Page 360 of My Sweet Dollie, You Have to Love Me
“I can go? Now?”
“Once we run through some stuff.” Smiles the doctor in white. “Your stats are good. The evaluation team is happy and believes this will be a one-off incident.”
He eyes me, glasses sliding down his nose. A finger pushes them back up, pressing into bushy red eyebrows.
I wait for comments on my other scars, but I think it’s safe to assume that the team mentioned my self-inflicted injuries when none come.
“Just a little paperwork, and you’re good to go.”
Dollie isn’t outside my room as I exit.
She’s already in another ward. My head snaps from side to side, hoping to spot pink hair and a hoodie in the crowd of people.
I don’t see my girl.
I check my phone from the pocket of the beige hoodie she selected. It’s dead.
Fuck.
“If I were getting a lump looked at, I’d probably be in radiology.” Dr. Harrison steps out of the room that I’ve lived in since arriving here and into the waiting room with more belongings than I have, placed under her arms. “It’s on the floor above. And might be worth a look. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
I nod, taking off toward the elevator and stairs. I choose the latter, letting my long legs take them three at a time. Limping badly by the time I get to the top, I ignore it, as I’m used to limping. I don’t let it slow my pace.
Yanking open the door, I find myself in a new ward, this one identical to the last and all the others I remember here.
Memories claw at me, each one a painful cut into my past.
All I see are bright lights and doctors ahead, moving slowly from one room to another.
It’s so different from the quiet of the recovery room in the emergency department.
All I hear in my head are unfamiliar voices who talk of sexual assault and the infections I needed testing for.
It’s been almost nineteen years since I last walked around this hospital, and yet I remember it all like it happened earlier this week. I push away memories that are better left in the past, and I focus on finding Dollie.
Today is about her, after all.
Heat fills my body, and at the same time, a cold sweat cloaks my skin. I put one foot in front of the other, searching each room. I pass by one painted lilac, then another painted blue.
No sign of my girl.
The worry I feel becomes hard to swallow down, the heavy feeling staying lodged in my throat. Sweat drips over my brow.
Glancing to my right, I steal a glance at pink hair and worry. It slows every part of me, seeing her with her eyes pointed to the ground. A long sleeve of a baggy hoodie falls off her dainty shoulder, and her fingers move in her lap, feeling over the tie that wraps around the neck of a very special antelope.
A new pair of sneakers that she must have found in my closet takes me toward her. I don’t even care that they rub close to my heel.
“Hey, unicorn.” I slink into the seat at her side, wrapping an arm around her.
“Oh, my god. You’re really here, right?”
“I am.” There’s no point in me telling her that she can see me, feel me, because that’s the case for all the things that only appear to her: the spiders, the shadows, the clowns.
“How? You didn’t run out, right?”
“I would have. If begging had failed.”
“You begged?”
