Such a Pretty Face by Annabelle Costa

Chapter 41

Between the medications and the excitement of the last night, I sleep soundly, even with the nurses coming in to check my blood pressure practically every five minutes. One nurse was kind enough to tell me she’d “never heard a woman snore that loudly before.” Gee, thanks. Camille once told me that I snore, but I didn’t think it was that loud. Maybe it’s gotten worse.

At around eight in the morning, my doctor finally comes in to discharge me. I was expecting Dr. Cooper, the nasty cutie, but instead, it’s a tall, gray-haired man with a disarming white beard. Instead of standing over me the way Dr. Cooper did, he pulls up a chair next to me.

“Is it all right if I call you Emily?” he asks me.

I nod.

He smiles, and it’s a toothy white grin that makes me like him instantly. “I’m Dr. Kraus. How are you feeling, Emily?”

“My ankle still hurts,” I admit. Overnight, my ankle has puffed up even further and turned a deep purple color, despite being iced and elevated on two pillows. It looks awful.

“Any chest pain? Shortness of breath?” he asks.

I shake my head no.

“We need to talk about your diagnosis, Emily,” Dr. Kraus begins.

No, we don’t. My stomach clenches.

“Dr. Cooper told you that you have adult-onset diabetes, right?” he presses me.

“Yes,” I murmur. “But… I think it might be a mistake. I haven’t had any symptoms.”

“The symptoms in type two diabetes can be vague,” the doctor explains. “Some people notice they feel more tired than usual or that it’s hard to concentrate. Sometimes people are more hungry or more thirsty and find themselves going to the bathroom more frequently to urinate. Some people notice blurred vision as a symptom.”

Oh my God. I’ve had all those symptoms. So that’s why I can’t read the blackboard anymore in class.

“I need you to take this seriously, Emily,” Dr. Kraus says. “There are a lot of people living with diabetes these days, but that doesn’t make it any less serious. What do you know about the disease?”

I bite my lip. “Something about my blood sugar being high?”

Dr. Kraus raises his white eyebrows at me. “Do you know about any of the complications of diabetes?”

I shrug. This seems like something I ought to know, but I don’t.

“If you don’t take care of this, Emily,” he says, “the disease could affect your eyes and you could go blind. It could destroy your kidneys, and you could spend the rest of your life on dialysis. It could affect your healing ability, and if you end up with a cut on your foot, you could wind up losing your entire leg.” He lowers his voice a notch. “And when I say that it could do those things, what I mean is that it will do those things. If you don’t treat the disease.”

A shudder goes through me. I could go blind? Lose a leg?

“It stinks being in the hospital,” Dr. Kraus says sympathetically. “The last thing you want is to be here for months because you have a wound that won’t heal or an infection that won’t go away. You need to take this seriously, Emily. Or else this hospital will become your home away from home.”

All at once, the fear I felt the other day when I almost couldn’t get out of bed comes flooding back to me. Maybe I’ve let this go too far. Maybe…

“You’ve got a lot of life left, Emily,” Dr. Kraus says to me. “Please don’t spend it here.”

I have to admit, I think a lot about what Dr. Kraus said to me for the rest of the morning. I think about it when the nurse shows me how to prick my finger so that I can check my blood sugar. I think about it when they send in a nutritionist to come see me, her arms brimming with pamphlets about healthy foods and support groups and something called “bariatric surgery.”

“Some people need the stomach stapling, Emily,” the nutritionist tells me. “It’s not the end of the world.”

Abby is due to pick me up at noon, and by that point, my head is spinning. I’m clutching prescriptions for a medication for my high blood pressure and one for diabetes. I have diabetes. I actually have diabetes. I don’t know what to think about any of this.

At twelve o’clock sharp, I hear a thump on the partially closed door to my hospital room. Abby is always prompt—definitely a good quality. I can’t wait to get out of this place. My crutches are leaning against the wall, and the nurse helped me get dressed in some scrubs they had lying around since I didn’t have any of my clothes with me.

“Come in!” I call out.

I struggle into a sitting position, which is a lot easier when the bed controls get me most of the way there. I need one of these adjustable beds for home.

“Hey, Emily.”

I look up and practically fall over again when I see Brody sitting in his wheelchair, two feet away from me. I may look different, but he sure doesn’t. Christ, I forgot how cute he is. I see that infectious smile on his face and half of me wants to throw myself into his arms. The other half of me wants to hide.

“Brody,” I manage.

I see his blue eyes traveling over my body, and the urge to hide grows stronger. Then his eyes rest on my face. “It’s been a while,” he says.

“Yeah,” I agree. “How did you know I was here?”

“Abby told me,” he says. “She doesn’t have a car, so she asked me to pick you up.”

“You don’t have a car either,” I point out.

“Sean’s got the van outside.”

Sean. Ugh. Speaking of people I really, really don’t want to see right now. I can only imagine his face when he sees me.

“You guys are getting along now?” I ask.

Brody shakes his head. “We always got along. Sean is my best friend—he was just… going through some stuff. But he’s better now.” He adds, “I definitely couldn’t have gotten through us breaking up without Sean.”

“Oh,” I mumble.

“I wasn’t very good for a while,” he admits. “Fell off the wagon a few times, if I’m being entirely honest. But I’m okay now. Over it. You know.”

I have to admit, I’m a little disappointed that he says that he’s over me. There was a tiny part of me that wished he was still pining for me desperately. That he was here to beg me to get back together. But that’s not the case. After all, like Jess said, he’s got a plus one for her wedding—he’s moved on.

