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The drawbacks to being poor.
The ambulance started going, its siren flaring as it drove us as fast as possible to the nearby hospital. “What happened?” the woman asked me, and both she and his brother stared at me.
“I came home and found him in the bathroom, passed out. I wasn’t home when it happened,” I carefully avoided saying he cut himself, not wanting these people to think he was suicidal. I mean, maybe he was, but there was no way he did this to himself…right? He was getting better. People who were getting better didn’t relapse like this. “I took off my shirt and tied it around his elbow, hoping to slow the blood long enough for you guys to save him.”
Honestly, I hated how I sounded: broken, tired, weak. It’d been a doozy of a day, and it wasn’t even over yet. Today was a day that would go down in infamy. In hell. Today was a day I really hoped was never repeated for the rest of my life, regardless of how long my life turned out to be.
If I stayed at Hillcrest during my college years, it might not be that long.
“You might’ve saved his life by doing that,” the medic woman remarked. She filled out whatever she had to fill out before gesturing with her pen to my hand. “And what happened to you?”
I pretended not to notice everyone’s eyes on me. “Oh, I…I fell.” Oh, fuck me. Totally stupid response, one that wasn’t even believable, but it was the only thing I could think of at such short notice. I was worried about Declan, not myself. I didn’t have the mental capacity to come up with a lie.
“You fell?” the medic woman repeated, clear in her tone she didn’t believe me. Hell, I didn’t believe myself, and I was the one who said it.
“Yeah,” I said. “I was flustered. I mean, Declan’s my roommate, and I thought he was dead.” Yes, freaking out over coming home to Declan all bloody and cut up was a natural response, right? Telling them about Travis and what he did to me…I was stupid, but I didn’t think it would help much.
Besides, Travis was mine. The vengeful, spiteful part of me wanted to make him pay for what he did to me, for what he had to have done to Sabrina. That bastard thought he knew me? He had no idea who I was, but he’d find out.
I glanced down to my hand, finding that my thumb had swelled. I’d been too busy dealing with Declan and reading the journal that I hadn’t noticed. In addition to hanging at a weird angle, my thumb was also starting to go numb. Or maybe it was in my head. Maybe I was mentally preparing myself for the worst-case scenario tonight. Declan looked worse and worse as the minutes wore on.
We arrived at the hospital within fifteen minutes, and as the medics pulled out the gurney Declan was on, I was the last out of the ambulance. The woman medic was speaking to Declan’s brother, telling him he could wait in the waiting room until Declan was stabilized, and to me, she started saying I’d get my own room, I’d need an X-ray of my hand to see how bad the dislocation was, blah, blah, blah. Technical stuff. Stuff I didn’t care about.
“Just take care of Declan,” I said as we walked through the sliding glass doors of the ER.
“Are you refusing medical care?” the medic asked, ready to add something to her clipboard of wonders.
Declan’s brother glanced at my hand, and he was the one who said, “No, she’s not.”
“But I—” I stopped myself from saying I didn’t have health insurance. Hell, did I even have my ID on me? I didn’t think that would stop them from treating me, but how were they to know whether or not I was lying about my identity? I clamped my mouth shut, not knowing what to do.
Since I wasn’t bleeding out like Declan, they checked me in at the front desk of the ER. Declan and his brother disappeared down some hall, even though they tried telling his brother he wasn’t allowed. The brother probably said something about money, or what family he was from, which then promptly shut them up.
Me? I was left alone, filling out paperwork with my good hand. No driver’s license, no insurance card. All of that, I said, was back in the dorm room. Lies, but they took them. Mostly because they couldn’t refuse anyone service, even if they highly suspected that person wouldn’t pay their insanely large medical bill.
It was over an hour before I was taken to my own room, and an additional thirty minutes before I was taken to get an X-ray of my hand. This, from what I’d heard, was actually considered fast for an ER visit, though I didn’t really know. My mom never took me to hospitals when I got sick. She paid for my vaccinations, but that was it.
As I waited for the doctor to come and see me, I leaned my head back on the pillow behind my head. I lay on a white bed, IV fluids dripping into my vein, because apparently I was dehydrated, go figure. That’s what being chained to the floor would do to you, I guess. I couldn’t even remember the last time I peed.
The doctor came soon enough, an older gentleman with an accent that was hard to understand. He injected my hand with some kind of pain-numbing liquid, and then he told me it’d probably be better if I looked away while he relocated it.
I didn’t look away. I watched, not even wincing when my thumb was back in its socket.
After one final X-ray to make sure my thumb was entirely back in the position it was supposed to be in, a nurse bandaged a splint to my thumb, telling me it had to be on for three to six weeks, depending on the healing.
Great. I could so plan out revenge while being a gimp.
It was as I was waiting for my discharge papers that Declan’s brother appeared in the hallway. I watched as he went to the nurse station in the center of the hallway, where all their computers were, leaning his elbows on it as he asked them something. A younger nurse pointed in my direction, and he straightened his back before walking to me.
He entered my room, gingerly sitting on the chair near the bed I was in. He looked tired, but still attractive. If this was what Declan would look like in a few years…
Whoa. Almost made a comment about signing me up for it. That was a bit too close to commitment for me. It wasn’t like I was against commitment, it’s just that after everything I’d been through, it was hard to picture me being with anyone. Me wanting to be with someone who was actually sane and not batshit crazy.
“How’s the thumb?” he asked.
“You have eyes,” I muttered. “How does it look?” A bit bitchier than I intended to be, but today was just not my day.
A muscle in his jaw clenched. “You didn’t fall.” His words were not an accusation; merely a statement of fact. He knew the truth, somehow, and I knew nothing about him. “You also don’t have insurance.” He knew so much about me, so fucking much, it was a wonder why he was even here, talking to me. Surely he knew everything there was to know already.
