She nods her head, and I read a hint of relief.
“Oh, thank you. I’m much better today.”
But when she shakes her head, I see there’s a faint bruise forming on her cheek. My gut clenches. “For fuck’s sake, Josie—what happened to you?”
She shrugs and then almost reflexively lifts a hand to her cheek.
“Oh, that. It’s been…a morning. It’s nothing, really.”
Tears glisten in her eyes, and she blinks fast, like she’s been trained out of letting people see her cry—who the hell taught her that she never has a right to be upset?
“Josie,” I say. I keep my hands clenched at my sides, though I want to cup her jaw and look more closely at that bruise. She should get some ice on it. “Tell me.”
She stares down at her finger tracing the edge of the counter, her teeth gnawing her bottom lip. She’s full-body trembling now, and it takes all my willpower not to sweep her into a hug. I can tell that’s not what she wants, though. She wants to stand on her own two feet. I can’t help but admire the heck out of this woman.
“Fender bender,” she admits, and shakes out her arms as if to let it all go. “I was coming here from breakfast at my mom’s. I wanted to make up. We left things badly yesterday, as you saw.”
She looks down and gathers herself. I wait.
“So, the apologies sucked, but whatever. It wasn’t terrible. Just Mom being my least favorite version of Mom. Then, on the way home, I don’t know how to explain it. There was this red light…and this vertigo just seemed to come out of nowhere. I’ve never had it like that before. And never while driving.”
“Vertigo?” I ask, my own mind spinning now, recalling some of my medical training. “That could be an infection or an inflammation. Sometimes stress or anxiety can trigger it, too. Any changes in medication recently? Dehydration can also cause vertigo. We ought to look into it.”
“Yeah, I will…”
“Sorry. Sorry. I didn’t mean to pry.” I mentally kick myself for sayingwe. There is nowewho will be looking into anything. I’m annoyed that I did what everyone else does with Josie—treat her as if she’s weak, when she’s unbelievably strong.
“I’ve got to hope it’s nothing, even though with me, it’s always something. I blacked out, I think?” She blacked out? I have the sudden urge to throw this woman over my shoulder, run out of here, and keep running until she’s safely tucked into my bed. “Anyhow, the accident was all my fault. I crashed into a mailbox.” She sighs shakily. “It could have been worse. Thank God I didn’t hurt anyone.”
My heart clenches. “Are you all right? Physically? Mentally?”
She takes a deep breath, then nods. “Yeah, just a bit shaken up. And bruised. When I was a child, I had an ear operation. Something to do with my equilibrium? Vertigo can still happen randomly, apparently.” She touches her ear lightly, as if testing it. “I don’t have the best health luck. You know when doctors are like,Well, that only happens to one in a million people? I’m always that one.”
“Makes sense.”
“Excuse me?” she asks.
“You are one in a million, Josie.”
At that, she smirks at me like I’m taking the piss. I’m not. She’s exceptional.
“Anything I can do to help?” I ask, and her smirk softens into a genuine smile.
“No, but thank you. Poor Gertrude, though. It’s not looking good for her.”
“I was starting to have feelings for Gertrude, the old bird. She’s a bit of a grande dame, with her taped-up side mirrors and dented fender.”
“She might be ancient, but she’s dependable. It’ll be very hard to put her out to pasture.” Josie shrugs, then smiles with real affection for that clunker.
“When it’s time, we’ll have to do a proper send-off. A Viking funeral,” I add.
“A decent car wash, at least.”
We stand there for a moment, our silence filled with all the things I want to tell her. Mostly how much I care. How seeing her like this makes my chest ache. How even the thought of something she loves being hurt also hurts me and that there’s part of me that wants to get my team to haul Gertrude into the body shop for a full tune-up. That car is a liability for the precious cargo it’s carrying.
Suddenly, the solution hits me. “So it’s a good thing we added section eighty-nine, subsection A,” I say.
“Huh?”
