Free Go: A Surrender by Jane Nin Page B

was right and I was finally ready to
accept that—not bat it away like I had done the other night.
     
    We stopped first at a little café, where we drank coffee and
ate buttery, sugared slices of toast. Though my internal clock was all haywire
now I felt strangely alert: every sensation, from the clinking of our cups
against their saucers to the sweet melting of the butter against my tongue,
made me feel alive and joyful in my body. Jack watched me closely, and this,
too, felt delicious.
     
    “I’m sorry I couldn’t meet you,” he said. “We lost a rig.”
     
    “An oil rig?” I’d forgotten, briefly, about how my way was
being paid.
     
    He nodded grimly.
     
    “Was anyone hurt?”
     
    He looked at me, real sorrow in his eyes.
     
    “Oh god,” I said.
     
    “I keep telling myself accidents happen, because, of course,
they do. But.” He stopped.
     
    “They do happen,” I said, lamely but truthfully.
     
    “They had families, you know. What that must be like.
Just—one day to the next.”
     
    His eyes shone a little and he looked away. I took his hand,
thinking sheepishly about how I’d been sulking over his absence. He let me lace
my fingers into his, then returned my gaze for just a moment, gratefully.
     
    “I know,” I said. “Or I don’t. I know that it’s terrible.”
     
    And as our hands were linked I had a flash of losing him
with equal suddenness—tonight, or in a week, or even just someday. A pain bled
through me and now I, too, was fighting not to show emotion.
     
    He squeezed my hand tight—knowing, maybe. Looking at me.
     
    And then he let go. “Ready?” he said, and I nodded, and we
stood.
     
     

14.
     
    “I thought we’d do some charity work,” he explained as we
pulled up outside a hospital.
     
    I glanced at him, wondering if he’d say more.
     
    “I spent too much time in one of these yesterday,” he said.
“It got me to thinking. You know, people stay here for months at a time, some
of them. They must miss the comforts of home.”
     
    “And let me guess,” I said, “am I one of those comforts?”
     
    “I imagine you’re rather nicer than whatever they left
behind,” he said, “but that makes the gesture all the more meaningful.”
     
    We walked through the sleek front doors and at the
information desk he asked for a name. In the elevator, he extracted from his
laptop bag a little folded square of cotton and opened it up. It was a
candystriper’s apron, pristine and new.
     
    “Should I put it on?” I asked.
     
    “It’ll be a private room,” he said, “with its own bathroom.
You can change in there.”
     
    We stepped out of the elevator and began down a long,
mint-green hall. This was the first game where what was being proposed did not
automatically excite me. This hospital, its cold hallways, its smell of
sickness and sterilization, made me want to run back out into the sunshine and
gulp the outside air.
     
    “But won’t that ruin the surprise?”
     
    “I imagine it’ll all be pretty surprising,” said Jack.
     
    “Well hold on,” I said, stopping where we were. “Are you
sure he wants this? I know men are men, but it doesn’t seem right to assume.”
     
    “Don’t worry, he’s a horny bastard,” said Jack. “Always
talking dirty to the nurses. That’s how I got wind of this in the first place.”
     
    “Oh,” I said, still feeling dubious about the whole thing. I
stopped again.
     
    Jack stopped alongside me, looked into my face. “We don’t
have to do this, remember? That was the deal.”
     
    “But the game.”
     
    “Take a pass on this round. We’ll come up with something
else.”
     
    I considered this. “He doesn’t know?”
     
    “No clue,” said Jack.
     
    I thought a moment longer. As we stood there, a gigantic
black orderly in lavender scrubs and a surgical cap pushed a tiny sparrow of a
lady past us in a wheelchair. She gazed up at him raptly, like a little girl at
a father-daughter dance. There was