The collective gasp of the thousands of people in response still rings in my ears.
“Is there anything you can tell us?” Beckett asks the nurse.
The unmistakable noise of metal giving under force.
“Not right now. It’s still the early stages and we’re trying to assess everything—”
“Is he going to be …”
“We’ll give you an update as soon as we can.”
The smell of burned rubber on oiled asphalt.
Shoes squeak again. Voices murmur. Beckett sighs and scrubs his hands over his face before trembling fingers reach over and pull the hand gripping my leg free and clasps it in his.
The lone tire rolling across the grass and bouncing against the infield barrier.
Please just give me a sign, I beg silently. Something. Anything. A tiny little thing to tell me to hang on to the hope that’s slipping through my fingers.
Ringing cell phones echo off of the waiting room’s sterile walls. Over and over. Like the beeps on the life supporting machines that filter out into the waiting room. Each time one silences, a little part of me does too.
I hear the hitch of Becks’ breath a moment before he emits a strangled sob that hits me like a hurricane, shredding the paper bag I have preserving my resolve and faith. As hard as he tries to push away the onslaught of tears that threaten him, he’s unsuccessful. The grief escapes and runs down his cheeks in silence, and it kills me that the man who has been the strength for me is now crumbling. I squeeze my eyes shut and will myself to stay strong for Beckett, but all I keep hearing are his words to me last night.
I shake my head back and forth in a panicked disbelief. “I’m so sorry,” I whisper. “I’m so, so sorry. This is all my fault.”
Beckett hangs his head momentarily before wiping his eyes with the palms of his hands. And the gesture—pushing away tears like a little kid does when ashamed—wrings my heart even more.
I can’t help the panic that flutters as I realize that I’m the reason Colton’s here. I pushed him away and didn’t believe him—made him tired the night before a race—and all because I was stubborn and scared. “I did this to him.” The words kill me. Rip my soul apart.
Beckett lifts his red-rimmed eyes from his hands. “What are you talking about?” He leans in close, his conflicted blue eyes searching mine.
“Everything …” My breath hitches and I pause. “I messed with his head the last couple of days, and you told me that if I did, it was on me—”
“Ryl—”
“And I fought him and left him and we stayed up so late and I put him in that car tired and—”
“Rylee!” he finally manages in a harsh tone. I just keep shaking my head at him, eyes burning, emotions overloading. “This is not your fault.”
I jolt as he puts his arms around me and pulls me into him. I fist my hands into the front of his fire suit, the coarseness of its fabric rough against my cheek.
“It was a crash. He drove into it blind. That’s racing. It’s not your fault.” His voice breaks and falls on deaf ears. His arms are around me, trapping me, and claustrophobia threatens. Suffocation claws.
I stand abruptly, needing to move, to release the unease scavenging my soul. I pace to the far end of the waiting room and back. On my second pass the little boy in the corner chair scoots off his seat to pick up a crayon. The lights on his shoes flash red and grab my attention. I narrow my eyes to look closer, to take in the inverted triangle with the S in the center.
Superman.
The name feathers through my subconscious, but my attention is drawn to the television as someone changes the channel. I hear Colton’s name and I suck in a breath, afraid to look but wanting to see what they’re showing.
It seems like the whole room stands and moves collectively. A mass of red fire suits, faces conflicted with emotion, focus on the screen. The announcer says there was a crash that halted action for more than an hour. The screen flashes to the image of the cloud of smoke and cars careening off of each other. The angle is different than ours was on the track and we are able to see more, but as Colton’s car comes into the turn, the broadcast cuts the footage. All of the shoulders around the television sag as the crew realizes that what they were anxiously anticipating will not be shown. The segment ends with the announcer saying that he is currently being treated at Bayfront.
I see Colton’s lifeless body on the gurney, Max’s beside me in his seat. The similarities of the situation knock the wind out of me, pain without end. Memories colliding.
I turn to see the Westins walk into the waiting room. Colton’s regal and commanding mother looks pale and distraught. I swallow the lump in my throat, unable to tear my eyes from the sight of them. Andy supports her gently, guiding her to sit down as Quinlan grips her other hand.
Beckett’s at their side in a flash with his arms wrapped around Dorothea and then Quinlan in quick but meaningful embraces. Andy reaches out and grabs Beckett in a longer hug, teeming with heart-wrenching desperation. I overhear a choked sob and almost break from the sound of it.
Watching the whole scene unfold causes memories to flicker through my mind of Max’s funeral. A miniature pink casket laid atop a full-sized black casket, both blanketed with red roses, remind me of the words I can’t hear again: ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Makes me remember the hollow, empty hugs that do nothing to comfort. The ones that leave you feel over-sensitized, raw when you’ve already been scraped to the core.
I start to pace again amidst the hushed murmurs of “how long until there is an update?” Faces usually so strong and energetic are etched with lines of concern. And when my feet stop I’m looking into the eyes of Andy and Dorothea.
We just stare at each other, faces mirrors of each others’ disbelief and anguish, until Dorothea reaches a trembling hand out for mine. “I don’t know what … I’m so sorry …” I shake my head back and forth as words escape me.
“We know, sweetheart,” she says as she pulls me into her arms and clings to me, both of us holding each other up. “We know.”
“He’s strong,” is all Andy says as his hand rubs up and down my back to try and comfort me. But this—hugging his parents, all of us comforting each other, the tear-stained cheeks and muffled sobs—makes it all too real. My hope that this is all a really bad dream is now shattered.
I stagger back and try to focus on something, anything, to make me feel like I’m not losing it.
But I keep seeing Colton’s face. The look of absolute certainty as he stood amid all of the chaos of his crew—the same crew that sits around me, heads in hands, lips pulled tight, eyes closed in prayer—and admitted his feelings for me. I have to stop to try and catch my breath, the pain radiating through my chest, in my heart, just won’t stop.
The television pulls at me again. Something whispers through my mind and I turn to look. A trailer for the new Batman movie. Hope reawakens as my mind reaches into its depths—into the past hour.
The Spiderman book on the table. The Superman shoes. The Batman movie. I try to rationalize that this is all just a coincidence—that seeing three of the four superheroes is a random occurrence. I try to tell myself that I need the fourth to believe it. That I need Ironman to complete the circle—to be the sign that Colton will pull through.