I reach down and brace my hands against the edge of the mattress, and try to work up the strength to get back on my feet. My mother’s hands are on me again in a heartbeat. “You can’t,” she says, trying to push me back onto the hospital bed. “You’ll hurt yourself.” Her voice is firm but her hands are gentle. Too gentle. I push past them easily.
“I don’t care,” I say. “I have to find her.” God, she doesn’t even have any family left. Both of her parents are dead and she’s never really talked about any of her foster parents. She’ll be all alone. I can’t leave her all alone. I make it all of two steps away from the bed when I feel the painful tug and look down. My left arm is in a cast, and the other is hooked up to about a million different wires. Fuck. How bad had the accident been? I reach down and, using the half-numb fingers on my broken hand—at least, I’m assuming it’s my hand that’s broken. It’s hard to tell when the cast starts close to my fingertips and goes nearly all the way up to my elbow—I tug the little heart-rate monitoring clip off my finger and then reach for the IV line.
“Don’t touch that!” my mother snaps, reaching out and batting my hand away. “You need that medicine right now.”
“Fine,” I say, and reach out with my good hand and grab the IV pole next to my bed. It’s not hooked up to anything else, and it wheels freely toward me when I pull it. Good. With my other hand, I reach up and start pulling off the monitoring sensors they’ve attached to my chest. Beside me, a machine starts beeping like it’s doing some sort of end-of-the-world countdown, but I don’t care. Finally free, I start heading toward the door.
“Ashley! Get back here! You need to rest.”
My mother’s voice keeps getting louder with every word, but nothing she says is going to stop me. I feel a smirk start to pull at my lips as I limp forward out the door. I don’t even need to turn around; I know that behind me, Mom looks like she’s about to blow a gasket, and Dad’s looking helplessly around the room. They’re never going to change. “At least let me get you a wheelchair!” is the last thing I hear from the room as I turn and start hustling down the hallway.
The hospital is surprisingly quiet. I keep expecting nurses to jump out of nowhere and drag me back to my room, to have doctors rushing by with gurneys of people bound for emergency surgery, shoving me out of the way. But it’s calm out in the hall.
I don’t know where I’m going. For all I know, Star could be in the room beside me or on the other side of the fucking hospital, if she’s even in this hospital at all.
A million thoughts run through my mind at once as I approach the counter of the nurses’ station. What if my parents were lying? What if Star isn’t okay? What if she didn’t survive the crash?
Fuck. I need to find her. Right now.
I take the last few steps a little too quick and hit the counter with an amount of force that I really didn’t intend, and the pressure slams through my chest and makes black spots swirl in front of my eyes all over again. Fuck. I’m more hurt than I thought. I can hear the rapid clip of footsteps coming up behind me, and I know my mother is hot on my tail, so I have to make this quick.
“Hey!” I yell, leaning across the deserted counter, hoping against hell that there’s someone in the room behind it. “Hey!”
A second later a guy in pale blue scrubs hustles out, his eyes widening when he sees me. “You, Nurse-Dude. I need to know where my girlfriend is.” I’ve never called her that before, but damned if it isn’t true.
“Uh, sir? I think you should be in bed,” he says, blinking at me like he’s never seen a fucking beat-up guy before in his life. Some shitty nurse he is.
“Not gonna happen, asshole,” I say, and lean farther over the counter, shrugging off my mother’s hand when it hits my shoulder. “Star Collins. S-T-A-R C-O-L-L-I-N-S. Look it up in your little computer there and tell me where she is.” The guy looks back and forth between me and my mom, and for a second I think he’s going to piss himself.
“Sir, really,” he says. “I’m going to have to insist that you return to your room. The doctor will be in to see you shortly—”
“Fuck that,” I snap, and push myself off the counter. The hallway spins around me and I have to stop for a second and breathe through it, get my feet under me again. After a second, I shake it off and open my eyes. There’s probably a dozen people in the hallway now, and every single fucking one of them is staring at me.
“Ash—”
“No,” I say and start walking—limping—down the hallway. “I’ll find her myself.”
I’m booking it down the hall, and I can hear my mom and the nurse whispering behind me, but I couldn’t give a shit if I tried. I pull in a deep breath and start yelling for Star. Everyone who’s got their eyes on me seem to jerk in unison, and a couple people actually turn and scurry back into their rooms like rats. Good. Stay out of my way.
“Star!” I yell, but other than my mother and the nurse, the hallway is silent. Fuck. Where is she? I move faster, half pulling the IV stand and half using it for balance when my knees start to get weak. My right thigh is aching like a bitch, but I don’t look down. If I see it, whatever it is, it’ll just hurt worse.
“Star! Baby, where are you?” I say, my voice dropping low. The hallway is fucking spinning around me, and I have to squeeze my eyes shut for a moment. I’ve got the IV pole in a death grip, but it isn’t helping. If I don’t sit down soon, I’m going to be going down, anyway. I have to find her.
“STAR!” I yell, my voice booming down the hallway. And for long, terrible seconds, there’s nothing, and I can feel my body start to shake again.
“Ash?” I whirl around at the sound, afraid for a second that I’ve imagined it. But then it’s back, louder this time. “Ash!”
Holy shit. It’s her. It’s Star.
I turn down the hallway to my left, limping as I try to keep as much weight off my right side as possible, booking it toward the source of the sound.
“Star!”
“Ash!”
I skid to a stop and turn to my right. There she is. Holy shit. I feel hot and cold all at once, and my throat feels like someone’s got their hands around it, and they’re wringing the life out of me. But fuck, it doesn’t matter. It’s her.
“Jesus,” I say, the word barely making it out past the stranglehold on my throat. I don’t know how I did it, but suddenly I’m right in front of her. She’s got tears streaming down her face, and I reach out with my busted hand and touch them, wipe them away, just to be sure that she’s real. She lets out a sob and reaches for me. One of her hands is bandaged up like a mummy, and she’s all black and blue, but she’s here. She’s here and we’re okay.
“Oh god,” I fall forward and gather her up in my arms. The IV pole catches on something and goes tumbling to the floor. I feel it jerk the line attached to my arm, and it hurts like a bitch, but I don’t care. I’ve got her in my arms. I can’t stop shaking.
She’s crying, but I realize that I am, too. Big, nasty sobs that I press into her hair as I try to breathe through the ache in my chest. I feel like I’m dying. I press my lips against her ear, and try to take in enough air to force words out, but I’m shaking so bad. We both are.
“Ash . . . ” she says, and her voice is a fucking whimper and I can’t . . . I just . . .
“Jesus Christ,” I say against her hair, pulling her closer even though I don’t have to. She’s pressed as close as physically possible. Any closer and we’d be inside each other’s skin. My face is wet, and I can’t get the tears to stop, but it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t fucking matter. She’s alive. I pull back just enough to press our foreheads together. “I love you,” I say, and I press my mouth to hers. “You hear me, Star?” I ask as soon as I break the kiss, because she needs to hear it. I need her to hear me, to understand. “I love you so fucking much. Don’t leave me, okay? Whatever you want. Just don’t leave.”