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.