Page 45 of Contusion (Heartland Metro Hospital)

“No,” he snaps. “I wouldn’t invade your privacy like that.”

“But, I thought . . . earlier, you looked at my chart.”

“I did. I looked to make sure it was you. I confirmed your name, then I stopped reading.”

“Oh,” is all I manage.

Rory stops tapping his foot on the floor, and the sound ceases. He also sets the pen on the hospital tray between us. “So? Are you going to tell me what it is? I mean, you’re on the oncology floor, so I know it’s cancer.” His face betrays no emotion. I need to know if he’s angry or if maybe he even feels cat-fished, for all I know.

“Does it matter?” I ask.

Rory scoffs. “Yes, it fucking matters,” he sneers, finally betraying his stoic composure from earlier.

“There’s a reason you were meant to be for only one night, Rory. This wasn’t supposed to get complicated.”

“We’re a little past that, don’t you think?”

“It’s not too late. Feelings aren’t involved yet. You can go on as you were before we met, and I’ll go on with my treatment. No hard feelings,” I offer, and do my best to smile in a way that might soothe him. Yet, the thought of him not being around aches in my chest.

“Is that right?” he asks, but it’s clearly rhetorical. “You’ve decided, then? You have no feelings for me, and there’s no possible way I have feelings for you?” His muscles are all tight knots, and I wince a bit because he is so wound up, I can almost anticipate him throwing something. But kind and gentle Rory wouldn’t do something like that—I know that much.

“Rory, we hardly know each other. I won’t begrudge you walking away if that’s what you are worried about. I never wanted you to find out at all.”

“That’s what you think I’m worried about? That I would feel guilty about walking away now?”

“Well, yeah. Wouldn’t you?”

His eyes soften, and he scratches his jaw, letting out a long breath. “Valentina, I care about you. You’re right, we barely know each other, and it is too soon to talk about feelings. If circumstances were different, I would wait until we’d had more time together, but I meant what I said before. I want to get to know you and finding out you’re sick doesn’t change that.”

“It does for me,” I say, and now it’s me who’s angry.

“What does that mean?”

“You were never supposed to know. You were a fantasy—what I would have wanted if I wasn’t sick—and I got to live it for one day. I was happy with that, but you had to keep pushing, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, I did! Because I like you,” he hisses. I blink because it’s almost comical how he says the sweetest words with the roughest voice and so much anger. I want to laugh at how such a deep voice comes from the body of a man who has no business with that baritone.

“Rory,” I plead. “Do you think I want you around for this? Especially when you know what I am without this illness?”

“Do you think you are any less remarkable because you’re sick? Valentina, it only makes you that much fiercer. Don’t you see? It’s the fighter in you that I’m drawn to.”

My vision blurs at the welling of my eyes. He says the most perfect thing he could possibly say to me, and I press my hand to my chest to soothe my aching heart.

Rory stands from his seat and lies down next to me on the hospital bed so he can embrace me. I curl up into his side like I did that night on the Kansas City grass and breathe him in. This time, it’s the hospital’s antiseptic scent instead of the earthy smells of the park that mingle with the smell of Rory, and it is no less remarkable because it is him. His embrace soothes like nothing in this world, and I fall apart in his arms. I break down for all the words I haven’t said and all the people who don’t know I’m sick. I sob into his t-shirt, and he lets me. He hugs me tight, encouraging me to let it all out.

The circles he rubs on my back bring me down from my cry, and I compose myself.

“Now, can you tell me what it is?”

“Cervical cancer,” I say weakly.

Rory’s chin rests on top of my head, and I’m so glad he can’t see my face right now.

“Stage?”

I try to resist giving him any details, but in the end, I give in. I tell him every detail about my cancer and am relieved I don’t have to explain what any of the terms mean because he already knows. His arms tighten around me like the words physically attack him.

After a long moment, I feel him shake around me. I look up, and he is holding back laughter. I wipe my eyes. “What?” I ask. “Are you laughing?”

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