Chapter V
"Are you sure they're just friends?"
Chris and Lorelai are staring through the window of Jess's room, spying on their daughter. They are practically mashing their cheeks together trying to peer in through the inconveniently-sized glass circle. Lorelai checks her watch. It is 11:40am. The pair had arrived at 11:30, not that Rory and Jess would know that. They had not looked to the window once since Chris and Lorelai commenced their viewing party several minutes ago. Rory is staring at a book, reading it aloud to her bed-ridden companion, and Jess is staring at Rory. She is perched on the chair next to him with the book propped up on her bent legs, her left hand hanging uselessly in its cast over the arm of the chair. The edge of her seat almost touches the side of the bed. Any closer and she'd be next to him on the mattress.
Lorelai is appalled at Chris's sudden question. "Of course they're just friends! She's dating Dean. You know that."
Chris raises his eyebrows as Rory reaches for a glass of water with two straws on the bedside table, takes a gulp then hands it to Jess who grasps it with shaking fingers. He drinks a tiny sip, then Rory retrieves it to put it back in its place. She barely looks up from the pages. Chris says, "Yeah, but things could've changed. I mean, look at them."
Lorelai is looking at them. That's the problem. She's looking at them and doesn't like what she sees. He's in a hospital bed, but he's still the kid who was rude to her, who walked out on Sookie's dinner, who stole Rory's bracelet, who humiliated Dean, who pressed Luke to the point of pushing him off a freaking bridge. Everything and everyone he touches is damaged. Even himself. He's destructive.
And now he's staring at her daughter with nothing short of tenderness, and Lorelai doesn't know how to react.
The tension building between her brows causes Chris to look over. "Hey, we talked about this. We are giving him a chance, right? For Rory."
Lorelai responds, her eyes still on the snarky kid that disrespected her, "Easy for you to say. You don't know the half of what he's done."
"I know enough. You kind of ranted at me about it on the drive here. While I was trying to talk to the insurance company."
Lorelai forgot about that. That had been blind anger, a different kind of road rage. "Well, still."
"Should I get popcorn?"
Lorelai freezes. Familiar voice. 6 o'clock. She turns slowly as Chris does the same. Luke stands there with crossed arms. Before he can say anything else, she exclaims, "Oh, don't look so judgemental! We weren't doing anything."
He checks his watch. "Yep, no espionage at Room #219, not now and not for the last four minutes."
Seriously, he's been timing them? In that case, at least he didn't get here sooner. Lorelai rolls her eyes, and Chris reaches out his hand, "Hey, Luke, I'm Chris."
Luke takes it, gives it a solid shake. "Yeah, I remember. Were you guys going in, or…?"
He points to the door, and Lorelai waves her hand to dismissively. "No, that's okay. We'll go to the front. Let Rory know we're here and to head out when she's ready?"
"Yeah, sure." Luke starts for the door, but Lorelai grabs his arm. "Actually, Luke, can I talk to you real quick? Chris, I'll meet you out there?"
Chris shrugs and walks away, while Lorelai pulls Luke down the hall a bit. She's sure Rory has seen them by now. Luke takes the offensive before she can start speaking. "They both like books. The doctors aren't letting him read because of the concussion. It's harmless."
Lorelai accepts it, though Chris's innocent question burns in the back of her mind. Did Luke see the way Jess was eyeing her daughter? Maybe not, with their heads hogging the window. She shifts the conversation. "Okay. That actually isn't what I wanted to talk about. So… any luck with the pay plan?"
Luke scratches his stubble. "Ah, I shouldn't have talked to you guys about that. I'm just really tired."
Lorelai touches his elbow. "No, I'm glad you did. You don't have to tell me; I was just checking. See if there's anything I can do."
"Unless you're secretly a leprechaun, not really."
"My green suit went to the cleaners and never came back, unfortunately. How's Jess?"
"No complications so far. If it stays that way, he can get moved out of intensive care Monday morning. To the glorious place where the rooms are less expensive. They said we can avoid surgery if the lung tissue starts healing itself within the next few days."
