“Why aren’t you pissed at me?”
“I’m not an idiot, Jackie,” he said, his voice edged with amusement. “I know both of my brothers well enough to have put two and two together when I heard the stories. You did absolutely nothing wrong.”
Wrapping my arms around my chest, I hugged myself and refused to look at him. “How am I going to fix this?” I asked.
“Well, you can start by getting out of bed and going for a run,” he told me.
It was nice to know that at least there was one person on my side. However, I wasn’t in the mood and I let him go without me.
How was I going to survive living here now? It was hard enough in the beginning when I first arrived, but now? The school year was almost over, and I would be stuck on this stupid, isolated farm with a bunch of guys who wouldn’t even talk to me for the whole summer.
I glanced at the clock. By now there should have been some movement down the hall as people woke up, but the house was eerily silent. Groaning, I kicked off my remaining sheets and quietly put my feet on the floor. I didn’t want to make any noise. Wincing as the floorboards groaned, I crept to my door and peered outside. Every door down the hall was shut. Strange, I thought, stepping back inside.
When she tucked me in last night, Katherine had opened my window so the room wouldn’t get stuffy. It was how I heard the shouting down below. It came out of nowhere, an alarming call that broke the silence of the morning. I ran over to the window to see what was going on and saw Cole emerging from the fields carrying a bundle of something in his arms. He was dressed in work clothes and I knew that he was doing his morning chores.
“Isaac, help!” Cole shouted. It was then that I noticed Isaac standing on the back deck in his boxers, trying to sneak a morning smoke in. “Nathan’s in trouble!”
Hearing Nathan’s name, I squinted at Cole to see better, and the air froze in my lungs. In his arms was Nathan’s limp form.
“Aunt Katherine!” I heard Isaac call inside, his voice filled with panic. “Something’s wrong with Nate. I think we need to call an ambulance!”
I was moving then without having to think. I threw on a pair of pants and a shirt before racing out of my room. Down in the kitchen, Isaac was helping Cole get Nathan through the back door. The wait was nerve-racking, and by the time the white van sped up the driveway, sirens wailing and lights flashing, mostly everyone was down in the kitchen.
“What’s going on?” Danny asked as we watched the EMT load Nathan into the back. “Is he okay?”
“I don’t know,” I said, as the bile rose in my throat. “I heard shouting—Cole was carrying him—and, oh God!” I stumbled back into one of the kitchen chairs and let my head fall between my knees as I gasped for breath. My thoughts were reeling, back to the day of my family’s accident, and now all I could see were their faces blinking by in my vision, Nathan’s included.
This wasn’t happening. Not again.
“Come on, Jackie,” Danny said, gripping my shoulder and giving me a shake. “Isaac has the truck running. We’re going to the hospital.”
Despite the fact that my head was spinning, I let him pull me from the house without a fight. My thoughts were in a different place, miles away. Not once during the ride to the hospital did I think about how awkward I should be feeling sitting next to Alex. It didn’t matter. All I could think about was the fact that I might be losing another person I cared about.
Nobody knew what was wrong. All Cole said was that he went out to the barn this morning and found Nathan unconscious. The only guess that I could make was that he must have tripped while he was running and knocked himself unconscious. But even that theory sounded absurd.
Isaac’s lead foot got us to the hospital almost faster than the ambulance. Before he could even park, the truck doors flew open and everyone piled out. We tore across the parking lot and flooded the front lobby where a startled nurse directed us to the ER.
After so much rushing and panic, time passed slowly in the waiting room. No one spoke as we sat in the uncomfortable chairs, hoping to hear news from the doctors about Nathan. Cole was pacing the length of the room. Katherine was silently crying, her head resting on George’s shoulder, and Isaac was tapping his foot so hard that I was surprised he didn’t put a hole in the floor.
Finally, a man in a white coat appeared.
“Katherine Walter?” he asked, looking up from his clipboard.
She shot up out of her chair. “Yes?” she asked, her voice cracking. “That’s me.”
After introducing himself as Dr. Goodman and going through all the pleasantries that nobody cared to hear, he told us the news that we were waiting for. “Your son Nathan has just woken up, and it looks like he is going to be fine,” he said, offering her a smile.
Everyone breathed a sigh of relief.