Page 28 of Dark Time

I curled up in a ball on one of the rugs. My towel had come undone, and I didn’t care if I was naked and on the bathroom floor. I managed to find enough energy to pull the towel over me as a blanket, even if it was still damp, and fell asleep.

This happened two more times, the pain in my head increased with each new wave of nausea, and I wondered if I was going to die, alone on the bathroom floor. What a way to die, I thought as I curled up under a blanket, reeking of vomit, naked.

I could just hear my family and peers now. She wasn’t very good at being a Thompson, my father would say. I taught her to have more dignity than that, my mother would sniff. My brothers would probably sneer and walk away, if they bothered to pay attention to the news at all. My nieces and nephews might miss me, but my family, the people I’d associated with before my little rebellion?

I knew they were all wrong; this wasn’t how I deserved to die. I was a strong, independent woman. I was too stubborn for my own good, most of the time, and certain of my own abilities. I was through and through a Thompson.

Right now, I was just a pitiful young woman curled up on the floor, certain she was about to die. I reached out an arm; I wanted water, I wanted pain relief. I wanted Dylan. Even the act of trying to speak hurt, used up energy, and I was too exhausted to fight off the pain.

I didn’t want Dylan to find me like this, and that only made me cry harder. Something was wrong, and I was too far gone to call out to him for help.

Dylan

Emily was already out of bed when I woke up and stretched out to pull her to me. It amazed me how quickly I’d come to hate waking up alone, even if it meant Emily was up already and not far away. I liked to pull her to me while we were both soft and warm from sleep, and maybe kiss her neck while my hands went down to places that were eager to be brought back to life.

Not this morning. I sighed, got out of bed, and stretched again. It was a beautiful morning, and the sun was a bright gold light that spread across the bedroom in a warm haze. Something wasn’t right, I realized when I saw the door was open. I couldn’t smell coffee, and Emily always made coffee when she first got up. It was the very first thing she did.

I frowned and went into the kitchen. She wasn’t there, and she wasn’t in the living room either. Trudging back to the bathroom, I found the door closed, so I knocked. “Emily?”

The door opened a crack, and there was no answer, so I decided to go in and get my business out of the way. I’d barely had time to try to figure out where she was when I saw her on the floor.

I stopped and stared down at her on the floor. “Emily?”

For a second, images of the past flashed in my head, my mom as she overdosed, or the thousand times I’d woken up to go to school to find her asleep in the kitchen or the bathroom, always on the floor. That was when her dosage needed to be increased. Now, here was Emily. Emily wasn’t my mother, and she wasn’t on medications that would make her wander in the night.

“Emily!” I cried out, suddenly full of fear. I bent down and found her warm, to my relief, and she made a sound as I pushed to her back. “Emily, wake up, what’s wrong with you?”

It all came out as one sentence, and my hands raced over her body, looking for any sign of injury.

“Dylan…” I heard her whisper. “Hospital, please. I’m so sick.”

“Baby, what’s wrong?” I pushed her hair out of her face and looked at her. I couldn’t see that anything was wrong, and she didn’t have a fever, so it must have been something internal. “Where does it hurt, what’s wrong?”

“My head…” Her hand fluttered up to her head and then down to her stomach. “I’m so sick, Dylan, please.”

“Alright, sweetheart, let me get you up off the floor.” I picked her up in my arms to carry her into the bedroom. “Let me just run to the bathroom and get us dressed.”

I knew she’d die of embarrassment if I took her to the hospital with only a towel on, plus it was far too cold, and would probably get us pulled over if a cop saw her. Fuck, why was I thinking about such stupid shit? I raced to her closet, found a long black dress that she sometimes wore out when she did errands, simple, loose, and easy to get on. I put some socks on her feet and a pair of sneakers, then threw on a pair of trousers, a black sweater, and shoved my feet into a pair of loafers.

I picked up my keys, wallet, and then her. She’d barely responded to any of it and moaned through most of the process of dressing. Whatever was wrong with her, it wasn’t good. My brain wanted to race with possibilities, but I didn’t have time for that. I just wanted to get her to the hospital.

Maybe I should have called an ambulance, I wondered as I glanced over at her in the passenger seat of the car. She was curled up against the window, her hand over her mouth, with her seatbelt on. She had her jacket over her head and whimpered every time I hit a bump. Emily was very ill.

When I got her into the hospital drop-off area, I parked the car and asked her if she could walk in or if she wanted me to carry her. From the depths of her jacket I heard a pitiful voice. “I don’t think I can stand, Dylan. My head hurts so bad.”

“That’s alright, Emily. I’ll get you in there, honey. Don’t you worry about that.” I managed to get her out of the car and carried her into the emergency department.

A woman with a bored face and very long acrylic nails looked up at me. I saw a slight roll of her eyes as she turned away from the woman beside her, and she looked at me with a look I can only describe as … doubtful. “Can I help you, sir?”

“My girlfriend is ill, she needs to see a doctor,” I stated the words as calmly as I could, despite her apparent disinterest. I knew hospital workers were overworked and underpaid, and I knew they saw a lot in their daily lives, but a little compassion for people wouldn’t be unwarranted. I felt like a naughty child who had interrupted the teacher as she instructed the class.

“Well, we need her to fill out some forms, register, and then she can see the doctor.”

“I don’t think she can, her head hurts so bad she can’t stand the light.”

“If she can’t fill out the forms, sir, we can’t see her.” Her expression was dull, as if my problem was no concern of hers.

“Give them to me, I’ll fill them out.” I took the clipboard.