When Delilah emerged from the procedure room, her arm wrapped in gauze and her blood humming with painkillers, she needed to take only one look at her father’s face to know she shouldn’t waste her breath asking what he’d said to Gavin. She realized she didn’t have her phone; Gavin did. She couldn’t even text him to find out where he’d gone or if he’d seen Dhaval.
The waiting room was emptier than she’d expected given the voices and commotion drifting to the back treatment room. When Dr. McNeill beckoned them, her parents followed him into an office adjacent to the waiting room enclosed with glass, through which Delilah could see him explaining the injury. He pointed to his arm, then patted it and spoke emphatically, curling his fingers in a scratching motion. Delilah watched him with wide, scrutinizing eyes, trying to figure out if he was representing her version of events. She doubted it. One look at Gavin in his dark, skinny pants, scuffed shoes, and wild, dark hair, and grown-ups would think he was two steps past odd and just shy of suspicious. Delilah was the only person around who knew for sure that the only rough touch Gavin would ever give her was a biting kiss she begged for.
And then the doctor ticked a list off with his fingers in the same way he had with her before releasing her to walk back to the waiting room. She knew what he was saying:
Don’t expose the wound to water for the next twenty-four hours.
Remove the gauze after two days to let the wound breathe, and apply the antibiotic ointment every six hours.
No swimming, no baths, and don’t let it stay wet or be submerged in water.
If it looks like it’s getting infected, come back immediately.
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The drive home in the backseat was suffocating. There wasn’t enough room in the car for their three bodies, Delilah’s leaden panic, her father’s fury, and her mother’s anxious nattering.
“Gosh, it’s just been forever since we used that clinic. That Dr. McNeill is something—isn’t he, Frankie?” she asked her husband. She went on without waiting for a reply. “He’s been here since, what? The eighties? And before that it was his uncle running that office. Now, what was his name? Edwin something or other. . .”
“Miller,” Delilah’s father added flatly.
“Right! Edwin Miller. Oh, and he was a rake, wasn’t he?” her mother said, voice practically dripping with scandal.
“You’re thinking of his brother, Douglas.”
“Messed around with at least five girls from our class, though. For sure Rosemary. Also Jennifer and Deborah.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Whatever happened to him? I heard he got some young girl in trouble—”
“Never heard that.”
“—moved across the river to Missouri, but that was from Jennifer, and you know she never knows what’s really going on.. . .”
And even with the claustrophobic feeling in the car, Delilah still wanted Gavin to be in there with her. She didn’t even have his borrowed clothes anymore. The nurses had told her parents to bring in a fresh set of her own. His things were probably lying in the Dumpster behind the Urgent Care. And now, away from there, away from the singular priority that she protect Gavin at all costs, the reality of what happened started to descend. The tremor started in her right hand and spread up to her shoulder, the panic burrowing into her chest and settling into a cold block of ice.
It was madness, wasn’t it? That she’d been attacked by his house and he’d been blamed for it, and now she was bandaged and drugged and he was gone. Was he okay? Had he been arrested? Or was he home, back there, trying to reconcile what his house had done to Delilah with everything his house had done for him? This worry bounced around in her head, and even though it was nearly freezing outside, Delilah rolled down her window, simply needing air.
“Delilah Blue,” her mother cried, interrupting herself. “Roll up that window this instant or you’ll catch pneumonia!”
She rolled up her window but squeezed her eyes closed tight, trying to breathe, trying to think, trying to make sense out of any of this.
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