Medically-inaccurate images of blood, flesh, and organs flash through Lorelai's mind along with the X-ray images she saw last night. She grimaces, and Luke consoles, "Yeah, I hope not too. And I really can't pay for surgery."
"Is his mom helping with the bill at all? Is she going to come see him?"
Luke scoffs. "She's… busy. Not like that. She is busy. She's visiting her friend somewhere. Needed some time away from the city, I guess. She said she'd phone him today."
Lorelai doesn't want to judge Liz. It's hard being a single mother with an absent baby-daddy. It's hard. Especially with a kid like Jess. But… her son is in the hospital. Lorelai would drive day and night to get to Rory, and apparently Chris would do the same. But she doesn't want to judge her. So she lets it go.
"I get that," she responds, noting that he didn't answer about Liz's financial contribution, or lack thereof. "Luke, we're okay, right?"
"What do you mean?"
Lorelai doesn't know if he's playing dumb. "It got pretty heated last night. I want to make sure that we are okay."
Luke sighs. "I should've known you would want to talk about this. I thought we were done with it. Look, you know I care about that girl, and seeing her hurt was hard on me too." He's rubbing his eyes, perhaps in frustration, perhaps in exhaustion, perhaps in both. "I know what Jess has done in the past, so it's easy to lay blame on him. But I'm not going to light him on fire for crashing a car. Even if he didn't almost die right in front of me."
Lorelai patiently waits until he finishes with a miniscule flinch at the last sentence, then says, "I agree with you."
Luke blinks. "What?"
"I said I agree with you. Of course I'm angry my daughter got hurt, and obviously I want to blame the person who was driving. I don't like Jess, not one bit, but it's not fair to pin this all on him. And I was awful to you about it. I've already said sorry but I'm saying it again because I need to know that we're okay."
Luke nods. "We're okay. So you haven't changed your mind about Jess?"
"Absolutely not," Lorelai clarifies. "But I've changed my mind about the accident."
"Yeah, me neither. The kid's still a smartass."
They smile together, and Lorelai spots a calculator in Luke's back pocket as they head back towards Jess's room. As they approach the door, she says, "Let Rory know I'm here, okay? Finish the chapter or whatever. Everything is fine at the diner. I put up the closed sign and Caesar was almost done in the back when I left. And for everyone's sake, get some rest."
She walks down the hall, brainstorming ways to make money fast. Jess has at least a couple more days in the hospital, and Luke is already running himself into the ground worrying about the estimate. This stupid institute is squeezing him for every cent he has. What will the cost be by the time Jess is actually released?
"Grammar book, as per your request." Luke hands Jess the textbook, surprisingly light for its thickness. Rory must have done something last night, if he's asking Luke to bring him a school book. How hard did he hit his head? Luke asks himself as he goes to turn off the tape player that is making a weird noise.
Jess sets the book on his lap and opens it. The pages have been cut out, or parts of them. A large rectangle has been sliced out the middle of most of the pages, leaving a perimeter of paper and making a compartment within the book. Too good to be true, Luke thinks with an inward sigh. Jess pulls out a checkbook and a pen from inside the paper box. Since when does his nephew even have a bank account? Luke watches from the corner in shock as Jess silently scribbles on the pad with the text's cover as a table, signs, and rips the sheet out. He repeats the process, then reaches out to Luke with the two slips wedged in his fingers like a cigarette.
"Here."
Luke steps forward to accept them. "What is this?"
"Almost everything I have," Jess responds, turning his face away. "Don't worry, the book is from last year."
Luke looks down at the two checks. One is made out to Lucas Danes for $2,000, the memo line reading: Hospital Bill. The other to a Lorelai Gilmore for $500, labelled Car. To Lorelai Sr. or Jr., he doesn't know and he doesn't care.
"And I can get a job after this," Luke hears his nephew say, but his voice sounds far away. He flips the checks over, trying to verify that they're real. They certainly look real. He thinks his jaw is dropped is open, but he can't be sure.
"Jess, I'm not taking these." Luke tries to give him the checks so he can write VOID over the marked lines.
"Sure you are," he replies, not making a move to take them back.
"No, I'm not. Where did you even get $2,500?" Jess is silent, as he so often is, and Luke's thoughts are left to jump to the bridge money then the 500 baseballs then Babette's stupid, terrifying garden gnome. He mutters, "Jesus Christ."
