“You’re awake! Good, that’s good.” She disappeared from my field of vision.
I tried to sit up, but a sharp pain speared my side. I rolled back, turning my head to follow Mei’s voice.
“Oi, you!” Hands in the air, Mei charged after a dishevelled man wheeling a bicycle. “Where are you going? You need to apologise.”
The man turned and scowled. “Look what she’s done to my bloody bike. Not to mention my jacket. She owes me an apology.” He held up a shredded sleeve. “It’s ruined.”
“You can’t just run someone over and walk away.”
“The mad cow ran out in front of me on the bicycle path.”
Mei looked around with narrowed eyes. “Where is this bike path?”
The man pushed thick-rimmed glasses up his nose and huffed. “Granted, you can’t see it now because of the snow, but she should bloody look where she’s going in the future.” He strode off, the wheel of his buckled bicycle squeaking as he went.
Mei paced back to me, tutting and shaking her head. “What a tosser! Come on, my friend. We don’t need that bastard, anyway. Can you stand?”
“I… I don’t know. I’ll try.” Breathing through the agony, I tentatively sat up, hissing as pain snagged in my side.
Mei planted her feet and thrust her hands down to me. “One, two, three.”
I squeezed my eyes shut as she heaved me onto my feet. I appraised my injuries. I was able to stand, so my legs were okay. My arms were grazed, but fine. Aside from a splintering headache, the pain was local to my left-hand side.
“Okay, you’re freezing. We need to get you home.”
Mei wove an arm around my back and helped bear my weight as I limped alongside her, flinching with every step.
“So, how come you skipped your lecture, huh?”
The cold had numbed my extremities, and the shock of the bicycle crash had temporarily numbed my senses, but as we moved across the green — now white — it all came crashing back.
Francesca, naked in Jeremy’s bed.
My stomach lurched, and I doubled over, losing my grip on Mei and expelling a mouthful of bile into the pristine snow.
“Oh, I guess that answers the lecture question,” Mei said.
A chorus of disgust erupted from a huddle of passing girls. Mei brandished a one-finger salute at their departing backs.
I wiped my mouth with my hand, and we resumed our slow hobble.
In my room, I got out of my wet clothes while Mei went to make tea. I lifted my T-shirt, fingering the tender flesh over my ribs. A colourful bruise was already blooming. Gooseflesh prickled my skin, so I pulled on my pyjamas and eased myself into bed, nestling under my duvet but still shivering, my body clenching every time I convulsed.
Mei softly called through the door before entering, “You decent, Cati?”
“Yeah,” I said.
She pushed into the room with a steaming mug in one hand, a glass of water in the other and half a packet of cream crackers tucked under her elbow.
“They’re not mine,” I said.
Mei shrugged. “You need something in your stomach. Drink some water first.”
Red-hot pain seared in my ribs as I tried to sit up, so I rolled onto my good side instead and sipped the water. The wetness softened the parched edges of my mouth, and itfelt so good I gulped some more.
“Whoa, not too much, too quick. You’ll be sick again!”
“Sorry,” I said.
