Two adults meet. She has a boyfriend. He's much better for her. Can he tell her? Will she figure it out? Winner of two Golden Clitorides (Best Serial, Best Long Story by a New Author)
Warren and Elise were in Elise's car, on the way to the hospital.
"Why she does these things to herself..." Warren said.
"I know." Elise sighed. "I should have seen this coming. She's been a mess all week." Elise told him about the previous drunken episode, and about Sophia seeing him at the rink.
"She was there? She heard me? And she still didn't come in?" Warren took a deep breath. "She had the opening of all time. She knew how I was going to react. And she still didn't come in. Why am I even bothering?"
"Warren, you have to understand. When she came back to the room, she was as shook up as I've ever seen a person. She wanted to go into that rink, but couldn't. She was scared out of her mind."
"Of what?"
"I don't know. I'm not sure she knows. Anyhow, we were in our room after supper last night, and she was reading the internet, and she read something that disturbed her."
"I know what it was. That's why I was at your door this morning. Well, one of the reasons. I was going to come up anyway--I tried to come up last night, but you guys weren't there. But I came up so early because I read the thing on the internet. The skating world found out about our breakup, and the person who posted the information only got part of it right, and the message was very unkind to Sophia."
"Aaah. Well, after she read that, she said 'I'm going out'. I had to go to the library. When I came back in a few hours and she still wasn't there, I went looking for her, because I had an idea of where she went--a frat party a friend of ours told us about. Sure enough, she was there, and drunk off her ass. Shortly after I got there, she passed out, I called 911."
"Good fucking thing you went looking for her, Elise."
They pulled up in front of the hospital, and went to the intensive care unit. "They are only going to let one of us in at a time. They usually only let family in, but Sophia named both of us as stand-ins for family, since her family is so far away."
"I know. I named her and Papa Bear."
"Let me go in, and then I'll come get you."
"OK."
Elise walked into the room. Sophia was still tied to all the machines--but she was awake. Her eyes fluttered open, and she gave Elise a weak smile. "Hiya, roomie."