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“Stanley!” She looks at the cat then at me.
The fucker had been laying on them this whole time. Watching me run around like a lunatic. I hurry to the coffee table and grab the keys.
“Damn devil cat! I swear you’re asking to be a barn cat.”
“He’s sorry.”
“No, he’s not. I gotta run.” I give her a quick kiss before heading toward the door. “Love you, be back in a few hours.”
“Love you too! Don’t drive like a maniac!”
Just before the door shuts, I hear her scolding the cat. If only that would work.
Chuckling, I head to my car and climb in. I have just enough time to get to campus and into my room. The faculty meeting, which normally met on Tuesday in the faculty lounge, needed to change this week to a Saturday thing. I’m not a fan of going in when I don’t have classes, but a few others will be there as well. The things we do to make others happy is never ending.
“Ness?”
I shut the front door, drop my messenger bag by the entry table. I almost drop my keys into the bowl that sits, ready and waiting, but change my mind. I turn to the closet that is just behind the front door. I put my bag into it and hang my keys on the hook that adorns the inner wall. It’s the same place where the keys for everything else hang. They should be safe there.
“Ness? Sweetheart, are you here?”
Her car is in the drive, so I know she’s home. I don’t see the devil cat on the couch or in his cat house. Maybe they’re still outside. I hurry upstairs, ready to change to go out and help. I stop in the doorway, the handle of the door still in my grip. My lips tip up into a smile. Ness lays sprawled out on the bed, naked as the day she was born. I try to be quiet while opening the door thinking she is asleep. Her shoulders are red, her back, where the tank top she wore earlier exposed skin, is red too. Not bad, but she isn’t as tanned as I am.
“Don’t just stand there.” She grimaces and rolls so she is looking at me. “I need a second opinion on something…”
Normally something like that would have me stripping down and volunteering to inspect her body with my mouth. Something in her voice though, it’s not right.
“What happened?”
She sighs and buries her face back in the comforter. She’s talking, but I can’t hear her. It’s like she’s become that voice of the teacher in the old Charlie Brown cartoons.
“Hey, how about you turn that pretty face so I can see it?”
She does, and I get to see her face.
“What the fuck happened?”
The left side of her face is already bruised. There is a goose egg at the temple, and her eyebrow is busted. It’s then, looking down at her, that I see she has scrapes along her arm. There is a cut along her hip. And her knee is busted up pretty good too.
“Roll over on your back, baby. Let me see what else is wrong. Tell me what happened.”
“I had a moment of grace about a half hour ago…”
Vanessa
My utter embarrassment is suddenly washed away by the concern in his eyes.
“Well, to be perfectly honest, I’m not sure. I went from vertical to horizontal with a side of the world spinning around me so fast.”
“All right, what were you doing when that happened?” He is inspecting the cut on my hip.
I know that isn’t too bad. It bled for a minute then stopped. I think I caught it on a nail. I know he is going to make me go to the emergency room. The head injury is bad, but I don’t think I have a concussion or anything. My vision is fine, and other than the pain of the fall, I’m not experiencing anything else. The scrapes and the cut from a possible nail or two have me worried. I can’t tell you the last time I had a tetanus shot.
“I was trying to sweep out the back stall. There were leaves and debris in there. I had to go get the big shovel and a rake to help me out. I found the window above the stall ajar; I’m guessing that’s how things blew in. I got the other stalls clean before I started messing with windows. I got one side done with zero issues.”
My nose wrinkles up. That sends a sharp pain through my face. I grimace.
“Take it one thing at a time, yeah?”
