A couple days later, Shelly and I made the long loop. Every day she added on a few more rooms to pass before heading back. It was painful and slow, but I pushed myself to keep going. Usually I only encountered Mr. Goldstein, with his hip replacement, on my expedition.

Today it was not Mr. Goldstein when I turned the corner. I stopped, oxygen locking in my lungs.

Hunter and his male nurse were heading directly for us. Using the wheelchair as his walker, Hunter’s face was beet red, perspiration dripping down his forehead.

“Keep going, baby girl.” Shelly encouraged me to continue walking. My slippers slid across the floor, nearing me to Hunter.

After the night I said goodbye to Colton, I avoided going near his room, asking Shelly to take me around the other way. The farewell closed one door and opened a dam. The thought of Hunter, even hearing his name, sent venom into my blood. Resentment coiled in my gut. He lived, but Colton was dead. Anger at his survival over Colton’s drove resentment through my thoughts. These emotions stirred through me now, watching him.

“Come on, man.” The nurse motioned him forward. “A couple more steps.”

I scoffed at that phrase, having heard the lie so much myself.

Hunter lifted his head to look at me, his expression held zero sentiment. But his eyes flashed and a nerve in his jaw twitched.

“Keep going. You’re doing great.” The male nurse motioned for Hunter to keep moving forward. “You’re almost there. See, only a few more steps to the nurses’ station.” Hunter had more than four more rooms to pass before he made it to the destination. Way more than a few painful steps.

“Screw you, Carl,” Hunter growled and shuffled his feet over the smooth surface. “I have trouble walking, not seeing.”

“Wow, someone’s grumpy.” Carl shifted backward, a smirk on his face.

“Maybe if you didn’t cut off the painkillers,” Hunter grumbled.

“Need to wean you off of them now before you become an addict.” All of this felt like déjà vu.

“Too late,” I snorted. The stories of Hunter being heavily into marijuana and harder drugs was frequent chatter around school. Colton never confirmed it, but he didn’t deny it either.

The muscles along Hunter’s neck strained, his lips pressed against each other, turning white. He rolled the wheelchair forward and blocked my path.

“Get your chair out of my way,” I snarled as I stared at him.

“No.” A drop of sweat tracked down the side of his face.

“Get. Out. Of. My. Way.” The words broke over my tongue with incense.

“Get out of mine,” he snarled back.

“Hey, hey, hey, let’s not have any of that.” Shelly grabbed my elbow, steering me around him. I pinned my feet to the surface, hunching forward.

“No! For once you are not going to get your way.” I pushed at his wheelchair, making him wobble.

“For once? My way? What are you talking about?”

“You snapped your fingers and Colton ran, no matter what. You’d get yourself in a mess, but your brother always got you out.” My mouth wouldn’t stop; my wrath boiled and popped. “You’re a selfish bastard! All you ever thought of was yourself.” The words kept coming. “This is all your fault,” I seethed. “He wouldn’t have gotten in the car drunk. If it wasn’t for you, he’d still be alive.” Hunter jerked back as if I slapped him. “If he weren’t jumping to your aid again, running when you beckoned, none of this would have happened.” It might not have been true, but it didn’t seem to matter. My arms and legs shook with emotion. “He was always getting you out of trouble. And you continued to use him.”

“Hey, baby girl. Let’s calm down.” Shelly tried to pull me away, but I yanked out of her grasp.

“He loved you so much and now he’s dead,” I sobbed.

“You don’t think I loved him? I wouldn’t have done anything for him?” Hunter’s face flushed, and his cheeks dotted with red specks. “You know nothing about me.”

“I know enough.”

Hunter’s face twisted into a fevered sneer.

“You’re a selfish asshole. A loser.” Rage spat from me.

Both Carl and Shelly tried to step in, but we didn’t budge, staring each other down.

“You’re shallow and blind.” He leaned into my face.

“I. Hate. You.” In a tightly controlled, cold tone, nothing like my own voice, I heard myself say, “I wish it had been you.”

“So. Do. I.” He met my intensity.

“Okay, that’s enou—” Shelly stopped mid-sentence as Hunter clasped his chest. He sucked in a sharp breath, leaning over the wheelchair.

“Hey, what’s wrong? You okay?” Carl stepped up to him.

Hunter nodded, coughing into his hand. Blood sprayed out of his mouth, coating the floor in a foamy pink liquid.

“Oh no.” Shelly let go of me and ran for Hunter, but she was too late. Hunter’s body dropped, and he fell face-first into the wheelchair, sending it flying against the wall.

I jumped with a cry.

He started convulsing violently as more foam pooled around his mouth.

“Help!” Shelly squatted next to him, yelling down the hall toward the nurses’ station. “Code blue! We have a code blue!”

“What’s happening?” Both she and Carl ignored me, their attention on Hunter. Three more nurses ran to us, pushing me out of the way. Panic and fear strangled my vocals, making it hard to catch my breath. His body continued to jerk on the tile, blood leaking out the side of his mouth.

A flash of the night of the accident came back. A brief memory of red and blue lights and people calling out around me. Me, hanging upside down from my seatbelt, turning my head, and seeing Colton. His body bloody and broken, twisted in an unnatural position against the roof of the car.

Now people shouted medical jargon around me, like a foreign language, their voices intense and constant.

“Tell me what’s happening to him!” Again, no one acknowledged me.

Carl and two other nurses got him on a gurney. The entire team sprinted down the hall, driving air into his lungs with a handheld pump. They curved around the corner out of sight. I stood there in the vacated hallway, staring at empty space. It all happened so fast my brain was trying to catch up.

Dampness nudged my toes and drew my gaze down. Blood stained the front of my cream slippers, dying the tips of them like an Easter egg. Guilt saturated me like the blood on my feet. I just told him I wished he was dead instead of Colton and now he might be.

What kind of person was I?

The anger pouring from me was like nothing I had experienced. I was a stranger to myself. It forced an unsettled, unsure emotion inside me, but it also made me feel alive.