His nephew rolls his eyes at him, as if hearing his thoughts aloud. "It isn't stolen."
Luke waves the checks. "I know what I pay you at the diner, and it's not this."
"I had a job in New York. Gave some to Liz, kept some for myself." He shrugs lightly. "Don't tell her."
Luke could not care less that Liz didn't get every penny Jess earned while he lived with her. What he cares about is that in cities, kids sell drugs. He presses, "What job?"
"It doesn't matter. I got paid for my services, so just take the money."
Luke is too exhausted to continue to argue about his young relative's previous employment. He hasn't slept in 36 hours, and though Jess was apparently unconscious for the most part till 5am this morning, his sleep levels appear just as low. This is Luke's second time at the hospital today, since he returned briefly to lock up the diner properly, fetch some of Jess's belongings, and get some paperwork. Technically third, since he didn't get out of here till 4am. He'll let this go for now, but he will squeeze the answer out of him tomorrow if it is the last thing he does.
On the other point, Luke insists, "I can't take it."
"I'm not stupid, Luke. Hospitals are expensive. And you know I don't have insurance. Liz must've told you by now."
Luke stares down at the checks. $2,000 won't cover the bill, but everything be damned if it doesn't help. He's still reluctant though, and Jess must be able to tell. He says, "Look, at least get that money to Rory. You don't have to deposit that check yet if you don't want to."
Luke looks up at the person in the bed. He barely recognizes him. Where the hell is all of this coming from? Seriously, is this the same screwed-up kid that stepped off the bus five months ago from the Big Apple? He returns his gaze to the money slips, then slides Rory's into his pocket. As for his own, half of his instincts are celebrating that he is finally having some luck with this dumb medical bill. The other half is turning mushy and flipping on dancing lights to revolve around his title of Guardian. He sighs and returns his gaze to Jess once again. He's going to regret this. Without looking down, he tears the check in half, then in half again, and again, until it is in tiny pieces in his fingers.
"No, I'm not depositing it at all." He lets the paper shreds rain down on Jess's lap, on top of his incognito grammar book. Let it rain. How ironic. "You are going to keep that money, and you are going to spend it on college. And nothing else. Are we clear?"
Jess responds immediately, "If you wanted me to spend it on college, you should've kept it. Who knows how many strippers-"
"Don't be a smartass! I'm choosing to trust you with this. You're almost an adult. You can hold onto your own money. You've done it for this long. And give this to Rory yourself." He pulls the slip out of his pocket.
Jess refuses to take it. "She wouldn't accept it from me. Pities me too much in my current sedentary state. Besides, who knows if she's coming back here."
"You know she is. But I'll get this to her." He returns it to his jeans.
"Pinky promise with a cherry on top?" Jess asks sarcastically. Luke knows he meant the money, but he can guess with confidence that Jess secretly wants reassurance Rory is coming back. She told Luke she intends to visit as much as she can, especially since Chilton is so close, but he's not going to tell Jess that.
"Yes. Now stop talking. You're annoying me, and the doctor said to keep conversation on the light side. You need anything else?"
Jess just shakes his head, staring at the scraps in his lap. He hands Luke the grammar book to place back on top of his dresser. Luke takes it and says, "Good, now I'm going home. Have the nurse call if you need anything."
As Luke is grasping the door handle, Jess mutters, "Lora."
Luke turns around. "Excuse me?"
Jess glances up, then back down again. He says a little louder, "The nurse's name is Lora."
"Right. Of course it is. Have Lora call if you need anything. I'll be back tomorrow after the lunch rush."
As Luke heads down the hall, he wants to pass out then and there, the thuds of his footsteps transforming into a lullaby. Instead he pulls Rory's check out of his jean pocket, flips it a couple times. The kid keeps him on his toes, that's for sure. And he was right. Luke should've kept the check and deposited it into the account he had set up last month with a few hundred dollars at the bank. The one the bank teller Marie signed off on with an amused grin. The one he desperately doesn't want to empty to help pay the hospital. The one labelled Jess's College Fund.