“I’ll get a warm blanket,” she promises.
I’m cold, and I hurt all over. I close my eyes. I’m not sure how long I float in that nebulous state between awake and dreaming. When I hear the sound of footsteps, squeaky soles on the tile floor, I wonder if the pain or the footsteps woke me.
I look over at the white-clad woman. She moves a tube that hangs on the side of my bed and stretches to me. It’s obviously an IV line, but I don’t know why it’s there—or why I’m here.
I feel the cold start to crawl up my arm as the medicine travels through my vein from my wrist upward. It’s a disturbing feeling, one I’d like to stop, but by the time I force my lips open to ask the nurse about it, I’m alone in my room. My mind is encased in an ever-increasing fog, and I’m pretty sure the fog is because of that tube in my arm.
I’m not sure if moments or minutes pass before I ask, “Where am I?”
If someone answers, I don’t hear it. Sleep or drugs make the fog and weight stronger, and I’m out again. When I wake the next two times, I try again to ask questions, but if anyone answers—or hears me—I’m not aware of it. All I know is that I hurt, and then I’m drifting away. Maybe that’s why I dreamed of dying: I hurt from my legs to my head. Vaguely, I realize that between the hurt, the IV, and the nurse, I’m obviously in a hospital. I’m just not sure why.
In one of my moments of lucidity, I realize that I can’t move my arms or right leg, but I’m not sure if it’s from the medicine pumping into my arm or if there’s another reason.
“I’m right here,” Grace says from somewhere nearby. I can’t see her, but I’d know her voice anywhere.
“Grace?” With far too much effort, I try to focus on the shape in the chair that is apparently my usually hyper friend.
“Rest. You’re safe, sweetie. We’re here,” Mrs. Yeung says, and I realize that Grace’s mother is somewhere beside her. “You just came out of surgery.”
Grace hurries over to stand beside the bed. “You’re going to be okay, though, and I’m here with you.”
“Don’t leave me, Gracie.”
“I won’t,” she promises, and I am relieved. There’s no one in this world I trust more than Grace Yeung.
“Everything is okay now,” Grace says. She reaches out one hand as if she’s going to brush it over my face, but she doesn’t actually touch me. It’s only the shadow of her hand that lands on me.
“You’re going to be okay,” Mrs. Yeung repeats.
I glance at her and then look back at Grace. She nods in agreement, and then I’m out again.
This time my dreams are a strange mix that may be a series of wakeful moments waking and unconsciousness. If not, I’m dreaming about nurses and Grace sliding a chair near the bed with a horrible screeching noise—which seems a bit unlikely.
“Why am I here?” I ask, possibly again, possibly for the first time. I don’t remember if I’ve asked, but it’s the most reasonable question after “where am I?”
As promised, Grace is still here. Mrs. Yeung isn’t with her now, but that doesn’t matter. The chair is beside the bed, and her voice is quiet as she answers, “They had to bring you to Durham. You’re in Mercy Hospital. You were unconscious; ‘head trauma,’ they said, but you woke up late last night. This morning, you had surgery on your leg for a broken femur.”
I nod.
“They had to delay the surgery a day, but they operated today. It went well,” Grace says. “You’re in a new room now. You were in ICU.”
“Hazy.”
“You’re still coming out of the anesthesia. Plus, they gave you sedatives,” she explains.
Time passes, and eventually, my head feels clearer. I swallow, trying to speak with a tongue that feels too thick and a mouth that feels too dry, before repeating, “Why am I here?”
Grace doesn’t answer for a moment, so I watch her face for answers. People are more transparent than they think. Even with whatever medicines pump through the IV tubes, I have enough clarity of mind to see the worry and the anger in Grace’s face. Whatever happened to land me in this bed set my best friend into a mix of emotions that she’s trying to hide.
“Your parents really should be here to tell you this,” Grace starts. Her lips press together in a judgmental way that’s very familiar when my parents are mentioned. She’s far more judgmental about my parents than I am. I like the independence I have because of their travel and work schedule.
