Beast(28)

“I’m at the hospital like a billion times a week. I know people.”

“But how did you find me?”

“It’s embarrassing.” Jamie’s fingers sweep the side of her face, but they’re jumpy and she ends up tugging on her earring like it’s an anchor. “But I might have told a certain person who works at the food court next to the orthopedic suites about a cup of coffee I bought for a guy on the bus. And we might have chatted at length about it. And she might have seen or heard about someone matching your description being wheeled into surgery. And she might have violated all the HIPAA confidentiality laws by telling me this, so don’t breathe a word to anyone. I don’t want her to get fired.”

“You talked to someone about me?”

Jamie aims her camera at her face and grimaces a hideous shape with her mouth, pulling it down at the corners and grinding her teeth so they buck as the button goes click-click-click. She cracks one awful face after another, wincing sneers and scowling underbites. It looks like someone’s branding her with a red-hot tire iron. “What are you doing?” I ask.

“Self-portraits,” she says.

“Why are you screwing up your face like that?”

“Because it’s how I feel right now.”

She goes to make another monstrous face and I push the camera down. “Stop.”

“Excuse me?” She whisks the camera away.

Her stare makes me feel like I’ve been dipped in boiling water. Stripped and raw. “I don’t want to see you like that.”

“What if it’s the true me? Can you handle it?”

I blink. Maybe that’s Jamie’s beast bubbling up. “Yes. I can.”

She puts the camera down and scrolls through her recent photos, deleting some and keeping others.

“Why are you at the hospital so much?” I ask.

“I’ll tell you if you tell me,” she says, not looking up.

“Deal.”

“Therapy.” Jamie sinks down next to me. “I’m in so much therapy, sometimes I don’t know where my mind is,” she says. “Family therapy, individual therapy, group therapy, it’s endless.”

“Why so much?”

“My parents are ‘afraid’ for me,” she says, air quotes and all. “There was an incident at my old school. I took some things out on myself. They panicked. Fast-forward to now: my mom says it’s all part of the healing process.”

“An incident?”

“I got beat up, okay?”

“One of the mean girls?”

“No. It was a guy.”

I’m furious. “A guy beat you up? Are you shitting me? What piece of scum would do that to a girl?”

“Points!” She throws some more my way.

“Who is he?” I growl. I want to know.

“So chivalrous.” Jamie shines at the thought. “But yeah, that happened and then I got busted for doing something stupid that I don’t want to talk about. Your turn.”

“Something stupid?”

“That I don’t want to talk about. Your turn.”

My turn. “I fell off a roof.”

“Fell or jumped?”

There’s really not a verb for what happened. I confusajumplefell. My mouth wants to clarify with a flurry of words, but it opts for only one. “Fell.”

“That’s it? That’s all it took to get you into group?”

“That’s it.”

“Well, that’s a bit overzealous.”

“Right?” I ask.

Whatever I had left of my nerves disappears. Vanishes. I’m with Jamie and Jamie’s with me, and it’s like the jumping beans in my gut have been drugged.

She springs up and tries to climb the railing of the bandstand.

“What are you doing?”

“I want to get a big shot of the park,” she says. “The light’s really good.”

“How high do you want to get?” I get out of the wheelchair and hop over to her.

“What do you mean?”

Bending down, I hold out my hand for her to step onto. “I’ll lift you up.”

“I don’t want to hurt you,” she says.

“You won’t.”

She lightly steps with the ball of her foot into my open palm. “I hope you realize how much I’m trusting you. With everything.”

“I won’t let anything bad happen. I promise.”

“Ready.” Jamie holds her camera in one hand and steadies herself against the pole with the other.

I plant my left foot and raise her up, nice and steady.

“Holy crap! Holy crap!” she yelps. “You’re doing it with one hand?”

The sun blankets her hair with a yellow glow and casts her face in shadow. She’s so high above me. So slight, I could do this for hours. I feel her weight shift in my hand, like a broom you guide so it stays straight. “Don’t worry,” I say, not looking up her skirt. Even though I want to. “I’ll catch you if you fall. Take your shot.”

Her fingers balance against the dome, testing her center. Jamie’s stomach tightens and sends vibrations all the way down into mine. I got her. She will not drop. There’s a release in her feet after she takes her pictures, and I make sure she’s holding on to the rotunda. I hope she got what she needed.