Page 36 of Hearts to Mend

Wait. I grab for Dee, clutching her hand. I’m overwhelmed and at a loss for words, but what I have to say is vitally important: “No MRI.”

Those are the only words I can reach, like all my other words are stuck to the roof of my mouth. So I move my hand to my bum shoulder, the one with the remnants of shrapnel embedded in it.

And God bless her, Dee understands. She’s always been able to understand me, sometimes better than I understand myself. “Shrapnel from the war?”

I nod.

“It’s okay.” She squeezes my hand, and I feel my dog tags in her palm, warm from her grip. “This is a CT scan, nonmagnetic, so you’ll be fine.”

I grin a bit, relieved she understands and exhausted from the exertion to communicate. The staff start pushing my bed again. Dee stands still, letting my hand go as the distance grows between us.

“Don’t leave me,” I beg, desperate to hold onto her.

“I’ll be right here, Rico. They’ll bring you back after your scan. I’m not going anywhere.”

I’m not going anywhere. Those words are a comfort I didn’t know I needed.

CHAPTER 15

DEE

* * *

A frisson of fear creeps down my spine like the legs of a thousand spiders, leaving me shivering and breathless as the nurses wheel Rico toward the CT suite. I haven’t felt this kind of fear since I came home from school one day and found Mom nonresponsive on the bathroom floor.

That was the day I lost her. Though, the loss of Mom was a slow one. I’d been losing her in small doses for weeks, months, years before that final, toxic goodbye.

At least this time I’d known what to do. With Drew’s help, we’d gotten Rico the medical care he needed very fast. I just hope—for the sake of Rico, Inez, and Mateo—that it was fast enough.

Oh, who am I kidding? I hold out hope for myself too. As much as I like to kid myself that I can have an affair with Rico that’s purely physical, it’s a shallow little lie, and we both know it. Everyone knows it.

Rico stole my heart when we were eight, and he never gave it back. Since he left me, no one else has come close to mattering as much as Rico did. Not sexually, or otherwise. He was my best friend before he was my one great love, and for a long time, I’ve had neither of those things. When Rico left, he took my heart with him.

I tried to move on. I worked to fit the pieces of my shattered heart back together while the world kept turning, indifferent. But it was too much work. Too much struggle. I got lazy, and then I became indifferent too. Indifference can be pretty fun, actually. I partied like I didn’t care because caring hurt too much. Dad called me a heartbreaker for the way I “dated” the men of South Central Texas, but how can you break a heart you never even touched?

I was indifferent in other ways, too, not bothering much with friendships. Rooster is probably the closest friend I have now, but he has four big sisters and doting parents. If he landed himself in the hospital, I wouldn’t be in his top five list of people to call first. I love Drew like a brother, too, but he has Chloe now. He’s never going to need much from a friend like me when he has the love of his life to depend on. And Watts: he’s a family man, in a whole other world from the lonely one in which I live.

That’s the heart of it, really: I’m alone. And I’ve been alone for a long time. If I landed my ass in the hospital, who would I call?

Oh right, I did land my ass in the hospital. I look down at the boot on my foot and remember waking up to see Rico there, asleep in the chair across from me. And in that moment, for the first time in a long time, I didn’t feel alone.

With a groan, I flop into one of the chairs in Rico’s room, humming the chorus of an old Joan Jett song to calm my nerves as I wait for his return.

My hand hurts. I look down to see I’m still clutching his dog tags, my grip so tight the edges have left marks in my palm. Relaxing my fingers, I open my hand to read the details stamped into the metal, tracing my thumb over the indentations that spell out Rico’s name, social security number, blood type, and religion.

I remember, when he enlisted, he’d stewed about what to declare as his religion. Rico’s not religious—always a questioner, never a believer—but his mother would have disowned him if he’d listed anything other than Catholic on his ID.

It still reads Catholic, and I wonder if these are the same tags he wore all those years ago when he kissed me goodbye? How long has this pair hung against his chest, over his heart, only to come off now, as he lies in a hospital.

I’m shaken from my thoughts when Inez rushes into the room and pulls me out of my chair, entangling me in a tight hug. This tiny woman is deceptively strong. I take comfort in her embrace, letting some of the tension drain out of me as I set my chin on her shoulder and glance over at Drew, standing in the doorway. I give him a thumbs-up as thanks for bringing her here.

“How is he?” Inez pulls away so she can look me in the eyes as I answer.

I encourage her to sit in one of the available chairs, and I sit in the other. “His medical team performed what’s called an NIHSS assessment to determine the severity of his stroke. He scored a six, which is in the mild to moderately severe range.

“They took him to the CT suite within ten minutes of arrival and are presently performing a scan of his brain. The medical team says he’s a good candidate for Tenecteplase, which is a relatively new thrombolytic agent used to treat acute ischemic strokes.”

The look of confusion on Inez’s face suggests I need to explain better, in layman’s terms.

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