Chapter XIV
"I'm looking for Jess Mariano? He went to a new room this morning."
The middle-age nurse with her wiry glasses looks down at her clipboard, frowns. "Hmm, I see his name, but there's a star next to it. Let me check the computer, make sure this room number is current."
She rolls to the other side of the desk with a quick pushstart from her leg, sliding gracefully across the floor to the computer. Barely stalling her motion in time, she begins to type and click. She turns around after a couple minutes and says, "Sorry, dear. We don't have a room number updated into the system yet."
"What do you mean?" Rory asks.
She shrugs. "It says pending. I know that he was transferred into a new room this morning at 5:00 am then transferred out of that room at 2:00pm. It's only been an hour. He's probably still in the private wing."
Rory strolls slowly through the hall, trying not to be excessively obvious as she checks each room. Passing by the small circular windows with quick glances through each, she probably looks like a creeper. She does not have the energy to care. Seeing the boxes and the bus schedule this morning dragged something out of her. After spending the rest of breakfast waiting for Luke to return so she could confront him, Rory came to a conclusion. Firstly, it would be stupid to miss the bus because she was pending on Luke who at that very moment was probably withdrawing Jess from Stars Hollow High. Secondly, Jess should tell her himself; she wants to hear it from him. Like Lorelai told her, she shouldn't bring it up. She wants him to explain it to her, and by the time he comes around to that confession, she will have answered her mother's question: Do you really care that much?
"Hey, stranger."
Rory jerks her neck, as it was turned towards a room on her right, to see Jess. He's sitting in a wheelchair, his left ankle propped up with a blanket on his lap, a shawl draped over his shoulders. A stockinged foot peeks out from under it, a small furry animal poking out of its den. He propels himself forward very slowly down the hallway, and Rory consumes the distance between them with a few quick steps.
"I was here on Sunday," Rory says as she reaches him, and she immediately scans him up and down. The last she'd seen, he was choking on air with a fever that could've boiled eggs. She tugs at the collar of her uniform as she recalls the heat of his forehead pressed onto her clavicle, the closeness of their bodies when she held him in her arms, knowing full well he was in excruciating pain yet oblivious as to how to relieve it. Now he looks slightly ill, his skin paler, but bruises and undereye circles appearing ten times darker.
"I know. You must've missed me," he responds casually as he tips his head to motion her aside. As he starts to roll forward, she takes a slow, intensely deliberate step.
"You're feeling better?" she asks as they start their gradual progression down the corridor. She realizes it would be painful if he put any more force into rotating the wheels of the chair.
"Fine," Jess replies nonchalantly. Rory doesn't know what she expected, this time or the several before now.
"Jess, what are you doing out here?"
He shrugs as he makes his way around the corner, struggling to manipulate the wheels correctly. Rory feels her body flinch as she has to stop herself from helping him. "Beats me. When I woke up this morning, I went to a new room. Well I watched the sunrise first. Then they took me out of that one, said I get to go to a better one. But it wasn't ready yet and my old room was filled already. So I'm just hanging around. I think there was a nurse with me but we got separated."
"Separated or did you lose them on purpose?" Rory asks skeptically.
"What are you suggesting?" Jess asks wryly.
Rory shrugs under the weight of her backpack. "Not much. Just that the person who bailed on dinner his first night in town might try to lose a poor, unsuspecting nurse."
"Do you see how slow I'm moving here? I couldn't escape a snail."
She tries to console. "Not that slow…"
"Glad you think so. I was thinking we'd find you a wheelchair and have a race."
Rory laughs at the strange image of her and Jess catapulting down the hall in wheelchairs. The scary part is, if she didn't have a fractured wrist, she might actually do it. "You're ridiculous. Not to mention I'd definitely win."
"You mean you wouldn't let the sick guy win?" Jess asks with a humored tone. "I'm appalled at you, Rory Gilmore."
A part of her goes numb when she hears him say her name. It rolls off his tongue at a graceful speed, in tempo almost. There's a thickness in his voice, like coffee with cream, or like the red wine her mother describes and fawns over which Rory has never tasted. Rory Gilmore. In a wheelchair race with Jess Mariano at the hospital in Hartford. It sounds preposterous, yet she'd do it. She makes dumb decisions thanks to him. She goes outside of her comfort zone thanks to him. And she only has so much time left to be with him.
"Rory? Slow down, would you?" comes a strained voice from behind her.
