The EMT said the tourniquet saved Kat’s life. A nail nicked an artery in her left leg, and without my size thirty-two belt she would have bled out. When we arrived at the hospital, no one asked me what happened or what I saw. They were all frantically treating the wounded. I wasn’t injured, so they probably assumed I wasn’t with the others when the floor collapsed. Given my criminal record—and the fact that I hadn’t exactly been invited to the party—I figured it was best not to volunteer any information just yet.
Four people died. I knew at least one of the kids hadn’t made it, but hearing the body count made the horror too real. I thank any God that’s listening for sparing Kat’s life. And given the extent of her injuries, I pray it will be a life worth living.
The clock on the wall says it’s almost five a.m. In a few hours the sun will rise, and Kat still hasn’t woken up. Aside from the leg wound, she’s suffered serious head trauma, a punctured lung and three broken ribs. The doctor says she’s hopeful, but I’m not stupid. I know there’s a fair chance that Kat might never come to. I think that’s the reason they’re letting me stay in her room. Or maybe they realize that removing me would be potentially life-threatening. Not for Kat, but for me.
Her mother arrived about an hour after we did. I hadn’t seen Linda since I returned to Brockenhurst, and the difference was startling. When I knew her, Linda always drank too much and smoked like a chimney. But I spent years wishing she was my mother. She hugged every kid who ever entered her house. She told raunchy jokes and laughed harder than anyone else. And she always made sure that the kitchen was stocked with my favorite, Flamin’ Hot Cheetos—even though she and Kat both despised them. Now Linda’s dressed in chinos and her bleach blond hair is now dyed a respectable shade of auburn. The hair’s an improvement, but she looks like her spirit is broken. I have a hunch that marriage has not been kind to her.
Linda barreled through the door and flung herself over Kat’s body. I was busy making sure she wasn’t going to accidentally rip the IV out of Kat’s arm when Wayne Gibson appeared in the doorway. He wasn’t pleased to see me standing beside the bed. He grabbed a nurse who was passing by. “Get this kid out of here,” he ordered without bothering to lower his voice. “I don’t want to see him again.”
That’s when Linda lifted her head. Her eye makeup was a blur. Most of it had rubbed off, leaving smudgy black circles on Kat’s blanket. “No,” she said. “You can leave if you want to, Wayne, but Simon is going to stay.”
I saw Wayne Gibson’s jaw clench so hard he could have bitten through rebar. Linda was going to pay for her words when they got home, but Wayne wasn’t the kind of guy who’d make a scene in public. “You let your child run wild. I told you something like this was going to happen,” he said in a low, steady voice. “Now that it has, the last thing she needs is a criminal camped out in her hospital room.”
“She’s my daughter,” Linda replied softly. “I know what’s best for her.”
“If you knew what was best for her, Linda, Katherine wouldn’t be here.”
At that point, I stepped forward to face him. If I’d ever had to live with an asshole like that, I would have turned to drugs in a heartbeat. I could only imagine how he must have tortured Kat. And she was right about one thing—if I ever found out, I’d probably kill him.
I put my hand on the man’s chest and shoved him out of the hospital room and into the hall. “See ya, Wayne,” I said before I slammed the door in his face. “I’ll take it from here.”
When Linda said she was going home to gather a few of Kat’s things, I had a hunch Wayne wasn’t going to let her come back. I think she must have known too. Before she left, she signed a form giving me full access to her daughter’s room. The paper is folded up and tucked away in my back pocket in case anyone challenges me. So far everyone has left us alone. Yesterday, I would have traded my soul for some time with Kat. Now we’re together in a beige room with a floral border and a cheesy mass-produced watercolor of a sunrise. I feel like some poor bastard from a fairy tale who was granted a wish but forgot to phrase it correctly. I asked to have Kat to myself, and I got what I wanted. Her body is here with me, but the rest of her is gone.
A phone alarm chimes somewhere outside the hospital room.
“Kat,” I whisper. She doesn’t answer, but I know she can hear me. “If you don’t come out of this, I’m going to come after you.”
I move my chair to the darkest corner of the room. Lying in her hospital bed, Kat is lit from above like the body of a queen at rest in a crypt. I think back to Elmer’s, and I try to go through the facts as I know them. An unknown person threw an unidentified object. The object made eight people gather around it. When they did, the floor collapsed. After decades of neglect, the building’s boards must have been rotten. But was the weight of eight kids enough to bring them down?
Four people died. Three are unconscious. And two people, counting me, escaped from the party unscathed. I saw the other lucky one in the ER being treated for minor hand wounds. As far as I could tell, aside from his bloody palms, there wasn’t a scratch on Marlow. I was eavesdropping when he told the doctor he’d grabbed hold of a pipe that was mounted on the wall when the floor started to shake.
So we have one miracle survivor, one person who shouldn’t have been there and a mysterious call to 911. But the biggest mystery of all is the object. The incident is all over the news, and I keep waiting to hear that something unusual has been recovered from the rubble. The police still seem convinced that the collapse was an accident, but I’m not buying it. Right now, everything points to one conclusion: sometime soon, I need to have a chat with Marlow.