The Holiday Swap(3)
“Charlie? Can you hear me? Charlie, babe, open those gorgeous brown eyes of yours.” Priya sounded panicked. Charlie wondered what had happened. “Let’s get these off you.” Charlie opened her eyes and glanced down to see what Priya was doing, which was to remove the swaths of fake holly and branches of snow-crusted cranberries that lay across her skirt. Why was she on the ground, under a blanket of Christmas decorations?
“Priya, stop crying.” As Charlie’s vision improved, the makeup artist’s worried face finally came into view, only a few inches from her own.
“Oh my God! You’re okay. You’re okay.” Priya launched herself onto Charlie and held her in a bear hug. Then she pulled back and gently slapped her on her upper arm. “You scared the heck out of me!”
“Here. Help me up,” Charlie said, grabbing clumsily for her friend’s hands. This headache was like none she’d had before, and she gritted her teeth against the pain. As a relative nondrinker, she had felt pain like this only once before. Charlie and her identical twin sister, Cass (who handled alcohol much better than she did), had drunk two bottles of champagne the night before Charlie left for L.A. It had been the most miserable drive the next morning, with Charlie having to pull over multiple times on the trip from Starlight Peak to Santa Monica to be sick. She hadn’t touched champagne, or really any alcohol, since that day.
“Stay down a minute longer, Charlie,” a male voice to her right said. She turned to see the show’s medic—whose name was escaping her but who had bandaged up one of the contestants yesterday after she’d flayed her palm with a knife trying to cut a mango. He had a daughter, and a dog with a funny name . . . What is his name?
Charlie was horrified to see all the faces leaning over her. Including Austin, who—unlike the rest of the group—appeared almost pleased. “What happened?” she asked.
Standing by Charlie’s feet, Sasha frowned. She glanced at the medic, who was feeling around Charlie’s scalp. Charlie’s high ponytail had been loosened and some wavy dark blond strands were in her eyes. She tried to brush them away, but the medic told her to stay still.
“You don’t remember?” Sasha asked.
Charlie tried to recall any sort of memory about why she was on the floor in the stockroom. Then she saw Nathan sitting against the wall, a bandage on his forehead and a sling on his arm. He looked worse than she felt. “Is Nathan okay?”
“An entire shelving unit of pots fell onto your head, Charlie! You could have died!” Priya was wringing her hands, her glossy plum-colored nails going around and around. Charlie loved her friend, but she was known for her dramatic flair—both with her makeup brushes and her personality. As claustrophobia crept in, Charlie wished everyone would leave so she could pull herself together in private.
But then Austin was back in her sight line, his handsome face annoyingly smug. “Sasha, I’ve had a lot of concussions in my day playing football, and you really shouldn’t mess around. We definitely want Charlie at her best, don’t we? She should be checked out at the hospital—she took a pretty big bump to her head.”
Sasha nodded, then turned to the medic. “Sam, what do you think?” Sam! That was his name. Charlie felt momentarily energized by also remembering that Sam’s daughter’s name was Bernadette, and that she had named their dog Pancake after her favorite food.
“Sasha, I’m fine.” Charlie sat up, too quickly, and immediately wilted back against Sam as he braced her shoulders from behind.
“Doesn’t look like it,” Austin said. “Look, I can do the rest of the shots on my own. Then Charlie can go and get the care she needs.” Charlie did her best to glower at her co-host, who feigned a worried expression she didn’t buy for a second.
“Probably not a bad idea,” Sam said, peering around to look into her eyes. “What day is it, Charlie?”
“Monday.”
“What’s the name of the show?” Sam asked.
“Sweet and Salty’s Twelve Days to Christmas Countdown,” Charlie said. “I’m okay. Really. Can I get up?”
“Let me help,” Austin said, reaching out a hand just as Charlie grabbed onto Sam’s arms and hoisted herself up. Priya swatted gently at Charlie’s full skirt, trying to rid it of the pixie dust.
“Come on,” Priya said. “Let’s fix your hair and makeup.”
“I really don’t think this is a good—” Austin began, but Sasha cut him off.
“Okay, everyone, let’s get back to work.” Sasha turned to Charlie, and said more quietly, “You don’t look great.”
“Thanks a lot,” Charlie muttered.
“Listen. Here’s the deal,” Sasha said. “You can finish these last few shots, and then you’re going to the ER. Nonnegotiable. And if you need tomorrow off, well, not ideal but we’ll work the shots around it. Got it?”
“Got it,” Charlie said, still trying to quell the nausea; her head felt like it was under water. She had to hold it together until the B-roll was shot or risk Austin getting precisely what he wanted—the set, and Sasha’s full attention, to himself.
Priya fixed Charlie up, adding extra blush to her cheeks to hide how pale she was, and Sam checked on her a few more times. (Headache? Nausea? Dizziness? No, she replied, feeling guilty for lying.) Everything was going smoothly and Charlie was proud of her ability to keep her symptoms hidden despite how awful she felt, until the shot when she and Austin had to demonstrate how to caramelize the pineapple.