"everything must go"

May was leaning on the couch armrest with her face turned away. ice clapped together in my glass as i tossed the last mouthful back and set it down. no movement or sound. just her face covered up and her good arm wrapping around to keep her eyes hidden. her thumb twitched a little on the arm that was secured in a cast and she took a moment to look down. we were waiting for her father to show up and there wasn't much sense in talking at this point.

bang up job on the cast.

we had waited for a solid 4 hours to see a doctor, a mere 2 to get a bed to sit on and wait and wait and wait... i bristled a little when she got a choice of colour. baby, we never got that option. it was plaster white that would ascend into off yellow in a few weeks... none of this spectrum of the rainbow shit. she didn't even reply and i threw out black. thought it would match with more clothing items. she had sat on the gurney with silent eyes and one dead arm laid still on an elevated table. i looked at her and mouthed, "OK?" She shook her head no. I got up and fished out a bottle of orange juice from my man purse. i wondered if she could hear the distinct metallic pop of the lid opening for the first time...
the doctor came back with a tray of fixin's to construct a cast and muttered about having to kit himself out instead of a nurse "doing her job" and I sighed a little to let him know he wasn't getting much sympathy from me.
"This your girlfriend?"
"No sir, just a friend."
"How'd she break it?"
"Why don't you ask her?"
He looked up and yelled slowly, "HOW DID YOU HURT ARM?"
May leaned into his face and brayed, "BROKE IT ON SOMEONE'S FACE!" It croaked out with numb-sounding vowels but still, pretty obvious she could walk and talk and read lips. She looked off to the side and muttered, "asshole..."
Doctor Douche tensed up and proceeded with casting her broken arm and i kept on making her drink juice and eventually jam half a granola bar into her gullet. who knows how long since she ate.
when he wrapped up the doctor turned to me again to give me the run down on cast maintenance but i swished a finger around to tell him to tell HER. "Look, I'm not the one taking a bath with a garbage bag around it. Tell her what to do."
He looked back into her sour face and opened his mouth, but thought better of it.
"No strenuous exercise. Come back in 6 weeks to get it cut off or see your family doctor."
May nodded and hopped off the table. her arm dropped down and made a hissing noise half way between an "ow" and "shit!" I quickly moved towards her and gently put my hand under the middle section to support it. "Hey, Dr. Doolittle, how much you charging for a sling around here?"
Beyond disgusted he stomped away to squawk at the nurses station. After a few minutes of May refusing to make eye contact with me a nurse trucked in huffing and puffing with a square of material that she handed to me and turned heel out of the room. great, i'll just do this myself. thanks for pissing off the only people keeping sick folk alive in the fucking hospital, doc.
Lifting my hand away from the cast gently i flipped the cloth into a triangle.
"hold up your hair."
she was looking away. she couldn't hear anything... this is bad.
i said "hey" low and loud to get her attention. i'm sure she didn't actually hear me, just the boom radiating out of my fat mouth.
"May, lift your hair up so i can put this on." Her face looked sour holding her arm at an angle and lift her good arm up to pull back her mass of hair. I secured a tight knot and made sure everything was firm and safe. May still wouldn't look at me and just looked over my shoulder. I touched the side of her face to get her to look and she seemed shocked at how tender someone with no outward signs of affection could be. I didn't bother talking, just mouthing. "open up, your mammy's got something for you. I popped a hefty pain killer in her mouth to shoot back with the last bit of juice. Little sigh and I mimed one back with an over-tragic face.
"you gonna make it?"
nodding at me i heard her hand go fishing for car keys.
"Oh no no no, you can't drive home."
Her anger flared up quickly. "I cant leave it here!"
"fuck it. you know what? fuck it. drive the fucking thing home. no, you give ME a fucking ride home and you can drive it right up your ass!" i turned to walk a head of her and i could hear the clip of her heels pick up and an arm sneak into the bend of mine and pull me close. still nothing said and her eyes looked a head.
I waved at the nurses station. "Hasta mañana, ladies." Just a few tense stares. "Don't be mad at me, I'm not the damn doctor!" May turned around with me and watched me have an exchange with the oh-so-helpful cow that tossed us the sling.
"Buddy, it's BUSY tonight."
"Yeah, but why take it out on me and someone who doesn't even talk? If I'm being a prick piece of shit you can throw that to me. But really, her forearm was snapped, doesn't that warrant a sling?"
"Yeah. It's been a long night."
"sorry about that... have you eaten yet?"
Another one chirped, "If you call a half a bag of chips between the four of us dinner."
"ok ok... Give me the number if someone wants to call here directly."
