Lisa – Part 5

Read this first - any comments from trolls will be immediately deleted and the author(s) of them banned from this blog without further notice. These events took place at another time in my life and I am not going to defend them to small-minded, self-righteous bigots, nor am I going to hide them with a password as though I am ashamed of Lisa. There is an easy solution for anyone who is offended by my writing – that little red button with the “X” in it in the upper right corner. Use it.  

New to this series? Read in order: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.

When I finally made it home, the sun had well and truly risen. You all know, or most of you do, how those days go (Ugh. What is that horrible, giant yellow ball in the sky? Who put all these tiny socks on my teeth?). And when you’re already sick? It’s even worse. I ended up begging another waitress to take my shift, bribing her with promises of working any holiday she was scheduled.

Then, I slept. And slept. And slept. I was both hung over and high (O! Demerol! How I loved thee.), so I had no way to gauge whether or not I was getting sicker or just working off a binge. Lisa called a few times and I assured her each time that I was getting much better, but it was an absolute act of denial. I dragged myself into work Sunday morning, with dark, bruised circles under my eyes, fueled solely by coffee. I did well enough to avoid being written up and went home to sleep some more, waking for frequent bouts of ominous, rattling coughing. Because I was 21 and convinced I was invincible, and also because I was dirt-poor with very bad health insurance, I ignored it.

When I collapsed on Tuesday night at the soup station in the back of the house, our Manager on duty, Mark, told me someone could either drive me to the hospital or I could go in the ambulance, my choice. I agreed to have Kari drive me to the nearest ER, weakly complaining the whole way there that it was just a bad cold or the flu or something, and the ER visit was just going to end up with me getting a $100 dose of cough syrup and Tylenol.  

Instead, I ended up in the hospital on oxygen, breathing treatments, and IV antibiotics and fluids. My walking pneumonia, obviously angered at not being taken seriously enough, had called in its goon squad, full-blown bacterial pneumonia. With complications! It was like the Goodfellas showed up in my chest. With baseball bats!

I’ve never been that sick in my entire life and it’s an experience I don’t care to ever repeat. Lisa told me later that I was drifting in and out of consciousness most of the first night. I don’t remember much of anything after I cried to the doctor who rather forcibly admitted me that I couldn’t afford to be sick enough to be in a hospital. However, once the medication cocktail that they gave me began to work, I was happy to see the glimmer of a time when I would no longer feel as though I was breathing in a mixture of pudding and coarse sand. Finally, I was deemed well enough (thanks, crappy insurance!) for discharge on Friday afternoon.

Andy and Lisa were on hand to collect me. I knew I looked like something the cat dragged in; blotchy, dull skin, glassy eyes, greasy hair with a big flat spot, and still hacking like a 90-year old smoker with emphysema. I was sent home with a nebulizer, an inhaler, and prescriptions for enough antibiotics to treat a small village and cough syrup with codeine (which we got a fairly good chuckle out of later, because as we remember from earlier in the story, Demerol kicks codeine’s ass – and I was on Andy’s Favorite List).

“Come on, Coco, get in the car,” Lisa coaxed as Andy stayed inside, “to finish things up”. I later learned that he paid my outstanding hospital bill. In cash. Lisa urged me to lay down across the seat during the drive, and I quickly drifted off to sleep. When I woke up, we weren’t at my shabby but serviceable apartment complex. We were at Lisa’s place, a far more luxurious gated community with a guard.

“Wha’s goin’ on?” I mumbled, as Andy carried me up the stairs to Lisa’s bright, airy apartment.

“You’re staying here until you’re better, darling Coco.” Andy soothed me.

“I’m going to take care of you, baby,” Lisa murmured, squeezing my hand as Andy laid me down on her bed.

