Heart of the Matter - Emily Giffin [58]
“And the little girl?” Valerie asks.
“Orphaned and alone. But she lived. She made it. ‘Miracle girl’ the nurses call her.”
“How bad were her burns?” Valerie asks, her leg jiggling nervously.
“Bad,” Tony says. “Real bad. Eighty percent of her body, something like that.”
She swallows as she contemplates eighty percent, how much worse it could have been for Charlie. “How long was she in the hospital?” she asks, her throat suddenly dry.
“Oh, jeez,” Tony says, shrugging. “A long, long time. Months and months. Maybe even a year.”
Valerie nods, feeling a wave of pure heartbreak at the thought of the accident, the unfathomable horror on that embankment. As she begins to imagine the flames engulfing the plane and all those people inside, she shuts her eyes to stop the images from coming.
“Are you okay?” Tony asks.
She looks up and sees him standing closer to her now, hands clasped, head bowed, looking strangely graceful for such a squat, burly man. “I shouldn’t have . . . It was insensitive.”
“It’s okay. We were very lucky in comparison,” Valerie says. She takes her last sip of wine, suddenly desperate to get back to the hospital, just as a cook from the back emerges with a to-go bag. “Lasagna and house salad?”
“Thanks,” Valerie says, reaching for her purse.
Tony holds up his hands and says, “No, no. Please. This one’s on the house. Just come back and see us, okay?”
Valerie starts to protest, but then nods her thanks and tells him she will.
***
“How is he?” she asks Jason as she walks through the door and finds Charlie in the same position she left him.
“Still sleeping. He even slept through his dressing change,” Jason says.
“Good,” she says—because he needs his rest and because every minute of sleep is a minute not in pain, although she sometimes thinks his nightmares are worse than anything else. She kicks off her shoes and puts on her slippers, part of her nightly ritual.
“So?” Jason says. “How was it?”
“It was good,” she says quietly, thinking of how fast the time flew by sitting there with Nick, how pleasant and easy it felt. “We had a good conversation.”
“I meant the food,” Jason says, raising his brows. “Not the company.”
“The food was great. Here.” She tosses him the takeout bag as he mumbles something under his breath.
“What?” she says.
He repeats himself more slowly, loudly. “I said—I think someone has a crush on Dr. Beautimus.”
“Dr. Beautimus?” she says, standing to close the blinds. “Is that some slang term I don’t know about?”
“Yeah. Dr. Beautimus. Dr. Dime-piece.”
She laughs nervously and says, “Dime-piece?”
“A perfect ten,” Jason says, winking.
Valerie rolls her eyes and says, “I think you’re the one with the crush.”
Jason shrugs and says, “Yeah. He’s hot. But I’m not trying so hard to deny it.”
“I don’t go for married men,” she says emphatically. “I didn’t say you were going for him,” Jason says. “I just said you have a crush on him.”
“I do not,” she says, envisioning Nick’s dark eyes, the way he squints with a slight grimace whenever he’s making a point or being emphatic. It occurs to her that she might sound unduly defensive, that she shouldn’t protest quite so hard—especially given the fact that she and Jason often banter about hot guys, such as the bachelor who lives across the street and occasionally mows his lawn shirtless, and that some of them happen to be married.
Jason opens the bag, inhales, and nods approvingly. “So what did you talk about all that time?”
“A lot of things,” she says, realizing that she has not yet told Jason about the basket from Romy. She considers doing so now, but feels suddenly drained, deciding it can wait until morning. “Work. His kids. Charlie’s school. A lot of stuff.”
“Did you mention that you think he’s smokin’?”
“Don’t start,” she says.
“Don’t you start,” he says. “It’s a dangerous path, falling for a Baldwin like him.”
“Whatever,” she says, laughing at the term Baldwin and thinking that she did once have a crush on Billy—or whichever brother was