs work as I climb onstage to sing with Pauline. I try to recall what happened next—did I have a stroke? Did I fall and hit my head?—but there’s nothing there. It’s a blank space.
Which isn’t terrifying at all.
“Sly!” I call out his name again, but he still doesn’t hear me. What are he and Marco talking about so seriously that they can’t even look this way? Couldn’t they be doing that in here?
On a Sunday, on a Sunday…
Fuck it. I pull my legs up and push forward, determined to either find the call button or get the hell out of this bed. But as I try to move to the end of the mattress, every damn thing I’m hooked up to pulls at me at the same time. I nearly decapitate myself on the oxygen thing in my nose—which I’m pretty damn sure I don’t need anyway.
I try to shrug out of it, but I’ve gotten myself tangled enough at this point that it’s more complicated than it should be. I finally get it off, but now I’m exhausted.
What the hell? I put on a two-hour concert several days a week. An oxygen tube sure as shit shouldn’t defeat me.
Whatever. I settle back in the bed. Surely Marco and Sly will wrap up their conversation soon. Or a nurse will come check on me—this is the ICU, after all. Aren’t they supposed to be around all the freaking time on this floor?
It happened on a Sunday…
I look for something light to throw at the door to catch Sly’s attention and see my favorite guitar leaning on the wall beside me instead. Considering I left the blue Gibson Hummingbird with the tour, I’m extra surprised to see it here.
Does this mean Jace brought it?
A new spurt of alarm tears through me. How sick am I if Sly’s crying by my bedside and my tour manager flew down fromwhere he’s supposed to be setting up for my Chicago show on Tuesday?
I reach for the guitar to make sure I’m not hallucinating, but the second I’ve got her in my hands, I know she’s mine. The tiny scratch on the left side of the waist, the extra mother-of-pearl flourishes on the neck, the way she fits me like a glove. All of those things, and so many more, tell me this is definitely my Roberta.
My hands remember her before my brain does. The weight, the balance, the promise of music even in chaos. I don’t want to let go—not now, not ever.
It happened on a Sunday…
I shift her and myself around a little so my IV and the wire connected to the thing on my finger don’t get in the way, then start to strum.