But I’m glad he’s not drinking because of our breakup. It makes me feel terrible to think I almost ruined all the progress he made.

“I’d like to be friends, Emily,” he says. “If that’s okay with you.”

I look Brody over. Yes, he’s in a wheelchair. Yes, his fingers are curled up, his forearms are bony, and he drops half his food when he’s trying to eat. But he’s hot. He’s still really hot. He could find a woman who isn’t so fat she gets wedged in the bathroom and requires four men to wrench her free. I don’t blame him for only wanting friendship from me now.

“It’s fine,” I mumble.

“So,” he says, looking me in the eyes, “since we’re friends and all, maybe you could tell me the real reason you had to spend the night here. Because I’m guessing they wouldn’t keep you in the hospital overnight just for a sprained ankle.”

I stare into his kind face. It was always so easy to talk to Brody—I cared about him so much. I loved him. And the truth is, I still do. Maybe it’s time to be honest. If I can’t admit I have a problem, how am I supposed to get better?

“My blood pressure was high,” I admit. “And also, it turns out that… I have diabetes.”

And then I start to cry. I didn’t cry when Brody and I first broke up, but I cry now. I cry into my hands, and then Brody awkwardly pulls his chair up to the side of my bed, and I cry into his shoulder. He says nothing—just lets me cry.

I can’t believe I let this happen to myself. I can’t believe I became this way. And if I don’t do something about it, it’s only going to get worse. Until I’m dead.

“I don’t want to be this way,” I sob. “I know I eat too much. It’s just so hard to change…”

“I know how hard it is,” Brody whispers, attempting to stroke my hair best he can. “I went through the same thing. It took me almost dying to shape up.”

I lift my face to look at him. His brows knit together.

“Tell me what I can do to help you, Emily,” he says. “Whatever you need, I’ll do it. I’ll go to meetings with you. I’ll diet with you. I’ll go with you to the gym. I promise—whatever you want.”

“Thank you,” I murmur. “Thanks for being a friend to me.”

“Yeah,” Brody breathes.

I bite my lip. “And I completely understand that you don’t want to be anything… more than that. I mean, I get it.”

Brody frowns. For a moment, a dark look comes over his face and he seems almost furious. “Of course I want to be more than that!” he cries. “How could you say that? I don’t want to be your friend, Emily. I want to be your boyfriend.” He shakes his head. “I’m trying to be a good guy here. Jesus.”

My heart pounds in my chest. Good thing the cardiac monitor isn’t still attached. “You still want to be with me?”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” He blinks his blue eyes. “I think about you every single day. I was beating myself up for months for blowing things with you. When Abby told me you needed me here, I called Sean and said he had to get his ass over here ASAP.”

“But,” I sputter, “Jess told me you RSVPed ‘plus one’ for her wedding.”

For a moment, Brody looks completely confused. Then he laughs. “I RSVPed ‘plus one’ and you thought…? Jesus. There’s no one else. Believe me.”

“So who are you taking to the wedding?” I ask.

Brody sighs. “Emily, you realize I can’t take a trip to Maine all by myself, right? Since Jess banned Sean, I had to ask my mother. She’s my ‘plus one.’” He grins. “It may make me a bad son, but I have to say, I’d ditch her for you.”

“I put on a lot of weight though,” I mumble, squeezing my hands together. As if he hadn’t noticed. Like he was blind.

Brody shrugs. “So what? You could put on five hundred pounds and I’d still think you’re beautiful.”

Part of me thinks he’s full of shit. But part of me thinks he genuinely means it.

“The truth is,” he says with a nervous smile, “I’ve always sort of thought bigger women were sexy. I mean, really sexy.”

I stare at him. How is it possible that never came to light until just this second?

“I don’t want to creep you out by saying that though,” he says quickly. “I mean, it’s not a thing or anything. It’s just, you know, something I like. That I’ve always liked. A lot.”

“Oh,” I say breathlessly.

Brody raises his eyebrows. “So, um. Are you creeped out?”

“No,” I say. “I’m not. At all.”

“Good.” His shoulders sag in relief. “I was terrified to tell you all that time. I thought you’d take it the wrong way and freak out. But since we’re being honest, I thought you should know.”

“Actually,” I say, “it sort of makes me feel better. About everything.”

Brody smiles at me. “So I’m an idiot for not saying anything sooner, huh?”

“Pretty much,” I say. “But I get it.”

“Still,” he adds. “Even though I think you’re sexy as hell, I can’t watch you making yourself sick. I can’t. So if we’re going to be together, you have to make an effort to live a healthier lifestyle. I don’t want to have to pick you up at the hospital again until we’re good and old.”

“Or I’m having a baby,” I joke.

Even though it was a joke, Brody’s cheeks turn pink. “Yeah,” he says softly. “That would be okay too.”

We sit there, gazing at each other for a minute. I don’t know how I got so lucky to find Brody. He knows how messed up I am and he’s okay with it. All right, he’s a little messed up himself. But that’s okay with me. “I want you to make love to me,” I hear myself saying.

I don’t know why I said that. I’m in the hospital. I weigh the most I’ve ever weighed in my entire life. I can barely walk on my stupid ankle. But I want this. More than anything I’ve ever wanted in my life.

He smiles nervously. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

He rubs his nose with the back of his wrist. “Like, soon?”

“As soon as possible,” I whisper.

“Okay,” he says. He still has that nervous smile. “Let’s make it happen. If you’re ready.”

I’m so ready. This has been a long time coming.