Chapter XVI

"Hello?"

Rory considers hanging up. She considers it strongly. She doesn't want to do this right now. She'd probably avoid it forever if she could. Yet, now seems as good a time as any. Before she loses her nerve. Earlier, she felt something wrench inside her, when she thanked Jess for helping write Dean's letter. There was a tone- but not even that. It was an aura, but that's ridiculous. Just a sound her gut heard, that sensed of loss, defeat, surrender. Like he'd given up, sacrificed. Rory may be taking his two words - 'I know' - into something they are not. Into a sacrifice he never made, a surrender he never admitted.

"Is anyone there?"

She swallows the lump in her throat. "Hi. Um, it's me, Rory."

"Hey, Rory!" The excitement in his voice sounds dull and fake to Rory's ears. He isn't mocking her, but there is definitely a deeply-pitted anger.

"So, I was thinking that we should talk," she says, slowly and deliberately, half-wishing he'd take the opportunity to cut her off and say they could do this another time, any other time.

Dean sighs. "We should. Would you like me to come get you? Maybe in person is best."

Rory winds the phone cord around her fingers, almost yanking the receiver away from herself so she doesn't have to say it. "I'm, uh, not at my house."

"Did you miss the bus?" Dean asks tentatively, even though the suspicion is evident.

"No, I'm… I'm at the hospital. Visiting Jess."

Silence answers her confession. It's like she went to a cathedral and sat in the box and stared at the wall, as she was supposed to. Then she recited 'Forgive me Father, for I have sinned' and admitted her trespasses like she's seen in the movies. Just for the person on the other side of the grainy wood to say nothing.

Why does this even need to be a confession? Why does she feel so guilty?

Rory rambles on, adding small pauses as she tries to think of more fractions of phrases that don't quite make sentences. "He's doing better, actually. Left his room today. Went round a bit. And he got into the private wing. Like all the big shots. There's a-"

"Rory!" Dean explodes, cutting her off at last. "I don't care! In fact, I truly don't want to hear anything about that punk unless someone sold him a train ticket."

"Dean, come on, d-"

"No, you come on!" He yells, then lowers his voice to pose an offended inquiry. "Is this what you like to do every day? Go to the hospital to see Jess? What about your homework and studying? What about Harvard?"

Rory flinches, then retorts, "Don't make this about Harvard. It's a couple hours of my time. I'm getting everything done."

"Fine, then. This isn't about Harvard. What about everyone else, then? Would you rather go to the hospital to see Jess all the time rather than see the people that actually care about you?"

Jess does care about me, Rory thinks to herself immediately, but she doesn't say it aloud. Too scared. Too much of a coward. Saying it aloud will make Dean even more angry, and then he will call her a liar again. Jess has never said that he cares for her, but Rory knows that for someone who reads a book a day, he isn't good with words. He doesn't have to say it; Rory just knows.

Dean continues, "What about your mom? And Lane? Wouldn't you rather see them than that guy?"

Rory sighs. Just say it, Dean. He goes, "Would you rather see Jess than be with me?"

Since she had expected it, she makes sure not to hesitate at all before saying, "Of course not. You're my boyfriend, and I want to be with you as much as I can. But Jess is my friend, and he's hurt. I'm just trying to be there for him. Please stop being so upset."

Dean exhales, something between an angry snort and a sigh. "Can you blame me, Rory? He put both of you in the hospital, totalled the car, and ever since he got to town-"

"Stop it!" Rory exclaims, then quickly looks around for staring passerbys. "It wasn't his fault. Jess is hurt because of me. Sort of."

Dean inserts, "I know for a fact-"

"You don't know anything!" Rory says, feeling tears stinging at the backs of her eyes. "We were on the way back from ice cream, just talking, and Jess said that we should go back. Then he said that if he turned right we could keep driving. I told him to turn right. I did that."

He hesitates, processing, then gives her back her own words in a tone of defeat with which she is growing too familiar. "You told him to turn right?"

"Yes. I did. I'm not saying this whole mess is my fault because it could have happened to anyone, but I'm so sick and tired of people blaming Jess. Especially you. I thought you'd listen to me more than the rest."

Dean mutters, "I do listen to you, Rory."

"Then why can't you trust me?"

Seeming to regret it as he says it, the words from her boyfriend sound almost forced, in addition to redundant. "It's him I don't trust… I just want him to leave so everything can be how it was before!"

"Before?"

"Before he got here. Before you saw parts of yourself in someone else that I don't have."

Rory sighs. A part of her knows that he is right. It's what she said herself to her own mother a couple nights ago. It doesn't make sense, their friendship, but she and Jess have things in common. She just wishes Dean would remember that a piece won't fit between two others unless there is already space between them. Rory says, "Jess didn't cause any of this. He's messed up a lot since he got to Stars Hollow, but he didn't mess up this. We've damaged this all on our own. We don't communicate. So forget about Jess. I have to go. Next time, let's talk about us."

Dean clears his throat. "Okay, Rory. I just have one more question. Is it true what everyone is saying? About Jess leaving town?"

Rory starts at his question. He's already heard. She doesn't want to lie, but will saying it aloud make it come true? And if she doesn't say it the right way, Dean will accuse her of caring that he is, in fact, leaving. The tears that stung behind her eyes earlier are pooling on the surface.

"Yes," she whispers, then hangs up before she can hear the sound of Dean's smile.

