Fix by J. Mann (highly illogical behavior .TXT) 📕

Oh, shit.

The Roxy

IT’S LIKE EIGHT IN THE FREAKING MORNING AND MARY FAY is crawling us through traffic to Mass General. I haven’t recovered from last night’s grocery trip and that damn toilet paper kiss. Yet here I am, back in the car.

This woman is killing me.

I woke to the snap of my shade, music blaring from the kitchen, and a stack of clean clothes in her arms, including socks and the sock aid. Although the real cherry on Mary Fay’s good-morning cake was a baggie of rye toast for me to eat in the car. “No table service,” she’d announced.

By the time we pull into MGH’s circular drop-off area, my spine is literally hanging from its rods. I did not allow myself to take any Roxy this morning. At the crack of dawn, it had seemed like a good idea to show up in real and true pain. Not so much anymore, since now I am in real and true pain.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been playing the halfsy game. The hiding-it-away game. The this-isn’t-happening game. But the prescription is done. And although I have a supply squirreled away in my bedside table, there are no more refills in my future. I have to ask Dr. Sowah for more. Which does not feel at all like a game.

Mary Fay puts the car in park directly in front of the giant mechanized revolving door. The shred of rye toast crust I nibbled churns in my stomach.

More Roxy. I’ll figure out everything else later.

Everything.

My god, I need a Roxy.

“Eve? You okay?”

“Yeah, sorry, Meef. I’m good. You ready?”

She doesn’t move.

“You know I’m here for you, honey. Don’t you?”

This is not what I need right now. Nodding, I fumble to unbuckle myself. Not that I could get away from her anyway. I’m stuck in this car until she decides to get me out.

“Thanks, yes. I know.” I flash a smile, anything to make her move.

It works. Mary Fay returns my smile and exits the car. And I let out the breath I didn’t know I’d been holding. She grabs my crutches from the hatchback, and together—like we’ve been doing this all our lives—we haul me up and out of the car.

She hands over my crutches.

“I only need the one,” I tell her. Unlike in the grocery store, I feel safe at MGH. Even with a ton of people around.

She tosses the crutch into the back seat and shuts the door. “I’ll park and hang in the waiting room. Text if you need me in with you and the doctor.”

“Do you want anything from Starbucks?” I offer, trying to return us to our normal easy conversation.

“Starbucks?” she says. “You need to powershop, Eve. You’re already late.”

“I’ll take that as a no.” I’m definitely doing Starbucks.

Turning toward the door, I have a flashback of swaying darkness and pain from the night they stuffed me in an ambulance to take me home. It seems like years ago, not weeks.

My phone vibrates with a text. Mary Fay must want coffee after all.

Wish I could be there with you. My mother. Who has not disappeared. Who is at a conference in a state that is not disappearing.

Wish I could be there with you? She could be here. She could totally be here. Right now.

My thumbs pump out Your decision while my chest heaves. I click the send arrow so fast and with such enthusiasm, it’s shocking how helpless I feel doing it.

I stick my phone deep in my coat pocket, hobble across the lobby through the side door into Starbucks, and get in line.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

My heart slides farther into my stomach as the barista happily asks what they can get me.

I order Dr. Sowah and me Mocha Frapps, and then wait for them while my phone lies still in my pocket. Her decision. It was her decision. It’s why she isn’t answering my text. She knows it. But I know something, too. I know I wanted it to be her decision for the same reason she’s always made everything mine. You’d think understanding your mother for the first time ever might actually feel good, but it doesn’t. It sucks. I snatch out a Roxy and take it. Fuck being in pain.

The nice Starbucks server secures the Frapps into a to-go holder so I can carry them easily with one hand. Dr. Sowah loves Mocha Frapps. I’m not bringing him one because I need him to write me another prescription, I’m bringing him one and I need him to write me another prescription. Either way, I always bring him one because I like him, and he likes his Frapp.

As I’m heading toward the bank of elevators, my phone begins to vibrate.

I fumble between my forearm crutch and my pocket in my hurry to answer it, to speak to her, to tell her I’m sorry.

“Eve?”

Shit, it’s Thomas Aquinas.

I hang up.

And then press for the elevator, hard, like twenty times, as if its arrival can somehow take me away from what just happened. Before it comes, my phone starts vibrating again. I don’t even look. I know it’s him. Of course it’s him. Only Thomas Aquinas would call again. I can’t stand it. Maybe it’s her. I look. It’s him.

My hand moves to my lips as I think about his lips.

Where is the damn elevator?

My phone keeps vibrating.

Oh, my fucking god, I hate Thomas Aquinas. Why didn’t he text? I could be trying to rest right now. I could be asleep. I’ve just had goddamn surgery.

My phone stops. Finally. And I breathe a sigh of relief as the elevator opens in front of Dr. Sowah’s reception desk.

Leslie, his receptionist, looks up and hoots, “Eve!”

“Hey, Leslie.” I’d fall into her arms, if only I were able to.

Coming out from behind the desk, Leslie looks my body up and down, and reports, “You look great straight, girl! You’re superlate, by the way.” She then gives me an air hug, takes the holder with