Roomies by Christina Lauren
two
I’ve never been inside an ambulance before, and it’s just as mortifying to snort awake in front of two sober professionals as I’d imagine it would be. A female paramedic with a permanent furrow etched into her forehead stares down at me, expression severe. Monitors beep. When I look around, my head becomes a rocket ship, counting down to some manner of combustive event. My arm is sore—no, not just sore, screaming. A glance down tells me it’s already restrained in a sling.
With the distant roar of an oncoming train, I remember being pushed onto the tracks.
Someone pushed me onto the subway tracks!
My heart begins doing a chaotic version of kung fu in my chest and the panicked tempo is echoed by the various machines surrounding me. I sit up, struggling against the monumental wave of nausea, and croak, “Did you catch him?”
“Whoa, whoa.” With concern in her eyes, the paramedic—her name tag reads ROSSI—gently urges me back down. “You’re okay.” She nods at me with confidence. “You’re okay.”
And then she presses a card into my hand.
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline
1-800-273-8255
I flip it over, wondering if the other side says,
Who to call when a drunk dude pushes you onto the tracks
Unfortunately, it does not.
I look back up at her, feeling my face heat in indignation. “I didn’t jump.”
Rossi nods. “It’s okay, Ms. Bakker.” She misreads my mystified expression and adds, “We got your name from your purse, which we recovered just off the platform.”
“He didn’t take my purse?”
She presses her lips into a frown and I look around for backup. There are actually two paramedics here—the other is a scruffy Paramedic of the Month calendar-model type who is diligently charting something from where he stands just outside the ambulance. His name tag reads GONZALES. Beyond, a cop car is parked at the curb, and a pair of officers chat amiably near the open driver’s-side door. I can’t help but feel this isn’t the smoothest way to intervene in a potential suicide situation: I’ve just pig-snorted, my skirt is awkwardly bunched near my hips, the crotch of my tights is somewhere south of the equator, and my shirt is unbuttoned to make room for the adhesive cardiac monitors. A suicidal individual might suffer a touch of humiliation here.
Scooching my skirt down with as much grace as I can manage, I repeat, “I didn’t jump.”
Gonzales looks up from his paperwork and leans against the ambulance door. “We found you there, sweetie.”
I screw my eyes closed, growling at his condescension. This still doesn’t add up. “Two paramedics just happened to be wandering through the subway right after I fell onto the tracks?”
He gives me a tiny flicker of a smile. “Anonymous caller. Said there was someone on the tracks. Didn’t mention anyone pushing her. Nine times out of ten it’s an attempt.”
Anonymous caller.
CALVIN.
I see movement just outside the ambulance, at the curb. It’s dark out, but it’s definitely him, holy shit, and I see him just as he stands. Calvin meets my eyes for the briefest pulse before startling and jerking his face away. Without another look back, he turns to walk down Eighth Avenue.
“Hey!” I point. “Wait. Talk to him.”
Gonzales and Rossi slowly turn.
Rossi makes no move to stand, and I stab my finger forward again. “That guy.”
“He pushed you?” Gonzales asks.
“No, I think he’s the one who called.”
Rossi shakes her head; her wince is less sympathetic, more pitying. “That guy walked up after we arrived on scene, said he didn’t know anything.”
“He lied.” I struggle to sit up farther. “Calvin!”
He doesn’t stop. If anything, he speeds up, ducking behind a taxicab before jogging across the street.
“He was there,” I tell them, bewildered. Jesus, how much did I drink? “It was me, that busker—Calvin—and a drunk man. The drunk guy was going for my phone, and shoved me off the platform.”
Gonzales tilts his head, gesturing to the cops. “In that case, you should file a police report.”
I can’t help it—the rudeness just flies out of me: “You think?”
I’m given another flicker of a smile; no doubt it’s because I don’t look the part of a ballsy back-talker with my saggy tights and unbuttoned shirt with pink polka dots.
