Free Listed: Volume I by Noelle Adams

corner. The
darkness was a relief. She hadn’t realizing the florescent lights had been
grating on her head, but she knew now that they had.
    She
took another swig of her Coke and looked up at Paul a little dazedly.
    “Close
your eyes for a while,” he instructed, “You have more than an hour to rest. If
you aren’t feeling better then, we can reschedule for another day.”
    He
didn’t sound gentle or affectionate. He mostly sounded matter-of-fact and a
little bossy.  He was giving her that look of intense scrutiny again—the one
where he seemed to search for signs of her impending demise. She didn’t like
that look at all, since it defined her as an invalid and not a whole person.
But at least it was better than the mild gentleness he’d been using on her
recently.
    She’d
rather be a project of his than an object of pity.
    “I
don’t want to reschedule,” she mumbled. “I want to get this over with.”
    “I
know you do. Get some rest.”
    She
didn’t understand his tone, and he left the room before she could read his
expression.
    She
was relieved when she was left in the darkened room by herself, with just her Coke
and a couch.
    She
finished her soda. Then she couldn’t stand it anymore, so she pulled the pins
out of her hair, finger-combing it loose and finally able to rub her aching
scalp. She took off her shoes and jacket and curled up on her side on the sofa.
    It
wasn’t a dignified position, but Paul wasn’t going to let anyone barge in and
bother her. And it felt so good to lie down and close her eyes.
    She
didn’t go to sleep, and her thoughts were a confused jumble of images and
feelings, all intensified by the aching of her head.
    She
thought back to her wedding two days ago, still hardly believing the lush,
glowing beauty of it was real. It had seemed so much like a romantic daydream
she’d thought she’d long outgrown.
    She
shouldn’t have been so affected by it. She shouldn’t have cried. She wasn’t one
of those sappy romantics. She’d talked herself out of sentimental expectations
a long time ago.
    At
least, she thought she had.
    She
knew the storybook effect of her wedding had been manufactured, but it was
something—and she could have died without anything.
    She
would have liked for her father to be there. Thinking about him now, she felt
emotion swell up in her throat, and she almost started to cry.
    But
the crying hurt her head too much, so she forced the grief back—thinking about
her testimony, about the rest of the items on her list, and about how to
convince Paul to treat her as a person and not a project.
    She
must have dozed off at some point, although it felt like she was conscious the
whole hour. She was jarred into awareness by the sound of a voice saying her
name and then a gentle hand on her shoulder.
    “Emily,”
Paul murmured again, “How are you?”
    She
blinked up at him, completely disoriented. Instinctively, she sat up, vaguely
embarrassed that he’d caught her in such a vulnerable position.
    “Oh,
God,” she moaned, as the sudden move made her head throb dizzyingly.
    Paul
had sat down in a chair next to the couch, but he said, “We’ll reschedule this.
You need to get home.”
    “No,”
she argued, glaring at him as best she could. “Just give me a minute.”
    “Here,”
Paul said, offering her a new bottle of ice-cold Coke and then gesturing at the
bag he’d set on the coffee table. “And I brought some sandwiches. You should
eat something.”
    She
took the soda gratefully but made a face at the sandwiches. “I’m not hungry.”
    “I
don’t care. Try to eat something anyway. It will help your stomach, if nothing
else.” He reached into the bag and asked, “Turkey, ham, or roast beef?”
    “Turkey,”
she mumbled, annoyed with him but too shaky to put up a fight.
    Paul
handed her the sandwich and then took another sandwich out for himself, helping
himself to the bottle of water he’d brought in earlier since she’d left it
untouched on the