Free Flamethrower by Maggie Estep Page B

ain’t coming in my car.”
    Ruby was too woozy to go in for a big bout of bicycle advocacy. She needed a doctor, not a fight. She pulled the door to Tobias’s house closed behind her, followed the driver over to the Lincoln, and got into the backseat. As they drove over the Marine Parkway Bridge, Ruby called Information, got her doctor’s number, called his office, and got through to his secretary, Joanne.
    “Just have the triage nurse call up to us when you get to the emergency room,” Joanne said, unfazed.
    Between getting stepped on or bitten by horses and occasionally crashing her bike, Ruby was in to see Dr. Parrish at least twice a year with sprains, bites, or minor broken bones. She didn’t have insurance, but Dr. Parrish, a long-time Coney Island fanatic, charged Ruby a reduced rate.
    Ruby closed her phone and rested the back of her headagainst the seat. She closed her eyes and at some point drifted off, coming to when the car stopped. They were outside New York Hospital, and the driver was staring back at her from the front seat.
    Ruby produced money from her pocket, tipping the woman extravagantly, as was her custom.
    “Sorry I didn’t let you bring your bike,” the driver said penitently.
    “Yeah, me too,” Ruby said.
    “You gonna be all right walking in there by yourself?”
    “I’m fine, thanks,” Ruby said.
    She wasn’t fine. This was clear from the triage nurse’s face. Ruby didn’t have to wait long before being ushered onto a gurney and whisked back into the entrails of the emergency room.
    Dr. Parrish didn’t appear until after Ruby had been CAT-scanned and put through a series of monotonous tests involving touching her nose and following a neurologist’s finger with her eyes. She’d been wheeled back behind a curtain and was enjoying the slight buzz of the painkillers they’d finally given her when Doctor Parrish materialized.
    Doctor Parrish was a middle-aged man of medium build. He had kind eyes and a high, intelligent forehead. Ruby found him beautiful.
    “Bad day, huh?” Dr. Parrish said.
    “Not the best,” Ruby agreed.
    She told him what had happened. Sort of. Leaving out a few key details and painting the whole thing as an accident.
    “At least I can go home and go to bed now,” Ruby said.
    “Ruby, we need to admit you for observation,” Doctor Parrish said, using the foreboding
we
. Ruby was never sure what the
we
encompassed.
We
was like
they
. Whenever Ruby used
they
, Ed invariably asked, “Who’s
they?
The Van Patten Family?”
    “I can’t afford a night in the hospital. You know that,” she told the doctor.
    “I’m sorry, Ruby. It’s just a precautionary measure.”
    Ruby knew that he couldn’t advise her to leave.
    “I’ll check on you in the morning,” he said, even though Ruby knew that
he
knew she wouldn’t be there in the morning. “Try to stay out of trouble, will you?”
    Ruby smiled weakly as Doctor Parrish vanished beyond the curtain.
    The hospital smelled of sickness and cheap sheets, and the glare of overhead fluorescents seemed designed to provoke migraines. All the same, Ruby didn’t hate hospitals the way most people did. They were places where fascinating and brutal things happened in high concentrations. But she couldn’t afford to spend a night there as a sociological experiment. She sat up and put her feet on the floor. After a few minutes, she stood. She noticed she was wearing a hospital gown and, with effort, bent down to look under the stretcher, where she found a bag containing her clothes. She pulled it out and stood back up, getting a head rush in the process. As she dumped the clothes onto the bed, she realized that strangers had stripped her and she didn’t remember it happening. She got dressed then pulled the curtain back. Nurses and orderlies were bustling down a hall lined with stretchers and IV poles. Ruby spotted a bathroom across the hall and went in to fix herself up.
    Her left eye was swollen and bruised, and a