Chapter 50 - Recovery

Chapter 50: Chapter 50 - Recovery

Carrie pulled the Porsche up to the curb in front of the three-story brick building, exactly where Jesse pointed, and let out a breath she felt like she’d been holding since the bridge.

She’d driven the whole way with both hands locked on the wheel at ten and two, under the speed limit, flinching every time a cab cut in front of her. Jesse hadn’t said a word the entire ride. Twice she’d glanced over to make sure he was still breathing.

She cut the engine, came around to the passenger side and opened his door.

"Okay," she said. "Slowly."

He took her hand and let her help him up. He was steadier than he’d been at the hospital, but he still kept a hand on her shoulder as they crossed the sidewalk. She jiggled the lock on the security door until it gave, and they climbed the creaky stairs one step at a time, Carrie on the inside with her arm hooked through his, the paper bag of medication swinging from her wrist.

At the top of the stairs, he fished his keys out of his pocket and handed them to her. She unlocked the door and guided him inside.

The apartment was smaller than she’d expected from a man who drove a Porsche and paid for seven hundred thousand dollars of clothes without blinking. There was a sagging couch with a knitted blanket folded over its arm, a dripping kitchen faucet and a radiator ticking under the window. A framed photo hung on the wall by the door: a dark-haired woman with kind eyes, laughing at whoever was holding the camera, with a skinny boy grinning beside her.

Jesse let go of her arm and started down the short hallway toward a closed door.

Carrie set the bag of medication on the kitchen counter.

"What the fuck just happened?"

He stopped.

"I mean it, Jesse." Her voice shook, and she let it. "None of this makes sense. Two nights ago you were lying in an alley, and the next day you walked into my restaurant without a scratch on you. Then you spent more money on me in one night than I’ve seen in my whole life. Now I get a phone call in the middle of my shift, I’m picking you up from a hospital under a fake name and your face is wrapped up like a mummy. Nobody will tell me anything." She spread her hands. "I’d like an explanation. I think I deserve one."

Jesse turned around slowly to face her.

With the dressing across his nose and cheeks and the tinted glasses over his eyes, she couldn’t read his face at all. All she could see was his mouth and the swollen, bruised skin around the edges of the bandages.

"You should be getting back to work," he said.

Carrie stared at him.

That was it. That was his answer.

"Back to work?" she repeated. "You can barely stand up. What if you need help? What if you start bleeding, or you get a fever, or you can’t see where you’re going?" She took a step toward him. "That night at the bar, you told me you’d just lost your mother. You told me you didn’t have anyone. If you had anyone else in the world to call today, you would have called them instead of me."

The words hung in the air between them.

Jesse was quiet for a long moment.

"So you want to skip work," he said finally, "and stay here and take care of me?"

Carrie’s cheeks went warm. She folded her arms.

"I just want to make sure you’re okay."

Jesse tilted his head slightly, as if he were looking at her properly through the dark lenses.

"If you want to stay, stay," he said. "But I’m going to be in my room sleeping."

He turned, walked the rest of the way down the hall, went into his bedroom and shut the door behind him.

The latch clicked.

Carrie stood alone in the middle of the living room with her arms still folded.

The faucet dripped. The radiator ticked. Down on the street, a car alarm went off and stopped.

She looked at the closed door, then at the bag of medication on the counter, then at the woman laughing in the photograph by the door.

What kind of person was he?

He’d mocked her, ordered her around, threatened her with handcuffs, spent a fortune on her and carried her bags up four flights of stairs. He’d promised to take care of the man who’d beaten him half to death. Now he’d shut her out of his bedroom and left her standing in his living room with permission to stay.

She had no idea what to make of any of it.

Carrie sighed, unfolded her arms and sat down on the sagging couch. She pulled the knitted blanket into her lap and read the printed schedule on the front of the medication bag, line by line, twice.

Cold compress every hour. She checked the clock on the wall.

Then she got up, went to the kitchen and started looking for a clean dish towel and some ice.

******

In his bedroom, Jesse lowered himself onto the bed and lay back against the pillow.

His face throbbed in time with his heartbeat. The pain medication from the hospital was wearing thin, and every breath he pulled in through his mouth tasted faintly of blood.

He could hear Carrie moving around in the kitchen, opening cabinets and running the tap, then the clatter of ice cubes.

She’d stayed.

He smiled carefully under the bandages.

Then he closed his eyes and turned his attention inward.

’System,’ he thought. ’Activate One-Time Full Recovery.’

[One-Time Full Recovery activated.]

[Healing in progress.]

The warmth came the same way it had in the hospital bed at St. Nicholas. It started in his chest and spread outward, slow and heavy as honey, down his arms and legs and up through his neck into his face. The throbbing in his nose eased. The tight, swollen ache under his eyes loosened, as if someone had untied a knot he hadn’t known was there.

His limbs grew heavy. His thoughts went soft at the edges.

Somewhere far away, the kitchen tap was still running.

Jesse drifted off to sleep.