Page 305 of Cross Checked
She quirked her eyebrows like the sexual deviant she was.
I had opened one eye. “Is this you admitting you can’t live without me?”
“No, this is me admitting you are too valuable to be alone with stairs and a walker.”
“Same thing, Pip.”
“You almost died.”
“Still hot though, right?”
She had cried then, which had been shitty of me, but she had laughed through it, and I had decided that counted as a win because laughter from Bliss lately felt like being handed oxygen. She cried over tiny things now, never the big ones. The first time I stood up and screamed in agony, she was strong as an oak, telling me I could do this, telling me to breathe.
But me telling her she could give me the sponge baths put her into hysterics, her arms around me in the small hospital bed, terrified to let me go.
Now she stood in my hospital room with my discharge folder clutched to her chest, daring me to make one wrong move.
My father had bought the penthouse three days after I woke up fully.
Bought.
Not rented.
Not arranged temporary housing like a normal person with a mildly reasonable relationship to real estate.
Bought.
A high-rise outside Kimball Falls, close enough to Saginaw that he could pretend the location met his standards,far enough from campus that reporters had to work harder, and secured enough that my mother stopped flinching every time someone stepped too close to the private hallway. He and my mother took the penthouse because, well—Elenore Mercer.
Pip and I would stay in the apartment they rented one floor below them while I recovered. Temporary, allegedly. Though nothing about my father buying permanent real estate in response to a crisis had ever felt temporary to me.
Bliss had accepted this arrangement only after making my father promise, in writing, that she had keycard access to both the hot tub and sauna, control over my medication schedule, veto power over any nurse who looked “too judgmental,” and full authority to ban anyone who tried to discuss hockey before I could walk across a room without sweating.
My father had signed the paper, and Bliss thought she had won.
I had watched Harrison Mercer, real estate titan and corporate executioner, accept orders from a five-foot-two sports media major in pink lip gloss and realized, with deep personal satisfaction, that they loved her more every day.
The actual discharge process took forever. Nurses came in and out. My mother asked careful questions. My father asked terrifyingly specific ones. Bliss asked all the ones that mattered most, writing down what could hurt me, what signs meant infection, what happened if I coughed too hard, how much walking was too much, and whether I was allowed to shower without supervision.
I said, “I vote yes.”
Bliss said, “You don’t get a vote.”
My nurse said, “Supervision is recommended the first few days.”
Bliss looked smug.
I looked betrayed.
My mother looked at the ceiling like she needed strength.
By the time they loaded me into the back of the luxury Escalade waiting beneath the hospital’s “covered private exit”—which was really the back service and delivery bay—I was pretending not to be exhausted.
Badly.
My ribs ached from the wheelchair ride alone, my abdomen burned under the careful pull of stitches and taped bandages, and every breath felt like my chest had to think about whether it was worth the effort.
Bliss climbed in beside me before anyone else could, buckled herself in, then immediately reached for my hand.
