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Mom plops onto the stool. “She can’t walk to the bathroom.”
“That’s understandable considering the circumstances, and that’s what a bedpan is for.”
Finally, the pain slackens, and the nausea settles. Everything runs on normal speed again. On the hospital pain scale of one to ten, the pain drops to a six. “I’m better,” I assure Mom.
However, against every excuse I can think of, or way I can resist them, Mom and Pamela get my dead weight perched on the ridiculous pan. How long will I need help from everyone? It’s sick.
I glance at Mom and Pamela waiting for me to pee. They are looking away right now. Would I rather it was Cydni helping me? Definitely not. We are talking peeing here. Some things even best friends shouldn’t see.
At least Pamela’s had a mint now. And Dad doesn’t walk back in on us. It takes like ten minutes to get anything to come out into the pan. Whoever thought peeing would be such a big deal, but the two of them are smiling like I’m two years old with my first success.
It’s still completely better than a catheter though.
CHAPTER 28
Haddings
9:12 am
Last second, pathetic fear stalled my early departure, but the delay let me take the lawyer’s return call, and I didn’t miss it because I was driving. I fall across my bed and repeat what he said. “The police department did not recommend criminal charges, and the prosecutor should follow the cops’ lead.”
I scrunch my Nerf basketball and bean it at the hoop stuck to the wall. It sails through the net and bounces across the floor. “Yes!” The red ball stops by my foot.
Red. No, not red. Red like the roses in the Burns poem.
I cram my fingers through my hair and sit up. Why didn’t I think of the poem when I picked out the flowers for Sarah? Why? Noooo. What about the lines:
I will luve thee still, my Dear,
While the sands o’life shall run.
And I will come again, my Luve,
Tho’ it were ten thousand mile!
My stomach burns. Maybe the flowers haven’t been delivered yet.
I grab my phone, look up the number for the hospital, and call. Reception transfers me. “Yes, I was calling about Sarah McCormick’s status?”
“Just a minute, please.”
“Sir?” says a woman.
“Yes?”
“Sir, Sarah is getting ready to be moved to a private room, off the ICU ward, in the late morning.”
“Oh, great. So, if I ordered flowers yesterday, they’ll be deliv — ”
“Did they happen to be a dozen red roses?”
“Yes?”
“They accidently were brought up. My colleague stored them in the break room, but she told me to be sure they are moved with Sarah when she is transferred.”
“Oh.” I sigh. “So, she hasn’t seen them yet.”
“Just between you and me, the nurse said she took them down to Sarah for a look, thinking they would encourage her. Are you the sender, sir? Can I transfer your call?”
“No. No thanks. I need to go. Thanks for your help.” I tap my phone off.
Sarah saw them. She saw the roses. I cover my face. Even though I left off a card, she’ll suspect they are from me. I remember that one day outside the teacher’s lounge, she told me she memorized the Burns poem. She’ll suspect I sent the flowers, that is, if her brain can remember or process, and she may misconstrue everything again.
So what was her reaction? The nurse didn’t say, did she? No. I think she would have mentioned if Sarah tore the flowers to pieces. She said they were safe somewhere, for now. And Sarah was well enough for the nurse to show them to her. That’s good, right?
I tug my T-shirt away from my neck. Did I subconsciously want to bring the poem to Sarah’s mind?
I catch my reflection in my dresser mirror and sit frozen. “Whatever I truly feel, I know I haven’t gone the ten thousand miles.” My wall clock ticks, ticks, ticks.
With a deep breath, clarity dawns, creeping light over all my fears, which are suddenly silenced. My own truth steps forward. Boldly.
I jump up and start straightening my sheets, then the covers. I’m going now. It may be hard on the family to see me, but if it’s helpful to Sarah, isn’t that worth it? As long as it’s helpful to her. Couldn’t I be? Helpful?
Cydni’s certainly wrong. Whenever you foul up everything, there’s still a right thing to do, my dad always says.
