“Yeah, just my parents though. I can tell my brothers over dinner,” I said. I didn’t need their mocking or shit right now.
“Ah, the Wilder brothers at dinner. I can only imagine the amount of food necessary to feed an occasion like that.”
“Trust me, you don’t want to. We all practically eat our weight in food at that one specific meal.”
“Well, don’t make it a habit of eating like that and then going to work. We’re only equipped to handle one of you brutes at a time,” she said, smiling warmly.
“Are you flirting with me?” I asked playfully.
“I’m much too old to be flirting with a man in his thirties, but that doesn’t mean I can’t have a little bit of fun.”
“You can’t be any more than forty yourself.”
“Well, then I’ll take it, seeing as I’m fifty-two.”
“Fifty tw—! No, you’re not.”
“I really am. Fifty-two with two grown boys and a sassy girl who’s about to graduate high school. I had them young.”
“Doesn’t matter when you had them. What matters is that you raised them and made a life for yourself,” I said.
“Met a good man in the process, too. But don’t tell him about us. It’ll be our little secret,” she said, winking.
“I’ll take it to my grave,” I said, laughing.
She changed my dressing as I relaxed back onto the bed. I couldn’t get my mind off that beautiful woman from the bar. I closed my eyes and tried to conjure the name of it. The look of it. The theme of it. Anything to give me an idea as to what place I had stumbled into when I realized I didn’t have my cell phone on me.
“Did anyone come into the hospital with me?” I asked.
“Nope. Just the team of paramedics,” the nurse said.
“So there wasn’t a young woman with blue eyes and blonde hair with them at all?”
“Mr. Wilder, are you already cheating on me?”
I laughed wholeheartedly as she placed another thick piece of gauze over my stitches and taped it down.
“No, no one fitting that description came in with you last night.”
“Do you, by any chance, know the bar the paramedics brought me over from?” I asked.
“Not off the top of my head, but I could search around and see if that information is somewhere.”
“I’d really appreciate it if you could, Nurse…?”
“Delacourt. Erma Delacourt.”
“A beautifully southern name for a beautifully southern woman,” I said.
“Too bad I don’t have blonde hair and blue eyes,” she said, winking.
“Your brown eyes and wisps of gray are beautiful all on their own. Never doubt that for a second.”
“Don’t worry. I never do,” she said with confidence. “Now, I’m going to go call your parents then see if I can’t track down that information for you. In the meantime, no sudden movements. Those stitches are under a lot of tension, and if you bust any of them the only thing you’re going to be able to have is a local anesthetic to numb you up for stitches again. Which is essentially a big needle stuck straight into the exposed area.”
“Yeah. Let’s not do that,” I said.
“My thoughts exactly. But once your parents arrive, I’ll do a final check on you to make sure everything is stable, then you should be free to go.”