I’ve gotten letters to the hospital from weirdos and perverts and feminists and people who love me and hate me, from all over the world, but none of them know me. Mom has been opening my mail and mainly throwing it all away. I expect my inbox has overflowed, that my presence on social has turned inside out with overuse. I can’t imagine what’s happened to my channel and then I don’t care. I will take it down, or at least make it private. I don’t want a presence anymore.

Chapter 32

32

It is a day, but I don’t know which one.

I lose track of the days. There have been many of them. The nurse who likes me has come in to change my dressing. She has her hair sensibly tied back in a long braid. Her name is Geeta. She has a nice smile and a singsongy voice.

“Want to go for a stroll?” she asks me, and I shake my head. “Dr. Yang thinks it’s important for your mental health to get up and around.” Dr. Yang’s a really nice woman who specializes in cases like mine, whatever that means.

Geeta pauses and looks out the door of my room. “Someone else could use a visit. He asks about you every day.”

She’s talking about Pete. I start to weep, and she puts a steadying hand on my arm. I cry all the damn time these days. Mom says it must be all the painkillers they have me on because her hormone replacement therapy makes her cry.

Geeta says, “It might be good for both of you.”

“Okay,” I mutter through the tears. “Yes.”

She helps me into a wheelchair, and even though she’s gentle, I wince as a jolt of pain runs up the length of my body. She squeezes my good shoulder kindly, in a way that’s supposed to mean come on, champ, you got this. I nod. She pushes me down the hall, where I know Pete is. I’ve been avoiding his end of the hallway, choosing always to head in the opposite direction whenever I can. I haven’t seen him yet. Geeta wheels me into his room, and it feels like I’m going to be sick. It’s a shock, seeing him in bandages.

Lottie is there with her dad, Jacob. Her family. Jacob whispers a small hello, his face inscrutable. Lottie looks up, and she looks surprised, and concerned. There is love on her face, and it makes a small bridge between us. She checks with Pete quickly. His face is bandaged up, and much of his body. There is an IV taped to his hand, for pain, I expect. Same as me. When he speaks, he slurs a little.