She realizes she had gotten several steps ahead of Jess, who is rolling towards her with a neutral expression, blank save for his furrowed brow. He is trying to move faster than before. Rory can tell it is paining him to attempt to keep up with her, and she rushes to return. She gets behind his chair as she apologizes, grasping the handles. She lightly curls the fingers of her hindered left hand around the rod, but the imbalance makes pushing the chair forward a little harder.
"I got it," Jess protests as she propels him forward.
"I know you do, but let me, okay?" She replies. He grumbles as he settles in, pulling the shawl tighter around his frail shoulders. She asks, "Are you cold?"
"I don't know," he says. "I was hot half an hour ago."
"That's how these things go," Rory says as she barely dodges a garbage bin. "I hope your room is ready soon. You should rest."
"Nah, I like it out here. Moving around."
Rory asks, "Are they letting you read yet?"
"I get headaches. Trust me, I've tried. This place hands out prime punishment time. No reading. No loud music. No TV in the room. And I had five roommates for a day."
Rory cringes at the deprived existence Jess created with his words, then wonders how much he knows about his relocation. Instead, she requests, "Tell me about them."
"I don't know their names," he says as she pushes him down an unfamiliar hall at his direction. She repeats her petition, and he launches into descriptions. "The one on my left spent all his time on the phone with his girlfriend. On my right, think… 'the brain' mixed with Ducky."
"John Hughes?" Rory confirms, and Jess points out a turn.
"It was annoying."
She says sarcastically, "An astonishing opinion from Judd Nelson, everybody!"
"Dodger and 'the criminal'? High bar, Miss Ringwald."
Rory smiles and wishes she could see the smirk on Jess's face, even though she knows for certain it is there. She scoffs. "Now I'm 'the princess'? That's not-"
He cuts her off. "Two words. Rory. Curtain."
"Shut up!" She blushes as she remembers that night outside the video store, her picture on display for all to see. Jess never told her what he did to Bambi and Dumbo, but the cassettes he replaced them with must've contained… adult content. She insists, "Tell me about your other roommates."
Jess goes on, "Then there was Squeaker. He slept almost all day, but he squeaks when he breathes. There was one that groaned a lot. Like sex noises but worse somehow."
Rory flushes at that too, thankful she is behind him, and inserts, "He must've been in pain."
"Yeah, from an STD."
"You're terrible!" Rory cries, but can't help the laugh that erupts from her belly. Her belly is always right, when it comes to food and humor.
"Which I take pride in. Last but not least, Romeo."
"Not his real name?"
"Nah. He was writing a letter to some guy, though, which he dramatically shared with us. He sounded so desperate, I had to help him out. Kind of like you."
Rory jerks the chair a bit, but struggles to straighten out the trajectory afterwards. "Hey! That's not true!"
"Sure."
Rory reaches a door with a placard naming it the 'solarium', with a small description underneath. She reads aloud, "The Jim and Dana Melbourne Solarium was once used extensively for therapeutic exposure to light. Renovated in 1990 thanks to the generous contributions of Jim and Dana Melbourne, it is now a beautiful, open space for patients, visitors, and loved ones to enjoy. Wow, that's so nice."
"Right," Jess says dryly as he leans forward to grab the door handle. Rory beats him to it and holds it open while he wheels himself inside, giving her a scowl on the way.
Coming through the doorway, Rory is nearly blinded by light. Surrounded by glass, the sun's rays fly through the walls and the ceiling, illuminating everything around her. The trees behind the hospital are now only meters away, allowing the light to poke through their leaves, newly-grown in the past couple weeks of early spring. A small area in front of the solarium has been cleared, with flowers planted along a small paved path, wrapping around until it goes out of sight. She spots the last of the crocus stubbornly making their leave, with daffodils and tulips in their yellow and pink gowns stealing the stage. She looks up again and sees a pair of birds fly by, only a few feet above the glass of the solarium ceiling. This place… it's a place of renewal, of revival.
"You're smiling," Jess observes as Rory continues to flick her eyes around the scene before her until they come to rest on him. Even the sight of him in his weak and vulnerable state doesn't stop her lips from pulling back over her teeth. Because it's like that time before they watched Shrek together. In the dim sheen of the television-lit room, she saw him, really saw him. Now, she's being blinded by light instead of darkness, the sun's rays transforming him in front of her into the person she talked to on the bridge. The stubborn bibliophile for whom she put herself on the line the night before. With his messy hair and teasing smirk, telling her to give Hemingway a chance. When really, Rory can admit now, Jess wanted her to give him a chance.
"I can't help it," she whispers softly, turning her gaze back to the flowers, walking up to stand beside him. "It's beautiful in here."
She can feel his dark eyes on her when he says, "Yeah, I guess it is."