“Okay. If I see you there…”
He nodded. “I’ll find you when I’m done.”
As the ambulance drove off, I saw him through the back windows, talking to the other firefighters. But the image that stuck in my head was his face, the moment I’d reached for him. The moment he knew we were going to fall.
Don’t be afraid, he’d said in a whisper, before he knew I was alive, or conscious.
You’re okay, he’d said, before he knew whether that was true.
I’d clung to those words, made them into something I could believe in. But in hindsight, I wondered if maybe he’d only been talking to himself.
The emergency room of Covington City Hospital had pictures of Vermont’s Green Mountains on the walls—which I guess were supposed to be comforting. If only I hadn’t just plummeted off the edge of those same mountains. And the landscapes were interspersed with health notices to Please Wear a Mask if you were feeling ill.
The medic insisted on bringing me inside with a wheelchair—protocol, she claimed—but I stood up as soon as we were safely inside the lobby, despite the look she gave me. I glanced around the room at the sea of strangers—all watching me back.
I heard periodic beeping, a loudspeaker crackle, a baby crying. Everything was unfamiliar—the angular walls, the sounds, the sharp scent of cleanser—and I stayed close to the medic as she led me through the lobby. I checked over my shoulder, saw the double doors we’d entered. But there were no windows, no other exits except more doors leading to more halls. I could see the fluorescent glow through the glass panels. A labyrinth of rooms I’d never find my way out of alone.
I also didn’t see Ryan anywhere—maybe he was already getting looked at. Maybe he was on a different floor. Maybe he’d never find me in the sea of strangers. The medic led me past a bunch of people who looked like they should definitely be wearing masks, past the police hovering near the hallway entrances, to a narrow bed surrounded by blue curtains. I hadn’t stopped shaking since being pulled from the car.
“Probably just the leftover adrenaline,” she said, watching me stare at my own hands. I curled my fingers in.
“Yeah,” I said. Not the fact that my hands had barely kept me from falling, or the fear that was oozing out of every pore, turning me anxious and paralyzed.
It’s just the unknown, that’s what Jan would say. It’s how I got through the first month of high school last year, after it was strongly suggested that I attend our local school instead of having my mother homeschool me any longer. Strong suggestions were things my mother took pretty seriously. And me leaving the house on a regular basis was a big condition of her custody agreement with Jan and the Department of Family Services. Jan was the one who got me a summer job, for that very reason.
The medic patted my shoulder awkwardly before leaving the area as a woman in scrubs pulled the curtain aside.
I’m not stuck in the car anymore; I’m not hanging from a cliff; I’m not in danger. And slowly, the shaking subsided.
—
The doctor kept shining a light in my eyes, asking me to follow her finger, even as the police officer questioned me. I didn’t have a bump on my head, I didn’t recall hitting my head, but the fact remained that I had been unresponsive until Ryan Baker crawled into my car. I wondered, briefly, how long that had been.
“Were you on the phone?” the police officer asked.
“My phone was in my bag.” Both of which were now over a cliff.
The doctor’s fingers traced patterns on my skull, which was not at all unpleasant—a direct contrast to the officer’s line of questioning.
“Had you been drinking?” he asked.
“Other than caffeine? No.”
“So, you were tired then? Did you fall asleep at the wheel?”
Of course I was tired. I’d been at school for eight hours, and then spent two more hours tutoring Leo Johnson in chemistry. But these were the types of questions people asked my mom, who had learned to err on the side of caution, on the side of lying. Always too much to lose.
“Not really,” I said. “A soda was just the cheapest thing in the school vending machine. There was a car heading my way, on my side of the street. That’s why I drove off the road.”
“What did this car look like?”
It had been dark. I closed my eyes, tried to remember. One glance away. The heat kicking on. The glare of headlights, and I cut the wheel…“All I saw were the lights.”
The doctor was moving my head gently back and forth.
“There’s no sign of another car,” the police officer said.
I closed my eyes, tried to see it again—maybe the glare had been from my own high beams reflecting off the median. What had I really seen? It had only lasted a fraction of a second. Now that I revisited it, I started to doubt my own memory.
“Did you check the bottom of the cliff?” I asked.
He looked at me like I’d made a distasteful joke, but I was serious. He nodded to the doctor. “That’ll be all, Kelsey. Do me a favor and fill in your birthdate, phone number, and address, in case we have any more questions.”
“Sure.” I took the clipboard from his hand.
The officer pulled the curtain back as he left, and Ryan stood just outside, leaning against the desk at reception. I smiled involuntarily, and he half waved back. He was something familiar, and suddenly safe, and it reminded me of all those times at the Lodge, before things turned awkward, when he’d sit on top of the counter, smiling at me while I talked.
There was now a bandage wrapped around his upper arm, disappearing inside the sleeve of his shirt, and I wondered whether he’d gotten that from climbing in my car or if it was from the fall. The doctors chatted him up, patted his shoulder—he was still in uniform, and looked completely at home.
“Looks like someone’s here to check up on you,” the doctor said.
“He’s my ride home,” I said. And when she raised an eyebrow, I added, “He’s in my math class.”
She ran her hands over my arms, my sides, my back. I winced when she pressed my left arm, felt my body tense when her fingers skimmed my elbows. “You can expect some bruising,” she said.
She scanned my body quickly, turning over my hands, gently uncurling my fingers. “Ouch,” she said. Her eyes flicked up to my face and back down again. “Any idea how this happened?”
The deep line ran across all four fingers of both hands, the skin scraped raw. I resisted the urge to ball them back up. A secret—how close we truly came.
“No,” I said. “I don’t know.” A small lie. A learned habit.
She pressed her lips together as she treated and bandaged each one. “Are your parents coming?” she asked. “There’s still a bunch of paperwork to take care of before we can release you. And we need your insurance information.”
“No, but…” The thought trailed off as two teenagers approached the desk Ryan was leaning against. I heard the guy say my name as the girl’s gaze flitted around the room, eventually settling on me. She tapped her brother’s arm, and I shrank into myself.
Cole and Emma. Jan’s children. Both exes of mine, in one way or another.
Jan’s son, Cole, was also first-boyfriend Cole, even though it was back when he was fifteen and I was fourteen, and he probably only did it because he wasn’t supposed to. Or maybe just because I was always there.