I glance at the giant vase of flowers in the room and know that it’s from them. There are other smaller arrangements, but the big one is orchids, my favorite flower. It’s huge and overflowing. “They sent those.”
“These were waiting when we got to your new room,” Grace says, but she scowls again. Orchids don’t make up for their absence in her book, but I’m sure they have a reason for being away. They always do. Most of the reasons boil down to them forgetting that I’m not actually an adult yet—not that I’m complaining.
“Why did I need surgery?”
“There was an accident,” Grace says, her expression going from angry to gentle in a blink.
I grab her hand and tug.
She straightens her arm so our clasped hands rest on the edge of the hospital bed. She looks almost as tired as I feel. She squeezes my hand and stares at me. Her eyes are red and puffy, and I can tell she’s been crying a lot and sleeping a little. “I’m glad you’re okay,” she whispers. “I was so scared. You must’ve been terrified.”
“I don’t think I . . . I don’t remember anything,” I tell her. My voice wavers a little, but I’m not as upset as I probably should be. I feel sort of like I’m in a haze, which raises another question. “What am I on?”
“An antiseizure drug, a muscle relaxer, and . . . I’m not sure what else.” Grace glances at the bag of medicine. “Sugar water or something for hydration. Plus sedatives and stuff from the surgery.”
“Where’s your mom?” I ask. I’d heard Mrs. Yeung earlier, but I don’t see her.
When my parents travel, she’s my unofficial mom. Truthfully, she fills that function even when they’re home, but when they’re away, she has a signed power of attorney form for emergencies. My parents trust her completely—and for good reason. Mrs. Yeung has all the traits that “good Christians” in the South are supposed to have, including a few that my parents lack. She’s a stay-at-home mom who gave up a career to move to our little backwater town in North Carolina with her husband when he got a chance at his dream job.
“She had to leave,” Grace says. “We’ve been here a lot, and Jimmy had to miss a game already. She wanted to stay till you woke, but—”
“She was here when I needed her,” I interrupt. “She’s awesome.”
Grace scoffs. “Yeah, you say that because you don’t live with her. The other day . . .”
I know that Grace is still talking, but I can’t focus on what she’s saying. Things don’t add up. I remember leaving the coffee shop. Robert was to meet me, but he didn’t show. We didn’t argue at the party the night before. He was distant, but we didn’t fight or anything. We never really fight. We’re friends who’ve known each other since the cradle and decided to date last year, but honestly, we still mostly feel like friends who sometimes have sex. Fighting isn’t an issue for us, so when he didn’t show for our date and didn’t answer when I called—or when I texted him—I was confused.
Both my parents and Grandfather Cooper were out of town. Grandfather Tilling was home, but he goes to bed early, so I didn’t want to bother him, and I felt stupid calling Grace to come pick me up when it was only a couple miles to walk. Really, it would’ve taken longer for Grace to get there than it would for me to walk it.
“I was on my way home. I remember that. Robert forgot me or something.” I look at Grace, as if her face holds the secrets I can’t find inside my memories. Sometimes with Grace it kind of does. She’s very readable. She squeezes my fingers, and I notice that I’m still holding on to Grace’s hand.
“You got
hit by a car when you were walking, sweetie.”
“Hit? Like someone ran over me?” I try to remember, but I have nothing. It’s a bright blur there when I try to think about it.
“Yes.” She starts to tear up and adds quickly, “But you’ll be okay. You hit your head; they call it a traumatic brain injury. That’s why you can’t remember things, and you have a broken leg, some bruised ribs, and . . . lots of black and blue.”
But Grace looks down and won’t meet my eyes, and I know there’s more.
My mouth feels like the desert looks, and I have to swallow before I can prompt, “And? Am I . . .” I look down at my feet and quickly wiggle my toes. Then I glance at my stomach and arms. There’s a bandage on my right forearm, as well as scrapes and cuts on my hands. The cuts aren’t as bad on my left arm, but my right biceps is liberally decorated with slashes and dots. My left arm is scratched and cut, but nothing severe. Looking at my skin isn’t going to tell me if there’s something really wrong under it though. “Did I lose an organ or . . .”
