Mac looked down at me. “Already?”
The fifteen minutes or so I had here in the parking lot before I had to leave for Kiger always went too quickly. “I left my computer charger at home, and my mom’s bringing it to me. I need to be on time today.”
“Okay,” he said. But his arm stayed around me, and I didn’t budge. This usually took a couple of tries. As I thought this, I felt his phone, in his pocket, buzz against my leg. I extracted myself as he reached for it, glancing at the screen. “Shit.”
“What is it?” I asked.
“My mom.”
On my other side, Layla, studying her own phone, looked up. “What’s going on?”
Mac was already typing something. “Shortness of breath, and she started to pass out. They called the doc. Meeting him at the hospital.”
“Crap,” Layla said. “Let’s go.”
She pulled open the truck’s passenger door, throwing her bag on the floorboard. Mac, however, stayed where he was, again scanning his phone’s screen. “We’re supposed to go to Seaside and stay there.”
“What? I want to go to the hospital.”
“Dad says no. He wants us to man the shop.” Mac started around the truck. “Rosie will keep us posted.”
“You know she’s terrible at that,” Layla said. “We’re lucky she even told us they were en route. I need to be there.”
“Are you not listening to me? I can’t take you. Now get in, we’ve got to go.”
“I’ll take her.” I said this without thinking. It was only in the next beat that I remembered I was already late leaving for where I had to be.
“You sure?” Mac asked me, climbing behind the wheel. “What about your mom?”
“It’s an emergency. She’ll understand.” I hoped.
“Keep me posted?”
“Yeah.” Layla grabbed her bag while he cranked the engine. “Thanks, Sydney.”
“Sure.”
He backed out of the spot, kicking up a cloud of gravel dust all around us, and started driving out of the lot, dodging the familiar potholes. At the stop sign by the guardhouse he barely paused, prompting a shouted warning from the security officer there. And then he was gone.
“Which hospital?” I asked Layla once we, too, were on our way out.
“U General.”
That was all the way across town. “Are you sure?”
“It’s the only place that takes our insurance,” she replied. “Sorry.”
“No, it’s okay,” I assured her. I glanced at my dashboard clock. Three thirty already, and we hadn’t even left yet.
I tried not to think of the time, even as we hit every red light along the way. I’d never been to U General—everyone at the Arbors used Lakeview Methodist, which was brand-new and only a mile away—and the signs were hard to follow, especially in a distant part of town I didn’t know well.
Finally, after winding our way through a construction zone and two more red lights, I was pulling up to the emergency room entrance.
“This is good,” Layla said, gathering up her stuff as I slowed to a stop behind an ambulance, its back doors flung open. No one was inside.
“Do you want me to go in with you?” I asked her.
“No, I’m fine. Thanks. I’ll call you, okay?”
She got out, shutting the door behind her, and slung her bag over her shoulder before walking quickly through a set of automatic doors. I felt guilty for not going with her, balanced by a sense of relief as I pulled away, finally heading in the right direction. On my way around the traffic circle, I passed a city bus stop, the bench packed with people. A little boy with his arm in a sling, his face solemn, watched me as I went by.
By now, I was a full half hour late for my shift at Kiger. I’d already texted Jenn that I’d had an emergency and would be there as soon as I could, but she wasn’t the one I was worried about. All the way to the hospital and back, through traffic and more red lights, I kept waiting for my phone to buzz. Where are you? my mom would ask, and I didn’t even know how to tell her in a simple text. I was just hoping for mercy once we were face-to-face. When I pulled into the Kiger lot, I found Ames instead.
“Sydney, Sydney,” he said as I walked up to where he was standing. He had my computer charger coiled neatly—I recognized my mom’s handiwork at a glance—in his hands. “You were supposed to be here forty-five minutes ago.”
“I had something to do,” I told him, reaching for the charger.
He pulled it back, just out of my reach. “Funny, Julie didn’t say anything about you having plans. Did she know?”
I felt my jaw clench. Inside, Jenn was behind the counter, watching us. “I needed to give a friend a ride to the hospital.”
“Oh.” He still hadn’t handed over my charger. “Everybody okay?”
“Hope so. May I please have that now?”
Finally, slowly, he relinquished it. “You know, you’re putting me in a bad spot again. Your mom’s done a lot for me. I don’t feel right lying to her.”