This Story Might Save Your Life(92)

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I WAKE UP. My throat is scratchy and the nurse, or doctor, asks if I know what day it is. I laugh. I don’t know what day it is. I haven’t known what day it is for days. I laugh at this too. I’m strapped to a lot of tubes. There’s some discomfort in my lower abdomen, and it occurs to me that I have no idea why I’m here.

“Why am I here?” I ask the nurse or doctor or whoever he is.

“You had surgery. You’re coming out of anesthesia.”

“Surgery?” As I voice the word, nausea slithers in. The discomfort in my abdomen amplifies. I tell the nurse or doctor or whoever he is.

“Let me help with that.” He does something, and I feel nothing. Or maybe nothing is the wrong word. Definitely something. Or the absence of something? It’s the best I’ve felt in ages. I’m not even tired. I could stay awake for …



* * *



I WAKE UP in a hospital. This is the first thing I notice. The second is the tubes. I’m attached to monitors and drips and who knows what else. I can barely swallow for how dry my throat is.

“Hello?” I croak.

A man enters the room. “Well, hey,” he says. He introduces himself as Nurse Todd and asks me what day it is.

I think about it. “No idea.”

“What about the year?”

I tell him.

“Good. President?”

I know this answer too.

“Excellent. How are you feeling, Joy?”

I try to adjust my posture and my body returns an odd combination of numbness and pain. I notice then a lump of bandages on my lower abdomen, and remember, with a growing sense of alarm, Mitali’s bathroom. The last time I opened my eyes, I was on Mitali’s bathroom floor. I press my fingers to my lips and say through them, “I’m not sure how I got here.”

He nods. “Let me get a doctor in to explain it to you.”





Benny Abbott


Day Seven

Joy’s parents phone from the mid-Atlantic while we’re waiting, and there’s a lot of crying, and questions, so many questions, for which we only have incomplete answers. I call my lawyer and fill him in. He asks if I want him to meet us here, and I tell him thank you but no, I’ll catch up with him later. I hold Sarah’s hand as we wait, and wait, and eventually the doctor returns, once to inform us the surgery went well, and the next to let us know that Joy is awake. “Are you Benny?” she asks me.

I nod.

“She wants to see you.”

It takes everything in me to keep calm as I follow the doctor back. I will never be able to find my way out through these winding sterile hallways, but I don’t care. Joy is alive, and her surgery went well, and she’s asking to see me.

At the first door past the second nurse station the doctor stops and turns to me. “I’ve been informed about her situation. The police want to speak with her, but I told them she’s not ready yet. Just—keep the energy low, okay? She’s fragile. And more than a little disoriented. Don’t feel like you have to answer all of her questions. Grab me if you need help.”

I understand why I need to heed this warning, I respect the need to heed this warning, but it’s all I can do to not rush the bed and wrap my arms around Joy the second I enter the room. She’s on her back, draped in a white blanket, with a nasal cannula and various other tubes and monitors, and her hair is matted, and her skin is pale, and she’s the most beautiful woman I have ever seen.

My throat swells and my eyes fill, blurring the room. I can’t get any words out. All I can do is grin like an idiot as I approach my best friend.

“There you are,” she whispers.

I laugh a little. A tear falls on her hand. “There you are.”



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SHE IS, AS the doctor said, fragile. She’s lost a lot of weight, and despite the cocktail of drugs being pushed through her IV, she’s in a lot of pain. She doesn’t bring up the pregnancy, and so neither do I. Nor do we mention Xander. I can’t begin to guess what she knows, and in this moment it doesn’t matter. I hold her hand and tell her I missed her, and we skirt around the tricky stuff as if she’s just returned from war.

“I’m sorry I didn’t find you sooner,” I say eventually.

She scrunches her eyes. Even when she can’t smile, Joy’s smile reaches her eyes. “I was wearing my Wenda costume.”

I ache with everything I want to say, but now’s not the time. Instead, I kiss her forehead and tell her to rest.



* * *



KELLER FINDS ME an hour later in the hospital courtyard. Sarah straightens as the detective approaches the concrete table where we’ve been, until this moment, relaxing in the shade, waiting for Joy to wake up again.

“I’m not talking without my lawyer,” I say when she’s within earshot. I see no reason to volunteer any of the hows or whys or wheres or whos or whats involved with finding Joy. Not after what this woman has put me through.

“I know.” Keller stops just short of the table. “I just wanted to ask how Joy is doing. They said you’ve seen her.”

As with everything Keller says, this feels like a trap. Maybe I wasn’t supposed to enter her hospital room. Maybe I’ve inadvertently broken another law. I look to Sarah, and she seems to understand.