“No! You still have all your organs; you’re not paralyzed. You’ll be fine,” Grace hurriedly assures me. “They put a plate in your leg, but that’s not going to mean much other than physical therapy. You hit your head pretty hard, and we were scared about that. You were out for a day, but you’re awake now and seem okay so . . . that’s good too.”
She’s still avoiding saying something though. I know her too well for her to succeed at it. For someone so eager to dive into confrontation with most people, she treats me like I’m in need of sheltering. I take a deep breath and ask, “And? Just tell me.”
“There was a lot of glass. That’s all. You got some cuts, like on your arm. The big injuries were your leg and your head . . . your brain, really, but it seems like they’ll be fine.” She holds my gaze as if staring at me will keep me from reading whatever secrets she wants to hide. I know she’ll tell me; she always tells me even when she doesn’t want to do so. Earlier this year, when Amy blabbed to everyone at school that I had slept with Robert, Grace tried to protect me. She shielded me from the things people were saying, but even then, she gave in after a couple of days and spilled. I don’t want to wait this time.
“Gracie . . . what aren’t you saying?”
She sighs and hedges, “You’re going to have some scars on your face. It’s not really that b—”
“Mirror.”
“Sweetie, maybe not yet.”
“Mirror,” I repeat, louder this time.
“Eva, let’s just wait until you’re feeling better, and it’s heal—”
“Please.”
I watch Grace dig through her bag and pull out the little silver compact that her grandmother gave her for her sixteenth birthday. For a moment, Grace holds it in her hand, squeezing it so tightly that her knuckles look like the skin has grown thinner there.
She holds it out to me, and I don’t let myself hesitate. I’m not vain, not really. I’m not the most beautiful girl in the world, but I’ve always been pretty enough to not be jealous or insecure. I have dark blue eyes, a smallish nose, lips that look pouty, and cheekbones that are defined without looking razor-sharp. I’m not opposed to wearing makeup, but I’ve always been happy that I don’t necessarily need it.
I gaze at the reflection in the glass. The girl I see now needs makeup badly. Red lines crisscross my face. Dark blue stitches highlight some of them. As much as I want to, I can’t look away from the tiny reflection of myself, and I’m glad that Grace’s mirror is so small.
I reach up to touch the black-and-blue marks and cuts on my throat, but before I can, Grace grabs my hand. “No touching. The nurses said you shouldn’t irritate the wounds. We had to keep your wrists restrained at first.”
Even as she tells me that I was tied to my bed, which is disturbing on some basic level, I can’t look away from my reflection. I dart my tongue out to touch the cut on my lip and promptly wince. I don’t hurt like I should, and I know that it’s because of the medicine coursing through my body. One particularly long cut runs from just under my eye to the side of my cheek where it curls under my ear and vanishes into my hair. That one has been stitched. Vaguely it registers that the ones deep enough to need stitches are the ones that’ll scar the most. Some of the others are only shallow cuts like the ones on my arm, so I think they’ll fade.
The tiny cuts vanish under the top of my shirt, and I look at my arms again. I was wearing a long-sleeved shirt when I walked home. Maybe that protected them a little, or maybe it was just how I hit the ground or how the car hit me. All I know for sure is that it’s my face that took the worst of the impact. I glance back at the mirror, hoping for a moment that it isn’t as bad as I first thought. It is though. No amount of healing is going to make these all vanish.
The day of the accident was the last day I was pretty.
I close my eyes, and Grace takes the mirror from my hand. She doesn’t tell me that everything is okay or that it’s not as bad as it looks. She might try to hide things from me when she thinks it’s for my own good, but she doesn’t ever lie to me.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
..................................................................
DAY 5: “THE VISIT”
Judge
WHEN THE CAR HIT Eva, the thump of her body was louder than I expected. It reminded me more of hitting a deer than a possum. I’m not sure why I was surprised. Girls aren’t the same size as possums, but I suspect I thought more of her nature than her size. The initial thump of her body was followed by a thud as she fell against the car hood. I’ve dreamed about it twice since I hit her, since I thought I’d killed her.