After carefully dressing, picking out nice clothes to win any points possible with the parents, I down a cup of espresso and a bagel. I’m ready.
Before I realize it, I’m in traffic, forcing my heart to slow as I pass pedestrians. I’ll do what I can this second. That means drive to the hospital, see her — them. Talk. Or try for a chance to. And Cydni should be in school. Hopefully.
CHAPTER 29
Sarah
9:50 am
When my mom’s back is turned, I press my fingers against my puffed face. Despite what the doctor said, there were still fluids from the surgery left to drain. Without the tube in, they are slipping down and swelling my head up like a balloon. The pressure stretches my skin taut, like a frog in a microwave. Why didn’t it all drain out earlier? Or why didn’t they leave the tube in longer? Maybe Mom was right and not the surgeon? I must be freakish beyond belief.
I jerk my hands down as she faces me. “Done with breakfast?”
“Yeah.”
She rolls my tray away. It found its way here before Dad even came back. “You didn’t eat much, Sarah.”
“Did, too. Some eggs, a couple grapes, and I drank the coffee. I’m full.”
“I suppose it’s normal to have a small appetite after surgery.” She covers the leftovers with the plastic lids.
“Yeah, so go ahead, Mom. Go find Dad and at least let him know he can stop looking for my breakfast. And then get some food. It’s not like you’d eat my leftovers.”
She looks at my cart. “True.”
“Mom, go. You know you get crabby when you don’t eat.”
“I do not!”
I stare at her through my puffy eye slits.
“All right. You sure you’ll be okay without me for a few minutes?”
“Go!” I say, and she actually listens. For once.
CHAPTER 30
Haddings
10:10 am
My back prickles at the timing. Worrying his hands, an elderly man steps out of children’s ICU, which allows me to get through the double doors before they lock closed. I didn’t have to buzz the desk and possibly get denied entry. I inhale, preparing for whoever might be in the room with Sarah right now.
Clipping through the corridor, I slide right past the nurse’s station, with only one woman at the copy machine, working on a paper jam. The air is thick with tragedy in this wing. Room after room holds disorder and pain.
I stop at the door with Sarah’s name markered on the board. My legs are petrified wood. I don’t hear any voices, so I peek. The room is empty, apart from the bed behind the half-pulled curtain. “Sarah.” I tip inside. “Sarah?”
CHAPTER 31
Sarah
10:12 am
I recognize his voice the second time he says my name. “Haddings!” I gasp. Before he gets past the curtain, I yank the sheet up over my face. A blaze combusts between the white fabric and my sticky skin. My poky stitches rake the material.
He cares enough to visit? The hurt for what I’ll never have with him spikes my chest, while my pride ratchets up panic. He rejected me with his poem, and now I look like a monster. Squirming under the bedding, I blurt, “I’m, I’m not up for visitors.”
“Sarah, you can speak — move your arms and legs?!” he gushes. I hear the curtain slide. “You sound exactly like yourself. It’s so good to hear your voice!”
“Um. Yeah, I can move. And talk. Great, huh? But I’m sorry. I seriously don’t want people to see me right now.”
“How you look doesn’t matter to m
e, Sarah.”
“No, believe me. This matters.”
There’s a long pause, and then he goes, “Sarah, I want you to know I’m sorry. So very sorry about the accident. You have to believe me.”
“Yeah. Thanks.” I wait a second but don’t hear him moving toward the door. “And thanks for coming. It means a lot to me. I’ll see you another time.” This is so stupid.
“No, I can’t leave yet. I need you to know I’m really, really sorry.”
“I believe you. I mean, who would want me to get hit?”
“I never did.”
“Of course not,” I huff. “But talking through a sheet is pretty ridiculous. I’ll see you later, ’kay?”
“It’s like I told you in class, as your teacher, I care about you, Sarah. I really do care.”
Only the blood pulsing in my ear moves with random stabs of pain.
“After this … even more,” he says. The words hang as if suspended in the thick solution in one of my IV bags.
