She might have said more but I lost it. I stared at her earrings, fiercely bright diamond studs, focusing on them to keep from panicking.
She pressed on through my unresponsiveness and blank, horrified expression. “Do you understand, Anna?”
“What?”
“We’re keeping you for a day or two longer, to make sure no complications arise. Then you can go home.”
I managed to nod, and she left to deliver terrible news to someone else. A wave of loneliness hit me, and for the first time it occurred to me I should try and tell someone where I was.
This was harder than I expected it to be. My purse had, almost miraculously, made the trip to the emergency room with me, and was stowed in a small locker beside my bed. The bag had been stepped on repeatedly, either by cops or capes, and my phone’s battery was dead and the screen even more badly cracked. I realized that I didn’t even know June’s number off the top of my head, so I couldn’t call her from the terrible, strangely sticky landline in the room.
My best nurse, whose name was Nathan and whose muscular arms were covered in full-sleeve tattoos of tentacles and warships, found me a charging cable and managed to plug in my wrecked phone. It took me three tries to input my password and I sliced my thumb open on the shattered glass of the screen, but the device still worked. Dozens of texts and chat messages from June arrived in a squawking swarm of notifications.
Her messages started out affectionately mocking (good luck today, dick), but quickly became concerned (what’s happening over there? holy shit you’re on tv!!). After the footage cut out, there was a string of panicked messages detailing how everyone on-site was told to clean out their desks and leave, that the building might be raided; someone ripped the hard drive out of June’s computer while she was still in her office, putting on her coat. Eventually her messages devolved into her alternating between calling me a bitch, sending poop and explosion emojis, and begging me to call her.
I managed to peck out the message hey, I’m alive and was working on a follow-up before my phone lit up from her calling me. I let her scream at me for scaring her until her voice gave and she was hoarse and panting, and then I slowly explained the horrors of my last forty-eight hours. She felt bad enough for me, or forgave my radio silence enough, to promise to swing by my house and come by with supplies in the morning.
I spent another fretful, shivering night, unable to get either comfortable or warm, and managed to sleep just as a thin gray dawn was starting to filter into my room. I was startled awake a pitifully short amount of time later by my morning nurse, who sang hello to me and plopped a huge fruit basket down on the table next to my bed.
“This came for you! Isn’t that exciting?” She stared at me expectantly.
I flailed and cursed. Every time I got any sleep at all, even just nodding off for a moment, I woke up stickier, smellier, more physically abject than I was before. My leg was stained with iodine from where they had painted my skin in prep for surgery, and my skin had broken out everywhere the adhesive from the surgical tape had touched me. I felt like one-third of my body was a rash. The backs of my hands were the worst, aching from the IVs and seeping lymph. There was no fruit basket yet created on this hell earth that would have been capable of making me excited.
Batting away the cellophane, careful not to disturb any of the tubes attached to me, I fished between the apples and fig jam and a tiny box of artisanal crackers until I found a card tucked between the leaves of a pineapple. It was emblazoned with the familiar eel-and-trident logo of Electrophorous, and I felt a sudden surge of warmth toward E. He might have placed me right in harm’s way, but at least he cared. Maybe when I returned to work, I thought, I could negotiate dental coverage. I opened the envelope.
It was not the “Get well soon!” card I expected, but an HR document, typed neatly on official company letterhead. I was thanked for my “good” work, told I had been a “valuable resource under difficult circumstances.” However, since my injury meant I would be recovering “indefinitely,” and my employer found themselves in a “state of flux,” they were “regretfully” severing my contract.
In acknowledgment of your service and efforts while under our employ, a standard reference letter will be added to your agency file. Once you are able to seek employment again, please feel free to submit a new application to Electrophorous Industries.
I held the letter nervelessly, staring into the middle distance, and could barely muster a reaction when June entered the room with a small duffel bag over one shoulder. She drew up short when she saw my face, and I held the letter out to her, unable to come up with something to say.
It wasn’t often I got to see June speechless—her quick-witted viciousness was one of her best qualities. But in that moment, staring at the huge fruit basket on the side table near my hospital bed, her powers left her.
I sipped some lukewarm ginger ale through a bendy straw and basked in her outraged shock. She opened her mouth to say something, then closed it again.
I managed an uneven grin. “I know.”
“I can’t.” She shook her head with brain-rattling force.
“Drink it in.” I gestured grandly.
“An actual fruit basket.”
“It’s next level.”
She turned her back, walked away from it, and suddenly turned around, as though if she looked away for a moment, the basket might disappear.
“Those fucks! I’ll fight a bitch,” she spat. Her outrage was more comforting than a hug. I managed my first real smile in some time and gathered the motivation to reach for the bag she had brought me.
June was wearing nose plugs, but it was still obvious how gravely uncomfortable she was in the hospital. The odor of disinfectant, new and old wounds, sickness and shit, would be awful for her (and to be perfectly clear I didn’t smell delightful either). But she’d brought me warm socks and my favorite hoodie, basic hygiene supplies, and even my lipstick and eyeliner. It went an incredibly long way toward making me feel human again.
Her generosity had limits, of course.
“I’m not helping you in there,” she said flatly, though she did agree to find a nurse to help me hobble to the bathroom to make a first pitiful attempt to clean myself. After brushing my teeth, applying a few cucumber-scented body wipes, and using an elastic to tie back my gritty, greasy hair, I was downright cheerful. While I slowly navigated my way back into bed, June read the letter from HR over and over, brow knit together in fury.
“It’s the cliché of the fruit basket I find particularly offensive,” she said finally. “Of all the shitty ways to deliver this news, they chose the worst bad joke.”
I reached into the basket and fished around. “Would you like a plum?” Opiates and emotional devastation were making me giddy.
“No.”
I shrugged and bit into the stone fruit. Juice pooled in my palm and ran down my arm.
“Greg’s here.”
I sucked on one of my fingers. “That’s nice of him. He taking a call?”
“Yeah, out front. He should be up in a minute.” She looked me over critically, taking in my swollen and splinted leg, limited mobility, gray face. “When are they going to let you out?”
“Tomorrow, maybe the next day. As soon as it’s clear I don’t have staph or a clot.”