“Holland, we suspect your arm is broken.” Gonzales climbs inside and adjusts a strap on my sling. “And you may have a concussion. Our priority now is getting you down to Mount Sinai West. Is there anyone who can meet you there?”
“Yeah.” I need to call Robert and Jeff—my uncles. I look up at Gonzales, remembering how my phone was in my hand one moment, and I was being flung onto the tracks the next. “Did you also find my phone?”
He winces and looks up at Rossi, who gives me her first—apologetic—grin. “I hope you have their number memorized.” She lifts up a Ziploc bag holding the shattered remains of my beloved device.
Once my head is checked (no concussion) and my right arm is casted (fractured ulna), I file a police report from my hospital bed. It’s only when I’m speaking to the two intensely intimidating officers that I register that I was avoiding making eye contact with the man grabbing me. I didn’t get a good look at his face, though I can quite accurately describe his smell.
The cops exchange a look before the taller one asks me, “The guy got close enough to grab your jacket, yell at you, and shove you over onto the tracks, but you didn’t see his face?”
I want to scream, Obviously you have never been a woman running away from a creepy dude before!, but instead let them move on. I can tell from their expressions that my lack of a physical description dissolves the credibility of my I-didn’t-jump story, and in the wake of this mild humiliation I decide it would seem even more suspicious if I knew the name of the busker at the subway and he still failed to stick around to help me out. So I don’t bother to mention Calvin by name, either, and they jot down my generic details with only the vaguest display of investment.
After they leave, I lie back, staring up at the blank gray ceiling. What a crazy night. I lift my good arm, squinting at my watch.
Morning.
Holy shit, it’s nearly three. How long was I down there?
Above the dull throb that painkillers don’t seem to dim, I keep seeing Calvin standing up from where he’d been waiting at the curb. It means something that he was still there when I came to, doesn’t it? But if he was the anonymous caller—and I assume he must have been because we all know the zombie didn’t have a phone—why didn’t Calvin tell the police that someone pushed me? And why lie and tell them he wasn’t a witness?
The telltale rushing click of dress shoes on linoleum crescendoes from the hallway, and I sit up, knowing what’s coming.
Robert bursts past the curtain, followed more smoothly by Jeff.
“What. The. Fuuuuuuuck.” Robert stretches the last word into about seventeen syllables, and takes my face in his hands, leaning in, examining me. “Do you realize how freaked out we’ve been?”
“Sorry.” I wince, feeling my chin wobble for the first time. “My phone got knocked out of my hand.”
Seeing my family’s panic makes the shock set in, and I start shaking wildly. Emotion rises like a salty tide in my chest. Robert leans in, pressing his lips to my cheek. Jeff steps closer, too, resting a gentle hand on my knee.
Although he isn’t related to me by blood, I’ve known Uncle Robert my entire life; he met my mother’s younger brother Jeff several years before I was born.
Uncle Jeff is the calm one; it’s the midwesterner in him. He is steady, and rational, and deliberate. He is, you may have guessed, in finance. Robert, by contrast, is motion and sound. He was born in Ghana, and moved here when he was eighteen to attend the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. Jeff tells me that Robert had ten job offers when he finished, but he chose the position of youngest-ever concertmaster of the Des Moines Symphony because the two of them fell in love at first sight the weekend Robert was in town interviewing.
My uncles left Des Moines when I was sixteen and headed to Manhattan. By that point, Robert had been promoted out of the ensemble to become the conductor of the symphony. Moving off-Broadway, even as a musical director, was a big step down for him in pay and classical prestige, but musical theater is where Robert’s heart beats, and—maybe more importantly for them—it’s long been much easier for a dude to be happily married to a dude in New York than in Iowa. They have thrived here, and two years ago, Robert sat down and composed what would soon become the most popular production on Broadway, It Possessed Him.
