Sadie shook her head. “I shouldn’t have let him walk me up to Dov’s.”
“Sadie, listen to me. Sam is going to be fine. There’s going to be a story, and we’re all going to laugh, I promise you.” Marx stood up. “I’m in the middle of this very exciting game, and I’d like to finish it now if that’s acceptable to you.”
Sadie nodded. She went into Sam’s room, and then she got into Sam’s bed. She called Dov to let him know she wasn’t coming back that night.
“Why?” Dov said. “You have no information. There’s nothing you can do. The worry is pointless. Come home.”
“I’m going to wait here in case he calls,” she said.
Dov laughed. “I forget how young you are. You’re still at the age where you mistake your friends and your colleagues for family.”
“Yes, Dov,” she said, trying to hide her irritation.
“When you have children, you’ll never be able to worry about a friend as much again,” Dov said.
“I’m tired,” Sadie said. “I should go.”
Sadie hung up the phone. She pulled Sam’s blanket over her head, and then she went to sleep.
By the time Sadie woke up, it was eight o’clock the next night, and she’d slept so long that Marx had finished the first playthrough of Ichigo. She went out to the living room to ask if Sam had called yet, and she found Marx gazing at the dark monitor and gently smiling to himself, as if in possession of a great secret.
“Marx?”
When he saw Sadie, he ran over to her, and he lifted her up in his arms, and he spun her around the room.
“Marx!” Sadie protested.
“I love it,” Marx said. “There’s nothing more to say.” And then in a booming actor voice, “I LOVE THIS WOMAN AND I LOVE THIS GAME! WHERE THE HELL IS SAM?”
As if in direct response to Marx’s appeal to the universe, the phone rang. Sadie and Marx both jumped for it, but Sadie was closer, and she got to it first.
“It’s him,” Sadie reported to Marx. “Where the hell have you been?”
Sam had broken his ankle, the one above his damaged foot, and because of the poor condition of that entire extremity, he’d had to have emergency surgery on it. He was at Mass General in Boston, and he had to stay in the hospital for another night, but could they come and get him in the morning?
“Why didn’t you call?” Sadie asked.
“I didn’t want you to worry,” Sam said.
“We worried because you didn’t call.” Sadie began to cry from the release of built-up tension. “I thought you were dead, Sam. Dead. That we’d finished the game and…I don’t know what.”
“Sadie, Sadie, it’s all right.” Sam said. “I’m fine. You’ll see.”
“If you ever do that again, I’m going to murder you,” Sadie said.
“I know now. I should call. Sadie? Are you there?”
Sadie was blowing her nose, so Marx took the phone from her.
“For the record, I knew you were okay. I played the game,” Marx said. “You’re both geniuses. And I love you both so much. And that’s it.”
Sadie reclaimed the phone from Marx.
“Our first playthrough,” Sam said. “So, we’re done?”
“I think we are,” Sadie said. “Mostly. I have a few things.”
“I have a few things, too.”
“I want to see you,” Sadie said.
“I think visiting hours end at nine,” Sam said. It was already 8:15. “I doubt that leaves you enough time to get here and get a community service timesheet together.”
“Very funny.”
“Seriously, there probably isn’t enough time for you to get here.”
“Okay, Sammy,” she said. “I love you.”
“Terribly,” he said.
“We’ll see you first thing in the morning.” Sadie hung up the phone.
In yet another hospital bed （but his first with a view of the Charles River）， Sam felt incredibly lonely and slightly sorry for himself. He had nausea from the anesthesia and from not having eaten enough in the last two days. Although he’d been given a goodly amount of drugs, he could still feel his foot enough to know that when he fully felt it, the pain was going to be terrifying. He was worried about what this latest mishap would end up costing （his bank account was near zero） and feared sorting out the related health insurance issues. The specialist had said that the condition of his foot was so poor it was now compromising his ankle. “There are only so many times a foot can be put back together before you have to start considering other options,” the doctor said. The other options were medieval. At the very least, he knew he’d be on crutches for a couple of months, and he was dreading the rest of the winter and having to rely on Marx and Sadie more than he already did. The reason he hadn’t called them when he’d first woken up in the hospital was because he was embarrassed. He had hoped the fall wouldn’t have been as bad as it had ended up being. He had hoped he would be patched up and easily sent home, with an overpriced bottle of aspirin, and that neither of them would have had to be involved at all. He didn’t want them to see him as weak, even though that was how he felt. Weak, frail, alone, exhausted. He was tired of his body, of his unreliable foot, which couldn’t even handle the slightest expression of joy. He was tired of having to move so carefully, of having to be so careful. He wanted to be able to skip, for God’s sake. He wanted to be Ichigo. He wanted to surf, and ski, and parasail, and fly, and scale mountains and buildings. He wanted to die a million deaths like Ichigo, and no matter what damage was inflicted on his body during the day, he’d wake up tomorrow, new and whole. He wanted Ichigo’s life, a lifetime of endless, immaculate tomorrows, free of mistakes and the evidence of having lived. Or if he couldn’t be Ichigo, at least he could be back at the apartment, with Sadie and Marx, making Ichigo.
Just when Sam had made himself feel as wretched as possible, he saw Sadie and Marx through the glass panel in the door. It was almost like they were a mirage. They were goddamn gorgeous, those two.
Even though they would only get fifteen minutes with him, Sadie and Marx had decided to take a cab down to the hospital anyway. “How many times do you get to toast your first game?” Marx had said. They had stopped at a liquor store to buy champagne and plastic flutes.
Sam was both embarrassed and pleased to see them. He knew he looked awful. His foot and ankle were in a bulky cast, about the hundredth cast of his life. And there was a multicolor bruise on his cheek and forehead. His friends were beautiful and strong, with their rosy outdoor cheeks, their cashmere coats, their shiny hair. If anyone saw them together, he was sure they would think he belonged to a different and feebler species. But then he reminded himself: They are not only my friends. They are my colleagues. He had turned them into his colleagues, and in a strange way, that was comforting to Sam. Ichigo bonded them to him for life.
Marx poured Sam a small glass of champagne. “Hope this doesn’t interfere with whatever else they’ve given you.”
“What happened anyway?” Sadie asked.