I stagger out of bed. What now? If this is Ricky, I will kill him. I’m shaking as I approach the front door, still in my clothes, which are rumpled from sleeping.
It’s Gary, standing on my front steps in full uniform. I step back, and because it’s Gary, give him a brief nod, intended as a greeting. I don’t trust myself to speak. I don’t know what to feel, so in that instant, I choose to feel nothing.
“Zoe,” he says, and my former friend’s face is so full of sympathy I almost collapse against him. I’m surprised they sent him, of all people. Maybe the police are hoping, because of our history, that I’ll be more cooperative. I motion for him to come in and watch as he closes the door gently behind him.
I start to say something, but the words get stuck in my throat. Instead I stare at him helplessly, feeling the brittle threads of my life snapping one by one.
“Zoe,” he says again. “There’s been an accident.”
“An accident?” I repeat dumbly. “Where?” I am imagining some kind of catastrophe at the plant, while at the same time a slow, seeping relief spreads through my veins. This isn’t about Amy.
“On Snyder’s Road, coming into town. Richard’s car —”
“Richard?” I interrupt. “My brother, Richard?” My head is spinning. I can hardly make sense of what Gary is saying. I put a hand on the wall to steady myself.
“It’s pretty bad, Zoe. He’s been airlifted to Jefferson Memorial Hospital.”
“Okay,” I say. My mind is a whirlwind of confusion. “I need to find my keys. Does my mom know?”
Gary lays a gentle hand on my arm. “Zoe. It would be better if someone else drove you.”
“I can drive,” I answer automatically.
“Let me call you a cab,” Gary says. “I would take you myself, but I’m still on shift.”
I am about to argue, to insist that I can drive myself to the hospital, when what Gary is saying finally registers. And I wonder, for just a second, if Ricky’s accident wasn’t an accident at all. If this was his way of running from the truth for good. But why was he running back to Dunford?
CHAPTER TWO
•
JEFFERSON MEMORIAL HOSPITAL IS A monstrous brick building. My cab driver, Leroy — he told me his name, but otherwise didn’t speak to me during the forty-minute drive to the city — drops me off at the front entrance just before midnight. I stagger inside, unsure what to do or where to go. I spent most of the ride in a dazed panic, only half registering my surroundings as Leroy drove out of Dunford and along the dark highway. I didn’t bring Mom. I didn’t even call her. I want to see how bad it is before alarming her. The last thing I need is for her to have another heart attack.
At the first counter I come across, I ask for help. There are two people sitting at a desk, wearing uniforms of some sort, and after typing Ricky’s name into a computer, one of them tells me he’s in the Intensive Care Unit. A nurse is summoned to escort me there. She walks briskly and I have to scurry behind her on my shaking legs. We arrive at a waiting room outside the ICU doors, and when the nurse turns to face me, she eyes me carefully before asking if I am sick.
“Me?” I say, confused. “No, I’m here to see my brother. Richard Emmerson. He was in an accident.”
“If you’ve had a cough or fever in the last twenty-four hours, we can’t let you in the ward,” she explains.
The back of my neck is sweating and my hands are shaking. “I have a cold,” I admit. Can this nurse see how feverish I am?
She purses her lips and nods at me. “Someone will be out to speak with you, but I can’t let you in,” she says. “Wait here.” She disappears through the doors that lead into the ICU. Within less than a minute, she returns. “I told the staff at the desk that you’re here,” she says. Then, without so much as a backward glance, she walks away, leaving me alone in the waiting room.
A different nurse emerges from the ICU and establishes my relationship to Richard. “I can’t let you see him, but I will come out to notify you if anything changes,” she tells me. “If you need to contact us, use this.” She indicates a phone mounted beside the ICU doors. “It connects straight to the desk.”
At first, I pace around the small waiting room, counting the chairs to distract myself. There are fourteen in total and all of them are empty. There’s a TV on the wall, tuned to a news station, but the sound has been turned off. I am too wound-up to watch it anyway. Eventually, I collapse into one of the plastic chairs, holding my aching head in my hands. I am sitting like this, folded over myself, when Brenda arrives.
She nods at me before being led through the doors into the ICU where I am not allowed to go. Eventually, Brenda returns to the waiting room, white-faced, with a doctor close behind her. I try to stand up, but I’m shaking so badly I have to sit again. Brenda’s eyes are red-rimmed and teary. She’s looking somewhere beside me, as if she can’t bring herself to look at me directly and I feel something in my chest breaking apart.
It is the doctor who speaks. Richard is in a coma, he explains. At his words, Brenda shakes her head slowly, although
