Jenna stared through the windshield of the pathfinder at the hospital looming in front of her. What was she thinking?
At least ten days with Jim. Ten. And that was optimistic; the nurse said it could be two weeks before he would be ready to be off pain killers, and move around independently, and there was still physical therapy, and things like sitting and standing and grocery shopping and bathing… Just thinking about it made Jenna dizzy. She looked at the passenger seat beside her; she had gone to pick up his prescriptions for him, a brown paper bag filled with little orange pill bottles. There were the antibiotics for the surgery, and the painkillers for everything, and the blood-thinners to prevent clotting, and the anti-emetics to prevent nausea. The pharmacist had walked her through dosages and times of day and water and food and how to manage all of it, but her head was already swimming with all the post-op instructions; twenty three pages of them. What had she gotten herself into?
She had moved everything she figured she needed into his house. As she had lugged in her suitcase and Lulu's crib that morning, her heart had panged for Jim. The house was empty. Half the closet hollowed out, half the drawers in the master bathroom—yes, she had snooped—were empty besides a few spare bobby pins and a single lost earring. The kitchen was missing things, like glasses and silverware—Francine must have claimed them in her flight.
Jenna couldn't help but feel like a homewrecker. She had done that to Jim; and here she was moving in to the very house that she had ruined. Guilt clawed at her. Joe would have been so disappointed. Two weeks.
She took a deep breath and pulled the pathfinder up to the doors, putting on the hazards so she could go in and get Jim. The nurses and attendants all waved at her jovially; she was sure her presence and the lack of a ring on her finger had led to much gossip in the small-town hospital.
Jim was sitting up in bed, breathing deeply with the nurse holding both his arms. He winced with every intake of air, his breaths shallow and raspy. A walker stood off to the side, yellow tennis balls adorning the rear feet. If Jim hadn't clearly been in pain, Jenna would have laughed. It was comical; she was so used to seeing little old ladies with the metallic walkers; this one looked amped up on steroids to fit Jim's six and half foot frame. Jim heard her breath catch as she prevented the laugh from forming and whipped around to look at her.
"Ouch! Shit!" he exclaimed, turning slowly back to the nurse.
"Didn't I tell you? No turning!" The nurse scolded him, but even as she did, a wry smile crinkled her eyes pleasantly. Of course, Jim had become a favorite on the ward in his time there. He had told Jenna during her pregnancy that he made a point of knowing all the nurses names for when he had their help during births. No doubt that had come in handy in his days spent bed-ridden.
"The car's out front," Jenna said weakly. She picked up his personal effects bag, and then could do nothing but watch uselessly as the nurse helped him stand and fixed his hands on the walker. He stood for a moment, looking down at his feet as though marveling at his ability to be upright.
"Well this isn't so hard!" he crowed. He lifted the walker and winced as it landed back on the ground, absorbing the impact in his stomach.
"Didn't I tell you? Use your arms! God put them there for a reason!" The nurse harangued Jim as he lifted the walker tentatively and tried again, this time gently setting it down and easing into leaning on it slowly.
"There's my boy," the nurse crossed her arms triumphantly. "Now what are you doing?" the nurse turned on Jenna abruptly. "Hold the door for the man!"
Jenna scrambled to turn and open the door, holding it wide and blushing bright red as Jim began the slow crawl towards her. His face was red as well—though not with embarrassment, just exertion from the effort of walking. It was clearly a lot for him.
The journey outside took over fifteen minutes—every step covering inches and requiring intricate coordination from Jim. The nurse walked with them, giving Jim elaborate praise as though every step was a triumph. At the car, she coached Jenna through grasping his sweaty arms and helping him lower himself into the passenger seat without bending over his torso too much. Then she helped Jenna fold and maneuver the walker into the back of the car. Jenna was immensely grateful for her help, but if she heard the words "good girl" spoken one more time, she was ready to turn around and clock the nurse right in the jaw. When she finally slammed the drivers door shut behind her, a beautiful silence filled the air.
They sat there for a moment, nothing but the sound of Jim's ragged breathing breaching the silence.
