When My Heart Joins the Thousand(31)

“I hope you’re okay with that.”

I close my eyes. “I don’t mind.” I wonder why I’m letting him do this, how he slipped under all my carefully constructed guards like a rose thorn under a fingernail.

Deep inside my brain, a warning bell clangs. Too close.

Outside, the wind howls. A wet mixture of snow and sleet slides down the windowpane. Winter, it seems, has arrived early this year.

Carefully he inches back, extricating himself from my arms, and I’m surprised to feel a small pang of disappointment. “I didn’t know it was supposed to storm,” he remarks.

“It wasn’t. The weather report said ‘cloudy.’”

“Guess weathermen don’t know everything.”

A branch scratches the window.

“The roads are going to be nasty tonight,” he says. “You’re welcome to stay.”

My gaze jerks toward him.

“Only if you want,” he adds quickly. “I know just coming over was a big deal, so if you’re not comfortable with that, I understand. I just thought—”

“I’ll stay.” My acceptance surprises even me. “I should go to bed soon, though.”

“Okay. Sure.” He looks into my eyes, and I have the feeling he’s getting ready to say something else. He bites his lower lip and looks down.

He gives me a fresh toothbrush in a new package, along with a set of his pajamas, and goes to bed. I change in the bathroom. The pajamas are too big on me, and I have to roll up the pant legs and sleeves.

Above his sink is a medicine cabinet with mirrored doors. On impulse, I open it. Inside, I see the usual things—a jar of petroleum jelly, a package of Q-tips—and then on the bottom shelf, a row of amber pharmacy bottles. Eight of them. I don’t recognize all the names, but my gaze catches on one word: fluoxetine. The generic form of Prozac.

I close the cabinets.

In the living room, I stretch out on the couch and pull a thin wool blanket over myself. After an hour of shifting around, I finally drift off.





CHAPTER THIRTEEN


Stanley lies on an operating table, unconscious. His ribs are splayed open, his lungs exposed, pink and damp and spongy. They inflate and deflate with each breath. Nestled between them, where his heart should be, there’s a model plane with a painted smile. Veins and arteries run in and out of its little cockpit.

The wing is broken. If I don’t fix it, he’ll die. But I realize, with rising panic, that I have no idea what I’m doing. My latex-gloved hands tremble. I’m holding a bloodstained scalpel in one, a tube of superglue in the other. Stanley’s breathing hisses softly through the mask over his mouth and nose. A heart monitor beeps in time with his pulse.

“Well? What the hell are you waiting for?” My head jerks up to see a nurse staring impatiently at me. It’s Ms. Nell, her mouth and nose hidden by a surgical mask. “Patch him up!”

But I can’t move.

The heart monitor lets out a loud, steady beep as he flatlines.

I wake with a start, pajama shirt clinging to sweaty skin. I kick off the covers, stumble over to the light switch, and turn it on. With light, reality reasserts itself. I exhale a shaky breath and flop back onto the couch. A vision of the broken plane flashes behind my closed eyelids.

I broke something precious to him. On my very first visit to his house.

I have to fix it. I have to at least try.

I creep down the hallway, toward his room. Outside his door, I pause. With luck, I can retrieve the plane and slip out without waking him.

I ease the door open a crack and peer in. Stanley has the covers pulled up over his head, so I can only see a bit of blond hair sticking out, and the plane is still sitting on his nightstand, in two pieces. Holding my breath, I tiptoe toward it.

I stop.

He’s breathing oddly—small, hitching, shuddering gasps, not quite muffled by the covers. My eyes strain against the darkness. I can see him moving a little. A nightmare?

He utters a soft moan. His breaths rise and fall, rise and fall, getting faster.

“Stanley,” I say loudly.

He lets out a startled cry. His head emerges from under the blankets. In the faint moonlight from the window, I can just make out his wide eyes, bed-mussed hair, and flushed cheeks. “Alvie! Wh-what the hell—?”

“You were breathing very fast,” I say.

“I— What are you doing in here?”

“I want to fix your plane.”

“Now?” His voice is oddly squeaky. He pulls the covers up to his neck, squirming. He won’t look directly at me.

“What’s wrong.”

“Nothing!”

I stare. The intensity in his voice confirms that it’s not, in fact, nothing.

“Please.” He gulps. “I need a minute. Can you—can you go in the kitchen, or something?”

I think about the breathing, the movement, his flushed face. Something clicks into place inside my head. “You were masturbating.”

He makes a sound like he’s choking. “N-no! I just—”

“Go ahead.” I step out of the room, close the door, and go into the kitchen. Getting back to sleep seems unlikely at this point, so I brew a pot of coffee, pour myself a cup, and sit at the table, waiting.

I hear the shower running, then creaking floorboards. Stanley steps into the kitchen, leaning on his cane, his skin still damp. He’s wearing blue pajama pants, thick socks, and a rumpled, long-sleeved shirt with a Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton on the front. Slowly he lowers himself into a chair, not looking at me.