Page 22 of Sublimate
He seemed very, very real, and he also wasn’t a shapeshifter, doppelgänger, or anything else paranormal. His eyes were still blue instead of red and he answered me in his own voice instead of a demonic rasp. “Hi, Vivi. How are you?”
At the moment, I was very confused. “Hi. I’m ok,” I told him, just like I’d been repeating to Cadence. “How are you?”
“I’m doing all right. Your friend called me,” he said. “I guess we went to high school together and she got my number somehow.”
“Cadence? She’s really good at research,” I said. “She called and you came?”
“I did.” He took a step closer to the bed. “The last time I saw you, you told me that you were going to leave Michigan.”
“I couldn’t but I didn’t waste the money you gave me and it wasn’t a scam,” I said. “I don’t do that stuff.”
I had been trying to sit up as I explained myself and he quickly walked closer and put his hand on my arm. “Don’t move too much. Cadence said that you were badly beaten and I can see that she was right.”
“She’s really worried and upset,” I said.
“I understand her feelings.”
She joined us at that point and stumbled over her words as she tried to explain the situation to Nolan. “Some tourists found herin a hotel parking lot,” she said. “The police are searching for the person who did it.” She glanced at me and pressed her lips together before telling him, “I called you because I remembered what you did for the volleyball team.”
“Yes, you mentioned volleyball,” he answered. To me, he sounded perplexed by that.
I understood why. I was a stranger to him, and Cadence (another stranger, since he didn’t remember her) had summoned him to this hospital. He had given me money to leave and I had taken it, put it in my bag, and yet? A few weeks later, I was still here. No wonder he was confused.
I tried to clear up some of that. “I didn’t steal from you,” I told him again. “I did try to go.” But the two of them had started talking together and they didn’t pay much attention to what I had to say. And I was trying to follow along, but I wasn’t doing a great job. My ankle was itchy and for some reason that was absorbing so much space in my mind…get the itch, scratch it…
“Vivi?” Nolan was leaning over the bed. “What do you think?”
“I think that you’re going to believe that I blew your money on something stupid but that wasn’t what happened. The day you gave it to me, Kolter’s friend saw us as we were leaving the hamburger restaurant. It was just like the bread again. Kolter left work and came home, and he was so steamed up. He wouldn’t let me go and he made me admit that I was hiding things. I wouldn’t have told him, but I had to. He took everything.”
“Did he do this to you last night at the hotel, too?”
“No.” But I closed my mouth after that one word, because I felt like I had talked too much already. I was tired from saying all that and my jaw ached. It had just tumbled out, which happened to people at times of stress or while they were under the influence. I had learned a lot of information from my mom that way— in her case, it was due to narcotics.
I looked over at Cadence, who had also listened to me vomit up that story, and she appeared to be sick to her stomach herself. “Sorry,” I apologized to her. She was a nice person who lived in her family home and it was probably great, even if the stairs were steep and her mom didn’t want to share the first floor. She wouldn’t have heard anything like this before, although she did read a lot of the books they had at the library. Maybe there was a story about someone like me? I considered that and felt doubtful.
“I’m just a normal girl,” I announced. “My life isn’t exciting.”
Nolan looked over at Cadence. “Does she have a head injury?”
“They observed her and said she’s ok. I think they drugged her up a lot,” she answered. “Or it could be the pain that’s making her giddy.” She took another tissue and wiped her eyes. “Vivi? Nolan Whittaker is going to help you,” she told me, speaking only a little faster than when he’d first introduced himself to me last fall, Nnnn-ooo-lll-aaa-nnn.
“What?” Despite the slow speed of her words, I hadn’t understood. “Why? I don’t need help.”
“My Lord in heaven,” she burst out, “you totally do! You’re lying there looking like you got run over by a truck and…” She gotanother tissue. “I remembered that you two knew each other, and I remembered the volleyball team.”
He turned to look at her, still puzzled.
“I don’t need him,” I said, and he swiveled to me.
“Vivi, we decided that you should come to my house to recuperate,” he told me. He also spoke slowly.
“That’s not what I’m doing,” I said. “You don’t have to take me in. I’ll go to a shelter. The nurse is going to get me some information on those.”
“I wish she could come home with me,” Cadence said tearfully. “But my mom is a little touchy about strangers.” She swirled and tugged at a curl before letting go and grabbing yet another tissue.
“I don’t need to go with anybody,” I told them, but they treated me like I was still acting loopy and ignored that. Nolan went somewhere and Cadence sat in the chair and texted furiously with her mom—not angrily, just a lot and very fast. I dozed a little and stated several times that I was heading to a shelter, or a motel where I could pay cash—I just needed to get some cash. “I’m going to figure this out,” I said.
But when I was finally discharged, after a long wait and lots of advice from the nurse, I rode in a wheelchair to the exit and there was Nolan with his big car. It wasn’t as new as when I’d first seen it, but it was still beautiful.
