He Scored My Life A 4 And Hers A 10 novel · Chapter 2 of 32
Chapter 2: Plates and Screws
Casey learns the TenScore queue went live without the nurses, Jesse brings vending-machine dinner, Bryce arrives with a printed reconciliation agenda and admits the ledger, and Brooke texts a photo from Casey's bathtub.
I stared at the monitor until the numbers blurred.
"Since when do we score people highest first?" I said.
"Since six o'clock." Ronnie's jaw was tight. "IT pushed it at shift change. Three days early. Nobody told the floor."
On the screen, a little gold flag sat next to Brooke's name.
A star inside a circle. Priority Member.
"What's the flag?"
"No idea," Ronnie said. "Nobody can tell me. I asked the house supervisor. She asked IT. IT said it's proprietary."
Down the queue, the man with the bloody towel was a 5.
The grandmother's toddler was a 3. He had a fever of 104.
"Ronnie. That baby should be first."
"I know." She slid the toddler to the top by hand. The screen beeped and put him back. "It keeps doing that."
She did it again.
It put him back again.
She swore so creatively the X-ray tech laughed out loud.
Then she pushed me through the doors and the morphine started to work.
Surgery was at two in the morning.
A plate and seven screws along my right tibia.
They put me in a bed on the fourth floor with a window full of snow.
My leg was a long white splint wrapped in a stockinette sock.
My phone had forty-one texts on it.
None of them were from Bryce.
At six the next evening somebody knocked on the open door.
Jesse Brackett stood there in a navy job shirt, carrying an armful of vending machine.
Two bags of pretzels. A sleeve of peanut butter crackers. Two cans of ginger ale. A honey bun.
"You're off shift," I said.
"Twenty minutes ago." He dumped it all on my tray table. "Hospital dinner is a crime. This is also a crime, but it's a crime you choose."
"Is the honey bun for me?"
"The honey bun is negotiable."
He sat in the chair by the bed.
Up close he looked tired.
"How's the leg?"
"Plate and seven screws."
"Show-off."
I laughed, and it hurt, and I laughed anyway.
He took a marker out of his shirt pocket and leaned over the splint.
"Can I sign it?"
"It's a sock."
"I'll sign gently."
He wrote something across my shin in big black letters.
I squinted at it.
"What does that say?"
"It says 'Get well soon, Wardlow.'"
"It says 'Gel wall seen, Wordlaw.'"
"That's what I said."
I ate the honey bun. He let me.
He didn't ask about my husband.
He didn't look at the empty chair on the other side of my bed.
At seven he stood and zipped his coat.
"I've got my daughter. My mom has her till eight."
"How old?"
"Seven going on forty." He paused in the doorway. "You did good last night, Wardlow. In the hall. I heard."
Then he was gone.
Bryce came at eight-thirty.
He brought no flowers.
He brought a printed sheet of paper in a clear plastic sleeve.
He set it on my tray table on top of the pretzel wrappers.
RECONCILIATION AGENDA. 15 MINUTES.
1. Acknowledge feelings (3 min).
2. Contextualize the incident (5 min).
3. Agree on messaging (5 min).
4. Next steps (2 min).
"You made an agenda," I said.
"I make agendas for everything. You know that." He set a timer on his watch. "It keeps emotion from running the meeting."
"My leg is full of screws, Bryce."
"Which is item one. I acknowledge your leg."
He actually looked at the paper to see what came next.
"Item two. Brooke was alone in a ditch and panicking. You were in a lane of traffic with first responders coming. I made a triage decision."
"Don't," I said. "Don't use that word. You don't get that word."
"Casey."
"Say what the Ledger is."
He glanced at the door.
"It's a productivity tool."
"Say what's in it."
"It's private."
"I watched you type my name into it with my blood on your shoes. Say it out loud."
His watch beeped. Item two, time up.
He turned it off.
"It's where I score my day," he said. "Including people. Everybody does it in their heads. I just write it down."
"And I'm a four."
"You're a stable four. That's a compliment. Fours don't need anything."
"How long have I been a four?"
He didn't answer.
"How long, Bryce?"
"A while." He straightened his quarter-zip. "Look, we can fix this. Item three. We agree that last night was a stressful logistics failure, and we say that if anyone asks."
I picked the agenda up off the tray.
I tore it in half, then in half again, and dropped it in the pretzel bag.
"I'm filing for divorce."
He laughed. Then he saw my face.
"You're on painkillers."
"I'm on Tylenol. I've been off the good stuff since noon. Get out of my room."
"You can't afford the house without me."
"I paid the down payment on the house. Get out of my room."
The nurse at the door, a girl I'd trained two years ago, stepped aside to let him pass.
She didn't say a word.
She just looked at him until he walked faster.
I lay there with my heart going hard.
At nine-forty my phone buzzed.
A text from a number I didn't have saved.
It was a photo.
My bathtub. My lavender salts. My candle, the expensive one I saved for my birthday.
Brooke in the water to her collarbones, her braced wrist resting on the rim, smiling.
Under it, one line.
"He says the house scores a 10 for my recovery."
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