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for an angel to get a headache.

    I woke up as the doctors were doing rounds. Mom hadn’t come back, and Wes hadn’t reappeared. Wherever Liz was, I hoped that she was better off than she was last night. I hoped she was healing.
    TV doctors never tell people that there’s no reason for patients to feel the way they do. There’s always some rare disease that just somehow happened to penetrate suburbia, and the young hotshot—or the old curmudgeon—always figures it out just in time. If a doctor says, “You seem to be doing much better now,” in the first act, it’s only so the patient can have a dramatic relapse right before the commercial break.
    In real life—in my sample size of one, anyway—real doctors seem a lot more willing to say, “Your CT was clean, your lumbar puncture came back fine, your fever’s gone, your white cells are elevated but not abnormal. It seems like some kind of virus hit your system very hard, but in the end, you seem to be recovering. We see no reason to keep you here. Go home, take it easy, rest up. Do you have someone you can stay with, just in case you start feeling worse again?”
    The doctor—Dr. Jacob Turner, Internal Med Resident, according to his name tag—looked like he’d passed exhausted years ago. His hair was a nice shade of brown, but gray was creeping in at the temples. His eyes looked young and friendly, but there were creases around them. At least the lines around his mouth looked like they were from laughing. “I have a roommate,” I said. Who was going to read me the riot act, as soon as she got the chance, I was sure of that.
    “Good,” he said. “What about someone who can give you a ride home?”
    “My mom. She’ll be here soon, I’m sure.” I wasn’t really sure of that at all. My mind kept wandering back to the smell of whiskey on her breath. How had she been drinking at the hospital? Was she carrying a flask again? She hadn’t been that bad in years, not since right after they died, when she was still insisting that it had all been faked somehow. That was when she’d gone away for a little vacation, as she called it, and I’d stayed with Shan and her mom for a couple of months. When my life had been something that pretended at normal. She’d never stopped drinking entirely, but she’d been doing much better. For years. At least, while I’d been home. I hadn’t made any extreme attempts to stay in touch. I’d called when I thought of it, but every conversation we had was painful, so I avoided them when I could. She sent me checks, now and then, to supplement the meager income I was pulling off, splitting shifts between being a backup teacher in a preschool and a barista in a local coffee shop. What was there to talk about, anyway? Her daytime life was protected by HIPAA, and I doubted she wanted to hear about the butts I cleaned or the various ways people managed to be insulting while ordering their double-tall-mocha. We were apples and oranges, she and I, and the less time we spent trying to understand each other, the less time wasted.
    But still. If she was drinking again, maybe I needed to keep a closer eye on her. Sometimes, things got weird, when she’d been drinking heavily. Stuff happened. I’d call her when the docs cleared out, and see if she answered. See if she offered to come and pick me up, or if I needed to figure out something else. Like the bus to my apartment. Or something.
    As the doctors finished patting me on the head and leaving, the nurse—Jamie, again, back for the day shift—came into the room. “I hear they’re setting you free,” she said as she set down a breakfast tray.
    “You hear right.” I scooted myself more upright as she pushed the tray over my lap.
    “Well, before you abandon us, you have a visitor, if you want to see him. Your handsome rescuer.” She smiled and leaned in close as she fluffed the pillows behind me. He’s worth ten of that creep that’s been hanging around , she