Page 10 of Holiday Love
“Oh, I see.” She looks him over again, and I watch as Leslie’s eye catches on the nipple ring. Teddy must have shifted. His hospital gown has ridden up to reveal a ridiculously chiseled chest and the small silver circle in his left nipple. Another new addition from the last time I saw him.
“Bit of a wild one, huh?” she asks with an appreciative gleam in her eyes.
I resist the urge to shove her out the door.
“Did you need something?” I snap before I can stop myself.
She straightens, finally dragging her gaze away from Teddy. “Going to get a quick set of vitals.” She picks up the medical chart from the foot of the bed.
My phone rings, and I hurry to silence it, noting that it’s from my dad. I don’t have to pick it up to know it’s about treatment updates. The way my mom hasn’t been sleeping. How her side effects are getting worse. I rub my fists into my eyes and promise myself to call him back on the drive home.
It only takes a few minutes for Leslie to write down the information on the monitor. Pulse, respiration, blood pressure, pulse ox. After a quick swipe of a thermometer over his forehead, she declares, “All done. Everything’s normal.” With obvious regret, she says, “They’re planning to transfer him out of the ICU early in the morning.”
“When does your shift end?” I ask with my sweetest smile.
“In an hour,” she answers. “When were you planning on leaving?”
“In an hour.”
Chapter six
Teddy
Everything hurts. My leg. My chest. My head. It all feels fuzzy and weird and like it’s my body but not my body. With great effort, I pry my eyelids open. Or at least I think I open them, but I must be dreaming because I’m staring into a pair of chocolate brown eyes set in a beautiful, if slightly stern, face. A face I’ve thought of many times. Pointed chin. High cheekbones. Lips the color of rose petals.
“You’re so pretty,” I slur to the ghost, blinking against the blur in my vision.
The apparition doesn’t like my compliment. Her lips tighten into a thin line.
“It’s the painkillers,” she says, speaking gibberish. “They’re making youloopy.”
“Loop back to you,” I serenade her. “Yes. I do. Back to you.” Terribly off-key, I continue with my song, crooning, “Something that rhymes with shoe…”
She rolls her eyes. “Okay. That’s enough of that.” She stands, and I note the faded blue scrubs she wears with the black drawstring tied at her narrow waist. She’s slim, my ghost. Narrow shoulders, chest, and hips. I remember how bony she felt beneath my body. How I was scared I’d crush her like a fall leaf under my shoe. I’d flipped her around, so she straddled me as she rode me. She’d smiled down at me then, her hair a shining black curtain that tickled my cheeks when she bent to kiss me.
I open my mouth to tell her how much I liked it when she was on top of me, but a straw is in my face. A lime-green bendy straw, the kind you give to a little kid. It’s bent at a ninety-degree angle. She jabs it into my lips and demands, “Drink. You’re fluid restricted but not NPO.”
See? Gibberish.
Maybe my dream girl, I chuckle at my own cleverness, doesn’t speak English.
“Voulez-vous coucher avec moi, ce soir?”I try the only French I know. I learned it from a song.
More eye rolling. “I bet you say that to all the ladies.”
She forces the straw between my dry, chapped lips. “Drink.”
The water is icy cold. It goes straight down the wrong pipe. I choke and half sit up, sputtering and coughing. Water dribbles down my chin.
My ghost frowns and thumps my back with her hand. She hits me hard, like she’s mad at me, which is strange because she’sthe one who never calledme.
Ghosted by my own ghost.
Even in my foggy state, the irony isn’t lost on me.
I try to sit up all the way, still coughing, when something bites me in the arm. In both arms, actually. With a hiss of pain, I look down to see IVs sticking out of me. Slowly, I trace the clear tubing back to bags that hang from a long silver pole next to my bed. Two bags hang there, one big and one small, both full of something that looks like water, but I know is not.
“What’s that?” I mumble. Even after drinking, my mouth feels like it’s full of cotton balls.
