Captive

“If I’m the hostage, why did they take you with me?” Crosby asked me as he nibbled on his sandwich. Of all possible reasons to make someone eat, watching my vomit episode seemed to have done the trick for him.

I sat strategically on the floor near the “bathroom” facing him as he stretched his leg on the bed. I haven’t uttered a word the whole day, but now, as we sat in the darkness, Crosby probed for the answer that would stir my hate for him and his perfectly normal human behaviour.

“For you,” I muttered.

“What do you mean?” he asked much to my annoyance.

“You’re hurt. I’m a nurse. You’re worth more alive than dead. They need you in one piece if you are their bargaining chip,” I answered briefly.

Crosby took his time to digest my analysis. “I’m sorry,” he finally whispered.

An unsettling silence hung between us before Crosby spoke again, his sandwich long forgotten. “I am truly sorry if you’re stuck here because of me. And I’m sorry about your friends. I wish…”

“Don’t! Your apologies won’t change anything. So please let me be. Take a nap or something,” I said.

My body finally gave up and I fell into a fitful sleep in a sitting position, drooling on my own shoulder.

I woke up to a pitch-black room, an uncomfortable bed, and a coarse blanket covering my barely concealed skin. As my vision adjusted to the darkness, I realized that it wasn’t a nightmare; I was still a captive, but my cellmate, a man that I admired on a normal day, was not in sight. I don’t remember sleeping in this bed. Crosby was here earlier. I sat up brusquely and saw that Crosby was sleeping on the floor, his discomfort painfully obvious.

A gentle poke was all it took to scare him awake. He was breathing rapidly as he sat up. As I was about to reassure him, he hunched over and groaned in pain. “Just lay on your back. Contracting your abs in this position will make it worse,” I whispered as I helped him get more comfortable. I waited until his pain subsided before I spoke. “How did I get to bed? Was I sleep-walking?” When he shook his head, I realized what he has done.

“Are you out of your goddamn mind?! You carried me with your – are you stupid?! You should not be sleeping on a hard floor either!” I scolded.

“Would you just shut up!” he yelled back. I froze. No one has asked me to shut up since elementary school.

As I was formulating a mean remark, Crosby hissed in pain, making me feel like an asshole. It wasn’t enough that he carried me with a midsection wound and a compromised leg, or that he gave me the bed and slept on the floor in his condition, no, he also thought of covering me with the only blanket we had.

Crosby has just proven that he was indeed the kind man I normally admired.

“Can you stand up?” I asked him calmly.

“I’m fine,” he answered stubbornly.

I thought I was the queen of stubbornness, but Crosby was in a whole other league. He could be the MVP there too.

I took a deep breath, willing myself to be patient with him. It was the least I could do given the circumstances. “Listen, Sidney,” I said, using his name for the first time, “how about you take the bed tonight, and when you are feeling better tomorrow we can switch?”

“You’re already assuming that we’ll be here tomorrow night,” he said in a deadpan tone.

That was beside the point. Jesus, this man was difficult. My patience was threatening to wear-off. “Humour me,” I said, trying but likely failing not to sound sarcastic. When he didn’t budge, I tried another tactic. “How about we share the bed?”

“I can barely fit on this bed alone,” he answered. Crosby had a point, but I was not going to let him win this argument. I sure as hell will not agree that he sleeps on the floor in his condition. “We can always try,” I said as I started helping him sit up despite his weak protest.

As he laid on the wall side of the bed, I made sure he remained on his back to prevent any tension on his stitched wound. With Crosby taking two-thirds of the single bed, I had no choice but to position myself on my side, with my back to him. I tried to make sure my butt did not make any contact with him, a task proven to be quite difficult in our current position.

“You’re gonna fall on the floor,” he commented, likely sensing my hopeless attempts at keeping some space between us. I could hear the rumbling in his chest as he spoke; we were that flush to one another.

“I will fall if you decided to kick me in your sleep,” I said. Crosby chuckled lightly. It was beautiful sound, the first happy sound he made since we met, not that I blame him for his lack of joy.

“You know what? I think your smell is what may push me off the bed,” I joked, earning another chuckle.

I often found humour in the most unexpected and dark situations. My sister often called me a nutjob when I couldn’t stop laughing at the story of how I almost got paralyzed. I was told that humour could be a defence mechanism. Whether it was healthy or not was up for debate.

“You need to shower too,” he replied.

I turned around to glare at him, but in the soft light coming through our barred window, I saw his smile and it disarmed me. “Here,” he said as he slid a thick arm under my neck and around my shoulder, securing me to him all the while serving as a comfy human pillow. “I’ve got you, this way you won’t fall and yell at me.”

“Are you suggesting that you’ll be able to pull me back in your sleep?” I asked raising my eyebrows at him.

“I have good reflexes,” he simply said. I wasn’t about to argue that with him. Who was I to question Sidney Crosby’s reflexes? Even if I wanted to argue, it was not possible anymore as his eyes fluttered closed and his breathing stabilized. Soon, I followed suit.

Notes