But there’s not enough “care” to overlook all this. The words turn in my broken head, and I shove down the hope, which has the idiocy to flicker that we could be more. Maybe at the U. My bashed brains are more idiotic than ever.
“Sarah, I’m so sorry I hit you.”
What?
“I’m sorry I hit you, Sarah McCormick,” he says, suddenly sobbing.
Wait. What is he saying?
“I just need to help now — as the driver, I need to do something for you.”
Haddings hit me? Haddings? I blaze under the sheet. No. I shake my head through the pain. No! A blue Mustang. It was a blue Mustang. That’s what Cydni was trying to tell me. Haddings drives a blue Mustang, and he’s the one who hit me. It’s crazy impossible. Teachers don’t hit students. They don’t.
“I’m sorry,” he blubbers.
“You? You were driving?” I ask, my voice squeaking.
“What? Didn’t anyone tell you?”
“No. No one said anything. Just that the driver was a man. That’s all I knew. That’s it.”
“Oh,” he groans.
I breathe fast, faster, until I’m close to hyperventilating. I try to sink farther into the bed, away from him, but I get nowhere. “Were, were you aiming for me?”
“What?” he cries. “How could you say that?”
“I don’t know.” Tears flood my face. I hold my breath. Pgh, the air bursts out and right in again.
“How do you feel?” he asks.
“I don’t know. Confused? Shocked. Angry.” Am I angry? “Yes, I’m mad, Haddings! Really mad! How could you do this to me?”
“Sarah, please,” he begs. The bed shakes as he bumps against it, jarring pain through the top of my head. He’s standing right over me and doesn’t have a clue how much he just hurt me again. “Believe I’m sorry. I know it’s too much to ask you to forgive me.”
“You’ve got that right.” Doesn’t he? Yes. Definitely, yes.
“I need you to know … well, I’m not exactly sure what did happen, but I, I didn’t see you. There was a text — ”
“I don’t want to hear your excuses!” The sheet puffs with my hot breath. “This, all of this, is your fault!”
“It is. It is. I know it, and I know I should have come sooner to support you, or I mean, at least let you know I was here, but I didn’t. I couldn’t think straight. Cydni said … Anyway, I was trying not to upset your family, and honestly, I was terrified. That’s the real truth, but then this morning I knew, clearly knew, I had to come back.” He spews on and on. “Sarah, I was here all yesterday. I didn’t go home until they brought you down from recovery. I waited for you into the night. I was — am sick over what I’ve done.” There’s a cough and a sob.
I close my eyes. I’m going to start screaming. Any second.
“But today, I had to come back. I didn’t know they hadn’t told you, but I knew I had to apologize to you face to face.”
“No way,” I sputter.
“I have to see you, Sarah.”
Like what he needs matters? Is he serious? And he wants to talk, face to face? I pant, and my head goes lighter still. Do I let him see, to show for real what he’s done, to make him suffer? Will he? Do I look bad enough to twist his guts?
My pride shouts, “Don’t! You’ll blow the sliver of a chance you have left for someday.” But is there a sliver? He said he cares for me. But that was the old me. And who would want to even be friends with a guy who runs you down? I clench my fists tighter. Come on, Sarah. There’s … nothing … left. Go ahead. Why not see how much he so-call cares.
“Sarah?”
My arms spasm. “Face to face? Take a good long look then.” I flip the sheet down. “This is what you did, Haddings.”
CHAPTER 32
Haddings
10:17 am
My stomach swallows itself. There’s an enormous gash from above one eye down to her opposite ear. There are horrific black and red stitches lumped with coagulated blood along the messy lesion. Her wide, bald crown gleams with some kind of ointment. There’s a green-black bruising over her immensely swollen, distorted head. I can hardly find her eyes in the beaten flesh.
I start vomiting words. “No, no.”
She stares at me through puffed eyelids, nearly compressed closed.
