Lindsay

 

I go home because I don’t know what else to do. Pluto comes and nuzzles my legs and I stroke his fur, but my dog can’t help me feel better. I want to follow Gavin, but I don’t know where he went and me being there is not going to help when he finds Kate. I’ll have to make it up to her later after she speaks to her dad.

After an hour of pacing around picking up my phone and putting it down and moving things from one place to another, I get a call.

“Kate’s in the hospital, Greenwood,” Gavin says.

“Oh my god.” I have to sit down, my heart in my throat. “What happened?”

“She skidded off the road and rolled her car. She must have been going too fast.”

“Have you spoken to her?”

“No, she’s had a lot of pain meds, and they’ve sedated her. Oh god, they’re doing some tests on her brain.”

“All this was my fault. If I hadn’t come over to see you…”

“I wanted you there. I didn’t send you away.” He sounds defeated. “She said she would be staying with Paul.”

“I’ll come to the hospital.” I want to see Kate, be there for her. I know she’d be there for me.

“I don’t know what you can do here. You should try to get some rest.”

“I’m coming anyway.”

All I can think all the way to the hospital is, “Please be all right. Please let the tests show there’s no damage.”

Why did this have to happen to Kate? Why now?

When I get there, I don’t know if they’ll let me see her. I say I’m her sister. I’m close enough to her to be her sister. And I did this to her!

She is lying in the bed, all wired up to monitors. Gavin is holding her hand. He looks up when I open the door, and I’ve never seen him look so wrecked. In a few hours, his whole face has changed.

“The car was totalled. She was lucky to get out alive.” He shrugs his shoulders, crushed I guess by the horror of it all.

I go over and give him a hug, a comfort hug. I can’t think of anything but Kate right now. He places her hand back gently on the bed cover and leads me outside the room, his hand on my back.

“I’m sorry, but I don’t think we can be together right now.” I understand but his words still cut right through me.

“I know. It’s okay.” It’s anything but okay, this whole fucked-up situation. Of course, it’s not okay, I want to yell. I need you, too. Kate is the person I’d talk to about all of this mess. I can’t talk to anyone. But I don’t say any of that.

He hugs me to him as if he can’t bear to let me go, but there’s no way to change things with Kate lying there like she is.

“Did you talk to Paul?” I ask.

“Not yet. I’ll talk to him in the morning. She came back without him. I don’t know what happened. Maybe they had a fight and she came home early because of it, only to find us together. And then she ran off, upset, not thinking straight. The rain must have made the road slippery, too.”

“I feel terrible.” Kate has always been there for me, always. And up to now, I have always been there for her. Ever since we were kids.

“I blame myself, too, but try not to go there. We didn’t know she would overhear. She wouldn’t normally come back like that. But like I said, we should cool it for now. I can’t…I just can’t do anything that might upset her right now.”

“No, don’t worry about me.” I give him another hug, my heart heavy in my chest, breathing in the scent of him as if I’ll never get another chance.

“Go home. Put your arms around your mom and dad when they get back, because you never know what’s around the corner.”

“No, you don’t.” I didn’t see this coming at all. That one day I would have a good friend to talk to about anything, the next I am in Gavin’s bed planning to keep him a big secret, and then the day after nothing at all. And Kate lying in the hospital. Fuck— it doesn’t matter about me. She has to be all right.

Gavin squeezes my hand, kisses my cheek and turns to go back to the room. He glances back at me.

“Keep her safe,” I murmur and leave, back through all the endless sanitized corridors of the hospital. It’s only once I’m well away from Kate’s room that the tears start. I sit in my car in the parking lot and I can’t stop crying. I’m one big mess, grasping for stray Kleenex in my bag. It’s only once I’ve cried myself out that I can think about driving home.

Dawn is just breaking as I turn out of the parking lot. I just want to be home.