Unwilling to live away from them for long, I came to Columbia for my MFA in creative writing, but have basically stalled out. Being a baby graduate with an MFA in New York makes me a mediocre guppy in an enormous school of brilliant fish. Without an idea for the Great American Novel or any aptitude for journalism, I was virtually unemployable.
Robert, my savior, got me a job in theater.
My official title is archivist—admittedly a strange role for a twenty-five-year-old with zero Broadway experience—and given that we already have a million photos of the production for the program, I’m keenly aware that this job was created solely as a favor to my uncle. Once or twice a week I’ll walk around, randomly taking pictures of sets, costumes, and backstage antics for the press agency to use on social media. Four nights a week, I work front of the house selling It Possessed Him T-shirts.
But unfortunately, I can’t imagine dealing with the wild bustle of intermission or holding my gigantic camera with only one good arm, and it punches an additional gust of guilt deep into my belly.
I am so useless.
I pull one of the pillows out from under my head and let loose a few screams into it.
“What’s going on, Buttercup?” Robert pulls the pillow away. “Do you need more medicine?”
“I need more purpose.”
He laughs to dismiss this, bending to kiss my forehead. Jeff’s gentle hand slips into one of mine in quiet solidarity. But Jeff—sweet, sensible, number-crunching Jeff—has found a love for throwing clay in the past year. At least he has the passion for pottery pushing him forward through the tedium of a Wall Street workday. I have nothing but my love for books other people have written, and the anticipation of seeing Calvin play guitar a few days a week at the Fiftieth Street station. After tonight’s stunt, I’m not even sure I’ll feel that anymore. The next time I see him, I’ll be less inclined to swoon, and more inclined to get up in his face and ask why he allowed me to be thrown under the proverbial bus. Or train, as it were.
Maybe I’ll go back to Des Moines while this fracture heals and take some time to think about what I really want to do with my degrees, because when it comes to liberal arts, one useless degree plus another useless degree equals zero jobs.
I look up at my uncles. “Did you call Mom and Dad?”
Jeff nods. “They asked if they should come out.”
I laugh despite my dark mood. I’m sure that without even seeing the extent of my injuries, Jeff told them not to worry. My parents hate the urban bluster of New York so much that even if I were broken in half, in traction, it would still be better for everyone if they stayed in Iowa. Certainly it would be less stressful for me.
Finally, Jeff eases down on the mattress next to me and glances up at Robert.
I notice that Jeff licks his lips before he asks something difficult. I wonder whether he knows he does it. “So, what happened, Hollsy?”
“You mean, why did I end up on the C line tracks?”
Robert gives me a knowing look. “Yes. And since I’m confident the little suicide intervention advice we were just given in the waiting room was unnecessary, maybe you can tell us how you fell.”
“A guy cornered me. He wanted my phone and when I got too close to the tracks, he shoved me over.”
Robert’s jaw drops. “That’s what was happening when you called?”
Jeff’s cheeks go brilliant red. “Did you file a—”
“Police report? Yeah,” I tell him. “But he was wearing a hoodie, and you know how making eye contact with crazies only encourages them, so I couldn’t say much other than that he was white, probably in his thirties, bearded, and drunk.”
Jeff laughs dryly. “Sounds like most of Brooklyn on a Friday night.”
I turn my eyes to Robert. “A train had just left, so there weren’t any other witnesses.”
“Not even Jack?” Both uncles know about my subway crush.
I shake my head. “His name is Calvin.” Answering the question that forms in their eyes, I say, “I’d had a couple cocktails and asked him.”
Robert grins down at me. “Liquid courage.”
“Liquid idiocy.”
His eyes narrow. “But you’re telling me Calvin didn’t see anything?”
“That’s what he told the paramedics, but I think he was the one who called them.”
Robert slides a sturdy arm around me, helping me up. “Well, you’ve been cleared to leave.” He kisses the side of my head and utters six perfect words: “You’re coming home with us tonight.”
