Alex shook his head, not understanding. The hospital? Who was sick?
“Dad-”
“Now!” his father said.
They piled into his dad's car, his mother in the passenger seat, Alex confused and afraid in back, and screeched backward out of the driveway. The moment they hit the street his dad spun the wheel and locked up the brakes and Alex was thrown forward. He didn't even have his seat belt on yet. Then his dad floored it and he was thrown back again. He got his seat belt on with shaking hands just as his dad fishtailed right at the end of the street, nearly slamming Alex up against the door.
His dad kept driving like a madman, and his mother, who was never shy about opining on his dad's driving, especially when she deemed it unsafe, didn't say a word. Alex was suddenly aware he needed to take a leak. He'd been so frightened, and they'd left in such a hurry, he hadn't even realized.
“It's Katie,” his father said as though remembering for the first time that Alex didn't even know what the hell was going on. He slowed at a red light and swiveled his head to check for traffic, then rocketed through. “She was in an accident.”
Alex felt tears well up and forced them back. He heard an echo of his mother's voice in his mind and knew all at once the sound would reverberate inside him forever.
Oh no. Oh please God no.
“I don't understand,” his mother said, and Alex could hear she was crying. “Where's Ben? I thought you were going to tell him-”
“I did tell him,” Alex's father said. “He was supposed to drive Katie home. I told him specifically.”
Alex tried to understand what this was about. Earlier that day the whole family had returned from two days at the California State Wrestling Championships in Bakersfield, where Ben had won the 171-pound weight class. Ben had been ecstatic, so happy he had even surprised Alex by hugging him in front of everyone in the stands. Some kids were throwing Ben a party that night. It was for seniors and juniors, so Ben and Katie were going. No one had told Alex more than that. They never did.
“Maybe Wally drove her,” Alex said in a small voice, trying to be helpful. Wally Farquhar was Katie's boyfriend. He was a senior and had a fancy black Mustang. He never gave any sign of even knowing Alex existed, and Alex didn't like him much. He had the sense his parents weren't so crazy about Wally either.
There was a long silence, and Alex wondered if he had said something wrong. After a moment, his father spoke, his voice unrecognizably grim. “Wally was driving.”
No one said anything the rest of the way. It was as though the fact Wally had been driving had decided something, something both awful and permanent.
Alex wanted to know more, but he was afraid to ask. Katie was in a car accident… but she would be okay, wouldn't she? And why wasn't Ben driving her? His parents said he was supposed to. He wasn't able to articulate the feeling, but he sensed strongly that Ben had done something wrong, and that whatever it was, if Ben hadn't done it, none of this would be happening.
But maybe it wasn't happening. Maybe he was still asleep at home. Maybe the ache in his bladder, his dad's crazy driving, the sound his mother had made, this whole sickening lurch in their lives, maybe it was all just a terrible dream.
His father screeched to a stop in front of the Stanford Medical Center emergency room entrance and cut the engine. His parents jumped out, slamming the doors behind them, and Alex realized they weren't going to a parking lot, they were leaving the car right here. How was he supposed to know that? No one had even said anything to him, and it felt like they were just leaving him.
He got out. The night was cold and quiet and he could see his breath fogging, could see swirling cones of vapor under the sodium lights in front of the building. The façade of the hospital seemed to glow in the darkness around it, the building's edges indistinct. His sense that this could be a dream deepened.
He ran inside and pulled up next to his parents. His father was talking to a black woman in a window, a nurse or a receptionist. Katie Treven, he was saying. We're her parents. Where is she?
The woman looked at some paperwork in front of her, then at Alex's father. “She's in surgery, sir.”
Surgery. Alex's mind was flooded with visions of masked doctors in bloody gowns, white-hot operating room lights, trays of gleaming metal instruments, and the thought of Katie at the center of it all, right here, right now…
“We need to see her,” Alex's mom said, her voice equally frightened and firm. “Where is she?”
The woman looked at Alex's mother, and though her expression wasn't without compassion, Alex recognized something unmovable in it. He could sense how many times the woman had danced these steps, how accustomed she was to dealing with this situation.
“Ma'am,” she said, “I understand how upset you are. But you're not permitted into surgery. It's a sterile environment, and if you went in it could only hurt your daughter, not help her. Please, just have a seat in the waiting room. The doctor will be out shortly.”
Alex watched his parents’ shoulders slump, and they all shuffled off, meek and scared and dejected. He wondered for a moment how he could have known about the nurse. The nature of the insight felt new to him, and not entirely welcome.
There was something sadly eternal about the small rectangular waiting room, with its smell of antiseptic and rows of upholstered chairs and television flickering in the corner. The television was playing too quietly to be heard and Alex wondered what was the point, and then he realized: it was to remind people that this room wasn't the whole world, that whatever horror had summoned them here, there was still life outside. He was struck by the thought, by the newfound adultness of it, as he had been by his insight into the nurse, and for some reason the fact that he could suddenly understand such a thing frightened him.
They found three adjacent chairs and sat. Alex looked around. A dozen or so people were in there already. None paid Alex and his family the slightest attention. A Latina cradled a little girl's head in her lap, cooing softly. A little boy Alex supposed was the woman's son slumped against her shoulder, asleep. An old man in a flannel shirt moaned to himself, clutching a bloody rag against his arm. They all looked like they'd been there forever, and Alex wondered briefly if his family now looked the same.
He wanted to take his mother's hand but saw that she and his father weren't touching, so maybe that meant he wasn't supposed to. “I have to… I need to go to the bathroom,” Alex said. His mother offered only a tiny nod in response, and Alex felt guilty that he had to do something for his own comfort.
When he returned, his father had gotten up and was pacing. His mother sat so still she might have been carved from marble. Certainly her face was white enough.
Alex sat and stared at the swinging doors he assumed led deeper into the hospital. He tried not to think about Katie, about how they were operating on her. They must have given her anesthesia, right? At least she wasn't in pain.
Every twenty minutes or so his father would go to a pay phone in the corridor and call home. After the fourth such foray, he came back and said, “I got Ben. He's on the way.”
His mother looked up. “Where was he?”
His father shook his head. “I don't know. I didn't want to get into a discussion. I just wanted to get him over here.”
Less than ten minutes later, Ben burst into the waiting room, and Alex felt a wave of reassurance at the sight of his tough, broad-shouldered big brother. At least they were all together now. It could be hard to talk to Ben, and Alex knew Ben didn't exactly like him, but his brother had always protected him. Alex felt he would protect him now, too, protect all of them.