“Do you need anything else?” Tyler asked. “Do we need to sign something?”
“No,” Officer Porter said. “Seems clear this was an accident.” He looked at me. “Don’t beat yourself up too badly, miss. These things happen.” He paused, and frowned. “But in the future, you might want to look into some gun safety training, if you’re going to be handling a weapon.”
I bobbed my head and blew my nose, just as the male nurse reentered the room. “All right, Tyler,” he said. “Time to wheel you off for some tests.” He looked back and forth between the officers. “Did you get everything you need?”
“Yep,” Officer Olsen said. “Just need to take a look at the gun.”
“I’ll take you to the truck,” I said, feeling like now that Tyler had made an official statement to the police that the shooting was accidental, I could leave him alone and not worry about him telling the hospital staff something else. I couldn’t follow him around forever. On this one issue, I’d have to trust him—I had no choice.
Twenty minutes later, after the officers had inspected the gun and confirmed for their report that there had been only one bullet discharged, I sat in the waiting room of the ER. Except for me and one older man napping on a small couch, it was empty, which wasn’t surprising. Monroe wasn’t exactly a raging metropolis; anyone with more serious, life-endangering medical issues would likely be taken to Everett, to a bigger hospital.
As I waited, I wondered what my parents would believe had happened, and how Liz and Jason would react to Tyler’s injury. I decided that I’d better at least text my parents and let them know I was okay. I’d left a note for them before I’d gone to confront Tyler, saying that I probably wouldn’t be home that night, but there was no way I’d be able to hide the fact that Tyler had been shot, and that I’d been with him when it happened.
I quickly typed out a text to both my mom and my dad, telling them that Tyler and I had gone up to the cabin to try to work things through. I said that I’d taken the gun from my father’s office just in case, as a way to feel safe and secure around Tyler, and that it had accidentally gone off. I felt terrible for lying to them, and guessed they might suspect that I had purposely pulled the trigger, but as long as Tyler and I told the same story, no one would be able to prove otherwise. Again, I was struck by the oddity of this new and unlikely alliance with the man who raped me. This lie would forever link us.
My phone immediately began to chime with anxious return texts from both of my parents—“Where are you? How could this happen? Are you okay?”—so I told them where we were, that the doctors were taking care of Tyler, and that I was fine. “He admitted what he did to me,” I told them. “He said he’ll tell the police.”
Knowing this would set off another litany of responses, I turned the sound off on my phone and shoved it back in my pocket. My stomach growled, but I ignored it, instead thinking about what the police in Bellingham would do when Tyler confessed. What kind of consequences he would endure. I had read enough about rape shield laws online to know that my name would be kept out of the paper unless I consented to having it made public, but Bellingham was a small town. People who knew our families were aware of how close Tyler and I were, not to mention there were other people who had attended the party and might put two and two together, remembering us making out on the dance floor, and then my abrupt departure with Mason and Gia. I need to move, I thought suddenly. I need to find a place where nobody knows me.
“Excuse me, miss?” a voice said, jerking my attention back to the waiting room.
“Yes?” I said, startling in my chair, realizing that I’d begun to doze off. I looked up to see the same male nurse who had taken Tyler for his tests standing in front of me.
“Everything looked good. He’ll need some physical therapy, but the bullet missed the joint, so there’s no need for surgery. We’re going to clean the wound and pack it, put him in a sling, and give him some antibiotics and pain meds, and then you two can be on your way.”
“Thank you,” I said, strangely relieved that Tyler’s injury hadn’t been worse. Maybe the long shadow of our friendship would always be the first filter through which I saw him. Maybe, no matter the damage he’d done or how hard I tried to fight it, there would always be part of me that cared.
? ? ?
We left the ER in Monroe around two p.m., and spent an hour and a half in silence as I drove us north—home, to Bellingham. Tyler slept most of the way, but then, just as I turned on my blinker and took the Lakeway exit off of I-5, he spoke.
“Do you want me to do it today?” he asked. His voice was dull. Defeated. “Should we go downtown right now?”
“Yeah,” I said. “We should.”
“They’ll want you to make a statement, too, I’m sure,” Tyler said. “But probably not until after I’ve made mine.”
“Okay.” I wanted to say more, but I was so tired, my brain seemed to be running out of words. “I told my parents we went up to the cabin to try and talk things out, and that I brought the gun just to help me feel safe around you. I told them it went off on its own. That it was an accident.”
“Then that’s what I’ll say, too,” he said.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him turn and look at me, but I forced myself to keep my gaze forward as I turned onto Lakeway Drive and followed it until it became West Holly, a one-way street that led downtown. “You promise you’ll tell them everything,” I said, my voice an octave higher than usual. “You’ll tell them what you did?”
“I promise,” Tyler said, without hesitation.
I drove toward Grand Street, thinking that I’d need to have one or both of my parents come pick me up at the station and take me to get my car, where I’d parked it last night when I was waiting for Tyler’s shift to end. I couldn’t believe that barely thirteen hours had passed since the moment I approached him in the parking lot. It seemed like another lifetime; I felt like I’d aged a hundred years.
As I pulled into a parking spot and turned off the truck’s engine, Tyler looked at me again. “I know this doesn’t change anything,” he said. “And I know it doesn’t help, but I really am sorry. I’d do anything to fix it.”
“Do this,” I said, keeping my voice hard, even though a small spot inside my heart ached hearing the angst threaded through his words. “Do what you promised to do.”
“And that will make things right?” he asked, with a sliver of hope.