The Girl In Between (The Girl In Between Series Book 1)

by Laekan Zea Kemp

  The hospital was six eight-story buildings connected by a series of glass walkways. We wound through four levels in the first parking garage before we found an empty spot. Felix cut the engine and then the three of us just sat there.

  I knew they were waiting for me to tell them what was next, to reveal some kind of master plan. But I didn’t have one. I didn’t have anything except a newspaper clipping, an IPod full of Roman’s favorite songs, and an insatiable swelling deep in my lungs that felt like hope. Because this is not a coincidence. We were not a coincidence.

  The security guard at the base of the parking garage gave us walking directions to the children’s ward. We passed bronze sculptures like the ones I’d seen on campus at Emory—static children that said more about the patients’ lives inside a hospital than out of it, frozen and yet transitory. A physical purgatory I’d spent too many nights in since that first episode when I was twelve.

  We took an elevator to the third floor and found the front desk. Women in scrubs were shuffling around, their voices low. One of them laughed, the lightness ringing in the hallway, out of place and strange. The murals along the walls were strange too. More scenes of children running, swinging, jumping. One dimensional and stationary just like all the others.

  I approached the desk, cleared my throat.

  “Yes? Can I help you?” the nurse said.

  “I’m sorry, I’m a little lost. I was looking for a friend. Davide Roman Santillo. He’s on this floor, right?”

  Her fingers bounced off her keyboard as her eyes scanned the screen. “I’m sorry.” She shook her head. “Not on this floor.”

  “Are you sure?”

  She checked again, nodded.

  “That’s...” I looked back at Dani, my throat dry. “Do you know if he may have been moved recently?”

  “Not sure. I don’t see him in any of my records. Maybe he’s been released.”

  I shook my head. “No.” But then I remembered the article I’d read. The headline: Local teen spends eighteenth birthday in coma. “Wait. Is there any way to check if he’s in another part of the hospital? Maybe he was moved to the adult wing.”

  “You’ll have to go downstairs for that. Adult wing is two buildings down, just past the first parking garage. Depending on the injury he could be in another building.”

  As we made our way to the adult wing I tried not to think about the other possibility. That Roman had been here, only we were too late. When we got to the adult wing, a nurse with frizzy hair sent us in the opposite direction. We finally entered a quiet glass building through massive sliding doors and six floors later the smell of fresh paint swirled into the elevator. When the doors opened we were swallowed into the hum of EKG machines, defibrillators, and heart monitors. We walked down the hallway, steps muted on the pink carpet as we made our way to the front desk.

  “Hello,” I said. “I’m looking for a patient who may be on this floor.”

  The nurse smiled. “What’s the name?”

  “Davide Roman Santillo.”

  She didn’t even look at her computer screen. “Last room at the end of the hall.”

  Most of the doors were closed, clipboards hanging in a clear plastic tray on the outside. We reached the end of the hall and I saw a sliver of his bed from between the door. I leaned against the window. It was cold.

  “Bryn?” Dani reached for me.

  I watched the cars down on the street. They looked like little matchboxes, the people spilling out of them like ants. I watched them moving around on these invisible tracts and from that high up they looked planted there on purpose. I wanted to feel that too. Like I was doing the right thing.

  This is not a coincidence.

  I stepped to the door, eyes on the tile as I pushed it open. I reached back for Dani’s hand but I grabbed Felix’s instead. He squeezed, let go, and then I stepped inside.

  I tried to absorb him in pieces, starting with the blanket rising over his feet and sinking between his legs. It dimpled over his knees, cream-colored sheets folded at his waist. I examined the tiny blue squares on his gown, the sleeves lying limp against his arm, strings untied behind his neck, the faint impression of where they’d once been still pressed into his skin. I inhaled and it sounded like a sob. Felt like one too. I inhaled again, quiet this time, and then I looked.

  His eyes were trapped under bruised lids, his skin dry and translucent. His mouth was a thin line, crooked on one side, and sinking into hollow cheeks. The shadows of bruises were still fading from his pale skin. He looked like he’d been carved from himself by jagged tools, an unsteady hand giving him angles where there should have been curves; the silhouette of bone where there should have been flesh.

  “Roman.” I wanted to touch him but there was no soft place for my hands. “I’m here.”

  I pressed a hand down on the mattress, trying to be more than just a voice. I let it crawl closer. I let my finger trail down the side of his hospital gown.

  “Roman. I found you.”

  I heard the door slide open and then I was looking at the man from the film. Roman’s dad. They had the same wide eyes and the same black hair but as he stood over Roman’s bed he looked like a giant. Roman was just a sliver of his dad then, like that child we’d watched flung into the air, large hands resting on his small head.

  “Hello…” His dad’s voice trailed off, questioning.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know anyone was here. The nurse—”

  “Are you a friend of Roman’s?” he asked.

  “Yes.” I turned back to the bed, to Roman’s hands resting flat at his sides. “I would have come sooner. I had trouble finding him.”

  “It’s a big hospital.”

  We both grew quiet. I could hear Felix and Dani in the hallway, all sighs and whispers.

  I turned back to Roman. “How is he doing?”

  Roman’s dad sunk down in the small chair at the foot of the bed, hips barely clearing the armrests. He looked uncomfortable but I couldn’t tell if it was because of the cramped space or my question. Or maybe me. He hiked one leg onto his knee, gripped his calf. I saw his jaw grow tense and I waited for words but then he just shook his head.

  I leaned against the window, waiting for him to tell me to leave. But he didn’t. He just sat there too, both of us staring at Roman, trying to will him awake. I wondered how long Roman’s dad had been sitting in that same chair, waiting for Roman to wake up. Six months. That’s how long it had been since he’d first washed up on shore. Six months is a long time and it made me wonder how long I would wait.

  We didn’t have a lot of time. Graduation was next weekend. And Germany. Finding a cure was worth one summer of my life. But was it worth one summer of Roman’s?

  I watched his dad’s face in the corner of my eye. He looked tired. Empty. I’d seen that look before, those familiar dark circles. My mom had been wearing them for years. And now, looking at this man who was a stranger, this man who loved Roman as much as I did, I felt just as helpless. Because it was true. No one ever wants a lifetime worth of waiting. You don’t choose that life. You tolerate it. You endure. When you know what it is you’re waiting for, you endure.