Another time, my prickly pride might have made me protest, insist that I go home and take care of myself, but all I felt then was relief. Relief that I was in a soft bed with cool, silky sheets and a down comforter and pillows instead of on my lumpy used mattress set with poly/cotton blend bedding and a faded comforter from Goodwill. Relief that Lisa brought me juice and soup and then brushed my hair until I fell asleep for several blissful hours. Relief that she made sure I got my medicine and brought me dinner and stood guard while I took a blissful hot bath.  She got me a clean tee shirt and boxers (What? None of you wore oversized men’s boxers as pj’s?) and actually tucked me in before she left for work. I was feeling almost human for the first time in a week.

After being unceremoniously thrown out on my own at 18, and having had to basically act as the parent in my relationship with my mom for years before that, someone finally wanted to take care of me. It felt nice.

That being a Friday night, she was late getting in. It was still dark when she came home, but dawn wasn’t very far away. In my dreamy Demerol state, I was kind of half-dozing as I heard her get in the shower, then the hum of the blow dryer, but I opened my eyes and smiled at her when she came in to check on me.

“Hey,” She flipped on a small lamp as she sat on the side of the bed, brushing my cheek with the back of her fingers, ”You should be asleep.”

“I was,” I sighed, “I heard you come in. It’s that twilight zone sleep you get on painkillers anyway, you know?”

Lisa laughed softly and nodded, “I know how it is. How do you feel?”

“Like someone kicked the living hell out of me. Which is a considerable improvement from how I felt Tuesday.”

“You scared the shit out of everyone,” she replied, “I think Mark thought you were going to die after Kari said you’d been admitted. She called me right after. I’m so sorry, Coco. I shouldn’t have asked you to come out on Saturday, I just didn’t know how bad it was. “

“No, hey, Lise. Don’t, OK? My going out Saturday is my responsibility. Besides, how could I abandon you to Patrick and his hyenas?” The last part was meant to make Lisa laugh, but she only regarded me quietly.

“I can sleep on the couch if that’s more comfortable for you.” She said at last in a carefully neutral voice. The memory of those kisses amid the neon strobes and seductive shadows came rushing back to the front of my mind and I could feel myself blushing furiously. Which was stupid, right? I was four years removed from being a virgin and I’d thought my innocence had been pretty much shredded to bits even before that. But I’d never met anyone like Lisa, never felt attracted to another woman like I was to her before. All my experience was based on being a boy-crazy flirt. I was scared and confused and I had no idea how to process these powerful, unfamiliar feelings but I didn’t know how to tell Lisa that and so I just lay there, staring at her. She sighed a little and stood up, a shield sliding into place over her eyes.

“Call me if you need anything then, Coco.” I’d hurt her, I knew I’d hurt her and I didn’t want that to be how this played out. Panic welled up in my throat as she turned to go out the door.

In a voice I barely recognized I croaked out, “Stay. Please.” She stopped and turned back to me, barely.

“Are you sure?” Same cool tone. But she’d stopped.

 ”Yeah. But I should tell you I probably snore.” I replied, clutching a corner of the ivory sheet tightly.

Lisa gave me another searching look, “Don’t do this because you feel guilty. I’m taking care of you because I want to, even if what happened was just because of the drugs. So if whatever else might come of this isn’t OK for you, you tell me right now.”

“It wasn’t the drugs, damn it. Maybe they let me relax enough to experience it, but that wasn’t all of it.” I started to shake a little, “Just…can you be patient with me, because nothing like this ever happened to me before, and I look and feel like hell, and I still don’t know how you could possibly be interested in me when you could have anyone you want.“

“Someday, Coco, we’re going to have a serious talk about this self-esteem thing you have,” She said it tenderly, though, and the mask slipped away from her face as she finally smiled again.

“Personally? I blame the public school system,” I replied sulkily, and at last, she laughed, kissing me quickly and lightly. She turned off the lamp and crossed around the bed to slide in beside me. I think she knew I couldn’t go to her, not yet, so she gathered me up and just held on to me gently.

“You have to get well first. We’ll take this slowly. I won’t do anything you don’t want me to, Coco. Will you trust me?” she murmured, stroking my neck very softly.

“Yes.” I said simply, closing my eyes as she wrapped herself around me.

“Good. Now sleep.”

So I did.

I’m on a roll! Part 6 may even post this weekend. But I make no promises.