“I was talking about the toothbrushes,” she says.
“I know.” I run my hand through my ridiculous, spiky hair. “I just . . . I don’t want you to think I’m hiding anything.”
She sits down across from me on her own bed. “I’m a Pisces.”
“What difference does that make?”
“What difference does it make to me if you’re gay?” Zoe says.
I let out the breath I didn’t realize I have been holding. “Thanks.”
“For what?”
“For . . . I don’t know. Being who you are, I guess.”
She grins. “Yeah. We Pisces, we’re a special breed.” Rummaging in the pharmacy bag again, she comes out with the box of tampons. “Be right back.”
“You all right?” I ask. “That’s the fifth time you’ve gone to the bathroom this hour.” I reach for the television remote while Zoe’s in the bathroom. There are forty movies playing. “Listen up,” I call out. “Here are our choices . . .” I recite each title while an Adam Sandler clip plays on endless loud repeat. “I need a comedy,” I say. “Did you ever see the Jennifer Aniston one in theaters?”
Zoe doesn’t answer. I can hear water running.
“Thoughts?” I yell. “Comments?” I flick through the titles again. “I’m going to make an executive decision . . .” I pause at the Purchase screen, because I don’t want Zoe to miss the beginning of the film. While I wait, I pore through the room service menu. I could practically buy a small car for the cost of a T-bone, and I don’t see why the ice cream is sold only in pints instead of scoops, but it looks decidedly more gourmet than what I might have cooked myself at home.
“Zoe! My stomach is starting to eat its own lining!” I glance at the clock. It’s been ten minutes since I paused the screen, fifteen since she went into the bathroom.
What if the things she said about me aren’t really what she feels? If she’s regretting staying over, if she’s worried I’m going to crawl into her bed in the middle of the night. Getting up, I knock on the bathroom door. “Zoe?” I call out. “Are you okay?”
No answer.
“Zoe?”
Now, I’m getting nervous.
I rattle the knob and yell her name again and then throw all my weight against the door so that the lock pops open.
The faucet is running. The tampon box is unopened. And Zoe is lying unconscious on the floor, her jeans around her ankles, her panties completely drenched in blood.
I ride with Zoe on the short ambulance trip to Brigham and Women’s Hospital. If there is a silver lining in any of this, it’s that being stranded in Boston has put us in spitting distance of some of the best medical facilities in the world. The EMT asks me questions:Is she usually this pale? Has this happened before?
I don’t really know the answer to either question.
By then Zoe has regained consciousness, even if she’s so weak she can’t sit up. “Don’t worry . . . ,” she murmurs. “Happens . . . a lot.”
Just like that I realize that, no matter how much I think I already know about Zoe Baxter, there is a great deal more I don’t.
While she is examined by a doctor and given a transfusion, I sit and wait. There’s a television playing aFriendsrerun, and the hospital is deathly quiet, almost like a ghost town. I wonder if the doctors have all been stranded here by the storm, like us. Finally, a nurse calls for me, and I go into the room where Zoe is lying on the bed with her eyes closed.
“Hey,” I say softly. “How do you feel?”
She swivels her head toward me and glances up at the bag of blood hanging, the transfusion she’s being given. “Vampiric.”
“B positive,” I answer, trying to make a joke, but neither of us smiles. “What did the doctor say?”
“That I should have come to a hospital the last time this happened.”
My eyes widen. “You’ve passed out before from having your period?”
“It’s not really a period. I’m not ovulating, not regularly anyway. I never have. But since the . . . baby . . . this is what a period looks like, for me. The doctor did an ultrasound. She said I have a fluffy endometrial stripe.”
