I almost smile. Which is deeply inconvenient, given I’m the reason he’s constructing origin stories for profanity.
I focus instead on getting him inside.
“Coming through,” I announce when we enter the crowded waiting room, using my boardroom voice that makes people automatically step aside.
I wheel Archie straight up to the triage desk.
Unfortunately, my efficiency stops when I encounter the NHS Accident and Emergency department’s triage system.
The nurse regards Archie’s ankle with the clinical detachment of someone who’s probably already seen more than twenty broken bones tonight, assigns him a priority level that essentially means “not dying, therefore not urgent,” and hands me a laminated number like we’re at a deli counter.
“Four-to-six-hour wait,” she says, immune to my expression of disbelief.
Apparently, my boardroom look, which normally cowers tech executives into behaving, doesn’t work on people who deal with actual life-and-death situations.
I try explaining that I can pay for expedited service, and she looks at me like I’ve suggested bribing the Queen.
“Here are painkillers for the pain.” She hands Archie some tablets and a cup of water. “You need to go to the orange waiting zone.”
“Follow the color-coded misery,” Jaymee says, nodding toward the orange waiting area. It looks remarkably like purgatory with fluorescent lighting.
“So, are you just visiting London?” Archie asks as I start wheeling him again.
He’s acting like it’s normal to have a get-to-know-you conversation between two Americans in a London hospital waiting room while I’m wheeling him past a drunk guy in a banana costume who is explaining to anyone who’ll listen that he didn’t mean to superglue it on.
“I’m over here to do some work for a few weeks,” I reply as we find some spare chairs below a bright-orange wall.
“What kind of work do you do?”
I hesitate before I answer. “I’m in the tech industry.”
Will sharing that information make him realize that I know his brother, and that his broken ankle is the result of a revenge prank gone epically, disastrously wrong?
Archie tilts his head, studying me for a second. “You don’t seem like most tech guys I’ve met. They usually can’t maintain eye contact for this long.”
I bend to adjust his wheelchair brake. “How’s the ankle feeling?”
“Like it’s broken,” Archie replies. “What part of the States are you from?”
“I live in San Francisco now, but I’m originally from Detroit.”
He sneaks me a quiet grin. “I thought I detected some of that Great Lakes vowel shift sneaking through.”
I try to hide my surprise. Most people hear my accent and guess somewhere Midwestern. No one’s ever pinpointed it that precisely.
The grin fades from his face as he tries to shift his ankle, grimacing.
“Are you okay, Archie?” Jaymee asks. Her obvious suspicion hasn’t faded.
“I’ve been better,” he says.
Fuck.
“I’ll go track down some more ice,” I say. “And see whether they have any stronger painkillers available.”
As I stand, Billy mutters something to Jaymee that I don’t quite catch, but probably isn’t flattering. Jaymee just watches me go, arms folded.
I spend what feels like a geological epoch waiting at the triage desk to ask about stronger painkillers. When I finally get to the front of the line, the answer is no. The look the nurse gives me suggests I’ve been mentally filed underprobable addict. She does, however, grant me ice, which feels like a major diplomatic victory.
