College Ruled

thirty-seven

37
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I HAVE a concussion.

        That much I could have confirmed myself, needing only the searing headache, the drowsiness, and the obvious vomit to tell me so. The ER didn't do much more than agree with me. The closest hospital was barely more than a medical center, and though they did have the equipment and the insistence to do a CT scan, I refused. The non-negotiable chest X-rays they forced on both me and Christina were enough. I could already see the tag being added to my credit account, could already feel the bill being shackled around my ankles. The average cost of a CT scan had to be in the thousands—there was absolutely no way I was going to pay that just for the Docs to turn around and say, 'Yep. All clear. Looks like you have a concussion.' No. Nope. Absolutely not.

I thought my logic was pretty sound.

Grayson, on the other hand...

His disagreement was a quiet, simmering anger. He didn't argue with my choice, not verbally. I mean, how could he? I was an adult, and he was... not even technically my boyfriend.

So, he simply stewed. He scoffed under his breath when the doctor confirmed the concussion, jittered his un-hurt knee—so aggressively that I was sure he was going to tear something in that leg too—as we waited for the chest X-ray to come back, hissed something between his teeth that sounded a lot like 'For the love of fucking Christ' when I officially refused the scan. 

It got to a point that Wes, who'd gotten really good at looking nervous, stopped staring at me and began to watch Grayson. Like he was a bomb that'd go off if you left it alone.

The drive back to the cabin isn't much better.

It's quiet—so quiet that the lack of noise does nothing to sooth the pounding in my head. Christina's barely looked at me since the hospital, Wes seems too worried about saying the wrong thing to say anything, and Grayson—besides the occasional nudge on my shoulder when my forehead starts to droop onto the cool, fogged window—makes quite the effort not to acknowledge me either.

All I want to do is sleep.

"I'm going to go meet the tow," Wes says when we all climb out onto the cabin's driveway. He watches Chris wander off toward the front door before turning back to Grayson and me. "Are you good?"

I can't tell who he's asking, so I just nod, wanting more than anything for people to just stop asking. I'm fine, I'm fine. I have a concussion—I'm fine. I mean, they're the football players. Don't they get concussions, like, all the freakin' time?

Behind me, Grayson clears his throat. "I'm going to stay with Remedy, but you should get someone to go with you. No point going alone when we have a house full of people."

Wes nods. "I'll wake Mave."

When we get to the room, Grayson switches on the space heater, shoving the disarray of clothes out of the way with a low grumble. The bedding is splayed across the floor in a mess, but the sight of the mattress is enough to draw me in.

The urge to crawl into it is almost as large as the desire to rewind the past hours and never climb out of it in the first place.