by Lexy Timms
“Oh baby, is there anyone near you?” she asked, her voice suddenly brisk and urgent. “Can you find a doctor or a nurse who might be able to talk to me?”
Ashley got up and walked, on shaky legs, past the white curtain. She saw a uniformed woman rushing past, and she quickly thrust her phone in her direction. “Can you help me please? Can you talk to my mom, tell her what’s going on with my cousin?”
The nurse looked at her, then at the phone, then took it. “Um…can I help you?” she said. Then, after a pause, she continued, “Oh, yes. I’m sorry, ma’am, but the doctors haven’t reported anything to us yet. Sure, I would absolutely recommend that you call her parents and tell them that.” She then handed the phone back.
Ashley’s fingers were so unsteady she nearly dropped the phone, but she managed to get it back up to her ear. “Mom?”
“I’ll call your aunt and uncle, sweetheart,” she said.
The hush in her mother’s voice made Ashley’s panic well up even further, and she struggled to tamp it back down so she wouldn’t hyperventilate again. She had to be strong for Kaylee, because there was no one else there for either of them. “Okay, Mom,” she said after a moment. “Thanks. I just… I don’t think I could talk to them right now.”
“That’s okay, honey. You just hold on and try to be strong.”
“I am.”
“I love you, Ashley.”
Her throat clumped with salty tears. “I love you, too…and I’m sorry, Mom.”
“For what?”
She wiped her eyes and retreated behind the curtain. “I-I knew Charlie was going to break up with her. I should have kept a closer eye on her. She had some kind of real weird thing going with him. It was like she couldn’t… I can’t even explain it.”
Her mother sighed. “Was sort of…obsessive?”
Ashley blinked. “Yeah. How did you know?”
“It isn’t the first time. Kaylee’s always felt she has to be popular, the person everyone loves the most. Maybe it’s genetic. I don’t know. She doesn’t take rejection well. Anyway, let me call them. Stay close to your phone, and if you need me—”
“I’ll call you, Mom.”
Ashley ended the call and huddled in the chair, staring at the white curtain. Time dragged on for what seemed like forever. Her eyes drifted closed, then jerked open again; she felt guilty for even trying to sleep at a time like this, but she was tired and hadn’t gotten any sleep at all after a hectic, emotionally-draining day. She was in need of rest, no matter how dire the situation, and her mind and body demanded it.
Her head nodded toward her chest again, and her eyelids dropped, then closed. She jerked back up a few minutes later. A foul taste coated her tongue, and her eyes were gritty with fatigue.
More time passed, and again, her eyes closed and flew open. The commotion beyond the curtain occasionally drew her attention. She dozed and woke again. She’d just woken up from a fifteen-minute nap when the squeaking of a shoe against the linoleum just beyond the curtain startled her. When the curtain opened, she saw a man with short, gray hair and a mournful look on his face.
“Hello, you’re, uh…”
“Ashley, Kaylee’s cousin and roommate.”
He nodded, still wearing that somber, grim expression. “I see. Is there any, uh…closer kin here?”
She wrung her hands. “I called my mom, and she called Kaylee’s parents, but I haven’t heard from them yet.”
After another nod, he repeated, “I see.” He paused a moment, then continued, “Well, to inform you of the, uh…situation, we don’t know what she took or was given to her. I’ve sent some samples to the lab. It seems she may have had a very mild heart attack. Her blood-alcohol level is dangerously high, so we are also treating her for that.”
“I’m sorry. Did you say she had a heart attack?” Ashley asked, convinced she’d heard him incorrectly.
He nodded again as he pulled a pen out and made a note on the chart on the clipboard in his hand. “Yes. It was very, very mild, almost unnoticeable, in fact.”
“How can a heart attack be unnoticeable?” she asked as a thin thread of anger coiled through her.
“It happens a lot more than you might imagine.” He slapped his hands together, and the pages of the chart fluttered. “We’ll obviously keep her here for observation. Once she’s moved to a room, you can stay with her if you’d like.”
