The Unseen (11 page)

“Thanks, this is real sweet of you,” Peyton said to the nurse, dropping her a wink.

“
Hurry up.  I’ve got my rounds,” she replied, not at all charmed by the boy with his thorny black-rose neck tattoo.

“
Peyton!” Cassidy said. “Wow, you look shitty.”

“
So do you.  Can you roll me close enough for a kiss?” he asked the nurse.  She sighed and wheeled him alongside the bed, reminding him again to hurry.

Peyton gave her a quick kiss, just brushing his lips against hers—Cassidy could have used a little more at the moment, but it was awkward with the impatient nurse hovering over them.

“How are you?” Cassidy asked.

“
Cracked ribs, no big deal.  What about you?”

“
Busted leg.” She pointed to her bedsheet. “They fixed it up.  I just can’t walk or do anything.  They say I have to go to rehab to help me walk again.”

“
I have to go for my arms and shoulders.”

“
I always knew we’d end up in rehab together.” Cassidy smiled, and he laughed.

“
Actually, though, my parents are moving me to some new hospital by their house, up in Alpharetta.  They say it’s really nice.  It’s got this huge indoor aquatic center.”  He didn’t add
it’ll be a hell of a lot nicer than this overcrowded public hospital swarming with street people
, but the thought was clearly there.

“
Then we won’t be together.” Her smile faltered.  Lacking insurance and money, Cassidy would have to take whatever care the public system offered her, and she was lucky to get that.

“
It’ll be fine.  Things will be back to normal soon.”

“
Were things ever normal?” she asked.

The nurse cleared her throat and took hold of his wheelchair.

“My ride’s waiting,” Peyton told her.  He looked at her a moment longer, and his lips moved silently.  She wondered whether he would say
I love you
.  It would be a first, and not a bad time to mention it, either.

“
I’ll text you,” he said.

“
I’ll
text
you, too,” she said, with just the tiniest sneer in her voice.  He looked bewildered, as if clueless what he might have done to annoy her.

“
Take care of yourself,” Cassidy said. “Don’t drown in your fancy aquatic center.”

“
Almost nobody does.”

The nurse began to wheel him out.

“Hey, Peyton?  Do you know if they ever caught the guy in the hearse?”

“
The hearse?” Peyton looked back over his shoulder.

“
By ‘the hearse,’ I obviously mean the one that almost ran into us and made us crash.”

“
You mean the truck?”

“
It wasn’t a truck.  It might have been a limo.”

“
No, it was the biggest truck I’ve ever seen,” Peyton said. “Bigger than a Mack truck, dark as hell, all those smokestacks throwing out sparks...the high beams were like fire.  They blinded me.  What kind of truck was that, anyway?  It took up both lanes.  That can’t be legal.”

“
Wait, what?  What are you talking about?” she asked, but the nurse had already wheeled him out, relentlessly keeping things on schedule. “Peyton!  Come back!”

“
Text me...” he said from somewhere out in the hall.

Cassidy sighed and looked at her purse, located on the far side of the narrow table by her bed.  She reached out with her right arm, and immediately felt searing pain erupt from her right leg and burn its way up her side.

She cried out in pain and let herself sink back onto the bed.  She hadn’t expected that.

She couldn’t stop thinking about what he’d said, though, that he’d seen something very different before the crash.  She was certain that it had been a long, low, shadowy vehicle with pale blue headlights almost too dim to see.

Gritting her teeth, she forced herself to reach across the table again, resisting the howling pain long enough to snatch up her phone.  She sighed as she dropped back into place on her pillow.  She needed more pain meds than she was getting, but they were being stingy about it and claiming it could react with all the recreational drugs still draining from her system.  Cassidy had assured them her body could handle quite a lot of drugs at once, but it didn’t help.

She tried to turn on her phone and text Peyton, but it was dead and she didn’t have a charger with her.  She groaned and tossed it back onto the table.

They’d both been high and a little sloshed, and they’d probably both banged their heads pretty hard.  Peyton had to be wrong, she thought—why would anyone build a truck two lanes wide?  Who could ever use a truck like that?  Peyton’s memory had to be more distorted than hers, because his didn’t make any sense.

In the early afternoon, she had a quick visit from a physical therapist.  He was a handsome young black man, tall and lean, with a quick, generous smile.

Please say there’s a massage involved,
she thought, glancing at his long and muscular fingers.

There wasn’t.  He presented her with a pair of crutches and invited her to stand on them.

“Already?” Cassidy asked. “What if I re-break the bone or something?”

“
The broken part’s been turned to steel,” he told her. “We don’t have to worry about your bones, just your muscles.  You need help getting off the bed?”

“
No, I can probably do it.” Cassidy winced as she heaved herself into a sitting position.  She tried to swing her legs over the edge of the bed, but her right leg was just dead weight.  She felt a stab of panic, realizing for the first time just how immobilized and helpless she’d really become.

“
Just let me know if you need a hand.” His eyes regarded her.  They were a golden-brown hue, full of mirth while his lips remained solemn.

“
I need a hand.”

He helped her to her feet and supported her while she eased the crutches under her arms.  His touch was warm and strong, keeping her steady.

“You’ll probably want to let your good leg and your crutches carry your weight,” he said. “I want you to do the opposite.  Put as much weight as possible on your right leg.”

“
I can’t even feel my right leg.”

“
Put some weight on it, and you’ll feel it just fine.” He winked, and it was just the way a wink was supposed to be, she thought—not cheesy, not creepy, but playful and teasing. “You ready to try?”

