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By the end of the day Amy’s hangover should be a hazy nightmare, but instead it’s somehow worse. She’d put on her sunglasses when she went out for a late lunch of a single chocolate croissant and a black iced coffee – all her stomach could tolerate – and then never bothered to take them off when she got back to the precinct. Now it’s finally 5 p.m. and Amy groans and lays her head on her arms folded across her desk, ignoring the sunglasses crushing into her forehead. She closes her eyes and lets the blessed darkness win, just for a moment.
That’s when Gina comes by and dangles keys right next to her ear and announces they’re going to Atlantic City.
“I- no. What? Why? No.” Amy winces and pushes the keys away.
“I told Jake we’d bring him kabob from the guy down the street,” Gina says. “We won’t, because internal injuries and all. But he’s expecting us.”
She drops the keys on Amy’s desk and yells to meet her in the garage in five. Amy peels off the sunglasses and massages her temples, and tries to decide if she’d rather beg Holt for some overtime or spend the next six to seven hours with Gina. Ordinarily it’d be an obvious choice but her mouth tastes like the subway smelled last night and her ears are still ringing from the keys and she’s pretty sure she’s going to vomit in the next 20 to 30 minutes. At least with Gina there’s a good chance she can be unconscious for part of the next few hours.
+++
Gina’s waiting for her in the passenger seat, which means Amy is driving, which she realizes she should have expected. Amy starts up the navigation app and asks Gina which hospital Jake was taken to.
“Atlantic City,” Gina says, laying the derision on thick.
“There are like three hospitals in Atlantic City,” Amy says, searching the app.
In the end she has to text Charles for the details. By the time they hit the road they’re looking at a three-hour drive, at least.
Amy expects it to be silent, or at least conversation-free – expects Gina to stare at her phone the whole time or play loud music or sleep. She’s fine with that. She hasn’t puked after all but she’s still not in the mood for Gina banter.
But Gina surprises her, and after only five minutes of rapid-fire texting she’s suddenly talking about Jake. It comes out of nowhere. She says, “So then Jake hit Brandon in the back of the head with a basketball and we ran, and after that we were pretty tight,” and it takes Amy a long moment to figure out that Gina is sharing something precious to her.
The stories keep unfolding: walking home from school together every day, prank calling crushes, the time Jake saw her in a bra and she made him show her his butt. First kisses and first breakups and second kisses and second breakups and Jake’s apparently cried in front of Gina more than Amy had thought he would have cried in his entire life.
When Holt had told them that Jake was hit by a car and in the hospital, and that he’d be fine, Amy had felt a spike of concern and an unexpected desire to go to him. But she’d shaken it off and gone about her miserably hungover day. Later, when Sarge had returned and told them more details she’d been more exasperated than worried, though it certainly sounded like he was pretty banged up.
Gina, though – she isn’t taking it well. Amy thinks about reassuring Gina, about taking a hand off of 2 o’clock on the steering wheel and patting her shoulder. But she realizes that this – talking, sharing, spilling childhood secrets among the red taillights of the evening commute on Garden State Highway – is her way of coping. And Amy can give her that.
+++
“Isn’t it after visiting hours?” Amy says, as they’re parking.
“I called and said you need to interview him for a case,” Gina says, “Police business, very covert.”
“And they bought that?”
“I think they didn’t care,” Gina says, and ushers Amy toward the elevators to the third floor.
Jake is asleep, the lights in his room made dim, so Gina says she’s going downstairs for coffee. She offers to get one for Amy too, which is just further evidence that Gina is deeply shaken.
Amy steps quietly into the hospital room, closing the door behind her. Faint light from a bedside lamp angled away from the bed casts Jake’s face in shadows, but she’s still surprised to see that he doesn’t look as bad as she’d feared. She can make out some scrapes and bruises, and he seems unusually pale, but with his eyes closed, lips just parted, he looks peaceful. The only other sign of injury is a brace on his hand, which looks almost comically inadequate for the litany of wounds she knows he’s suffered. Amy feels a sudden desire to take that hand in hers, to stroke a thumb over his fingers. She folds her hands into fists until the feeling fades away.
She drops in the chair beside his bed and sets her purse on the floor. She’s fishing inside for her cell phone when she hears a soft rustle, and looks up to find Jake has turned his head toward her, and he’s blinking his eyes open.
“Hey,” she says, just above a whisper.
Jake binks some more and looks confused, and Amy tries to recall if Terry said he had a concussion on top of everything else. But then he’s squinting at her and she realizes he probably isn’t wearing his contacts anymore and no one’s brought him glasses. She scoots the chair forward and leans further into his space, and slowly the confusion clears and Jake is smiling at her, goofy and soft.
“Hi,” she says again.
“Hi.” His voice is a little croaky and when he coughs, he grimaces and clutches at his side.
Amy winces in sympathy and looks around for a cup and water, but there’s nothing, and she’s not sure what he’s allowed to drink at this point. She settles in closer and waits for him to breathe easy again before offering another smile.
“That bad, huh?”
“It’s not good,” Jake says. His face turns a little stormy, brows furrowed in something she can’t quite recognize. “Are you here to chew me out too? Because I think Sarge just about covered it.”
Amy frowns, and then she nods in understanding. “He says you were reckless and need to take better care of yourself.”
“Amy-”
“Hey, I’m in no condition to judge right now,” Amy says, lifting her hands in surrender. “Have you checked your phone today?”
“My phone?”
“I guess not.”
Amy sighs and gets up, heads to a closet next to the bathroom, where she finds a stack of Jakes clothes. In his jacket pocket she finds the cell phone, and by some kind of miracle it still has a 5 percent charge.
“I’m only giving this to you now because you’re in too much pain to laugh in my face,” Amy says, as she hands over the phone.
Jake scoots himself up slightly in the bed, which is already raised at an angle. His face lights up immediately at the first photo, and Amy can’t help leaning over to get a look. It’s a selfie: Amy and Gina on a subway platform, wearing their new sunglasses despite the obvious late hour. Amy has on a ridiculously large black sweatshirt.
“Is that a Scarface hoodie?” Jake is squinting at the screen, lifting it closer to his face. He definitely can’t see.
“Don’t ask what I paid for it,” Amy says.
Jake’s eyes go wide. “What did you pay for that?”
“I said don’t ask!”
She sits down while Jake continues to scroll through the photos she’d texted him the night before, when she hadn’t known that he’d been hit by a car and was bleeding internally in an Atlantic City emergency room. She’d been dreading him giving her shit for the photos, but now, she’s glad she sent them. Even if he’s probably going to make the photo of her sitting in the middle of some street with her shoes on her hands and her mouth opened wide in drunk laughter his background wallpaper.
Oh – she sees he’s already done it.
It’s true that he doesn’t laugh much, but his grin is infectious and it loosens something in her chest she hadn’t realized was all knotted up.
By the time Gina finally comes up, two coffees in hand, Jake has breezed through the photos several times and is lying back in his bed with the phone clutched to his chest. Amy can see that he’s already tired again, though his eyes light up when Gina approaches.
“You’re such a jerk,” Gina says to Jake, even as she’s shoving Amy’s coffee into her hands.
Amy takes her cue, and she picks up her purse and backs toward the door. Jake shoots her one desperate look that she reads as a plea to stay, but she shrugs and gives him a little wave. She closes the door again on her way out.