“I would.” She stood, and while dizziness swept in, she managed to stay on her feet. “Doctor, is she…going to be okay?”
He frowned. “That’s hard to say. As I said, we’re not yet sure what she took, so we don’t know what effects to expect. She experienced quite a few seizures, some quite severe, and those could have done some serious damage. There’s also the heart issue to consider, and we’ve been unable to bring her back to consciousness. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, as it will allow us to slow the spread of whatever she took. Her heart needs rest, and we need to clear her bloodstream.”
“Thank you,” Ashley muttered, almost unable to fathom the nightmare.
“She’s in good hands, Ashley,” he said, then walked away.
Ashley plopped back down in the chair, battling a fresh spring of terror. Heart attack? How in the hell does a girl who’s barely 19 have a heart attack? Drugs, of course, she thought, clenching her fists in anger, ready to punch whoever had dragged Kaylee into that world.
The curtain swung open again, and an orderly smiled at her. “Hi there. I’m going up to the fifth floor, so they asked me to show you the way.”
She got up again, and her entire body ached like she’d just finished a serious workout. “Thank you.”
He nodded and led the way.
Ashley followed silently, too wrapped up in her own emotions and worries to care that he didn’t talk to her. She walked into Kaylee’s room and stared at her cousin, who looked absolutely lifeless under those sterile white sheets, with all those machines and tubes hooked up to her.
Kaylee lived to be loud and larger than life, but now she was so still and so pale and so small that it just broke Ashley’s heart.
CHAPTER NINE
Logan stared at the walls. He knew he’d blown it. How did I manage to do something so asinine? he scolded himself. He had to go find Ashley and apologize, because she sure as hell wouldn’t answer her phone if he called, and he couldn’t blame her for that.
He tried to shake off his self-loathing for a minute, grabbed his shoes, then slid them on and headed out the door. It was early morning, maybe too early for her to be in class. He hoped he could catch her in time to talk to her, to tell her how damn sorry he was. I know it’s clichéd to tell her it’s me and not her, but it’s true, he thought, shaking his head and resisting the urge to face-palm himself silly.
Her walked up to her door in a haze and knocked, but there was no answer. He checked the time again, wondering if she’d left for classes already or she was just flat-out ignoring him. Maybe she’s hunkered down on the other side of the door, wishing I’d just go away so she can focus on more important things, like those damn textbooks she’s always got her nose in.
Logan gritted his teeth and took a breath. He felt he deserved it, that she had every right to break up with him. There was no way in hell he could deny that, but that didn’t mean he had to like it, nor did it mean he was going to give up on trying to fix what he had broken.
He knocked again, a little harder and louder, till his knuckles stung. Still, there was no answer.
“Damn it,” Logan mumbled, then turned away.
Suddenly the door next to Ashley’s opened, and a pretty blonde stood there blinking at him.
“Hey, have you seen Ashley?” he asked, figuring he might as well take the chance.
The coed shook her head, her hair fluffing around her face. “Not since the ambulance left. I think Kaylee died or something. Everyone’s been sayin’ she OD’d.”
“What?!” Logan said, his heart instantly dropping into the pit of his sto
mach.
The blonde nodded eagerly.
Another blonde, one who very much resembled the first, so much so that they could have been twins, popped out of the doorway. “Yeah, that’s what everyone’s saying,” she said, practically breathless. “It’s crazy! I mean, can you believe it? Right here in our dorm. I totally hope she didn’t die. My parents are already freaking out and being all OCD and anal about me living on campus. They’re positive I’m gonna do something really stupid, and if they find out my dorm neighbor died, they’ll make me come home or live in some crummy apartment.”
The first blonde added, “Now that would be a real tragedy. I sooo love having you as a roommate, sis,” she said, giggling like an idiot as she pulled her annoyingly bubbly roomie into a hug.
Logan, stupefied and bemused by their candor and self-involved nonsense, could only gape at them for a moment. “Oh, okay. So what… Um… When did this happen?”
