"Did he, now."
Doug heard a distant squeal of tires. He looked over Stephin’s shoulder just in time to watch Abby run her car into a fence.
31
Pale
HE WASN’T the nearest student to Abby’s car, not by a long shot, but he was the first on the scene. Her face was lost in the white pillow of the airbag, tassels of curly hair splayed like creeper all around. She wasn’t buckled in. He wrenched the door open and was already pulling her from her seat as Troy came running up yelling, "Don’t move her! Don’t move her!"
There was a right thing to do in a situation like this, and a wrong thing. The right thing was to call 911 and wait by Abby’s side, maybe even initiate CPR until the paramedics arrived. The wrong thing was to load Abby into another car and move her yourself to the closest hospital. A distant third might have been to lift Abby into your arms and run thirteen blocks to St. Mary’s Emergency in Pennwood, despite shouts of protest from the mob of kids that had gathered at the school gates.
I just acted without thinking, Doug explained to an imaginary jury of his peers after he’d been running for a mile and his mind had cleared. In emergencies a person can sometimes demonstrate astounding feats of strength.
He didn’t notice the wood-paneled station wagon that followed him all the way to the hospital. He was in another world.
The hospital waiting room was filmy and crowded with people. One man had a piece of rebar in his foot, but apparently not enough of a piece of rebar in his foot to leave the waiting room. CNN silently played on a television bolted to the ceiling.
After handing Abby off to the ER nurses Doug had been unable to answer, for various reasons, the following questions about her:
What kind of insurance she had
Whether she had a middle name
How her last name was spelled
If she was allergic to any medications
How, exactly, she’d come to have only three liters of blood in her body
Abby’s parents had been called. He’d have to face them soon. No one had actually asked him to stay, but leaving now would feel like fleeing a crime scene. He got up and sat down, got up again, walked to the hospital gift shop and stared at Mylar balloons and fist-sized teddy bears, then returned to the waiting room to find all the seats taken.
A lot of people had come to the ER in sweatpants. A thin, well-groomed woman in a tailored skirt and hose shivered in her seat while the sweatpants crowd seemed to look askance at her and wonder: Did she change clothes before coming? Did she freshen up? Doug wondered if his own clothes communicated the right amount of human concern and went to the restroom to check.
It wasn’t getting any easier, looking in mirrors. Most days he could focus below the neck, examine his clothes, all but ignore his hair now that it never seemed to get mussed up anymore. Tonight was no different, except that it was completely different. Putting aside for a moment that he was actually trying to muss himself up a bit, he also sensed the insistent stare of a pair of eyes in the mirror.
His eyes, nominally. They were set in his face, or in a kind of counterfeit of his face. There was something wrong with the expression. Something wrong with the eyes.
They looked old, inevitable. Like they’d always been here in this hospital, waiting for Doug to arrive. He didn’t like their air of blunt satisfaction. He wanted to give them something to look surprised about.
Exiting the bathroom he took this hospital scene in again and wondered, suddenly, if Abby was going to die. The white floors, white walls, cold white light that robbed everything of shadow and substance, the flimsy gowns and white coats and pajamas — were they trying to make it all look like some cheap heaven? Were they trying to prepare you for what came next?
"Doug?"
Jay’s sister, Pamela, was down the hall, looking a little fragile, unsteady. Doug tried to recall — Was she friends with Abby?
"Hey, Pamela."
"How did you find out?"
Doug didn’t know how to answer this question, didn’t understand it, really, but then Pamela was just hugging him so he hugged back.
"Have you seen my mom?" asked Pamela.
"No."
"Okay. I’ll take you up. They moved him upstairs."
Him? Jay?
"God, what the fuck? Who would do this?" said Pamela, suddenly a fury, as she let Doug go and turned back to the elevators. "Do you have any idea who would do this to a person? A person like Jay? Anyone at school?"
"No. Look," said Doug, "I don’t really know much. I just heard he was here because…because Abby my girlfriend is here, too. What happened to him?"
The elevator opened, and Pamela tucked herself into a cold corner of it. Another woman got in with them (a young and Indian-looking doctor, Doug noted), so Pamela whispered, "He’s lost a lot of blood. He was unconscious. Someone or…something bit his neck. Actually bit his neck. And Chewbacca’s dead."
Doug would have liked a chance to explain a few of those details to the doctor, but the opinions of strangers didn’t seem like the right thing to be concerned about right now, and besides — the woman just exited on the third floor like she hadn’t been listening.
All the fire had gone out of Pamela and she hugged her shoulders. "There was blood everywhere at home. You could smell…and now Dad’s being all stupid and telling the police all about how Jay dyed his hair black and started dressing better," she said, and with a target for her anger she rallied a little. "He told them to talk to Cat. He thinks they’re doing drugs. Jay and Cat, I mean. Not the police."
The elevator doors opened, and the hallway they stepped out into was indistinguishable from the one they’d left: white walls, white ceiling, polished white floor. The same odd sensation of floating.
Through the third door Jay lay asleep in a bed with his arm strapped to the side. A clear tube connected the inside of his elbow to a plastic bag on a metal stand, a plastic bag that looked like those Doug had once stolen from the Red Cross, though the liquid inside this one was colorless.
Jay’s dad rose from his bedside chair and crossed the room to meet Doug. "There he is. There he is. How are you, Doug?" He seemed to consider and then quickly reconsider hugging Doug, and instead gave him a firm, vigorous handshake, like he was trying to sell Doug a shiny new optimism. "It’s so good of you to come. Thank you." He looked over at Pamela. "You didn’t find your mother?"
"I’ll try her cell again."
Pamela left the room, and Doug and Mr. Rouse stood at the foot of the bed, watching Jay. He didn’t look like he was sleeping. Doug could see the place on Jay’s neck where the blood had been taken. Even through a patch of gauze he could see it was big, obvious, surrounded by a scribble of broken blood vessels just beneath the skin. It didn’t look anything like the evidence Doug left (or didn’t leave) on Abby. This was like graffiti. This was sending a message.
"How…" Mr. Rouse began, "how did you know to come, Doug? Did Pamela call you?"
"No, actually…I was already here for this girl I know. Abby. She…passed out while driving."
"Abby…Abby. I’ve met her, haven’t I? She dresses just like that Cat!"
That wasn’t really true. Cat dressed more punk, Abby more romantic, but they both wore a lot of black. Dark makeup. That was probably enough for Mr. Rouse. Doug knew it didn’t take much for some parents to see Satanists and death worshippers. His mom had once described his cousin Kristi as "pretty goth" for wearing plum-colored lipstick. Which matched her plum-colored polo shirt and the embroidery on her cutoffs. Mrs. Lee insisted she only wore it for "shock value."