“We’ll take him to Memorial.”
“No! He works there. He won’t want to go there. I’ll take him to Central. I used to work there. I know them.”
Someone or something began lifting me up. I tried to push it away but felt too weak and too heavy to do much good.
“Jacob, we’re taking you to get your hand checked out.”
Grace.
Her voice was the perfect embodiment of her name. It made the buzzing sound dull just enough that could feel like I wasn’t completely losing my damned mind. When she talked the hands went away, too.
“Keep talking,” I heard a far off voice say but the words had come from my mouth.
“What do you want me to say?”
“Anything. Just keep talking, please.” I loathed the sound of my own voice. It sounded so fucking weak and tired.
“Um, I hope you’re happy that I missed my swim workout for you. I stopped by your condo first and didn’t find your car. I was going to go up but I knew you wouldn’t be there …” She kept talking as the cool, night air grazed against my sweaty body.
We were outside.
Someone was leading me, holding me up, as we moved farther and farther away from wherever we’d been. But I couldn’t figure out where we were going. All I knew was that I needed to continue following the sound of her voice. It was like a siren call. As long as it kept going, I would follow.
“We’re going to the hospital, Jacob. I’ll take you to Central. I know the staff there, okay?”
Was it a question?
It might’ve been a question but I had no answer to give.
****
“How bad is it, Mark?”
I blinked and looked around the room. I was in an exam room. Peering down, I saw that I was dressed in a hospital gown. I was the patient and not the doctor.
That was when I did a double take. The room had all the markers of a typical exam room in an emergency department, but this wasn’t Memorial. We weren’t at the hospital I worked at.
“Grace, you know I can’t tell you.”
“I know the rules, Mark, but please, just this once.”
“Look, I’ll go in there and ask him if it’s okay that you see his records.”
“But he’s—” Grace and whoever this Mark character was she was talking to, startled when I abruptly pulled back the curtain of the exam room, staring at the both of them.
“Jacob.”
I turned to Grace and saw the fear and hesitancy in her eyes.
“Why am I in a hospital gown? And why—” I went to hold up my right hand and that’s when pain radiated up my arm and down the whole right side of my body.
“Jacob,” Grace called as she moved to my side, helping me back to the gurney I’d hopped off of in the first place.
“What the hell am I doing here?”
Grace looked at me with a pained expression, before glancing over at the guy she called Mark. I recognized the green scrubs and lab coat, marking him a doctor.
“You don’t remember anything?” Grace’s voice was soft. Too soft. The kind of genteel she used with patients in anguish or young children who were frightened in the hospital. It wasn’t the type of voice she used with me.
