16. Jamie

Jamie

Fever is trippy. The room has an odd jittery quality, and I’m hot and cold at the same time.

There’s only one thing here that’s behaving exactly the way I need, and that’s Wes. Whenever I open my eyes he’s here. Even though I’m worried about his health, his career and every other goddamn thing, I can’t deny that it’s a comfort to me. Because everything happening to me is just so disorienting.

“How’d I get here?” I ask suddenly.

He looks up from his phone. “Uh, ambulance, I’m pretty sure. Your man Danton called me at the rink, but I didn’t hear all the details.” He clears his throat. “I think he said something about an ambulance.”

I consider this while the walls shimmer weirdly. And then? A huge grizzly bear flattens its giant body against the glass window. I’m staring at it when it yanks the phone off the wall, and a voice booms in at us. “Dude! What a lot of trouble you are, J-Bomb!”

My synapses fire in slow motion, but Wes’s groan clues me in. Blake has arrived. Fuck! I try to casually pull my hand away from Wes’s, but he holds on tight. “Wes?” I croak.

“Yeah?”

“Is our cover blown?”

“Well…”

Blake’s hysteria vibrates the walls. “Is your cover blown? Is a bear Catholic? Does the pope shit in the woods? I just saw both your faces on the ten o’clock news. Nice yearbook photo, J-Bomb.”

Wes jumps out of his chair and stalks over to the window. I’m pretty sure he’s making a slashing motion at his throat.

“What?” Blake says with a shrug. “He’s gonna see a TV, a newspaper or a phone before tomorrow, right?”

Somehow this new information helps clear my head. If we’re on the news, that means the whole world is feasting on Wes like a gossip buffet. “I’m so sorry,” I say.

Wes whirls around. “No you don’t. This is not your fault. Not even a little.”

I know that’s true. But I’ll bet this is hella inconvenient. No wonder he’s been sneaking peeks at his phone when he thinks I’m not looking. “What does Frank say?”

Wes shrugs. “He’s handling it. You don’t need to worry.” Yet Wes doesn’t look nearly as calm as his words.

“You’re stuck in here with me. They must be pissed off about that. There’s probably satellite trucks in front of the stadium.”

“There’s satellite trucks in front of the hospital,” Blake says gleefully.

We both stare at him. “Seriously?” Wes asks.

“Yup! Had to do a Red Rover to break through ’em. Brought you your jim jams.” He holds up a duffel bag. “The super let me into your apartment. I didn’t know which toothbrush was whose, so I just brought everything.”

Slowly, subtly, Wes and I turn to catch each other’s eyes. We have the same awkward question in mind, I just know it. Did he open the wrong...

“Probably shouldna opened all those drawers,” Blake carries on, rubbing his chin. “Ya can’t unsee some of those toys. But everybody has to have his own kinda fun. Speaking of fun, I also brought you an Italian sub from the deli on our corner. Do you think I can get the bitchy nurse lady to bring this bag in there for you?”

Wes lets out a long, agonized sigh. I might be the one in the hospital bed, but today he’s had his privacy amputated. And the wound is a gusher. “Blake, it kind of kills me to say this.”

“What, Wesley boy?”

“Thank you for all your help today.” My boyfriend rubs the back of his neck, as if saying nice things to our most obnoxious neighbor is causing him pain. “Really. I appreciate all you did for me earlier.”

“Aw,” Blake grabs his own chest. “Any time, rookie. And hey—love the new chair. I might have to get one of those for myself. Oh! Miss? Yoo-hoo!” Blake has spotted the nurse, and now he drops the phone and gallops after her.

Wes turns to me and puts his hand on my forehead for the millionth time. His fingerprints are probably permanently imbedded in my face. “Are you freaking?” I ask him.

“No,” he lies.

“I’m not apologizing for being the cause,” I hedge. “But I’m sorry for all the crap that’s coming your way.”

He props an elbow on my mattress and brings his handsome face closer to mine. “This was always going to happen. Maybe it’s like oral surgery. You know you need it, you know it’s temporary, but it still sucks for a while.”

“Okay. True.”

What neither of us says out loud is that we hope it won’t prove fatal to his career. Yesterday he was the Rookie Superstar, Ryan Wesley. Tonight he’s Ryan Wesley, the First Out Gay NHL Player.

The bolt on the door clicks open, and the nurse and doctor arrive again. But neither of them is carrying the bag Blake had brought for us.

“What’s the news?” Wes asks, rising.

“We’re going to move Mr. Canning to another room,” the doctor says.

That’s when I notice—he and the nurse aren’t wearing moon suits anymore. “It came back negative,” I croak.

“It came back positive—for a non-novel flu virus.”

“Not the sheep flu,” Wes repeats, sounding relieved.

“Right,” the doctor agreed. “A plain old flu.”

They keep talking, but my eyelids begin to feel heavy again. Wes asks the doctor why I’m so sick, and the doctor’s buzzwords make me even sleepier, because it sounds like he really had no idea why I’ve been leveled. He uses phrases like “unusual presentation” and “unfamiliar climate.”

Whatever. Now I just want to go home.

“The fever is down to one hundred and one. That’s encouraging,” the nurse says. She’s standing at my head, pushing a thermometer into my ear. “Once those antivirals kick in, you’ll start feeling human again.”

I feel so woozy right now it’s difficult to believe her.

The next time I wake up I’m on my way to a different room on the fourth floor. It’s much the same as the old one, except first I have to suffer through an embarrassing ride through the hallways on a stretcher. They actually lift me to the new bed by picking up the sheet I’m lying on and whisking it onto a new mattress.

“Can’t I just go home?” I ask whoever’s tucking me into the new bed.

“Not until that fever’s gone, hon,” the new nurse says. She’s a big Jamaican woman by the name of Bertha, and I like her immediately. “Tomorrow, probably.”

But I thought it was tomorrow.

Does that even make sense?

More sleep now.

I close my eyes while Bertha is still fussing with my IV fluids. Wes looms somewhere nearby. And that’s all I need to know for now.