Thirty Two

WHO THE HELL CARES WHAT TIME IT IS? The sterile smell is overwhelming. My mind is fuzzy for the first few seconds after I wake up until a jolt of reality clears the fog and sends me reeling back into the present. "Jackson!" I pull at my arms to help myself up but they've been replaced by concrete and I can't. They're stuck. I turn my head to the side to discover that my wrists are anchored to the hospital bed with brown, tattered leather shackles. I follow the length of my leg, and although I'm covered in a flimsy blanket I pull and feel that my ankles are also imprisoned. Oh my God. They think I'm crazy. I'm not crazy. I'm about to scream when a nurse enters the room. She's wearing scrubs with a pattern of little suns, complete with sunglasses and rainbows on them. Doesn't she know the sun is gone? Doesn't she realize it's grey and grim and cloudy and awful? I want to ask her these things. Don't you know the sun will never shine again, nurse? Don't you realize there is only darkness? She offers me a contrived smile. It's the kind of smile that works to disguise tremendous sympathy, like when someone dies. "Look who is awake," she says brightly. Her voice is wrapped in a deep, southern drawl. Ugh. She's so peppy I could puke. Leave it to the world to hand me a nurse with the same personality as the hideous scrubs she's wearing. "I wasn't asleep," I point out flatly. "I was drugged. Big difference." "Well from what I heard, you were fixin' to cause quite the stir." I don't care what they think I was fixing to do. I need to get out of here. I need to find Jax. I don't have time for this. I pull upwards on the restraints. "I'm not crazy," I tell her. "Undo them. Please." She picks up a clipboard affixed to the end of the bed and her eyes scan the papers. "Afraid I can't until the doctor clears you." "Get him," I say. "Please." I clear my throat, realizing how demanding I must sound right now. "I mean I would really, really appreciate it if you would get the doctor." "He'll be round soon, dear." She moves to the side of my bed and slips a blood pressure monitor around my bicep, cranking the small handle, pumping it up and watching closely as it deflates. "How are you feeling?" What does she mean how am I feeling? I've just lost the best part of myself. The person who made me feel everything I've always wanted to feel, to be the only person I ever wanted to be. I can't even wrap my head around the tragedy of it all so how am I supposed to feel? I pull at the restraints again. "Please," I say. "I need to leave." She stifles a laugh. Bitch. "Afraid not." "I need to make a phone call." "What you need to do is relax, alright? The doctor will be around soon and once he sees you, we can decide what's next." "What do you mean decide what's next?" "What the best course of action to take is." "The best course of action is to let me go. I'm fine." There's that God awful smile again. The one reserved for the living in memory of the dead. "Well we'll just have to see about that." With those words, she sets the clipboard back in its place, turns and leaves. I'm alone with my thoughts and that hurts almost as much as the realization that Jax is gone. What happened? I stare at the dropped ceiling tiles, counting the small specks in them while I wait for the doctor. By the time I reach 2,768 specks, a man in a white lab coat comes through the door. He's got a stethoscope around his neck, and a stack of papers in his hand that he is studying intently. I turn to look at him. "Hi there," he says. He looks down at his papers. "Lola, is it?" I nod. "I hear you've have quite the day. Sunstroke huh?" I pull at the restraints again. "This a new treatment for sunstroke? Is it like the new zombie virus, you're preventing the spread of infection?"m He glances back down at his sheet. "Says here you were getting abrasive with the paramedic who brought you in. The restraints are to ensure the safety of our staff. I can assure you there is no zombie apocalyspe in the works." "I wasn't being abrasive. I didn't want to come to the hospital." "Why not?" "Because," I say. I debate telling him about Jackson. That someone I love with my whole heart has vanished into thin air-same way he came. But then questions would follow and I know better than to tell a medical doctor that I wished for a boy on a cupcake and he appeared, particularly when I'm trying to convince him of my sanity. I know better than to say my time-travelling husband from the future showed up just in time to save me from myself. If I say these things, they will lock me in a padded room and throw away the key so I chose something safer. "Because I hate hospitals. I suffer from Nosocomephobia." I'd seen it once on a documentary I watched about irrational fears. It's a fear of hospitals. Richard Nixon had it. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, good doctor. "You're afraid to be here?" "Extremely. Please lose the restraints. I won't try anything. I promise." He studies my face, no doubt determined to see if I can be trusted. Apparently I can because first he releases the foot restraints followed by the ones affixed to my wrists. I rub the chapped skin on one wrist with the fingers of the other. "Thank you," I say. "So, let's have a talk, shall we?" "Sure." "How are you feeling?" "Fine," I lie. "Nausea?" "No." Yes. I feel sick to my stomach. Down to the core. "Vomiting?" "No." But I want to. I want to lean over a bucket and puke out what remains of my soul. "Are you feeling dizzy?" "Isn't that the same as nausea?" "Can be associated with nausea," the doctor replies, "although not the same." "I'm not dizzy." Another lie. My head is spinning so fast in circles. Each moment spent here is one wasted. One where I could be trying to find Jackson. "Lethargic?" "Not a fair question," I say. "Up until two minutes ago you had me tied to a bed. I wouldn't say I'm ready to run a marathon but I'm fine." God. I hope he believes me. I need to leave. "I'm going to check your vital signs," he says. "If they're good, we can probably chalk up today to sunstroke paired with some pretty bad dehydration. Remember in heat like this, its very important to drink water." "I know," I say. "I was careless." He proceeds to do pretty much everything the nurse did. Check my blood pressure, listen to my heart rate, look in my eyes and ears. When he's finished, he swings his stethoscope over his neck and gives a tight smile. At least it's a real one, not one that should come with a bouquet and a deepest regrets hallmark card. "Well. Looks like you're good to go," he decides. Thank God. "One condition," the doctor states. At this point, he could literally ask me to do anything in order to be able to leave. I'd probably do it without thought. "What's that?" "I'm afraid I can't sign your discharge papers without someone here to drive you home. You've blacked out today and it's not safe to drive." "Drive what? My magic carpet? An ambulace brought me here. I'll call a friend." He chuckles. "Right. I forgot about that. Once that friend is here, have the nurses page me and I'll complete the release papers." "Thanks," I say. He turns to leave but I stop him. "Doctor?" "Yes, Lola?" "I need my phone please. The paramedic had it." He walks to a tall cabinet on the far side of the room, swings the door open and retrieves my cell phone, brings it over and hands it to me. "Thank you," I say. "You're most welcome." He leaves and I dial Madeline, not sure who else I can call. Madeline is at the hospital half an hour later. I can hear her heels clicking on the floor and the bracelets jangling from her wrist before she's even in the room. I can smell the scent of cherry blossoms preceding her. Her eyes are rimmed red, as if she's been crying. "Lola," she says. "Good God. What happened? Are you alright?" The familiarity of her face, her voice, all of it brings the weight of the situation back. I shake my head, side to side, tears spilling over my eyes. "No. He's gone." "Wait. What? Who is gone?" I can hardly bring myself to utter his name. It forms on my mouth but my lips don't want to allow me to say it. They forbid me from saying it out loud because then it becomes true. "Jax," I say. "He's gone." Her red eyes widen and her mouth drops. "What?" "Jackson is gone." "Where?" "I don't know." She sits. "What happened?" "When I left your place this morning, I ran into X who wanted to talk. I blew him off and went to meet Jackson but Xavier followed. We kind of argued, you know, about the fact that he thinks he loves me when he doesn't. Then he kissed me. He kissed me and Jackson saw. They got into a huge fist fight." Madeline covers her open mouth with her hand. "Jackson used Xavier as a punching bag, it was horrible. X ended up punching me by mistake." "What?" she blinks. Her doe like eyes, shocked, disbelieving. "I stepped in the way. That's why Jax went crazy. Because Xavier hit me." "Oh my God! Let's think about this," Madeline tries to reason, "If your loverboy Jackson was that upset, maybe he took time, maybe he went somewhere to cool off, to clear his head. We all need that from time to time." More tears fall and I sob. "No," I say. "You don't understand. I went to the beach house. Some lady I've never seen before is there. Says she lives there. Says she's never heard of him." The words release in a string of sloppy, hard-to-spit out facts that strangle me for breath as they exit. "He's not there?" "It's my fault," I say. Actually it's Xavier's fault if I trace it back to the root cause, but I am part to blame too. "Oh honey, I'm sure it's not your fault," she says. "You don't understand," I tell her. "I wished I never made the wish." Jackson is gone. Once again, I got exactly what I wished for.