The first girl shrugged. “Like about three or something. It woke us all up. I mean, those stupid paramedics were yelling and shouting, and they had these noisy paddle things and kept clanging a stretcher around, and then—”
“Yeah, the paddles were to kick start her heart or something,” the other interrupted. “I don’t think it worked, though. She looked like a zombie.”
Speechless again for a moment, Logan just shook his head and stared at the floor. What the hell did Kaylee do? Was Ashley with her? he wondered. Of course she was. When he could finally bear to pull his gaze back up to the airheads, he asked, “Do you know what hospital?”
For a response, there were only shrugs all around.
Finally, the first girl chimed in, not too helpfully, “Maybe we’ll find out when Ashley comes back. If she’s not dead, we’ll take her some flowers or something to cheer her up before she checks out of the hospital. I mean, I know they’re gonna kick her out of school after that little stunt. It was like something from an episode of that Intervention show.”
The second added, “I heard she wanted to pledge a sorority and couldn’t, so she went nuts and tried to off herself. Not everyone’s cut out to pledge.”
“Thanks,” Logan said sourly, then turned and started walking. He took out his smartphone and began to search for the closest hospitals, frustrated to discover that there were three, possibly four, and she could have been taken to any one of them. “Well, gee, that freaking narrows it down,” he muttered in complaint. He walked briskly as he called the first one. He was shuffled around for several minutes, transferred and put on hold by one department after another, only to be told in the end that they couldn’t tell him anything at all since he wasn’t a direct relative of the person who might or might not be there. With that lesson learned, when he called the next hospital, he pretended to be Kaylee’s brother. That fib worked well enough for him to learn she wasn’t there, so he quickly called the next medical facility on the list.
“No, I’m afraid your sister’s not here, sir,” a polite nurse told him.
“Thanks,” Logan said with a sigh, then hung up. “Three strikes, I’m out, I guess,” he said as he continued walking. “Why the hell can’t the third time always be a charm?”
Not sure what else to do or where to go, he decided to call the first hospital again. He changed his voice a bit, fed them the lie about looking for his sister, and, sure enough, learned that she was actually there. Irritated that he’d wasted so much time, he quickly dialed Ashley’s number, but it went straight to voice mail.
Worry raced through his veins, prickling him with goosebumps all over. Whether Kaylee was alive or dead, he was sure Ashley was all alone in a hospital, and that broke his heart. He had to be there for her, to protect and support her whether she wanted him to or not.
Everything else between them was forgotten as that thought hit him. He had to make sure Ashley was okay, and he refused to let her go through such an ordeal alone. He couldn’t stand Kaylee, but Ashley loved her, and he knew she had to be scared to death. All he wanted was to be there for her, to make sure she was okay and that she wasn’t alone. He didn’t want to keep fighting with her, and he knew she didn’t want to fight with him either. He had been a jerk, and she deserved an apology; she would get that, but first—and far more importantly—she needed him by her side to help her get through what was probably one of the worst nights of her entire life.
He picked up Zip’s car and headed out, en route to the first hospital on the list. The highway was packed, as usual, and he was stuck in that conglomeration of cars and trucks, honking horns, middle fingers, and shouted curses for nearly half an hour. The bumper-to-bumper mess only made Logan more anxious and worried. He wondered if the ambulance that had carried Kaylee to the hospital had been caught in the tumult. Did poor Ashley have to sit helplessly by while they stalled out behind inconsiderate drivers and all this gridlock?
He certainly hoped not, for he couldn’t even imagine what that would have been like for her. He knew she had to be afraid then, and he was sure she still was. For the life of him, he couldn’t figure out why she hadn’t called him. Of course we fought, he thought, but doesn’t she know I’m always, always gonna be there for her? Has she just…forgotten that already? So help me, if she called Charlie instead, I’ll… Then, before that bitter thought could even complete itself in his head, he stopped it.
