Really Good, Actually(70)
Ryan sidled over and started showily checking in with Amy.
They could all get fucked.
Merris took out her phone and held it at that old person distance, regarding it through narrowed eyes. Amy was explaining surge pricing to her when I took off, at speed, inwardly congratulating myself on my genius plan to sneak back into the venue from the other side, to get another quick bump from Darragh before embarking on my walk. Maybe I would walk all the way to Simon’s, on the other side of town. I could do my gesture for him now. I looked great, after all. Why not?
I skipped around the side of the building, hearing my heels click and feeling the wind in my hair and knowing somewhere deep within that from the outside this looked very cinematic. I could hear Amy and Merris calling after me, the click of Amy’s enormous heels and Merris’s sensible ones as they gave chase. What were they going to do? I had incredibly fast, good, very strong legs, and they were old and stupid and old and bad and old. I rounded a corner, chuckling to myself, and started scuttling down a set of concrete stairs, gripping the railing, feeling focused and alive.
I was halfway down the stairs when I heard Merris fall.
Chapter 16
The hospital was a hospital: depressing and sterile, somehow both too bright and incredibly dingy at once. I picked at my cuticles and looked around guiltily for somewhere to sit. Two middle-aged women who seemed to be sisters were spread out on the last available bench, doing a Sudoku and lightly crying and looking like they’d been awake since they were born. I did not feel high anymore. I felt like the worst piece of shit on the earth.
It had been horrible, every part of it: Merris on the ground; Ryan shining his phone’s flashlight in her eyes as Amy asked her to count back from ten; a small crowd forming as I called 911 and repeated the words Amy was yelling at me; the paramedics arriving, briskly checking Merris’s wrists, ankles, and knees before loading her onto a stretcher. Only one of us was allowed in the ambulance with her, and I said, “Please, Amy,” and she let me. As they closed the doors, I saw her fall into her clown boyfriend’s arms in tears.
Merris had looked so old on the stretcher, although she’d spent the entire ride loudly insisting it was ludicrous that they’d put her in one. It was easy to forget, talking to her, that she was over seventy. Occasionally she made jokes about her arthritic limbs, or how people automatically gave her their seats on the bus, but for the most part she seemed vital, sharper than ever, indestructible. I took out my phone and googled some statistics about seniors and falls, an idea that revealed itself instantly as a bad one.
Down the hall near the reception desk, a man bleeding from his head tried to urinate into a water bottle while two cops spoke rudely to a woman who seemed confused and upset. Everyone the nurses wheeled by looked to me like they could plausibly be dead. I thought about how smugly I spoke to Americans about having access to free health care and decided I would not bring up this kind of thing next time I did. I asked a man holding a toddler in his lap if I could take the seat next to him. He stared back at me, either uncomprehending or angry or too tired to care about some woman wearing open-toed sandals in the middle of winter. The child in his arms said, “We’ve been here one thousand and one million hours.”
I bunched my stupid rented dress around my knees and sat on the floor. My phone was on 1 percent battery; I had no idea how long Merris’s various tests would take. There was a plug beneath some benches, between the Sudoku women and a guy in athletic gear who was cradling his left arm and periodically wincing. I tried to reach the socket from a seated position, leaning behind them and sliding my arm along the wall, but it became clear I’d have to lie down on the floor to get there. I was halfway under the bench, my fingertips straining to give the charger a final, decisive push, when someone stopped in front of me and said, “Maggie?”
I looked up from the ostentatiously sensible shoes at my eye level and met the aggravated face of Amirah. She was wearing pale purple scrubs and a stethoscope decorated with a small stuffed snowman I recognized from a children’s film about not being afraid to be who you are. The hospital she worked at was across the street. Amy must have texted her.
I crawled out from under the bench, jostling the Sudoku siblings.
“Did you yell at Amy?”
“No,” I said. “Yeah. Fuck, Amirah, it’s so bad. It’s so, so bad.”
“Is Merris okay?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “She’s getting x-rayed. They won’t let me in because we’re not related.” I brushed a line of fluffy gray dust off my arm and my eyes filled with tears.
“What the fuck happened?” There was an exasperation in Amirah’s voice that I didn’t care for. She sounded like she was at her wit’s end, but she’d just got here.
“I didn’t see,” I said. “She was behind me. It’s been so cold out . . . maybe there was some ice, or she tripped or something . . . I don’t know.”
I ran my fingertips under my eyes, and they came back flecked with mascara. I wished Amirah would hold me and comfort me or grab my hand and lead me out of here.
“Are you engaged?” I asked, sniffling.
Amirah reached into her pockets and proffered a tissue, a kind gesture performed coldly. I took it and blew my nose, then wiped off what was left of my lipstick.