Page 103 of Wicked Me
“As tempting as that sounds, I think I’ll pass.”
“Call the jail. See if they’ll let you talk to him.”
I shook my head, wishing we didn’t have to go there. Besides, I’d already called. The officer on duty at the jail had said Sam was in the infirmary. He wouldn’t give me any more information than that.
“I’m not sure I’m ready to talk to him even if I was able to,” I said.
Several chunks of Charlotte’s black and purple hair cradled her cheek, and somehow that and her soft smile made her appear childlike. Almost vulnerable. And for reasons that made no sense, I wondered if Her had ever been in a hospital with her hair tucked beneath her cheek and an IV pole next to her bed.
A heaviness pinched my lungs, the same soul-crushing kind I had lived with for years. Guilt. Raw guilt. I envisioned it as a collection of sharp needles I had somehow worked into a ball, repeatedly stabbing myself until it was manageable to hide away somewhere dark and lonely. And now... It was uncoiling from its foundation—had been uncoiling since I’d come back to D.C.—with violent jabs straight to my heart. But my heart could only take so much, especially after yesterday.
Carefully so I wouldn’t wake Nicole, I shifted out from underneath her thirty-pound head and stood. “I’ll be back.”
Charlotte giggled. “Okay, Ah-nold.”
“You’re high,” I said and touched her foot underneath the blanket on the way past.
“And you smell like a coffee factory, but I don’t love you any less.”
I blew her a long-winded, coffee-breath kiss and swept past the smiley-faced curtain that separated her bed from an empty one. Nurses of all shapes and sizes rocketed up and down the hallway, genuine smiles lighting their faces, their shoes a symphony of squeaks on the pristine floor tiles. I hadn’t met a crabby nurse yet, which made me wonder if I had been offered the LOC job, would I be all happy feet like them? I honestly didn’t know.
During one my many treks throughout the night for a coffee bath—I mean break—I had seen an honest-to-goodness pay phone on the wall near the cafeteria. An archaic invention like a pay phone in an otherwise modern hospital might have gone ignored by most people, but thank goodness I wasn’t most people. Plus, I’d needed a phone.
After my part in what I would forever call the LOC last-day circus, I’d discovered that my cell was missing from my purse, and all signs pointed to Rick as the prime suspect. He must’ve snatched it to destroy the evidence of his debauchery before he hightailed away from Sam’s fists and the police. It had all my contacts, all my saved photos of Kay and her little boy, Drew, grinning in front of dramatic Kansas sunsets, and Sam’s number, which I could throat-punch myself for not committing to memory. It wasn’t as if I could call it and he would pick up right then, but still.
I wandered past the pay phone several times the rest of the week, drifting from the cafeteria to Charlotte’s bedside and back again.
“Call him,” Charlotte said on Tuesday. Her leg was stretched out in front of her on the bed, her calf still swollen but not near as bad as it had been. Nicole’s turtle, Jimmy, sat near it, blinking slowly at the blanket fibers.
I shrugged at an episode ofThe Brady Bunch, which ended that conversation. But later that evening, I did call and learned he’d been transferred to the Department of Corrections. After signing up for their collect call services, several long minutes passed while I waited for Sam to pick up, my mind tumbling over what he might say to me and if I was prepared to hear it.
“Hello?”
So many different emotions clogged my throat at the sound of his voice that I had to swallow several times before I answered. “Sam. Are you all right?”
Silence for a long moment, and then, “It would be better if you didn’t call again.”
I shook my head, my reflection only a dark blur in the pay phone’s silver metal box. He sounded different, stiff, like he didn’t know who I was. “No, Sam, it’s—”
“Bye, Paige.” The line went dead.
I held the phone away from my ear, not sure what just happened. It would be better if I didn’t call? Better for whom? Certainly not me. Did he not think I deserved even the vaguest of explanations? Even after I’d let myself spin out of control and fall for him?
I hung up the phone and blinked down at the lines between the shiny tiles on the floor. Straight and narrow. Like the path I’d had all planned out when I’d arrived back in D.C. Instead, I’d let my heart lead me blind like a dumbass. The lines on the floor seemed to sway until I pinned all my balance on the right toe of my sandals, which cut through the center of one of the lines. Breaking it while simultaneously crushing it.
Charlotte didn’t tell me to call him the rest of the week. Somehow she and Nicole knew, even though I didn’t say a word. Charlotte let me rule the remote to her hospital room’s TV while Nicole forced chocolate milkshakes down my throat. Okay, maybe not forced.
Thursday afternoon, the day Charlotte was to be released, I wandered once again to the cafeteria. Adele’s “Hello” began playing softly from the television in the corner at the same time my gaze connected with the pay phone. Her haunting voice followed me around like some sort of ghost from the past. It was spooky, and yet I never got tired of listening to her.
Now, though, hearing this song felt like some kind of sign, like I had almost made it to a destination I’d been heading toward for years and didn’t even realize it. I strode toward the phone, my movements calm, practiced even.
A few coins I found at the bottom of my wallet clanked inside hollow metal when I plugged them into the slot. Some phone numbers I did commit to memory, especially that of my parents. Whether they wanted to hear from me or not, it was probably coded in all child DNA to have their parents’ numbers on hand, just in case.
It took four rings for Mom to answer. “Hello?”
“It’s me.” I had to smile even though the sound of her voice stung my eyes. “Paige. Your daughter.” It felt silly to say, but we hadn’t talked in a long while.
“Hi, honey. Is everything okay? Where are you calling from?” Her slight Latina accent always rang clearer when she was worried.
