Finding North (Naïve Mistakes Series) (14 page)

Kayla put her head down on the blanket and I held her. "I love you, Leora. You're the only person I've ever truly loved."

"I know," I said.

-3-

The same big African American nurse ("Nurse Thompson") who'd spoken to me when Kayla was in here on Friday, walked in the room.

"My my my, you two again. It's a regular South Central up in here, i'n't." She walked over and grabbed my chart, looked me up and down with one of those "don't try bullshit me when I ask you a question" looks.

"School fight?" she asked, looking up from the clipboard.

"M-hmm," I said.

"You pressing charges?"

"Um, no."

She paused, looked slightly shocked, then composed herself as if suddenly understanding. "Provoked her?"

"Kinda."

Nurse Thompson put the chart down, came over and pressed some spots on my back. I gave a yelp of howling discomfort.

"Girls, it really isn't my place but I'm gettin old and whenever you get old you start to look back at yo' life and you see things in a
whole
new perspective." She fanned her hands around as she'd said "whole."

"You girls are young. Whatever all y'all are into, or were into, or are
thinking
of gettin into, it's never too late to change and start again. And, in yo' cases, yo' life hasn't even hardly begun! Get what I'm saying?"

"Yes ma'am," Kayla and I said in unison.

"See, now that's why I like y'all. You might be into some rough shit but you at least got manners. Now, the gentleman sitting outside there, is he with you?" She looked at me.

I nodded.

"Young lady," she said to Kayla, "get him in here."

"But
—"

Nurse Thompson lowered her chin and eyed Kayla down with a "are you
really
going to try not do what I just said" look.

"Yes ma'am," Kayla said.

She went to the door, called Conall.

"So, Mister, I don't think you are her brother and so I'm assuming that you need to hear this. Miss Caivano, you are fine. You have a very deep bruise down. Now, there's nothing to worry about, but it gonna hurt like
hell
if you get on and do any of that hanky-panky, catch my drift? And it's possible that you spasm up and then make a funny movement and we'll have you in here, immobilized for three days. What is that saying: The passion of the moment and paying for a lifetime or something? Catch my drift?"

She eyed Conall and me, waiting for a response.

"Um, yes, ma'am," Conall and I said simultaneously. Kayla was silently giggling. One sidelong glance from the nurse and she tried to suppress it even further.

But I saw the nurse twitch into a small smile herself, and then force herself back into that bad cop look she was doing so well.

"So, to put it any more bluntly and just in case you didn't get it:
no sex
for at least a week. At
least
! You could irritate the muscles and then you'll be on your back for much longer than that. OK? I also imagine, being your age and living in the rich side, that you count calories and go to the gym and do spinning and whatever else y'all kids do today to get and keep a man. Well, none o' that as well.
Nothing
for at least a week. Understood?"

I nodded.

"Now, I don't know if you tried but you sure as well probably can't walk. So we'll bring you over a wheelchair so you can get on outta here. Prob'ly gonna be like that for a day or two. So, lucky you, you'll get sick leave from school. I suggest you start preparing for finals in those two days. It's never too early..."

She waited, stared at me. When I finally said, "Yes, ma'am," she continued.

"OK, then. Now, unlike your friend here, you
are
a minor, so we have to wait for your mother to come through to have you discharged. We cannot currently reach her. Your headmistress was authorized to provide consent for the initial examination but she said wanted your mother or someone else to handle the discharge so that it would be certain she would be informed. Only problem, is we can't reach your mother."

"Oh, um, Maria has legal charge to give Medical Consent in case my mother's not available," I said.

"Maria." It wasn't a question.

"Yes, Maria Gonzalez."

"I see. OK, then. And where can we find this Maria?"

"At my home."

"Alright." Her tone had eased now into something warmer. Although I understood that she'd put on the tough-nurse act out of care as well. She eyed each of us individually, pulled in her chest as if preparing to say something, then stopped herself, started to walk out.

"Um, nurse?" I said.

"Yes, honey."

"Thank you, um, a
lot
...for everything."

"Just doin my job." She looked at us three again. "And a little more."

-4-

"I feel real sexy now," I said to Conall as he wheeled me into the elevator of
my apartment block.

"I can't think of anything funny to say to that without overstepping the boundaries of propriety."

"Oh no, you did that when you started talking about Juliet."

"You're never going to let me live that down, are you?"

His accent was making me tingle. "Never."

"So, I suppose this is me meeting the mom today."

"No, she's probably not home. And, besides, Maria pretty much raised me. I mean, she's the one who's always been there for me when I needed to talk or, I don't know, go over stuff."

The elevator dinged and Conall pushed me to the door.

"I see... Is that why when she met me at the hospital she said, 'So, you must be the
gentleman
?'"

"Oh, you caught that, did you?"

"Well, the way she said 'gentleman' led me to believe there was more to it. I don't think she was merely using it as a term to describe men in general."

"Maybe. Maybe not," I said noncommittally.

"So, this is me..." I pointed to the door. Conall opened it and whistled when he looked inside, awed.

"Um, hello? Are you going to push me in?"

"Well, at least I can scratch gold-digger off the list. Unless, of course, you've been told that when you turn eighteen you're on your own and have to work your way up the world. My goodness, chandeliers? No one has chandeliers, except maybe in hotels..."

