Flash. Pause. Beep. Flash. Pause. Longer pause. Beep.
This was intolerable. But her head didn’t hurt anymore, and neither did her arm. That’s right—they said something about giving her medicine for the pain.
Still, even through the haze, it was amazing how distracting a flashing light could be. Maybe she would make the light her friend. The light was saying, Go to sleep, Stevie. Night night, Stevie.
No it wasn’t. No flashing light says that. The point of a flashing light is to say, Look at me! Look at me! Something is happening!
What was happening? Nothing. She was in this bed, tired and sleepless, a cast molded neatly to her arm.
Flash. Pause. Beep. Flash. Pause. Pause. Beep. Flash.
Look at me! Look at me!
Stevie felt something click in her brain.
The cast was snug. The cast was a part of her. The cast—
Look at me!
Stevie fumbled around in the bed, scrambling in the half dark with her right hand until she found the clicker she sort of remembered the nurse putting by her hand. She pressed it once, then again. A figure appeared in the doorway after several minutes.
“You okay?” said the nurse.
“Pen?”
“What?”
“Please can I have a pen?” she said. “Please. It’s important.”
The nurse let out a barely audible sigh but produced a Sharpie and handed it to her.
“Thank you,” Stevie croaked. Her throat was rough from coughing out that water.
When the nurse was gone, she pulled off the cap with her teeth, realizing after she did it that maybe it wasn’t a great idea to stick hospital pens in her mouth. No matter. She had the Sharpie now. It was dark, but she could about make out the words she was writing on the cast:
light. flash. form.
Now she could sleep.
26
STEVIE WOKE IN A STRANGE, NARROW BED, DRESSED IN THE THIN HOSPITAL gown.
She sat up slowly, using her unbroken arm to push herself up. She was surprised when this hurt her hand and looked to find her palms covered in scratches and cuts. The fall off the point had not been elegant or clean. She padded her way over to the bathroom in the grippy sock-slippers someone had put on her feet the night before. The bathroom mirror revealed the extent of the damage—her hair was sticking up at all angles, there were dark circles under her eyes along with a long scrape down the right side of her face. Her arm was green with bruises, which were accentuated by the green fiberglass cast that now adorned it.
These were all things that suggested she should return to the bed behind her. But then she looked down at the three words she had written on the cast the night before. She splashed water on her face （a mistake, this hurt）， then shuffled over to the landline phone on the wheeled bedside
table. She blinked, trying to recall the number she needed, then dialed.
“I need you,” she said when the person picked up. “And I need clothes.”
David turned up within the hour. Stevie had spent that hour wandering the halls, trying to find her nurse, and then bugging that nurse about when she would be allowed to go. The nurse asked her politely to return to bed, explaining that the doctor would be up in the early afternoon, and that she would likely be allowed to go then. But early afternoon was too far away.
So when David walked through the door with the bag of clothes, Stevie immediately pushed herself out of bed, took it, and disappeared into the bathroom.
“How are you feeling?” David asked through the door.
“Everything hurts,” she said. “Fine.”