“No, it doesn’t,” Sloane said and we walked closer to Ryder’s room.
“This is Rory’s best friend, former roommate and the woman she will eventually leave me for, Sloane. Sloane, this is my older brother Tate and his wife, April.” Tate and April both hugged Sloane, and said how much they’d heard about her, and how lovely it was that she was here. We all stood outside of Ryder’s room, a precipice Sloane had yet to cross.
“Do you want to go see him?” Lucah said.
“Oh, no. I don’t know. It would be weird. I mean, I barely know him.” She was saying the words with her mouth, but her body was inching closer. It didn’t matter that she barely knew him, because of the way she looked at him, the way she laughed when she talked about him, and the fact that she’d put everything else aside to be here.
“Go on. I’m sure he’d like to see you,” Lucah said, nearly pushing her into the room. He didn’t have to push too hard.
We all hung back as she walked inside, rolling her shoulders back and taking a deep breath. Despite her tear-smudged face, she looked fabulous, in a black dress with cherries all over it that looked like it was made in the 1940s. She’d done waves with her hair and pinned it back. Add red lipstick and she was an updated version of Lauren Bacall or Ginger Rogers.
“Ryder?” The four of us, me, Tate, April and Lucah stood and watched, which we probably shouldn’t have, but we wanted to see what would happen.
“Sloane?” His cracked voice said her name like a wish. Or a prayer.
“Hey, how are you?” She kneeled down next to his bed and reached for his hand, but it was covered in tubes, so she moved upward to his tattoo-covered upper arm.
“Been better,” he croaked. He tried to say something else and coughed. Sloane reached for the pitcher of water on the table next to his bed and poured it into a plastic cup, then held it to his lips. He took a few sips.
“Thanks.” His voice was a tiny bit stronger after the water. She put the cup down and reached out to stroke his forehead. That was when we all stopped watching. It was too intimate a moment to intrude on.
While Sloane talked to Ryder the four of us stood around. And waited.
15
We ended up eating dinner at the cafeteria. I’d heard all these horrible things about hospital food, but it wasn’t as awful as I was expecting. It was hard to eat, but not because of the quality of the food.
April got a call from her neighbors, saying that Gracie had thrown up and was running a fever.
“Fuck, this is just perfect,” April said, putting her head in her hands. I’d never heard her swear before.
“If you need to get back, go ahead. We’ve got this here. You can come back tomorrow,” I said. I didn’t know if I could miss work, but I knew Lucah would need to.
“Okay, we will,” Tate said, taking April’s hand. They said goodbye and left, so it was just me, Lucah and Sloane, who was just poking at the food on her plate.
“I should probably go too. I’m pretty sure my interns are crying and screaming in agony at the amount of work I left them. They’ve been blowing up my phone.” Sloane went and tossed her tray.
“You can stay, if you want. It’s completely up to you. Don’t feel as if you’re intruding.” This was the first time Sloane was actually cautious about overstepping boundaries, which showed me, again, how much she liked Ryder.
“I’ll come back tomorrow, if that’s okay. Have a good night.” She hugged both of us. And then there were two.
“Hey, how are you holding up?” I reached across the table for Lucah’s hands. I felt like I needed constant contact with him, to show him I was here, and I loved him.
“I’m doing okay. Sorry about earlier. I kind of lost it, I guess.” His face went a little red.
“You can lose it any time you want, Lucah Blythe. I lose it on you just about every day. In fact, I think I’ve filled my yearly quota of losing it. So never apologize for that.” My words made him smile, so we were getting somewhere.
“Do you want to stay all night? Or go home?”
“You can go home. I think I’m going to stay. Sleep isn’t really going to happen, and I can always crash in the chair in Ryder’s room if I have to. Oh, shit what about work?”
I held up my hand. “First of all, don’t worry about work. I have connections and I can get you out of it, second, I won’t be able to sleep if you’re here and I’m at home. So whatever you do, that’s what I’m doing.”
He nodded because he knew there was no point in arguing with me on this.
“They’re probably going to try and kick us out. I’m pretty sure visiting hours end in a little while,” he said as we dumped our trays and went to take the elevator back up to Ryder’s room.
“We could always bribe the nurses. What do you think they’d want?” I leaned against Lucah. I was exhausted, but not the kind of exhausted where I wanted to sleep. No, I knew sleep was far away, in a place I couldn’t reach.
“I could offer sexual favors,” he said, sticking out his tongue. There was his sense of humor.
“Yeah, I’m sure they would love that, but I’m not good at sharing.”
Ryder was awake when we got back to his room, and flipping through the channels on the small television mounted on the wall. He’d also propped his bed up and had pushed the sleeves of his hospital gown up so everyone would have full view of his tattoos.
“Feeling better?” Lucah said, and Ryder nodded.
“You here to watch me?” Ryder said, his voice still ragged.
Lucah opened his mouth, probably to say something about him needing to be watched, but then he changed his mind.
“Do you need watching?”
Ryder lifted one shoulder.
“You tell me.”
They weren’t going to get anywhere like that.
“I’m not playing this game with you, Ryder. We don’t have to talk about it right now. But we will talk, understand? There will be lots and lots of talking and you won’t be able to avoid it. We’re going to talk so much we’ll probably lose our voices and then we’ll talk some more.” Ryder was silent after Lucah’s speech.
I half expected him to throw a tantrum like a child, but he just turned his attention back to the television and kept flipping the channels.
Lucah found an extra chair and brought it into the room so there was one for each of us and then got out his phone.