“Someone needs to look at your knee,” Rose said.
“I can see it. It’s still attached.”
“What if something’s broken?” Rose said, putting her shoulder underneath his arm to steady him. “And someone needs to clean out these scrapes.”
“I’ll go if it still hurts tomorrow,” Tom said stubbornly. “And I’ll wash everything with soap.”
“Go to the hospital, you lunatic,” Ximena said. Rose tried to pull him toward her rental car, and he dug in his heels.
Tom scrunched up his face, lips tight and pale. “I can’t remember if I have health insurance right now,” he admitted.
“How can you not know if you have health insurance?” Rose asked before she could stop herself. Her internal filter wasn’t working well under strain.
“How many weeks were you under contract last year?” Ximena asked. “You might still have insurance.”
“I, ah, can’t exactly math right now? I’ll check tomorrow.”
Rose could tell he was trying to play it off casually, but hismouth was tight with pain, and he wasn’t putting any weight on his right leg.
“We’re going anyway,” Rose said. “You fell off my goddamn roof. I’ll pay.”
“I’m not going tosueyou—”
Rose shushed him violently, holding her hand in the air.
“We’re going!” she shouted, loud enough that several of the girls who’d surrounded them to make sympathetic noises and take photographs of Tom’s prone form stumbled back.
She crushed all other objections and enlisted Boyd’s aid in putting Tom into the passenger seat of the car.
The rain had slackened a bit, but the roads were still dark and wet and littered with tree branches when she backed slowly out of the inn’s gravel drive. Both of them were breathing hard, Tom probably in pain, Rose because adrenaline and fear and anger were still running through her system. She turned off the radio, then pulled onto the main road, keeping their speed to a crawl. It took all her effort not to chew Tom out for his carelessness with himself, and she was able to avoid that only because she could tell from his face that he was having an absolutely terrible time.Only one Rosieindeed—how many of him did he think there were?
“I’m sorry I screwed everything up, Rosie,” Tom said again when she didn’t speak.
She didn’t trust herself not to cry or otherwise deviate from the important goal of getting Tom’s knee tended to as quickly as possible, so she just squeezed the steering wheel harder. He was always sorry about the exact wrong things.
Tom swallowed. The seconds crawled on as she drove down-island toward the hospital.
“You know,” he said in a forcibly casual voice, “if you really want me to have health insurance, we could just get married again.”
Rose laughed against her best efforts and swiped at her eyes with the side of her hand. Tom fractionally relaxed once he saw his joke had landed, and that instinctively relaxed her too.
“Would that solve the issue of you doing things that are going to get you killed?” she asked, satisfied with how calm she sounded.
“Maybe I’d feel less of a need to impress you,” he offered.
“I amimpressedwhen I see you onstage,” she said. “I amworriedright now. You need…a lot of things. You can’t live like this.”
“So that’s a yes, then?”
Rose laughed again, even if the noise was strangled. “You asshole. It would serve you right if I said yes.”
“Serve me right?”
“Sure. Let me ruin your life again. Let’s get married again.”
“Why’s it ruined? I’d get your benefits package and move into your nice apartment, you’ll probably file my taxes for me, plus, you know, I’d getyou—and all you get is a fifty percent stake in my PlayStation 4 and some free theater tickets. I’d get the better end of the deal.”
The windward side of the island was deserted this season, and the headlights of the car were the only source of illumination for the wet branches and brown fields flanking the narrow road. Rose stopped at a stop sign and paused long enough tosneak a look at Tom, whose face was still more drawn than his words would suggest.
