Chapter IV
It is 7:30am on a Saturday morning when Rory and Lorelai walk into the diner, leaving Chris snoring on the couch. Rory insisted on getting up early to try to catch a ride with Luke to the hospital, and Lorelai seems only slightly bitter about getting up at the same time as the sun. On the way to the diner, Rory got a shortened explanation of Lorelai's argument with Luke the night before, a 'thinglet' whose resolution Rory witnessed, but not cause. When the Gilmores get to the counter, Luke is standing on the other side bent over a large open folder with a calculator sitting next to it. A ledger, Rory realizes when they get closer.
He doesn't even tear his eyes away as he pours two large cups of coffee, dripping very little. Impressive.
"Luke?" Rory addresses him hesitantly as she picks up the mug. "Would it be possible, I mean if you don't mind, that I could ride with you to the hospital?"
He looks up, and she sees that his eyes are red, his face unshaved. His voice is thick, and not with sleep. "What?"
"Woah, there." Lorelai says between gulps of caffeinated liquid. "Did you sleep at all last night?"
Luke runs his hand over his face. "Define last night."
Lorelai sighs. "Maybe you should go upstairs and res-"
"I can't!" he says a little louder, then lowers his voice tenfold as he continues to look at the numbers. "I called Liz half an hour ago. Jess doesn't have health insurance, so I need to figure out how I'm going to pay for this. And of course, the needle thing was a fail last night so now I'm looking at a few days of tube treatment."
Lorelai repeats quietly, "He doesn't have insurance?"
Luke grumbles as he plugs numbers into the calculator with aggressive jabs. "I shouldn't be surprised. Why would he have insurance? He can't pay for it, Liz can't pay for it. Why am I even surprised?"
He grumbles a little more, but Rory can't hear any of it. Neither she nor her mother say it, but both of them are recalling how much Luke spent on the building next door a couple months ago. Over $100K. Then the renovation upstairs. How is Luke going to scrounge up enough money to pay this hospital bill? Rory doesn't know much about this stuff, but she knows that medical care is expensive without insurance. Very expensive.
"How about a loan?" Lorelai asks, then rushes to follow up with, "I know how you feel about loans, but it's still an option right?"
Luke just stares blankly, lacking the energy even for a glare, and she says with her hands up, one open and one holding the coffee mug, "Okay, I retract that suggestion."
"I'll figure it out. Rory, did you say you want to come to the hospital? I'm leaving once I get some of these nutjobs out of here." He scans the diner with his I-hate-everyone look, then revises, "Maybe I'll do it now. Right now. They're pissing me off. Sitting there. Eating. And sitting there."
He takes a deep breath and shouts, "Alright, everyone, get-"
Lorelai covers his mouth with her palm. She improvises cheerfully, "Get out of town! How good are those pancakes, right? Hope everyone is enjoying their breakfast! Okay, awesome..."
She turns back to Luke and mutters through clenched teeth, "What are you doing? They're already eating. Do you really want to lose a morning's revenue?"
He tries to talk under her palm, but it comes out a muffled grunt. She says, "I'll cover here for a couple hours. I've had practice. I'll be at the hospital before noon."
She slowly withdraws her hand, and Luke says, "Well since they're staying, let me finish something over there and get something from the back for Caesar and…"
Rory and Luke are eventually pushed out the door by Lorelai after an impressive effort by the diner's proprietor to finish up a few more tasks. He mutters, "Stubborn woman" on his way to the truck, keys in one hand and ledger in the other. Rory follows with a to-go cup of coffee for Luke, making a sleeve out of the end of her scarf. For a man that hasn't slept in at least 24 hours, he stomps very quickly.
In the intensive care unit, Rory stands outside Jess's hospital room holding her small tote bag in her good hand. Her back is against the wall next to the door so he can't see her through the circular window. Half an hour has passed since they got to the hospital. Luke talked to Jess for about fifteen minutes during which she forced herself not to eavesdrop and now is at the desk discussing payment plans. When he exited the room, he whispered, "I didn't tell him you were here. In case, you know, you decided you don't want to see him."
She is in the exact same position she was fifteen minutes ago when Luke walked away. Her hand tightens on the handle of her bag. She and Luke talked in the car on the way to the hospital, and at first all she could say was, "Luke, it wasn't his fault."
Luke replied tenderly, "I know."
Afterwards, she tried to give him as much detail as she could about the accident, about what Jess did afterwards. Luke is the last person Rory has to defend him to, but it seemed necessary nevertheless. He has to know what Jess did for her, no matter what other people say, what Jess will certainly fail to elaborate on. Now, the only person to whom she's having trouble defending him … is herself. She's angry at him. She came to terms with that during the drive. It seems inherently wrong to be angry at someone who got injured in a car accident- after all, that's why her parents are cutting him slack -but she can't shake this.
