Page 39 of Stay Close
It takes far longer to mop me up, but when my injuries are cataloged, the doctor begins the work of repairing them. “I don’t know how you managed to fall down a flight of stairs and avoid a concussion,” he says, swabbing the wound at my eye. “You’ll be sore for days.”
I know that. “Will Ms. Spencer be okay?” I ask.
“Better now that she’s got it out.”
“That’s what I’ve been telling you,” Edie murmurs.
Caroline scoots into the room. “You are ready for an update?” She lifts her phone. “During the police interrogation, he admitted to lacing Edie’s porridge with this.”
She shows the screen to the doctor and reads, head tipped up to see the screen through his reading glasses. He grunts. “At that dose, it must have felt like hell,” he tells Edie, “but the worst has passed.”
“How did he get in?” I ask. My anger is as much for me as anyone.
Doctor Frum gives me a local anesthetic and begins stitching the ragged sides of my brow together.
Caroline consults her phone. “The assailant was a food service contract worker, brought in to fill out the staff numbers for the state visit. The palace vetting process is far more strict than that of the Grousehof but he had authorization to work at both. He found a crack and exploited it.”
Doctor Frum weaves the sutures, glasses balanced on the end of his nose. “No doubt Nils Helmut is on a tear about security. He’ll frisk me every time I drive up to the front gates.”
The anesthetic hasn’t entirely taken, and I grunt. Edie drags a chair to the examination table and takes my hand. I’m not five. I’m not going to cry about it. My fingers curl over hers.
My parents would like this, I think. They won’t be sure about her at first. She’s too academic, too northern, too nerdy. But this—her hand in mine—is their language. Care for their boy, and my parents will love you forever.
It’s good, I think. Because I’m going to hold onto this girl for as long as I breathe. I know it like I know that dirt bike track in Texas, and I’ve been around it close to a million times. The doubts and hesitations—the questions about whether I can do this and maintain the same career—are smaller than her hand in mine.
“You need rest,” the doctor says, tying off the last stitch and snipping the thread. I shrug on my shirt, and he places a few bandages over the cut. “I’ll look at it again in the morning.”
“You’ll find him in my suite,” Edie says, taking charge as though she isn’t an invalid herself. “I’ll make sure he gets the rest he needs.”
She takes my hand and leads me from the room. I nod my goodbye to the doctor and Caroline before turning to grin at Edie’s back. Let her have her way. We have a lifetime of taking care of each other to look forward to. I want to get used to it as soon as possible.
How can I be so sure? I look down at her hand clinging to mine, the determined set of her shoulders, remember the decisive way she declined a bribe, the resolve she showed when we drove that gauntlet into the Grousehof, how she saved my life when she pulled the fire alarm, and how fast she returned to me when I had blood all over my face. I remember the tentative purchase of a winter coat and the way she gripped a tube of lipstick. How could I have anyone else? Edie is mine and I am hers. All we have left are persuasion and logistics.
I’m good at those things.
I follow her to her room, liking the way she assumes ownership of my health and orders me around. “What’s your family like?” I ask, matching her pace.
“Intense. Why do you ask?”
“Will they like me?” I’m not even trying to hide myintentions.
She stumbles, and I right her with a tug of the hand, keeping her on her feet.
“They’re intellectuals. They live in their heads. I’m not sure they’ll know what to make of you. That fight back there—” She holds her spine perfectly straight as she walks. “Your job is dangerous.”
This is it—the moment I know whether Edie can suffer me or not. She’ll have to. I can’t do with anyone else. It’s good that she got a taste of how dangerous my job can be even if I’d like to lie. I’d like to tell her I’ll be home every night at five to walk the dog. I’d like to tell her my job has a good benefits package—generous vacation time, an excellent 401(k) match, unbelievable health insurance, and bouts of flexibility—because it does. But I can’t give her anything less than the truth.
“It is. Sometimes. There are a dozen scars like this one”—I point to the bandage—“all over me.”
She absorbs the information, chewing on her lip. “Who takes care of you?”
If we’re going to last, something I would give everything I have to make possible, I have to give her the truth. “Medics, hostel owners who don’t ask too many questions. A lot of the time it’s just me and a first aid kit in a dingy hotel mirror. Sometimes I have a partner when the job needs two protection officers instead of one.”
She unlocks the suite. “Are you confident we’re safe?” she asks. Exhaustion is catching up to me. Every part of my body feels sore, screaming for the comfort of sleep.
Not waiting for an answer I can’t even form, she slots the security wedge into the door.
“You’re on the bed,” she says when I begin to ease myself onto the narrow satin couch.
