“Sorry,” Barbara said, but like she wasn’t very sorry at all. She was gripping the arms of the chair she’d been glued to since she’d arrived. “But I’m not leaving.”
“Really, Ms. Carlson, it would be much better for Hannah if you and your husband could give us some space,” the gray-haired doctor repeated. “Just five minutes or so and you can come right back.”
They were going to do something they thought Steve and Barbara shouldn’t see, change the colostomy bag, move around Hannah’s floppy arms and legs. Something that made their daughter seem much worse off. The doctors had been optimistic but vague. What did “recover” and “regain functioning” mean? That Hannah would be 100 percent back to who she had been? Whoever that even was. In any case, the doctors needed her body temperature up before they would venture guesses.
“Come on,” Steve said to Barbara. His voice was hoarse. He’d been screaming—one of the officers at the scene had told her that, too—screaming Hannah’s name. “Let’s get out of their way for a minute. I could use some coffee.” He put a businesslike hand on Barbara’s shoulder. That was how he’d been the whole time at the hospital: all business.
“Okay, fine,” she said, for Steve’s sake, though, not for the doctors’. “But only for a minute.”
She followed Steve in silence down the hall toward the elevators. Instead of pressing the button for floor two (and the cafeteria), Steve pressed G for the ground floor.
“I thought you wanted coffee?”
Steve was avoiding eye contact. “Let’s take a walk instead.”
And so Barbara followed Steve off the elevator without arguing, even if the last thing in the world she wanted to do was take a walk. Her doing what Steve wanted was a peace offering, though she hardly felt like it was her responsibility to be holding out olive branches.
The hospital doors snapped open and they walked into the bright sunshine. It was warm for mid-March, the sky an unearthly blue that felt so terribly wrong under the circumstances. Steve was walking a bit ahead, more briskly now, as though trying to avoid her potential objections. And he was headed for those awful benches facing an inset patch of grass. It was a peaceful space for quiet contemplation. As far as Barbara was concerned, it was just like the dismal hospital chapel: too funereal.
“They said five minutes, Steve,” Barbara called after him. Anywhere but those benches. “I don’t want to go far.”
“We won’t,” he said. But he didn’t slow down, didn’t look back at her.
We have to talk, he’d said hours earlier. Before the river, before his wet clothes, before Hannah and all those doctors. Barbara had managed to completely erase it from her memory, until now. There was nothing good about Steve saying We have to talk. Barbara knew that from personal experience.
It had been unseasonably warm that night, more like August than June. There was only a week until graduation, and just when Barbara and Steve were about to start a life together, all of a sudden he was pulling away.
More and more Barbara had caught Steve looking at Jenna. Worse, he was trying to hide it less and less. Almost like he wanted Barbara to get so mad that she’d break up with him. It wasn’t just his looking at Jenna that was the problem either. It was the way he was looking—love, that was the look on his face. Which proved how not about Jenna his distance was. Because there was nothing to love about Jenna Mendelson. She was a whore, plain and simple. And now poor Steve was another one of the stupid boys who’d fallen for her wares.
Ignoring his wandering eye had seemed to be working until that night, when Steve had said he wanted to “talk” to Barbara. What teenage boy ever wanted to “talk” to his girlfriend about anything other than breaking up? But that wasn’t happening. Barbara was sure of that much.
“Hi there,” she called sweetly as she climbed into Steve’s beat-up Chevy truck.
“Hey,” he’d said, already unhappy.
Barbara was going to ignore that, too. She’d ignore everything if she had to. Steve was trying to sabotage what they had because he was scared, and Barbara wasn’t having it. They were perfect for each other. And they were going to be together, especially now. Steve would snap out of it once she told him. He was a good guy. He would do the right thing.
Barbara leaned over to kiss Steve in the driver’s seat. She’d worn an extra-short skirt and one of her tighter Tshirts for the occasion, and they both rode up on purpose when Barbara tipped herself over. Steve hesitated but turned and kissed her quickly, more like a lip bump.
“I know I said I didn’t want to go to the woods tonight,” Barbara said. “But it’s the last party, so let’s go!”
“Yeah, maybe.” Steve rubbed at his forehead with his thumb as he stared down at the steering wheel. “I think we should talk first, though.” He shifted in his seat. He wasn’t really going to do this, was he? Break up with her on this night, of all nights? Barbara had to head him off at the pass. Otherwise, they’d be stuck knowing forever what he’d really wanted.
“Okay, Steve, but there’s something I have to tell you, too.” Barbara turned to look out the open window toward her parents’ big, beautiful house, which would someday be their big, beautiful house. “Can I go first?”
“Okay,” Steve said after a long pause. Then he reached over and squeezed Barbara’s knee in a weird “let’s be friends” way. “Shoot.”