She whips and opens the door before she can change her mind. As soon as she bursts in the room and sees him on the bed, all the emotion and warmth drains from her, escaping through her fingertips as she drops the handle of her bag. Jess is sitting in the bed, blanket up to his waist. A few cords along with a clear tube pokes out of the collar of his hospital gown, then there are the IVs. A violet bruise stretches out of his thick black hair to skim his left temple, and the purple circles underneath his eyes nearly match it in color. She shifts her glance to his left ankle that emerges out one corner of the blanket, heavily bandaged and propped up on a cushion.
He doesn't even look at her. His eyes stay on the ceiling, expression bored and tired and disguising pain. The sensations that had drained out before are re-entering at rapid speeds as Rory scans her eyes over him again and again, as the X-rays had done the night before. Pressure is exerting from the inside, like a balloon pumped with too much air. The injuries. His expression. The cords and tubes and blasted beeping from the machine. Rory pops.
"What is wrong with you?!"
Jess lazily shifts his gaze to her, frustratingly disinterested, as if turning his neck is more effort than he cares to employ. His silence is more aggravating than any snarky response he could have invented. She continues, "You got all moody with the medic, and for what? To end up right here anyway!"
He solemnly looks away again, but slowly directs his head back towards her when she demands, "And what happened to your ankle?! There's no way I missed that!"
Jess doesn't say anything, and Rory wants to pull her hair out. "You should've told me you were hurt!"
"Why?" he asks softly.
The question is so simple and obvious that Rory is surprised when she hears it. She tries to recover, "What do you mean 'why'? Because! Because I would have made you go to the hospital! Or I would have stayed to talk to the police! Or better yet, I would have called the police, and then Luke, and I would have… I would have…"
As she trails off, she actually thinks about the question. Why? What would she have done? Besides worried more? And what could she have done? Jess got hurt, and nothing she would've done could have changed that. Except for the part ten minutes before the accident. When she told him to turn right.
"Huh," is all he says, point proven, but his face lacks the usual satisfactory half-smirk as he reverts his gaze to the ceiling. He's back to the monosyllables.
She picks up her bag and lets herself fall into the chair on his left side next to the bed. The cushion already possesses Luke's imprint. She says softly, "I didn't come here to yell at you. I'm just upset. If you had gotten treated earlier, it wouldn't be so bad."
He glances over at her, the slightest raise in his eyebrow. Why is he like this? He's staring at her like he couldn't care any less that he is here, so why does she? Distant and detached, he's constructing fence after fence between them. And that isn't what she wants. Fine. If he's daring her to climb them, then she'll jump as high as she can. "What, did you think I wouldn't care? Of course I care! And I feel awful because I didn't make sure you were okay, when you did everything you could to look after me."
He responds simply, "Not your job."
"Jess… we're friends, right?" She asks dumbly, needing something to hold onto so she wraps the fingers of her right hand around the rail of his bed. It feels like grabbing the rail of a roller coaster cart, climbing to the top. How soon before it plummets? Something flickers in his eyes when she asks, and she interprets that as an affirmative. "Friends look after one another. So it was my job. And I'm so sorry that you're like this."
Jess turns his eyes down. After a few moments, he whispers, "Rory…"
He slowly raises his hand to cover her fingers with his own, the oximeter clip on his forefinger pressing against her knuckle. He shifts his dark eyes to her blue ones. "I'm sorry you got hurt."
Rory has a feeling that is the only apology anyone is getting out of him. He's not claiming fault, as he shouldn't. He's regretting what happened to her, and she to him. It's a different kind of apology. And it is more than enough. It is everything. The vulnerability. The openness. For that split second, there are no walls, on either side. It's too raw, too real. Like the core of an…
"Onion," she murmurs aloud, then pulls her hand from under Jess's fingers to cover her mouth. Heat rushes to her face.
"I am befuddled," he declares, his expression a thorough mixture of confusion and amusement as he withdraws his hand.
She laughs awkwardly. "Um, have you seen that movie that came out a few months ago? Shrek?"
"I have not…" he returns skeptically.
She reaches into her bag and pulls out the tape. "I can fix that. Well I see you have a conveniently-placed television over there and it just so happens- I have a film requiring very little brain power."
As she waves the movie in front of him, with its animated blue and green cover case, Jess smirks. "Well, would you look at that. It just so happens I have a massive headache. Nothing like a brainless kids film to remedy."
While Rory puts the cassette into the VCR, she feels Jess's eyes on her from behind. He says, "You asked about my ankle. I tripped. Concussions and coordination aren't pals."
"I'd assume not." She shakes her head in mock disappointment with an hyperbolic sigh.
Pressing the play button and switching off the lights, she turns back and takes him in one more time. Now, in the dim room, it's like the bandages and tubes and hospital sheets are invisible to her. She sees him. She sees him in his leather jacket and black jeans with an annotating pen behind his ear. She tastes the ice cream they ate together the night before, in cones as required. She smells the old book he's always carrying and the cigarette smoke, a scent she once detested now barely minds at all. She feels his fingertips on hers, cold and warm and hot and real.
As she adjusts her chair to face towards the small corner screen, she smiles and glances over. There is a small lift at the corner of his lips, his irises illuminated by the television. She thinks, Ogres are like onions. They have layers.