Hannah’s voice cracked. “Is she . . . going to be okay?”
Kim noticed a piece of a champagne bottle lying next to Ronni’s bloodied hand. Just the foil-wrapped neck, still intact, still festive and girlish and fun. Damn them . . . “How much did she drink?” Kim barked. “What did she take?”
Hannah and Caitlin shared a look, possibly summoning the courage to answer. Jeff surveyed the room and cut them off before they could speak. “Who’s missing?”
Kim looked, too, and realized they were down a girl. “Where’s Lauren?” she demanded. Marta pointed at the bathroom, too upset to speak.
“She doesn’t do blood,” Caitlin elaborated.
Ronni emitted a low moan that jarred Jeff into action. “Hannah, go upstairs and get some gauze. Kim call nine-one-one.”
The look of terror on her husband’s face made her cold, and for the first time, she was aware that she was wearing only a thin nightie. Hannah hurried past her and Caitlin stood, allowing Kim her first glimpse of Ronni’s face. It was slack, unconscious, ghostly underneath the smeared makeup. A mask of vomit and blood coated her right cheek; her right hand and arm were sliced, raw, bloodied. . . . Beneath Ronni’s eye, a flap of skin dangled, providing a grotesque glimpse of milky-white eyeball bathed in red. Kim felt stomach acid burn her throat.
“Kim!” Jeff snapped. She tore her eyes away and hurried to the phone.
IT WAS DECIDED that Kim and Hannah would ride in the ambulance with Ronni; Jeff would drive the other girls home and explain the night’s events to their parents. Normally, the roles would have been reversed. Kim was more articulate, better at explaining the circumstances in diplomatic terms, while Jeff was calm and commanding in a crisis. But Kim knew she shouldn’t drive after the wine and sleeping pill. Of course, the shock of Ronni’s accident had left her feeling completely alert, but it wasn’t a risk she wanted to take. Jeff had only had a couple of light beers with dinner. He was fine.
And so Kim sat in the back of the ambulance beside her daughter, who clutched Ronni’s unharmed left hand and cried softly. Ronni’s damaged eye was covered with thick gauze, thankfully, but blood was slowly seeping through, staining the sterile white a deep crimson. The injured girl had briefly come to, stammering something about being cold, which the burly male paramedic attributed to shock.
“How much did she have to drink tonight?” he asked Hannah matter-of-factly. Kim took in his cropped dark hair, his ruddy complexion, his robust masculine energy. Really, he was straight out of central casting.
“Umm . . .” Hannah’s searching eyes met her mother’s, and Kim gave her an encouraging nod. “She had some vodka. And then some rye. Some J?germeister—I don’t know how much—and champagne.”
So much alcohol . . . Where did they get it? But Kim maintained her composure, even giving Hannah’s knee a supportive squeeze. The girl rewarded her with a grateful smile. The paramedic continued to fuss with Ronni’s oxygen mask, checking various digital readouts. “Any drugs?”
Hannah glanced at her mom, then dissolved into tears.
“Answer him,” Kim said coolly. She could feel her calm facade slipping. Sneaking a few drinks on your sixteenth birthday was normal, cliché even, but drugs now? Did she even know her daughter? Did she know any of these girls? But a glance at Ronni tempered her outrage. She was intensely grateful that it wasn’t Hannah lying bleeding on the gurney. Still . . . she suddenly felt that her years of careful parenting had been for naught.
“I think she took a Xanax.” Hannah sobbed. “And maybe some ecstasy.” She turned to Kim. “I’m sorry. We were stupid.”
“Yes, you were,” Kim said, and the magnitude of her failure threatened to overwhelm her. Despite all her devotion and parent education, her daughter had slipped into substance abuse right under Kim’s well-informed nose.
“Have you called her parents?” It was the paramedic. Though his attention was fixed on Ronni, Kim realized he was addressing her.
“I-I didn’t have a chance . . . ,” she stammered. “It happened so fast.”
“Call them when we get to the hospital. They need to be with her.”
For the first time, Kim started to cry.
LIKE ALL MOTHERS, Kim knew that forgetting her phone meant that one of her children would break his or her arm or the house would catch fire. Even in the terror and chaos of that night, she’d grabbed it off the charger and dropped it in her pocket. (She’d also hurriedly put on a bra and sweater, pulled on a pair of jeans.) Now she paced the sterile hospital hallway, fingering the cold metal casing in her pocket. Of course Lisa had to be called. If it were Hannah lying there covered in bile and blood, her eye dangling out of its socket, Kim would want to be there. And yet, she hesitated.
The thought of delivering the news to her friend made her feel physically sick. This would devastate Lisa. Kim could only imagine being woken from an innocent slumber to the news that her child—Lisa’s only child—was lying bloodied and broken in a hospital bed. It was too much to bear. But it was more than empathy that made her fingers cold and useless as they tentatively touched the face of her phone. It was fear.
She was scared . . . terrified, actually. It was more than just “shoot the messenger” anxiety. It wasn’t that Kim felt culpable, exactly. She had laid down strict rules that the girls had blatantly broken. They’d been sneaky and conniving and deceitful. But still . . . it had happened on her watch, and she knew how Lisa would feel. Any semblance of friendship they’d once had would be destroyed.
A fresh-faced woman, in her early-thirties and wearing a clinical white jacket, was walking toward her: the doctor. Her face was grave. “Are you the mother?”
“No, I’m her mom.” Kim pointed at Hannah curled up in a chair in a ratty pair of gray sweats and her dad’s sweatshirt. The effects of a night of drinking, panic, and crying were showing themselves on her puffy, makeup-streaked face. “It’s her birthday. Ronni was at our house.”
The doctor nodded. “Ronni’s stable for the moment.”
Kim realized this was what she’d been waiting for: reassurance. She could call Lisa now and tell her that Ronni would be okay.
“You need to get the parents down here,” the doctor said. “We need to get her into plastics. Someone’s got to sign the consent.”
“I’ll call right now,” Kim said, feeling subtly chastised.
“Good,” the doctor replied, heading back toward the curtained-off area where Ronni was being assessed. “We’ll try our best to save the eye.”
Kim heard her daughter’s renewed whimpering, but she didn’t have time to comfort her. She had to make the call. She couldn’t put it off another second.
lisa
THAT NIGHT