The woman did a double take.
“It’s for heartburn,” Dex said, voice flat and eyes steady until the attendant just nodded and went back to her business.
The hard-nosed Chinese guy that I had was making me nervous. He touched me in places, asking if it hurt, and then gave me the look as if he didn’t believe me. Half the time it did actually hurt but I knew the more I admitted, the more they would want to take me to a hospital for further inspection. All I wanted to do was get back home. I started to regret sticking around and wished Dex and I had just booked it back to the house and played ignorant.
While Dex’s attendant left to go get something out of the front of the ambulance, my head was tilted back rather roughly. The guy—I think his name was Jesse—peered at my neck suspiciously.
“How did this happen?” he asked, referring to my neck bruises.
I could see Dex out of the corner of my eye craning his head to look over in my direction. We never had a chance to explain what had happened to us earlier. I guess he never knew what happened to me at the top of the tower just as I still didn’t know what happened to him in that room.
I had to think quickly. “Sexual asphyxiation. You ever tried it? You should.”
Though my head my tilted back and I couldn’t see Jesse’s face, I know he was shocked. In fact, I could tell he looked over at Dex for an explanation. I hoped Dex would throw the attendant off this trail.
“It’s a little game we play,” Dex said, his voice laced with subtle sarcasm. I wanted to high-five him for his answer. “You know how it is.”
“Uhh,” the attendant replied, and brought my head forward. He suspiciously looked me in the eyes. I gave him a look as if he was the one who was the freak.
I nearly made some caustic David Carradine remark when he slid his hand down the back of my head. He stopped at where my hair was wet from being smashed against the glass. He took his hand away slowly and we both stared at it in the ugly light of the ambulance. It was red with blood.
I looked over at Dex. He was staring at me, eyes wide and mouth dropped a little, but didn’t say anything even though I could see words were forming at the tip of his tongue.
Jesse held his hand in front of my face and said matter-of-factly, “You’re bleeding. And you have glass in your hair.”
At this moment I could have chosen to cover up the matter with some inarticulate lie or I could flat out tell him I didn’t know how it happened.
“That was my fault.” Dex suddenly spoke up. “I panicked when I pushed us out the window. I guess I didn’t check that it was a clean break.”
I managed a smile at Jesse and didn’t risk looking at Dex in case Jesse caught on.
Jesse shook his head and motioned for me to go farther into the ambulance.
“Is she going to be OK?” Dex asked. I could almost hear a hint of boredom in his tone.
Evidently, Jesse heard it too. He gave him the stink eye. “I’m going to clean out the wound and check for a concussion. I think you’re free to go now.”
Dex shrugged and walked away. As Jesse sat me down on a stretcher, I could see Uncle Al and the twins coming up to Dex. They all looked my way and Dex began explaining something to them. Then Jesse closed the ambulance doors, shutting me inside the small, sterile room with him. I felt very uncomfortable.
He stopped in front of me and narrowed his eyes. There was something very vindictive about this guy, like it was his life’s mission to mistrust everyone he meets.
“Is that really what happened?” he asked seriously.
“What, with my head?” I wasn’t about to tell him the truth, but I had a feeling he wouldn’t have been satisfied with it anyway. Or he would have recommended I be sent to a different kind of hospital.
He put a stiff hand on my shoulder. I eyed it with disdain but he didn’t remove it.
“Did your boyfriend hurt you?”
I laughed. I couldn’t help it. Jesse the attendant looked annoyed at my outburst and took a step back.
“He’s not my boyfriend,” I said. “He’s my...well, my partner. I mean, sorta. And like we said, we were filming in the lighthouse hoping to get a glimpse of something supernatural. When all hell broke loose, the only thing we could do was bust out of the window. I may have hit my head when I went through. I was probably concentrating on not, you know, dying, and didn’t notice.”
“May have...” he said slowly, his head moving from side to side as if he had a slow-motion tic.
“Look, are you going to fix my head or not? Isn’t that your job?” I spat out wearily. I was growing more exhausted by the minute and my brain swirled with a million events that I refused to process.
“Fine. Just trying to help.”
He flipped my head down and proceeded to sift through my thick hair, mopping crap up with swabs and pads that reeked of alcohol and stung like hell. Miniscule pieces of glass rained down to the sticky floor like tiny snowflakes.
Ten minutes later he finished with a hardcore Band Aid and a square of gauze he stuck awkwardly at the back of my head. This would go down well at work tomorrow. I could just imagine Frida going “Well, Perry, the job would have been yours but we decided to go with someone who didn’t look like she drank a liter of tequila over the weekend and consequently hit her head on a bathtub during some kinky sex game.”
“Can I go now?” I asked impatiently.
“You really should go to the hospital to get checked out for a concussion,” he answered.
“Maybe I will when I get back to Portland tonight. I just want to go home.”
“You won’t be able to drive.”
