“There. Is that better?” Jesse’s voice filled the room as the lights dimmed enough for me to chance opening my eyes again.
After several blinks, I could keep them open, and a few more blinks after that, I could make out the objects and people around me. The first thing I noticed was the television hanging in a corner just below the ceiling. It was turned off. Below that was an industrial-looking chair stacked high with a couple of duffel bags. Beside the chair was a long window. From the traces of light coming in from outside, it was either dawn or dusk; I couldn’t tell. On the shelf below the window were a couple dozen flower arrangements complete with those tiny cards jutting out of them. Seeing so many of those earned another muttered cuss from me. I knew I didn’t have that many “real” friends who’d take the time and money to send me flowers unless something was really bad.
“Well, your ability to be vulgar sure isn’t broken.”
My gaze skidded to the other corner, where the window was, to find Rowen draped across a chair, looking tired and worse for wear. From the look plastered on her face, she was trying to make this seem like any old day, but I could see in her eyes that she was worried. Or sad. Or some combination of the two.
“Where’s Joze?” I asked before swallowing. My throat was killing me.
Rowen’s forehead creased, and her gaze drifted off to the side of me. “Right beside you.”
Taking ten times the amount of effort it should have, I managed to rotate my head to the other side of my pillow. Josie was there, and where Rowen was trying to hide her worry, Josie had taken it the other direction. Her eyes were bloodshot, the rims red and puffy. Either fresh or stale tears still streaked her cheeks, and one corner of her mouth had been chewed close to raw. Her hair was a mess—half of it still in her braid, half of it fallen out—and her clothes looked so wrinkled she could have been living in them for weeks.
She was the most beautiful, welcome sight I’d ever seen.
“What happened?” I asked her as Jesse came into view at the foot of the bed. His expression fell right in between the two girls’, although when I took a closer look at his red-rimmed eyes and noticed his inability to look me in the eye, I realized he was more in line with Josie.
Josie sniffed and tried straightening her shoulders before answering. They fell a few moments later. “You were thrown from the bull.” She looked to Jesse and Rowen as if she were looking for guidance.
Jesse turned to face the wall, his arms winding around his head. Rowen slid out of her chair and approached her husband. She wound an arm around his back and whispered something to him that I couldn’t make out.
After a few more moments of watching them, Josie cleared her throat. “Do you remember where you were last night? What you were doing? Do you remember anything?” Her voice grew smaller with each question. “The doctors said you might not . . .”
I was getting more and more impatient, waiting for the explanation as to why I was racked out in a hospital bed with the three people I cared about most looking as though they were attending my funeral instead of waiting for me to recover. Whatever had happened, the people in the room seemed to view it as being on par with being at my funeral. “Joze, I remember the night of the competition. I remember everything right up to being catapulted by that piece-of-shit bull whose hide I’m going to turn into a piece of wall art as soon as I’m out of here.” Even my attempts at humor were doing nothing to lighten Josie’s mood. “I just don’t remember a single thing after that. Can you catch me up? Before I arrive at the worst possible conclusion for why the woman I love and two of my best friends are looking at me like my life is over?”
I’d barely finished my sentence before Josie started crying. Again. Actually, it was more like sobbing. Violent, shaking, loud sobs that sounded as though they were choking her. Rowen moved from Jesse to Josie, threw her arms around her, and rubbed circles into her back, making soft shushing noises. Rowen wasn’t the hugging type. That she was running point on the hug situation meant the more sensitive two of the bunch were in bad shape.
“Hey, it’s okay, Joze. It’s okay.” I wanted to crawl out of bed and comfort her the way Rowen was, but my body didn’t seem capable of much, let alone climbing out of bed and holding myself up. “Take my hand, baby. It’ll be okay. Hold my hand.”
Josie’s sobs dimmed enough to where her whole back wasn’t quaking anymore, but when she looked at me with that anxious expression, I almost wished for her sobbing face back. This—the wide eyes that didn’t seem to blink—was far worse. At the same time, Rowen’s and her eyes dropped to a spot on my bed. Josie swallowed, moving away from Rowen and closer to the bed.
“I am holding your hand,” she whispered, staring at the same spot with tears filling her eyes again. “I am holding it.”
My eyes dropped to the place she was focused on. Sure enough, Josie’s hand was wrapped around mine, her fingers braided between each of mine. I noticed her hand tighten. It wasn’t the way my fingers seemed to look limp woven through hers that unsettled me so badly that I broke out in a sweat—it was that I couldn’t feel her squeeze. In fact, I couldn’t even feel her hand. I couldn’t feel the warmth of it or the softness of her palm, and I couldn’t feel the cool metal of the sterling silver ring she wore on her right thumb. I couldn’t . . . feel.
“What the fuck’s wrong with me?” I managed to get out, not sure I wanted to know.