Then they laughed.
Jenna knew it was wrong; she knew that Jim had to be in pain, but she couldn't help it. Something about it all was just utterly hilarious; Jim's journey from hospital room to the car, the way the nurse had treated him like a child and her like a dog, even just sitting there in Jim's blue pathfinder, together. It was a massive laughter, bellowing, punctuated by Jim's occasional cries of "ow!" as he held his ribs and tried to stop.
"You'd think I was in the Olympics," he finally gasped, calming himself enough to form words. Jenna tried to do the same. One look at his face helped; he was positively green. A laugh like that was disastrous for him right now.
"Oh Jim, you're gonna bust a stitch!"
"I'm sorry!" he gasped, trying to stop himself, a tear rolling down his cheek with his mirth.
"Don't laugh! You can't have a pain pill for another two hours and I don't want you passing out on me before I can get you to the couch!"
"Ok. I promise. Pinky promise." Jim held his pinky out and Jenna took it with her own, tapping their thumbs in the process to cement it. Even doing that made Jenna want to burst out laughing, but she bit her lip and turned the key in the ignition, starting off towards his house instead.
Jim flipped the radio on as Jenna navigated to his house, turning it to an old 90's station and pantomiming the lyrics. Jenna kept her eyes on the road in an effort to not laugh—after the tense few days in the hospital and the stress with Earl, seeing Jim high on painkillers was much needed stress relief.
The house was just as depressing as when Jenna had left. If anything, her suitcases sitting at the base of the stairs set off the disheartening atmosphere more; it looked like she was the wife poised to flee.
There wasn't much time to pay attention to that, however, as she moved Jim into the family room. She hadn't been in there before, so as he took hobbling, slow steps over to the couch, she ran ahead and pushed pillows into place, giving him a nice incline to lean against. Once he had backed himself into position accordingly, Jenna gripped his arms and helped him sit, slowly. She could feel the muscles in his forearms quivering from exhaustion, just from the short walk from the car.
Once he was seated, it was another effort just to turn him so he could lie down, then reposition the pillows so he was comfortable. As Jenna helped him sit up so she could smash pillows down into the space behind his lower back, she marveled at how he smelled; definitely not clean, but somehow not bad either. How was that possible? The nurses had sponge-bathed him in the hospital, but he smelled musky and. . . good.
"Well, now I know why this was bad timing for the divorce," Jim muttered weakly when he finally came to rest on the couch.
"What?" Jenna asked.
"She took the tv," Jim nodded at the empty wall in front of him, where the tv mount still remained, empty. He was half joking, his face a mixture of disappointment and chagrin. Jenna chuckled.
"Tv rots your brain anyways. You're a doctor, you need all your brain cells."
Jenna fell into the mothering too easily, grabbing a blanket from the ottoman in front of the couch and airing it out before laying it over his body, tucking it around his feet. She bustled into the kitchen and grabbed one of the two glasses in the cabinet (both novelty beer glasses from different breweries that she assumed belonged to him), filling it with water and opening cabinets until she had discovered a box of plastic straws as well. She returned to the living room and, with one hand, pushed the table at the end of the couch into position next to it, so he had easy access to the water.
"Ok," she paused, assessing the situation. "I'll grab your pills right now and set a timer for the next few dosages. Are you feeling nauseous? They said movement could make that worse; I'll bring in the ondansetron with your other stuff, so you have it just in case. Can I get you anything?"
Jim shot her one of his looks from the bed. "I really don't need all this, Jenna."
"Did we not agree on rules?" Jenna crossed her arms and then realized how she was towering above him. Her face softened and she sat on the ottoman, looking him in the eye. "Let's be honest with ourselves for a second," she began. "You have complained at every step of the way about me helping you out, but you have yet to offer a suggestion—and I mean a real suggestion," she said, cutting off his interruption, "not just the nurses at the hospital. I know you. You're liberal, and smart, and you never would have moved here if it weren't for your wife's—I mean, Francine's—residency. This isn't the kind of place a guy like you makes friends at. And that's fine and all, but it means you should stop complaining about me being here."