“There’s no way I did this, Sarah. No! No way.”
Wonder, anger, and rage cross her teeny eyes. “Oh, right. So what’s left? You think I stepped in front of your car on purpose?”
I’m shocked motionless.
“Like your poem freaked me out so bad that I tried to kill myself?”
CHAPTER 33
Sarah
10:18 am
Everything focuses to a pinpoint. The disbelieving rage burns from my mouth. “You think, you think I’m that pathetic?”
He shakes his head. “No,” he whispers. “I never would think that. No!”
I pound my fists against the bed. The tape on my IV is tugged from my skin. I grimace and mash it back down. “You think my life doesn’t have meaning anymore just because you aren’t willing to risk anything for me? Even after I turned eighteen? Because I know you were attracted to me. I know it, no matter how much you deny it and talk about stupid boundaries. You were.”
Haddings jerks back. “No, that’s not true, Sarah. I’ve told you the truth all along. Okay, I shouldn’t have given you extra attention — you’re just such an amazing student — and I should have encouraged you to go to Mills and not the U next year with me — ”
“Don’t flatter yourself. Maybe I had other reasons for considering UW besides you.” I snort. “And what does any of it matter, anyway, since you hit me. Face it. You.”
He crumples into the chair and weeps.
For the first time ever, he disgusts me, for so many reasons.
CHAPTER 34
Haddings
10:19 am
I heave in air and stew in the anguish. It was me. “I’m a fool, on so many counts, Sarah.”
Suddenly, my chest lightens with a small glow deep inside as I hear what she said. Not that I ever believed it, but my mom put the ridiculous doubt deep in the back of my mind. Sarah didn’t throw herself in front of my car because of what I did, or said, or didn’t do. It … was an accident.
CHAPTER 35
Sarah
10:20 am
My ball of anger burns like an exploding star. He hit me because he wasn’t looking. My swollen head is going to flame, all the medicines and antiseptics will torch before I collapse into a black hole.
I snuffle my tears into the sheet because I can’t reach the stupid tissues on the window sill. Finally, my anger sizzles down, down, down, leaving behind a heavy blanket of weakness.
Why isn’t he leaving after I’ve yelled at him? I look over. He’s all curled up, weak, nothing like the guy I thought was so hot that first day in class.
I sniff. Just a guy. Maybe sorry for what he did, or said, or didn’t do.
The tiniest sprout of sympathy pokes the hot black casing around my heart. And then burns up.
CHAPTER 36
Haddings
10:22 am
Get it together! I pull a tissue from the nearby box. I swipe it over my face as awkwardness oozes through the cramped room.
“I’m so, so sorry, Sarah.”
She glances at me then looks away.
“And I’m sorry I wasn’t here when you woke. I should have been here.”
She barely shrugs. “The people who still care for me were here.”
A knife gouges and flicks a bit of my heart to the floor. “Yes, I saw them earlier … yesterday.”
She wipes her nose on her gown.
I hand her a tissue, and she takes it. My fingers softly wisp against hers, and she flinches. I rub my neck. “My parents and I, we’ll pay for everything. We’ll find a way, even if it takes time, the rest of my life.”
She glances down at the bed and picks lint off the blanket. “Yeah, well, that’s great, but it doesn’t help my face, or the rest of my messed-up body.” She lifts her head. “It doesn’t tell me that my brain is okay, and that I’ll still be able to graduate and go to college. It doesn’t pay a cent for any of that.” She snorts.
“Well, we’ll see. I mean, first things first. I can meet with your family, Sarah. I’ll apologize and offer everything I have and do anything I can.”
“Um, no way. They don’t want to see you — believe me.” She scoots down. “Look, I’m super tired. I’ll tell my folks you were here if that’s what you want, but you need to leave before they get back.”
I hesitate.
“I’m serious. Stay away so everyone can cool down. It could be bad.” Her voice quiets. “Now would you go? It’s too much.” With the blanket pulled to her chin, she tears up again.