I swallow and keep walking toward the entrance. No one looks at me any more than they do the nurses and techs that fill the halls here at Mercy Hospital. I’m part of the scenery here. I’m nobody important.
Neither is she.
I can’t tell anyone though. They wouldn’t understand. It’s not that I need approval. I don’t. I don’t need a lot of things. What I do need is to see Eva. I’ve been thinking about it—thinking about her—since she fell. I have to know if she’s really alive. The article in the Jessup Observer says she is. I carefully clipped it out to save for my book, but after the fourth read, I needed a second copy because the ink was smeared and the edges were crumpled. I was careful with the second copy. Now, though, I hold the original clipping in my hands.
Eva Tilling, the granddaughter of both Davis Cooper IV (Cooper Winery owner and CEO) and of the esteemed Reverend Tilling, suffered multiple serious injuries after a hit-and-run earlier this week.
Miss Tilling, 17, underwent surgery this week and remains at Mercy Hospital in Durham, where she was transported after the incident. She is in critical but stable condition.
The victim was walking unaccompanied when she was run down by an as yet unknown vehicle. Authorities believe Tilling was only alone for moments after being struck when another passing vehicle saw her unconscious along the road and called 911.
The Jessup sheriff’s office is looking for witnesses to the incident. They said evidence has been recovered but declined to discuss specifics.
An arrest has not been made at this time.
The staff at the Jessup Observer would like to extend our prayers and thoughts to both the Tilling and Cooper families during this difficult time.
I know the staff writer has to suck up to the Cooper-Tilling family. No matter what They do, they’re always thought innocent. The paper is only one of the many things They control. I didn’t realize it a few years ago, but I see it now: Jessup is owned by Them, the ones who support the crazy rules that govern every interaction in Jessup. I’m not ruled by Them, not now, not ever again. Eva wasn’t either, but that changed. She became corrupt. I have seen it, dirt on her flesh where the corruption has begun to take root. She was the shining light, the proof that not everyone believed Their lies. Then she fell. She became just as guilt
y as the rest of Them, so I had to act before the corruption consumed her. It’s like a disease, eating away at all that’s good and pure.
I ran over her to save her.
I was willing to let her die in order to save her. I’m like Abraham with Isaac, willing to sacrifice the one I love above all others. Like Abraham, I lowered the knife—or car, in my case—but God spared my beloved one. Now, I am waiting, hoping, praying for a reward for my faithfulness.
I’m praying that her acceptance will be my reward.
As I approach the metal detector at the hospital, I wrap my arm around the large arrangement of flowers as I fish out my wallet with my other hand. I don’t have an ID in it, but I brought an empty one so as not to draw attention. I drop it and my clipboard into the bin, and then I step through the arch with the flowers. The guard barely looks at me.
I look a little older than I am, and with the scruffy facial hair and hat, the guard probably assumes I’m in my early twenties. He sees the flowers and uniform, and he fills in the rest of the facts to match the image. It’s enough for him to shift his attention to the next person. I gather my items and keep moving.
The flowers aren’t ostentatious, but they’re still large enough to be believable as a gift from the paper. My clothes are nondescript enough—black trousers, navy button-up, and a navy-and-white ball cap. My shoes are plain black too. Nothing here stands out. Still, I tug the ball cap down a bit farther to shade my face and hold the floral arrangement up and to the side. I stopped in earlier to get a look around the lobby. A camera aims at the door, and another sits in the back far corner of the ceiling behind the reception desk.
A bored woman glances up as I approach the desk.
“Pediatrics,” I say.
“Fourth floor.” She motions toward the elevators.
A second security guard stands nearby, but he’s not here to stop deliveries. Being the intersection of the east–west 1-40 and north–south 1-85, Durham has long been a high drug-trafficking area. It’s not as bad as it once was, but the hospitals have security due to drug-related crimes. Jessup isn’t like that. It’s safe.