The nurse counts down, and in one swift motion brings Jess to stand out of the wheelchair, rotates him, and lets him down to sit on the bed. He drags himself back slowly, barely feeling the tension in his chest as his arms reach back. The nurse tucks his suction container into a compartment on the side of his bed, then returns to lift one leg, then the other. She lowers his sprained ankle onto a stack of two small plush pillows, as if they had been added to the room for precisely this purpose. Far away, Jess can hear her voice asking if that hurt. He shakes his head. It's the truth. In all honesty, Jess feels numb. This seems like a routine to him now. He's going through the same motions as yesterday and the day before. Only now, it's in this fancy get-up that wasn't meant for somebody like him. He'd bathed earlier, but he feels too dirty to put himself on the large bed with its silky sheets and optimal firmness. The nurse positions huge, plush pillows behind him, and he hesitates to release his weight. She nudges him, and he leans back begrudgingly into the welcome arms of a place he doesn't belong.

"Have you been sleeping?" The new nurse asks, her voice clear and high-pitched, opposite to Lora's hoarse drawl thickened by cigarettes. There's something innocent about her, pure.

"Not really."

"You've been prescribed sleeping medication. Is it not working at all?"

"I get drowsy." Truthfully, Jess started hiding his sleeping pills under his tongue two days ago. They made him feel awful. He was still lying awake at night, but it felt more like drifting in a purgatory he couldn't escape. If he was going to be awake, he'd be awake. Listening to the silence that haunts him. Thinking about reading a book on a bench in New York. Or maybe on the bridge in Stars Hollow. Maybe about finding an old typewriter just like the one that his mom's boyfriend threw against the wall two years ago when he came home half-hungover and half-drunk from the night before to hear small taps that sounded like colossal bangs to his sensitive ears. Jess had written small blurbs since then, but not like he used to on that old typewriter from Jersey. Of course, everything had already gone to shit long before Jess stopped writing; he just had to resort to even more ways to escape the noise and silence and chaos.

"I'll talk to your doctor about something new or a higher dosage. You won't recover if you don't sleep."

Jess wants to protest, but before he processes it, she is gone.

Rory gazes around the room. Compared to the box he was in before, this is enormous, as though he were an office worker who gets a promotion from a cubicle to a corner office. There is a window with classy, patterned curtains draped aside, and the walls are pristine frosty grey instead of rotten eggshell in color. A television stands on the table, twice the size of the last one with a remote and channel guide, in addition to a row of tapes on the shelf underneath. Next to it, the chill-box is a stainless steel mini-fridge look-alike, as if it contains wine coolers and prosecco rather than ice packs. The telephone is black and vintage in appearance, salvaged from decades ago yet kept in pristine condition. To the right, even the bedside table is a polished, dark wood and the chair is clad in unworn, undented leather. She completes her scan of the room when her eyes come to rest on Jess, small in the middle of a bed that could accommodate three. He is propped up on multiple cushions, staring at his hands in his lap.

"Wow," is all she can say as her eyes avert to the light fixture, then quickly back to the patient. It's all over his face. "What's wrong? You don't like it?"

"It's fine." He shrugs.

"Come on. What's up?" Rory takes a seat, finally able to drop her backpack to the floor. She gives her shoulders a roll, then leans back into the comfortable leather cushion, which supports her weight perfectly. Nice job, Grandma and Grandpa.

"There's no way Luke can afford this," he mutters, looking at the curtains with what Rory interprets as disgust, blended with a hefty dose of confusion. "What am I doing here?"

She isn't sure how to answer. She had her mother get Luke to agree that Jess would be kept in the dark as long as possible, but she isn't naive enough to think that Jess is naive. This would lead back to her, but it can be avoided for now. She replies, "I'm sure he just wanted you to have a private room. Maybe they gave him a discount."

Jess scoffs. "Please. They're squeezing him for every cent he has."

Rory swallows and offers, "It's a nice room. You should enjoy it."

"I'm trying, but my ass isn't used to sheets with such a high thread count." He adjusts himself in the bed under the plush comforter. Rory chuckles and looks to the side table to see a perfect line-up of three remotes in front of the telephone. She picks one up, and against Jess's warning, presses a button. Cool air blasts behind her, whipping her hair into her face, strands sticking to her lip gloss. As she jabs the off button, she spits hair out and turns to see a fan standing in the corner, unnoticed in her preliminary scan.

Jess is trying to contain laughter, failing miserably as he taunts, "I tried to warn you."

"You hadn't touched them yet! How would you know?"

"I didn't." He snickers.

Still arranging her hair back into place while ignoring the sticky gloss at the tips, Rory takes another remote in her palm, this time pausing to read the labels. There are two rows of buttons, a snowflake emblem at the top of one, and a flame leading the other. She selects the bottom one under the flame. After a few seconds, Jess says, "Woah! It's warm."

"What is?"

"The bed. What did you do?"

Rory picks one under the snowflake instead of answering, and he tracks the progress, "Better… better… Nope, it's cold. Stop that!"

The bed has coolers and heaters. Now that is fancy. Well done, Emily Gilmore. As Rory giggles, Jess gets the last remote from the table and selects a button. The lights gradually dim until one would think the room were illuminated just slightly by candles. It's early spring, yet autumn is diffusing itself throughout the room, as the sun sets outside. Rory turns to Jess, and her eyes play tricks on her. They seem to do that quite often; they must be susceptible to light or something. She looks at him, and he's smiling with one side of his mouth. His skin, though pale with sickness and restlessness, glows under her gaze. The dim lights, as though cast on him by fire, dance around his dark eyes like crackling flames, enticing her and welcoming her and daring her. Maybe that's what this is; Jess is constantly daring her to cross a line, to make a move that no one expects. But Rory doesn't play with fire. She never has. That's how to get burned.