I rolled my eyes. “Well, lucky for me, he’s driving.” I gestured in the direction of the closed doors, hoping Dex was still outside. I felt so confined inside this fluorescent-lit doctor’s office on wheels.
“Technically, he shouldn’t be driving either,” he said morbidly.
“I’m sure he’s—”
“Not on his medication, anyway,” Jesse finished.
Medication? I must have looked confused because Jesse raised his eyebrows in mock surprise.
“Oh. You didn’t know about his medication?” he mused casually. “Olanzapine is a very powerful antipsychotic and typically intensifies when patients partake in smoking.”
My heart grew cold. Dex was taking antipsychotics. I almost joked to myself on how they didn’t seem to work very well when I realized the reality of it.
“Antipsychotic?”
“Primarily used to treat schizophrenia. You don’t know this man very well, do you?”
“That’s none of your business,” I snapped and stood up. I fought the wooziness that tried to take me over. I walked hunched over to the doors and opened them.
I was met with the cold night air. The fire was pretty much contained and, except for a few glowing embers here and there and some leftover strands of foundation, the lighthouse was reduced to a black pile of smoldering mush.
Uncle Al and Dex stood beside each other, facing the ambulance. When they saw me both their faces lit up.
Al’s was one of fatherly love and concern. But Dex’s face...I had to look at him with new eyes. I stood still at the base of the ambulance wanting to observe him from a distance.
His shoved his hands in the pockets of his slick, slightly oversized raincoat, which still had particles of sand sticking to it. I noticed now how it was slightly too big for him, making him look shorter than he was. Dirt had splashed across his black Fluevogs and up on to his grey cargo pants. He stared straight at me, head tilted down in the usual fashion, maybe wondering what I was thinking or doing. His cheekbones cast dark shadows down the sides of his face; his long mouth was closed and twitching slightly, snaking across his jaw. His eyes were intense but curious as they stared back at me, hard little dots searching in his deep-set sockets. His black brows inched toward each other and deepened his omnipresent frown line. The rest of his wide forehead contracted as did the freshly bandaged cut. A longish strand of wet black hair had flopped forward and stuck to it.
Slowly, he opened his mouth and stuck out his tongue. It was about as large as his mouth and lay flat against his chin. His eyes never changed.
Jesus. Who was this guy?
My pulse quickened. I started to feel woozy again.
“What’s wrong, Perry?” Uncle Al asked, coming for me.
I shook my head and bent over slightly, hands on my knees.
“She should go to the hospital, just in case,” I heard Jesse say behind me.
I slowly turned. He stood on the bumper and stared at Dex. Dex looked back at Jesse, slowly put his tongue back into his mouth, and casually extended his middle finger at him.
“OK, Perry,” Al said putting his arm around me and not noticing the Dex/Jesse scene. “Let’s take you to the hospital.”
“I’m not fucking going anywhere!” I cried out, the bitterness in my voice surprising me. Everyone looked shocked. Al took his hand off of my shoulder. Dex remained in the background and put his hand back inside his pocket.
“All right, we are done here,” Jesse said as he rolled his eyes and slammed the door shut. I let out a sigh of relief as he walked to the front of the ambulance and got in.
I looked at Al apologetically.
“I’m sorry, Uncle Al,” I said meekly. “I’m fine, really. I just want to go home. I’m sure Mom will be sending me off to the hospital anyway as soon as she sees this war wound on my head.”
He sighed but nodded. “OK. You’re old enough to make your own choices, I guess.”
He looked at both Dex and me. “Come on. I’ve got the truck here, if the boys haven’t already left. I’ll take you back and we can all forget that this...disaster...ever happened.”
Those were the sweetest words I could have ever heard.
***
Back at the house, I packed up as quickly as I could without overexerting myself. Turns out it was midnight; my iPhone died a horrible death in the flood so I hadn’t known the time. Chalk up an electronic expense for me and another reason why the promotion was so important.
I called my parents and explained that I would most likely be coming home in the middle of the night but to not wait up for me. Of course, I knew they would. And of course, my father was yelling at me over how irresponsible I was. Thankfully, Al got on the phone and calmed his brother down, explaining mostly everything and leaving out the injured part. I figure my dad asked about Dex, too, because Al said, “She seems to be in good hands. Yes, he’s a trustworthy guy.”
Speaking of the “trustworthy” guy, Dex had actually been in the bathroom the whole time I talked on the phone. It would have been weird at any other time but after what Jesse had said, I started to worry.
Was Dex really psychotic? I mean, they wouldn’t call them antipsychotics if he wasn’t. And if he was, what kind of psychotic was he? Schizophrenic? Did he hear voices? Was he suicidal? Was he…dangerous?
I quietly scooted down the hall and paused outside the bathroom door. I was about to knock when—
“I’ll be out in a second,” Dex said behind the door, sensing me.
