from dozens of small cuts. She was on her back, but her left leg was twisted beneath her body. She wore only her underwear and bra, and every bit of exposed skin was bruised, broken, or about to bruise. The ribs on her left side didn’t look right. In my entire life, I’d never seen someone beaten so badly.
I dropped to my knees beside her, my throat tight, eyes stinging with tears for her pain. Her eyes rolled toward me, the only movement she seemed capable of making.
“I am so sorry,” I whispered.
“We have to get out of here,” Nicolas said. “Someone will have called the police by now.”
“Bethany needs a hospital.”
Her eyes widened with terror and she gave the smallest head shake.
“Honey, you need a doctor or you’re going to die,” I said.
“What about your doctor?” Tate asked.
“Unless someone here has as a cell phone I don’t know about, I can’t exactly call him for a consult.
“I’ll go,” Nicolas said. “I fly fast.”
“How close to HQ are we?”
“We’re in Philadelphia.”
Not super-close, but not horribly far away. “Okay, look, the rest of us will get into the car and start driving. We’ll stick to the New Jersey Turnpike and head toward the rest stop where I met with Sasha and Rick. Teresa will know the place.”
“Okay.”
I gave Nicolas a hard look. “How wounded are you? Are you sure—?”
“I can make it,” he said. “I promise.”
“Okay.”
Moving Bethany was horrific, even with supersized Barry’s help. She made the most awful noises while we got her into the car, finally passing out as she was settled in with blankets from the living room. Nicolas hit the sky right after. The other boys gathered the medical bag and a few other things they couldn’t bear to leave behind. Barry shrank down so he could sit on the floor in the backseat and keep an eye on Bethany. I drove with Rick and Tate squashed into the front seat with me.
We got out of the alley just as emergency sirens split the silence of the night. Either no one bothered to call in the noise right away or the police around here didn’t make Meta disturbances a priority. I didn’t know Philadelphia well, but Rick seemed to, and he helped me navigate my way east.
Lack of traffic—and it being the middle of the night—helped us get to the rest stop fast. It also meant we had to wait for help to arrive, and waiting wasn’t my strong suit. Barry had already given Bethany the few painkillers and antibiotics he’d found in the bag. She stared at the roof of the car, the occasional tear slipping down one cheek. He stayed close while the rest of us got out of the car. Rick moved around to open the door near her head, then perched there and started talking.
I walked away, unwilling to intrude on the trio. With my adrenaline wearing off, everything was starting to hurt. My hands shook and my stomach rolled with the need to vomit up whatever was left inside. My face ached from Hinder’s punch. I knew I should help the kids patch up their wounds—all of us were bleeding from somewhere—but I couldn’t stop shaking.
The clones found Bethany. They had come damn close to killing her—assuming she survived the next few hours. They knocked us around to prove a point, and then I let them go. I literally had Jasper by the throat, and I let him go. Hinder lied to me, the fuckwad, proving once again just how unlike the real Hinder this clone was.
Reinforcements arrived in two different Sports. Bethany, bless her, was a fighter, and she held on hard as things happened around her and to her. I didn’t have to ask Dr. Kinsey what he thought after he first examined Bethany—it was all over his face. He didn’t want her moved again, so we piled into different vehicles and hit the road. I told the story to Teresa through a developing haze of shock and pain, and soon we were waiting our turn to take a puddle-jumper over to the island.
Everything happened in a blur. My friends kept trying to talk to me, to comfort me, and all I saw was Bethany’s broken body in that stamped-down grass. I’d failed her.
We were in the infirmary waiting area, the kids getting guerilla doctoring from Sasha and Teresa while Kinsey and Jessica were busy with Bethany. Of the others, Tate had the worst wounds courtesy of the three ice balls that ripped into his shoulder. The bleeding had stopped, but I heard someone say he’d need stitches.
Time passed.
At some point I was hustled into Kinsey’s office with him and Teresa. His face was grim, his surgical scrubs stained red in too many places.
“How bad?” Teresa asked.
“I’m sorry,” Kinsey replied, his voice hollow. “Her injuries were catastrophic. She crashed twice. We were able to get her heart beating both times. She’s on a ventilator now, but our tests are not detecting any brain activity at all.”
I grabbed the edge of his desk as the world tilted slightly. “She’s a vegetable?”
The tactless question was on point, because he nodded. “She’s brain-dead. Our machines are the only things keeping her body alive at this point.”
“Goddammit,” Teresa said.
“There’s nothing we can do?” I asked. “You know scientists and specialists. Can’t they—?”
“I’m sorry, Renee,” Kinsey said. “I wish there was more to be done for her.”
Catastrophic injuries. Sledgehammer. Fuck.
“Where’s Thatcher?” Teresa asked.
I blinked at her. “Why?”
“Because Landon needs to know, and his father should tell him, don’t you think?”
“I guess.”
“He’s with Landon the last I checked,” Kinsey replied.
I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t watch this. I hid in Dr. Kinsey’s office with the door mostly shut and listened. Listened to Teresa go down the hall and beckon Thatcher into the corridor. Heard muffled voices as she told him what was going on. A minute later, Landon’s cries of disbelief echoed down to my hiding place. I covered my face with my hands and cried.
Twenty
Dr. Kinsey eventually kicked me (gently) out of his office. I relocated to the waiting room, which was surprisingly void of extra personnel. Jessica told me the kids had been patched up and taken to an empty room downstairs to rest. A glance at the wall clock surprised me—only quarter after seven.
It felt like a year had passed since the fighting began, and it had only been eight hours.
I knew I should sleep, but something kept me from leaving. The guilt eating me up inside from Bethany’s impending death had put a lock on the door, and I didn’t have the energy to push past it. Bethany was a little crazy, but she hadn’t deserved this. Landon didn’t deserve this.
As if summoned by my thoughts of his kid, Thatcher emerged from the back of the infirmary. He looked startled to see me. His face was pale, his eyes red and smudged with dark lines beneath. He was exhausted and upset, and it was my fault.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey.”
“Have you slept?”
“No.”
“You should.”
“I know.”
He didn’t seem to know what to say to me, and I didn’t blame him.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