"My lack of friends isn't your problem, Jenna. I have insurance, I can afford the nurses."
"This is my problem. And I've already made it clear that it's not up for debate. I'm here, unless you're truly revolted by that." She peered at him through her eyelashes.
"You know I'm not—I mean, I could never—"
"Good." Jenna cut him off. "Now, can I get you a book? After I grab the pain meds, I mean. I need to call Dawn too and have her bring Lulu, and some things I forgot."
"There's a book on the side table in my bedroom, could you grab that? After that I'm fine, I don't need a thing. You can use the pathfinder too, go and get Lulu or whatever you need."
"I'll grab your book. And Dawn already has Lulu at the diner, she's just waiting on me to call to bring her by. My other stuff is already there."
Jenna stood and smoothed out her dress—she needed to change that too, she'd been in it for two days, but that was low on the list. As she set off to the kitchen to get his meds, Jim's hand shot out and grabbed her wrist, holding her in place.
"I mean it. About the pathfinder. You can use it whenever you need. And my wallet is in the personal effects bag, please use the credit card in there to buy groceries."
"I have money, Jim. I'm not broke."
"Jenna," he looked at her and Jenna had to look away.
"Ok. Fine. I'll use it for groceries."
He released her without a thanks—apparently that would be taking it too far.
Jenna got to the kitchen and paused while pulling the pill bottles and organizers out of the brown paper bag. Her hands were shaking, the brown paper rustling slightly as her hands quivered. Why was she shaking? She couldn't imagine.
She opened the pill organizer boxes and partitioned out the dosages for his pain meds and antibiotics. She found an old kitchen timer stuck with a magnet to the fridge and set it so that it would go off for his next dose. She opened the orange bottle with the ondansetron packets inside—the anti-emetics, for if he got nauseous—and withdrew a sheaf of packets. She was about to return to the living room when she realized she hadn't grabbed his book. She turned on her heel and climbed the stairs up to the second floor.
The master bedroom was just like she left it—just the one half of the bed messed up, smelling of his deodorant. There was only one book on the nightstand; a well-loved copy of The Soul of the Physician. Jenna grabbed it and returned to the living room.
Jim was snoring, fast asleep. Jenna sat on the ottoman and looked at him. The walk out of the hospital and then into the house must have exhausted him.
She looked down at the book in her hands. Nearly every page was dog-eared, the hard cover bent in one corner. At some point, coffee had clearly been spilled on it and the pages at the top wrinkled accordingly in a wavy pattern. He must love this book. A leather book mark was stuck in about two thirds of the way through.
"Ok Jim, let's see, what were you reading?" She flipped the book open to the page marked by the bookmark and smiled to herself. It was the beginning of a section, with one word printed in massive characters on the page: Resilience. Leave it to Jim to turn to medical novels for emotional support.
Jenna flipped the page and began reading aloud, quietly. She murmured the words to Jim, familiarizing herself with the crooning sound of her own voice. Soon, Lulu would be able to appreciate this kind of thing. It was good practice, really. Plus, when she spoke, Jim's face would flicker—just for a moment—into a small grin. Just a little upward flinch at the corner of his mouth, a little bit of a crease around his eyes. It looked peaceful. It made Jenna want to keep reading.
Ok I'm starting to realize what a hole I've fallen into with the plot here; let me just apologize now for another "somebody gets injured and their love interest is 'forced' to care for them" trope of a fanfiction. It wasn't my intent going in but it's where the story kind of led me to so I followed and now I guess we're here. I hope the voice of the characters is still hitting you guys right and can potentially salvage the story from the awful black hole the plot has gone into. Anyways.
Thanks to everybody who has read so far; I guess by virtue of being the first waitress fic on the site I shouldn't have expected many readers, but I'm still shocked at how low the numbers are compared to my Dear Evan Hansen fic. I won't post this on Wattpad or AO3 so I guess I shouldn't expect much. Thank you to those of you who have read so far, please feel free to favorite/leave a review! As of yet it feels kind of like I'm sending this out to the void and that isn't the greatest feeling.