Kennedy felt a strong hand under the bend of her knee. As the metal bar above the gurney from which her broken leg was suspended was adjusted, bringing her leg about ten degrees lower, she concentrated on the softness of the wide palm against her skin. The warmth from his touch remained on her leg after he removed his hand.
“Godspeed on your recovery, Miss,” the voice said, just as her gurney began rolling off of the elevator.
The sincerity in his tone struck her, yet still she offered no response. She felt the urge to say something to the man but was still so far from being sociable that she couldn’t make herself talk. She was thankful, however, because she did feel more comfortable after his adjustment. His voice stayed with her, its soothing timbre ironically finding its way into her soul when the pain was at its worst.
Five days after the accident Kennedy was removed from the intensive care unit and transplanted into a private room. The fire in her skin had all but vanished by then and slowly she had begun to feel sensations other than the raw pain that had been her constant companion since the accident. The nurses and orderlies settled her into her new room with all of the machines and tubes still connected. When they left, her head and eyes still bandaged and taped shut, Kennedy believed that once again she was alone. She had grown accustomed to not being able to see anything through the thick bandages and had begun to learn to listen for sounds of life around her. Suddenly, she heard breathing and turned her head sharply in the direction from which it came.
“Why didn’t I think to bring a camera? Darling, you look positively wretched.”
The voice came from a corner of the room.
“Skyy?” Kennedy cried.
“It’s me…in the flesh,” Skyy answered, moving to Kennedy’s bedside and plopping down on the bed next to her.
She took Kennedy’s non-bandaged right hand in hers.
“I would have been here sooner, sweetheart, but would you believe there was not one empty seat on one stinking plane until last night?”
Skyy leaned down and pressed cool lips against the side of Kennedy’s cheek.
“How are you?”
“I’m feeling a lot better than I look, I’m sure,” Kennedy answered weakly.
“Mmm, hmm. Well, my dear, judging from the slur in your voice, I’d say you’ve made friends with the Percocet fairy. That’s probably why you’re feeling so good.” Skyy giggled.
“Actually, it’s Vicodin now and we are on a first name basis,” Kennedy said, a pained smile pushing through her lips.
Skyy and Kennedy had been best friends since seventh grade at the all-girls boarding school they’d attended. They had been more like sisters than friends ever since they’d been paired together as lab partners in biology class. In a social circle that consisted of the Who’s Who in Young Black America, Skyy was the most real person Kennedy had ever met.
Unlike most of Kennedy’s other friends, and herself for that matter, Skyy was not part of a legacy of doctors, lawyers and social debutantes. Her father was a self-made man who had made friends with the right people, and clawed his way into a brotherhood of the moneyed folks of North Carolina. No matter how hard he tried, however, there was lingering in him, his wife and their only child, an element of roughness of the Southside of Chicago, from which they had fled as soon as he could afford it when Skyy was twelve years old.
While Skyy adapted to their new lifestyle of Bentleys and private schools, she never accepted or adopted the arrogance of the wealthy. When she and Kennedy first started hanging out together, Kennedy had attempted to draw her into her circle of friends, who were the prettiest, most popular of the girls, both black and white, in school.
Seated in the cafeteria enjoying chef-quality meals of broiled salmon and steamed asparagus tips, the girls were whispering and teetering over one of the new additions to the school, a girl who was there on scholarship, whose hand-me-down outfits and GAP jeans made her stick out like a sore thumb amongst the rest of the Lacoste-wearing, diamond-studded young girls. Skyy had remained quiet, studying the girl who sat alone, eating her lunch beneath the cloud of adolescent snubs. All of a sudden, Skyy rose from her seat, picked up her tray and marched deliberately across the cafeteria. She stopped at the girl’s table, said something to her and then sat down. Kennedy and her crew were stunned and after that day, Kennedy had been told in no uncertain terms that she had to make a choice. It was Skyy or them. Today, she turned to face her friend’s voice, glad at the choice she’d made.
“Where are your folks?” Skyy asked, tossing her hair over her shoulder.
Kennedy wished she could see Skyy, wondering what transformation her friend had gone through during her latest jaunt overseas. Skyy had been in Italy for the past three months. The firm she worked with, Samage Designs, had landed one exclusive hotel or restaurant after the other and Skyy’s fresh eye and youthful approach to design was a large part of the equation. Travel was the thing that, once bitten, Skyy had yet to be able to shake. She loved packing up and hitting the road and for her, the farther the distance, the better. Before Italy, she’d been home in North Carolina for only a couple of months, having spent the prior nine months in Japan designing and implementing the construction of a five-star hotel in Tokyo.
Each time she came back to the United States, Skyy was a different person. Once, there was a short, fiery red hairstyle, that, despite the shocking effect it had, actually looked fantastic on her. Another time, after a visit to India, she came home with her head shaved bald. These days, her hair having grown back to her shoulders, she rocked a permed layered style, colored jet-black. Her copper-penny brown face, with its slanted eyes and pixie nose, was sun-kissed and vibrant, bespeaking her strict vegan diet and rigorous exercise regimen.
“They left yesterday. Daddy had to get back to his patients and Mother, well, you know Mother. She can’t stand living out of a suitcase,” Kennedy laughed.
She didn’t need to let on to Skyy that she was glad that her parents had gone back home. Having them around worrying over her was as intense as the physical discomfort she was in, if not more. Skyy knew better than anyone how trying Kennedy’s parents could be.
“What about Maddie? What’s she up to?” Skyy asked.
“You know Madison…nothing new there. She was here, too, and was fighting with Mother as usual. Once I assured them that I was going to be fine, she hopped in her car and headed up to New York to visit Liza Penning.”
After the young Daniels sisters had kicked Liza’s butt all over the summer camp that year, Madison and Liza had become best friends. Liza was now a stand-up comedienne living in New York City.
“I’m sure Elmira was thrilled about that,” Skyy laughed.
“Yeah, well, what can she do? Madison is a grown woman now.”
“Yeah, grown and still living at home, sponging off of Mommy and Daddy. I don’t know why your parents don’t just cut her off. I bet you that would make her straighten up and fly right.”
Kennedy considered Skyy’s words for a moment, and one moment was all it took for her to dismiss them. First, there was no way her parents would ever cut Madison off. The Daniels would walk through hell with gasoline cans strapped to their backs before they ever allowed one of their own to have to make do without or depend on others for their survival. Secondly, as much as Madison rebelled against them, she and Elmira were so much alike that not accepting her and her behaviors would be the equivalent of her mother turning against herself. No, Madison had yet to find that thing, if it existed, that would push her parents to the breaking point, although she’d come very close once or twice.
“She promised that she’d stop back in to check on me by the weekend. If you’re still here, maybe you can talk some sense into her.”
Both Kennedy and Skyy erupted with much-needed laughter at the