Page 66 of Tell Me What You Want

“I already had it looked at at the hospital ...”

“It doesn’t matter. I’ll feel better if Andrés examines it.”

I’m in so much pain that I don’t really want to talk. Twenty minutes later, my bell rings. Eric answers it, and in a minute, there’s a stranger in my home. They greet each other, but the stranger just stares at the state of my apartment.

“Judith was cleaning,” Eric says, and chuckles.

But I’m miserable from the pain. “Listen, if it’s too messy for you, it’s fine by me if you want to clean up and put it in order,” I say. “The broom and mop are at your disposal.”

My bad mood charms them.

Finally, the stranger comes over to me.

“Hi, Judith, I’m Andrés Villa. Let’s see. What happened?”

“I burned myself with the iron, and it hurts like the devil.”

He nods and takes out a pair of scissors.

“Let me see.”

Eric sits beside me.

I feel his protective hand on my back. The doctor carefully cuts my bandage. He checks my injury, then pours some kind of saline solution on it. Temporary relief makes me sigh. He soaks some bandages in the solution, then rewraps my arm.

“It hurts a lot, doesn’t it?”

I nod.

“I’m going to give you something that will help. It’s the quickest thing for pain. These types of injuries, they hurt a lot. But don’t worry; they heal fast.”

He can shoot me up with whatever he wants; I just want this horrible pain to go away.

I watch as he injects me. He looks at me and winks. He must be maybe thirty years old. He’s tall, dark, and has a nice smile. When he’s finished, we all stand. He closes his bag and takes out a card for me.

“Call anytime, for anything at all.”

I check out the card: “Dr.Andrés Villa” and a cell number.

“I’ll do that,” I say.

At that moment, Eric puts his hand on my waist in a way that can only be described as proprietary.

“If she needs you, I’ll call you,” he says, his other hand on his friend’s shoulder.

Andrés is amused. Eric lets me go and walks him to the door. I hear them whispering for a few minutes, but I can’t understand a thing. All that interests me right now is getting rid of this pain.

I sit down on the couch again. The pain’s intensity is decreasing. I see Tomás, Eric’s driver, hand him some bags. Eric looks over at me after the door closes.

“I ordered dinner. Don’t move—I’ll take care of everything.”

Without getting up, I hear Eric rattling around in the kitchen. After a few minutes, he comes back with a tray and a full complement of plates, forks, knives, and glasses, and a bunch of take-out boxes.

“I asked Tomás to get us Chinese. If I remember correctly, you like Chinese food.”

“I love it,” I say.

“Has the pain eased any?”

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