“
Sure.”

“
Easy, easy...” he said, drawing his hands slowly away from her.

Cassidy felt herself swaying, but she didn’t topple over onto the floor.

“I’m doing it!” she said. “This is easy, I’m not falling—”

Pain shot up from her right leg, and she fell.  The therapist caught her with his quick hands before she swayed too far, then set her back on both feet.

“It hurts,” Cassidy growled.

“
That means you’re doing it right.” He flashed a smile. “You could make it easier on yourself, though.  Let me show you...” He gently moved her arms and hands, adjusting her position on the crutches, and she felt the strain in her wrists and shoulders shrink away.

“
That did help,” she told him.

His hand floated just above her forearm, tracing the coils of white-flowering hemlock and purple-flowered belladonna from her elbow to her wrist. “Nice ink,” he said. “Those are powerful plants.”

“Thanks.” Cassidy gave him a weak smile, though she was in pain and struggling just to stand still. “You got any tats?”

“
Couple things.  I can’t be taking my shirt off around patients, though.”

“
It’s okay, I’m a professional.”

“
You’re a pro at checking out tattoos?”

“
Yep.  I’m a tattoo artist.”

“
For real?” He raised his eyebrows and seemed to be checking her out with renewed interest. “Are you good?”

“
Some days.”

“
If somebody had a tattoo they needed fixed, could you change it up to look better?”

“
Yeah, let’s have a look.  Help me sit down.”

He eased her back to the bed, leaning the crutches beside her.

“This is gonna look bad if somebody walks in here...” He turned his back to her and looked over his shoulder with a smile that was almost shy.  Cassidy lifted his dark blue hospital scrub shirt.

One side of his back featured a long-billed bird in flight over the Nile.  She knew it was the Nile because a small island with a clearly Egyptian temple—closely packed square columns, animal-headed people seated on thrones—jutted up in the center of the river.

“That’s amazing work,” she said.

“
You think so?”

“
The detail on this bird...” Cassidy traced it with her fingertip.  His back was as warm as his hands, ridged with muscles, his skin a hue that reminded her of the jars of dark, bold wildflower honey her mother sometimes purchased at the farmers market.  For just half a second, she was tempted to lash out her tongue and discover whether he tasted as sweet as he looked.

Go away, evil thoughts
, she told herself.  Her boyfriend was in a body brace with cracked ribs, even if he had run away to a ritzier hospital.  Part of her couldn’t help feeling abandoned.

It wasn’t as though Peyton didn’t look at other girls—the scene was full of drunken sluts who treated even local club DJ’s like rock stars.

“That’s an ibis,” the therapist said, shaking her out of her thoughts.

“
I like the temple, too.” Cassidy leaned forward to inspect the detail work, the tiny, barely-visible hieroglyphs between the seated statues. “This is beautiful.  Why would you want it changed?  Who did this, anyway?”

“
You’re looking at the wrong tat.”

“
Oh.” Cassidy had been so immediately engaged and absorbed by the masterful scene on the right side of his back that she’d neglected to notice the wildcat prowling down along the left side.  It was clearly by another, much less talented artist.  It tried for photorealism but came off cartoony, the wildcat’s head cocked at an angle that was probably supposed to be inquisitive but instead just looked very, very uncomfortable for the poor wildcat.

The worst details were on the wildcat’s face.  It had two disproportionately tiny fangs, sized and positioned in a way that reminded her of The Count from Sesame Street.  Worse, the shading around the wildcat’s eye very nearly suggested a monocle.

“Oh,” Cassidy said, struggling for something nice to say. “Well, it’s, you know...a wildcat.”

“
My college mascot.” He pulled his shirt tail from her hands and lowered it as he turned around. “What do you think?”

“
It’s nice.”

“
Man, he looks like The Count!  Everybody in the locker room was like ‘one...two...three! 
Three
hundred dollars wasted on that ugly-ass tattoo!’” He imitated The Count’s semi-Transylvanian accent. “
Weeks
of that.”

She couldn’t help laughing. “Why didn’t you get it fixed?”

“That’s what I’m talking about.  Are you good enough to make this look good?”

Cassidy took a deep breath. “I can make it look
better
.”

“
That would be something.”

“
Come by my shop after I get back to work.  Neolithic, in Little Five.  I’ll fix your ink if you get me walking again fast.”

“
The system will probably give you somebody else for outpatient,” he said.

“
Oh.” She frowned. “But you can still help me.  I don’t have insurance, so I’ll get the bare minimum.”

“
Bare minimum’s pretty good here,” he said. “But sure, I’ll help you out.  Gotta love the barter system.” His gaze lingered on her for a moment, then he nodded once and turned his attention to her leg. “You need to start stretching each of these muscles at least four times a day.  You want to focus on rebuilding flexibility right away.”

He showed her how to let her leg drop slowly over the edge of the bed, supported by her good leg, to stretch out her quads, and how to sit flat on the bed and try to straighten her right knee in order to stretch out her hamstrings.  The stretching burned, and she clenched her teeth.

“Good,” he said. “We’re out of time, but keep working on that.  Be flexible, be strong.”

“
Yes, sir,” she said, in mock-military tone.

“
And think about how you’re going to fix my wildcat.” He jotted down his number on a small pad with the hospital logo in the upper corner. 

“
I already know how to fix it.  It will take one...two...three! 
Three
hours!”