"Is the money?"
"It is now."
Marilyn frowned. "What does that mean?"
"It used to belong to some very bad people. Now it belongs to me."
"Is that who was beating you? The ones the money used to belong to?"
It hurt to smile, but he had to, a little. "No. They really were just a bunch of no-neck gay bashers. I'm pretty sure of that." Flash wouldn't have had time to set anything up. He didn't think. Eli had spoken to him only moments before the attack. Flash didn't move that fast.
"Are the bad people looking for you?"
"No. They're doing hard federal time."
"For what?"
Eli laced his fingers with Marilyn's again and she let him. "You don't want to know."
"You're probably right." She brushed his hair off his forehead with her other hand and he felt it fall right back down. "You're talking better."
"Takes practice to talk with lips like these. Or maybe I'm getting used to the hurt."
"Didn't they give you something for pain?"
"Can't, till they know what's wrong with my head. I'm okay." He floated over the pain as he'd done so many times before, but this time, he was anchored by Marilyn's hand.
"What do you want to do with your wallet while you're in x-ray?" She clasped his good hand between both of hers. "Do you think the hospital has a safe?"
"You keep it." He tried to focus on her face and managed, mostly.
"Eli, you don't know me from Adam. How do you know I won't disappear with all your money?"
She came into sharp focus then, Marilyn, with her dark, silver-sparkled waves and those smile lines around her snowcloud-blue eyes.
"I know you enough," he said. "You saved my life, Marilyn." He shook his hand free and touched her cheek, but he couldn't tell her how her tears got to him.
"You want the money? Take it." He fumbled in the blanket till he found the wallet down by his hip and thrust it at her. "I'll give it to you."
"Eli, no." She pushed it back.
"Look." He tossed the damn wallet in the direction of his boots still against the wall by the door. "Do what you want with it. Keep it, don't keep it, give it to the drunk out in the hall. I don't care."
"Okay, okay, relax." She took his hand again, holding it tight. "Calm down, Eli. You're going to hurt yourself."
"Why should you care?" He slumped back onto the bed, trying not to cling as tight to her hand as she clung to his.
"I don't know. Probably I shouldn't. But I do."
A whole new set of people dressed in purple scrubs smacked the door open and invaded the room. "Ready for your ride to x-ray, Mr. Court?"
"I guess." But somehow he couldn't make himself let go of Marilyn's hand.
Not until she gave his hand a squeeze and said, "I'll be waiting."
As they shoved him out the door on his rolling bed, Eli saw Marilyn gathering up his things. She'd take care of them. She was going to wait.
After the x-rays, which required more waiting before they were taken, and a couple of new kinds of torture, Eli finally got some Tylenol. It didn't help a whole hell of a lot. They wheeled him back downstairs to the ER and parked him in the hall to wait until the pictures were developed and the doc could get back to him. At least they let Marilyn come back and wait with him.
She told him she had put his clothes in the trunk of her enormous car for now, and she had his wallet in her purse which was hanging from a strap over her shoulder. Then she stopped talking and just held his hand. Sometimes she ruffled up his hair, mostly she didn't. Eli lay there, holding her hand, trying not to hurt, trying not to think about how good it felt not being alone.
Eventually the doc came in, looked at the x-rays and told Eli he was lucky. He wouldn't have to have any pins put in to hold the bones together. He had a small bone in his right wrist as well as the stationary bone in his forearm broken. One cast would take care of both fractures. As the doctor had suspected, he had a simple fracture of the left tibia. The bone was broken all the way through but not displaced.
He would be in casts for at least six weeks, at least part of the time in a wheelchair. The broken arm and wrist meant he couldn't use crutches. Depending on how well he healed, he might get a walking cast after a month or so, if he followed all the doctor's instructions.
Eli tried to pay attention but he was hurting too damn bad. The adrenaline, or whatever it was that had allowed him to walk most of the way into the hospital, had worn off hours ago, and the pills they'd given him were doing fuck-all to help.
They let Marilyn stay in the room while he got his casts on and she helped him into his jeans afterward. One pants leg got cut to go over the cast but they were still wearable. She counted out the cash at the desk when he checked out and took the pages of instructions from the nurse. She snapped his coat closed over the sling. Finally, one of the aides wheeled him outside and helped him into the oversized car. They were back on the freeway before it occurred to him to ask where they were going this time.
"I'm taking you home," Marilyn said.
Eli peered into the after-midnight darkness. "This isn't the way."
"Yes, it is. We're going to my place."
What the hell? Eli gathered his attention and focused it on the woman driving the car. A harmless hospital flirtation with Marilyn was one thing. Going home with her was something else entirely. He was a loner and liked it that way. Getting too close to people created complications he didn't
