"So you're saying it was different?" Nick raised an eyebrow. "Little Christina actually had sex that wasn't fucking?"
Christina left him in the office with the finger and a bitter, "Office work can suck my ass." Nick and his boyfriends, didn't know what he was talking about and whatever.
Outside, it was still raining, noon and the fat droplets stuck to her hair and clung to her lashes. Monsoon weather. Deliveries every ten minutes, each package heavier and bulkier, weighty. The straps on her shoulders were biting in, digging into already strained shoulderblades and wet, everything was wet. Wet and dismal.
Steam rose from the sidewalks as she wheeled her bike into her building, evening and finally Nick had let her rest. Steam was rising off her skin, off the slick bike leather, steam was coating the buildings and clinging to the brick and glass of the entire fucking city. Sauna conditions. Rain and steam.
Tuesday, and more bills were due again in three days, power and Connect overdue and then some and the vultures closing in. The cement outside was covered in sheets of water, all running down to the docks and the sea, no extras from the docker's guild this week and a doctor's appointment in an hour to try and sort out some cracked ribs, abdomninal pain, damage from Saturday.
No point in trying to dry off, or ride down there, Christina stowed her helmet and waded back outside to jog down to the warehouse district, water getting in her eyes.
~
"Christina, there's a very good chance that--"
She flung heavy drenched hair out of her face, could feel the makeup running into her eyes and streaking her cheeks. "Just cut me open and stitch me back up, all right? I need to be in fighting form."
The doctor sighed. "Money?"
"Yeah, I got some."
"Fair enough," and the needle went into her arm, cool, hazy, drowning out the pattering weather.
~
She woke up groggy, her limbs twitching bit by bit, nerve endings tingling. She could feel the paper sheet over her body rustling as the anesthesia wore off and her body trembled, jerking involuntarily.
"Slow," the nurse said, and she willed her limbs to go slack, forced the twitching to still, slowly. A violent shudder went through her, all down her spine, and then still. Another shiver, and Christina opened her eyes with effort, saw herself in the operating room.
"Slow," the nurse repeated.
She started babbling, muttering low. "it's like a tab, like." The doctor looked at her. "The, twitching thing. It's like when you're coming off a tab and your muscles are going."
"It's the anesthetic," the nurse said finally. "Your muscles will spasm, but it'll wear off in a minute or so."
Christina could feel her body slowing, relaxing, and she answered, "how'd it go?"
"Well," and the nurse looked away. "You're not pregnant. That wasn't it."
"I knew that, I take my injections," Christina snapped. "Did you deal with it?"
"You." The nurse was pretty, pretty in a clinical, dull sense. "We removed part of your right kidney, and repaired the internal damage as best we could." She clucked. "You should have come to us in the beginning."
Christina shrugged, felt her shoulders twitch minutely. "Didn't think it was that bad."
"If we had a better idea of what happened--"
"It." A vision of Pink's foot, steel toed boot connecting with her rib and lower, and she swallowed. Or maybe it was falling out of the ring, that time. The bench, digging into her back when Pink had her on her back and Red was over both of them, or when Red was sitting and she was, and. it.
Tried to sit up, and her head spun, skin flushed and in a cold sweat. Vision went momentarily black. "Nothing. Forget it."
The nurse handed her a glass of something sweet and clear, probably mild sugarwater. "You can't do anything strenuous for at least a week." Christina snorted, and the nurse gripped her forearm, worried. "Seriously, unless you want to end up back on the operating table, you have to take it easy. You'll pull the stitches and staples."
"Right." Sucked back on the sugar water, and her side ached, ached dully and the pain in her stomach was barely less than when she went under. "I'll take that under advisement. I'm going home."
"You have to take it easy," the nurse whispered.
Christina marched out of the clinic. around the side of the building, she had to press a hand against the glass, almost blacking out and the slippery glass meant her fingers barely found purchase. Okay. Slow walk home, maybe, wading through puddles and making sure not to stumble. But, take it easy. Yeah. Right.
~
Busta complained, but she refused to fight for at least another two days, couldn't handle the pain in her side and "besides, if I start bleeding everywhere no one's going to have much fun, right?" so she got her way. No fights.
Mostly, Christina lounged around behind Chris and D, curled up in the DJ booth and feeling every inch of her body throb. only half of it was because of the music vibrating through her, the rest was bruising and surgery and shock. "why is it," she said, "that I always feel worse after going under the knife than I did before?"
D patted her head with his hand, long-fingernails curving. "Darling, things are always worse when they're healing."
J came to check on her once or twice, hand-in-hand with his boy. They left together for over an hour, even, she'd have to watch that. Gotta protect people where she could. The two of them, kissing on the dance floor, looked good, but wrong, and totally out of place. Have to watch that close.
"Girl, why don't you just go home?" Chris asked her, some time around four thirty and in the longest sitting down she'd done for almost two months. Danced maybe five, six times, accepted drinks and cocaine from anyone who was offering but pretty much stayed immobile for the whole night.
He didn't get it. "I can't," she said, and sipped another regenerative drink, this time one that Red had passed her from B. "Gotta make it to six am."
He was only the DJ, he wasn't part of the crowd, never out there, always behind the walls of the booth. Him and D, they were what happened to club kids who retired. "If you say so, A," and he looked doubtful but she roused up a grin from somewhere so he left it alone.
"You can stay back here as long as you need," D muttered to her, and it might be her club, her life, but it was a relief. she closed her eyes and rested her head back against the wall, blocking out the sounds as the drink warmed her belly and the drugs soothed her mind. hour and a half until she could go home.
~
J drove her home on her own bike, but she made sure no one saw it, wheeled the bike into the alley herself. His blond boy kissed him goodbye, and said to her, "be careful with yourself."
She flashed a grin, as J tucked her in front of him and started the bike. "of course."