She obliged and I pulled May's arm to get going. She seemed to wobble a little and I thought I better get her home before the pill really picks up steam. her heels clicked and clacked in the quiet halls. the uneasy still that the bowels of a hospital makes at 5am.... the steady din but muzzled compared to when it's bursting at the seams during peak hours. we were long past the drunks after the bar and only a few sad faces of children with peaked fevers sitting in the waiting room.
May and I stood out coming through the security doors from the treatment area... She was covered in a tailored suit jacket and smart purple dress shirt paired up with a skirt and fantastically expensive leather boots. i was in busted up jeans and a work shirt covered up just barely in a borrowed zip up sweater i took from Bear's repair garage. my heavy steel toed boots clomped out of sync with her heels hitting the ground and i felt eyes staring at us, trying to make sure some greasy asshole wasn't kidnapping some poor girl from triage.
i fished out my BlackBerry and turned it on as we approached the sliding doors. I slowed down for a moment to scroll through phone numbers. Jostling her arm I mouthed, "Maurice's or Bientot?"
"Bientot has better delivery."
"You're right... keep walking. I dunno where you parked."
May kept up her steady clip to find her car. Even in blinding pain I had no doubt in my mind she had made a mental note where the car was... and would, in fact, clearly remember it.
I called in a delicious early morning delivery of muffins and some assorted servings of fruit and other quick noshes like cottage cheese and yogurt. I gave the nurses station number to get the details for delivery from their mouths and hung up.
Finally we were in May's car and I didn't want her to be on the road. She didn't give me much of a chance to hesitate and turned the engine on. We wound home through back streets and I remarked how nice things looked in the pale shades of dawn. May didn't notice and I didn't feel like breaking her concentration.
I looked at her from the side... her long hair over her ears. I wonder if she even had her hearing aids in?
Pulling into the driveway May shut off the car once it was in park and looked at me.
"You wanna come in don't you?"
She nodded. I certainly wouldn't want to show up at home with a snapped arm after disappearing for 3 days.
"Should you let your folks know?"
"Binh called them already."
My eyes bugged out. Nothing says class than the man who broke your arm over gambling debts calling your parents to let them know you're alive. That's going the extra mile to show, you care about getting paid, but you also care about the little details of people management. Besides, why not cut to the chase and talk to the people who can cough up the money.
"Yeah. Yeah you should just stay over." She looked slumped over and was probably fading quickly as the endorphin rush died down. No more fuel for the brain synapses to keep firing.
I came around to her door and helped her stand. her weight was heavy on me and i wondered how the freak i'd get those boots off her without a prying stick.
Trundling in the back door as quietly as possible i was confronted with a fan of messages posted on the note board as I came into the kitchen. All revolving around a common them of "where are you?" and "where the fuck is May and why do her parents keep calling?"
She looked glassy-eyed at the post-its, a terrifying reminder that this was all very real and she had a lot to answer to. i hustled her on to chuck her into a bed to rest for a few hours after a few minutes trying to yank the boots off. they smelled something awful and her feet were chewed up from the heat and moisture of being trapped in them for days. nearly fainting i reeled back and went to grab a washcloth and something to dress the screaming pink sores from blisters that had ruptured leaving raw skin patches.
i held my breath as I frantically tried to scrub some water onto them and laid on thick lines of polysporin on everything that looked ripped up and tender with swelling. patting her leg i looked at her sleepy eyes. "you need something to sleep in?" nodding. i chucked her some shorts and a tshirt to crawl into and stared hard at her as she pushed her hair behind her ears. There was a hearing aid, but she definitely couldn't hear much of anything other than tones or a few booming noises that shook her more than being heard.
i left her to sleep on my bed and took my laptop into the spare room along with a phone. I called her father and hurriedly told him that May needed to sleep but I'd bring her directly home. He countered the offer by coming over to take the car back with the help of her sister and promised to come back to get her when she was awake. I couldn't even disagree since he had a spare key at the house. that's what you get for letting yer daddy pay for things I guess.
watching him pull up and chuck Josie out to move the car was well worth the stress of the hospital. i laid low to avoid encouraging him to come in and wondered how long i should let her sleep? i yawned. typical. i'm home and now i can't bring myself to sleep.