"Well, we do."

"So, is your mother here?"

Oh God, does he
really
want to meet my mother?

"Mom!" I bellowed. "Mom!" I could go check her room, but as you can see..." I gestured elegantly to my wheelchair.

"Oh, I'm so sorry you poor child."

"Asshole."

Conall walked to the living room, looked around.

"My mom's room is down the hall there, to the left. If she's not here, the door will be open."

"My goodness, this place is huge!" his voice faded as he walked away. He came back. "Maybe
I'm
secretly the gold-digger. You thought of that?"

I gave him my best unimpressed look.

"And?"

"And what?"

"Is she here or not?"

"Oh, no. Door was open. Room was empty."

Good. Because that's why I sent Maria home as well...

"Well, here's the next bad news. See those stairs?"

He looked at the stairs, looked at me, pointed at me, then pointed at the stairs, then opened his mouth dully. "Aha, I understand."

"Yes, and as you can see, if we were a restaurant, we'd be sued for not accommodating the handicapped."

"Very bad. Well, fine. The trick is really how to pick you up without hurting you. I really don't know why you didn't take those painkillers they offered you."

Because there's been too much pain around and I don't want to numb myself to it and pretend it's not there. And because the thought of any sort of opiate after all the drug-related shit I've been hearing just makes me sick to my stomach.

But, what I said was: "'Cause I wanna take it like a man," and made a real gruff face and tensed up my fists.

The pain was so bad when he lifted me that I felt myself momentarily black out. I tried not to scream but eventually did, with my mouth closed and teeth clenched. By the time he got me up to my room my eyes were watery from the torture.

"Mother...
fuck
," I said eventually, after my back settled into my bed. Maybe I had been overly optimistic about telling Maria she could take the day off. The way I felt, not even
I
was interested in sex with Conall right now...

"My goodness. A bathroom, a walk-in closet, and...no, it can't be."

"Yes, yes, yes, it's a gym. Get over it."

He stood there staring with his mouth open. "And your mum takes the small room downstairs?"

"Firstly, it is not a 'small' room—"

"Well, that's true, hers is also rather big."

"—and, secondly, she's never here! She used to have this room when we first moved in but eventually gave it to me. No, downright
insisted
!"
Ouch
! I was getting worked up and my back twanged.

Conall walked into the weights room, looked at the bench press, started counting the weights. "Fifty five pounds? Plus the bar. Sixty? Not bad at all."

"Are you kidding? It's lamebrain. I should be doing eighty." I was disappointed with myself. I'd hit a plateau and been stuck at it for almost half a year. And at the same time I was having the constant internal argument with myself that I never wanted to look "butch" but exactly as I did now—toned, athletic—but somehow, every time I got under that bench press I just wanted to hurt the fucker. Lift it up and prove to myself that I was better than it.

"You train alone?" he asked.

"Of course. Does Kayla look like the athletic type?"

"No, not at all. She looks like the 'I eat what I want and don't get fat' type."

"Yip, that's her."

"How is she by the way? She looked pretty beat up when I walked in."

"Do you always notice
everything
?"

"Um, no, not always."

"What, only when there are innocent girls around?"

"No, only when there are people I care about around." He glared at me.

Ah, because of Alexandra... I get it.

"And? Is she fine? Your friend."

Hatred welled up in me for Raphael, for all he did. I turned my head, unable to think clearly. What Kayla had told me had been
so
horrible,
so
ugly, and yet she was still relatively "normal." It's amazing what people can put up with. Their resilience.

"Leora, are you OK?"

"Yeah, I'm sorry. It's just... I'd like to tell you. But I can't."

"It's no problem. But is she OK or not? Just tell me that."

No, she's not. Or maybe she is. What's not OK is that the slimeball that went and hurt her is still going around and hurting others
.

"Conall, can you tell me about your brother? Why is he in the states? What's his scene?"

Conall went very still, ran his hand over some posters I had up on my wall (uh, yeah, embarrassing!) "This looks nice?" he said, looking at the male-model-inked-to-the-max-sex-symbol-poster I had up next to my bed. There was another one across the room and my eyes drifted over to it. Of course, at that stage so did Conall's.

"Fucking Christ. I'm so screwed," I said, digging my head into my pillow.

"Screwed?"

"Yeah, as in: There's no way I'll be able to take that embarrassing moment away. And no ways that I'll be able to convince you that I'm 'a woman' after you saw those."

"Oh, I'm supposed to think you're not a woman because you have a high sex drive? At least that's what it looks like. Or are these posters up there because you admire the artistic qualities of their tattoos?"

"Um, yes, that's what it is!" I stuck my finger up in the air in a sudden movement. Bad. Cringed in pain.

Conall sat down next to me, burned through my shell and heated up my skin with his eyes as he looked me up and down. "Conall, if we're not supposed to have sex, then you shouldn't be looking at me like that."

"Oh, we won't have sex. It doesn't mean I can't tease you a little."

I swallowed. Only it didn't work very well. "Think you could get me some water from downstairs?"

"Oh, of course, m'lady..."

Conall was gone awhile. Surely water couldn't take that long to get?

I heard a muffled voice from downstairs. It sounded like he was whispering, angry. When he returned he looked serious, his hair a little ruffled.