It cut him to the very soul that she hadn’t bothered to call him, even in her worst moment. Logan knew what life was like for battered women. His own mother was so brainwashed by her bastard husband that she didn’t even recognize how hard she flinched every time he lifted a hand, even if he didn’t raise it in her direction. Every time he yelled, she just drew in and cringed. Logan was sure that was what he most hated the man for, for turning his mother into a sniveling victim who didn’t even recognize herself anymore. He knew someone had tried to do that to Ashley, but she had resisted and gotten out. He warned himself that he had to remember that the next time he got mad. Unlike his mother, she wasn’t going to put up with it, and the fact that she’d refused to call him even when she needed him was his proof of that.
Finally, he burst out of the traffic and into a clear lane of fast-moving cars. He took the long loop and then opted for secondary and back roads to carry him to the hospital, as they were far less crowded. The parking lot was a nightmare all its own, so much so that he even considered abandoning the car. Just as he was pondering what Zip would do to him for that, a slot finally opened.
After pulling in slightly askew, throwing the car in park, and running inside, he jumped into the first open elevator and headed for the fifth floor, without even stopping to check in at the nurses’ station. His heart was pounding, and his mind was locked on one thought: Ashley. I have to get to Ashley. I have to make sure she’s all right. He had to be there for her right then, even if she sent him away forever afterward.
CHAPTER TEN
Breathe. In…out… Watch the monitors. Breathe. Hold Kaylee’s hand. Stare at the tubes…and don’t forget to pray! Now repeat…
The minutes felt like they dragged on, and the beeping and buzzing and shuffling of white-shoed feet across the linoleum and voices murmuring medical jargon and concerned relatives sniffling outside the other room doors in the hall began to grate on Ashley’s nerves. Not only that, but every time she caught a glimpse of Kaylee’s pale face it scared her to death. She wasn’t dead, but she looked like a ghost, almost as white as the hospital walls.
Breathe, she reminded herself yet again. Just…breathe. Her chest lifted and fell, while Kaylee’s hitched upward sharply and fell. The whooshing and sucking of the respirator drew Ashley’s attention. Her eyes went from the tubes in Kaylee’s arm, then back to her face, then to the accordion-looking blue filter thing that was pumping oxygen into her bod.
She’s so…pale, so very pale. That can’t be good.
“Breathe,” Ashley muttered, not sure if she was talking more to her cousin or herself.
Tears fell and were wiped away. Sobs mounted
and were stifled quickly. Still, as brave as she tried to be, inside she felt as cold and helpless as Kaylee looked.
A ring of Ashley’s phone broke her out of her exhausted, worried trance.
“Hi, Mom,” she answered, after taking a glance at the screen.
“Hello, sweetie. How is she?”
“I-I don’t know,” Ashley answered truthfully. “She doesn’t look good, Mom, not good at all. I’m afraid she’s… Maybe she’s too far gone,” she said. “The doctors haven’t told me anything, so I just don’t know.”
“Oh, honey, I’m so sorry you have to be there by yourself for all this. Her folks are on their way. Just hold on.”
“I am,” she said, looking down at her tight grip on Kaylee’s hand, hoping beyond hope that she would live long enough for her parents to see her. Cold tears crept down her cheeks. “I’m scared, Mom.”
“I know. So…no word on what it was?”
“No. Somebody just dumped her off in our hallway, like trash.”
After a long sigh, her mom said, “I really don’t understand people.”
“Me neither. Mom, she can’t stay here if…er, I mean when she wakes up,” Ashley said, refusing to speak a fatal prognosis, fearing it might come true. Don’t even think that, Ashley.
“I know, dear. I’m afraid that’ll be something for her folks to figure out. They should have taught your cousin to be stronger, but they were too busy giving in and cleaning up after her.” She cleared her throat. “Now’s not the time to be thinking of that. I’m sorry.”
“I know, Mom,” Ashley said sadly, “but it’s true.”
“Are you holding out okay?”
“I’m trying,” she said, but the truth was that she was far from okay. Nevertheless, she had to pretend she was. Someone had to be there, and Kaylee had no one else, especially with Charlie out of the picture. Ashley ached for Logan, with her whole being. She knew he would comfort her, that he could prop up her failing courage. If only he wasn’t so mad at me. Hell, if only I wasn’t so mad at him.
