Freefall

Fifth Chapter

"I'm good," I answered after a momentary pause.

He was leaned slightly over the notepad, he had one leg propped up on the other, and he was dressed more casually than he had been on his other visits. I couldn't help but noticed that he looked good in jeans.

He looked up when I answered, and I tried to strike a nonchalant I-wasn't-just-checking-you-out pose. Unfortunately, the pose revealed the new bruises on my hand, and he noticed.

"What happened?" He asked, leaning forward and looking concerned.

"Um. I . . . was reaching for . . ." I glanced discreetly at the nightstand to remind myself what I could have been reaching for, " . . . a, a hairbrush, and I accidently hit my arm against the edge of the table. I mean, I had to reach around my one arm, and then the other just sort of fell and, you know . . . hit the table."

Inwardly, I cursed myself for the stupidity lacing every other word and bit my lip. Elliott stared at my arm for a moment longer than was necessary.

"It looks painful," he said at last, meeting my eyes again. "Did you alert the doctors?"

"Uh. A nurse was in here, I'm sure he told the doctors. My parents came, and I was distracted, and . . . stuff." Stuff? Stuff? What stuff did a girl with three casts lying in a hospital bed have?

I ignored my inner scolding and smiled.

"Well, I hope no serious damage was done." He glanced at it again and seemed preoccupied.

After that there was an awkwardly long period of silence as he wrote on his notepad. I was afraid that he didn't believe me. What if I got stuck in the hospital longer than what I had been originally told? What if they never let me out because they thought I was crazy?

"So, were those all the questions you had for me?" I asked jokingly.

"What? Oh, no." He laughed and looked up again. "I'm sorry. Where were we?"

"We hadn't really started," I reminded him.

"Of course, of course." He laughed again and then began the usual questions.

He returned to his normal self within the blink of an eye, but I was still curious about his initial reaction to my new bruise. I couldn't understand why he was so interested in it. I answered his questions, but the thought kept lingering at the back of my mind.

Within two hours, he thought we had made good progress, and he wished me a good rest of the day. Once he had left, I leaned my bed back and took a nap. I had been thinking too much, and I would need more rest than the day before to be able to pull an all-nighter.

It was dinner time by the time I woke up, and I moved my bed into an upright position in preparation. It was a tossup between college food and hospital food for which one was worse, but still, food is food. After a few moments, I glanced at the clock and frowned. Usually the food was brought right on the dot, but tonight it was ten minutes late.

At last, the door was pushed open. Instead of the normal nurse who brought my food, this time it was Malcolm. When he saw me waiting, he hurried to set the tray on the cart and pull it over to my bed.

"See, I waited until you would be awake so neither of us could freak the other out, and here you are starving because I was late." He shook his head as he stepped back. "I guess no one can win."

I laughed. "I guess not."

Eagerly, I pulled the lid off of the tray and pulled the silverware out of its little packet. I had pulled the lid off of the jell-o before I realized that Malcolm hadn't left yet. I turned to look at him, spoon in one hand, jell-o in the other, mouth prepared for the first bite.

Malcolm was staring, head titled, one eye squinted smaller than the other, frowning intensely. "You eat the jell-o first?" His tone could barely contain all of the incredulity he was exuding.

I snapped my mouth shut and licked my lips. "So?"

"How can you eat the jell-o first? It's the best part; you have to save it for last."

"I have to?" Who was this guy?

"Yes. It's an unspoken, unwritten rule." Now he was solemn.

"Um. I like my jell-o first?"

His mouth dropped open, he took a step back, and stared at me, looking hurt. After a short moment, he turned on his heel and left the room.

I sat in stunned silence for a long time, staring at my green jell-o. I felt badly eating it first now. I bit my lip, looking at my spoon and then at the jell-o. One bite. After I took said one bit, I felt extremely guilty and dropped it back onto the tray.

I couldn't touch the jell-o again until I had eaten every other scrap of food on the tray. After I did, I had to admit that the jell-o tasted sweeter. Perhaps I would have to tell that to Malcolm. If he could ever stand to see me again.

I smiled and then laughed at the absurdity of our exchange. Malcolm was an interesting person. With a sigh, I reclined the mattress again and turned on the TV.

Three more cups of coffee and a lot of TV watching brought me to midnight. By then, I could no longer stand looking at the bright screen, and clicked it off. The lamp by my bed was on, but otherwise the room was dark. I shifted, trying to find a position that wouldn't make me sore.

As I looked around the room for some way to distract myself, the window caught my attention. The blinds had been shut, but towards the top, one had gotten caught on another, and I could see the moon. It looked huge. Huge and red. I stared at it hard.

A red moon. I wasn't sure, but I thought they were kind of rare. Something about it made me think about the different events of the day. Dreaming last night and waking up with new bruises. Elliott's strange interest in those bruises. Malcolm's obsession with jell-o.

I suppose I could understand that last one, but I still couldn't wrap my head around the dream. Tearing my gaze away from the window, I lifted my arm onto my lap to study the cast and bruises. It wasn't really a cast, it was more of a wrap. My hand up to mid-arm was wrapped in that beige-colored, stiff stuff. Around the base of my fingers, black and blue and green tinged the skin, and as I thought about it, my whole arm began to throb.

I must have re-fractured it, but how? I grimaced. I had woken up in the hospital bed which meant that I hadn't jumped off of anything. I couldn't make sense of it. And why would Elliott have an interest in it?

Without thinking about it, I turned back towards the moon. It was going to be a long night.