“Thanks,” he says.
“No problem,” I say.
Then her dad is opening the door wider, motioning Thalia and Bastien through.
“Thank you,” she says, one last time, and I wave.
She leaves. The door shuts behind her.
It’s almost two o’clock in the morning, and I’m almost three hundred miles from home.
But Thalia’s mom made it through surgery. Thalia’s here, with most of her family.
And I can still feel her on my lips. It’s the last thing I should be feeling. I should be feeling relieved, that her mom is out of surgery and the worst is over. I should be feeling guilty that I kissed her back, that I wanted it so badly, that among the thousand things I considered doing, ending the kiss wasn’t one of them.
I should be feeling concerned that her brother and father saw us, that now someone knows something.
But I’m not. I walk out of the hospital and back into the parking lot, toward my car under the orange lights, and all I feel is elated.Chapter EighteenThalia“How long until she wakes up?” I ask, and my voice echoes through the nearly-empty beige hallway.
“That depends,” my dad says, walking along efficiently. “Her doctor said anywhere from thirty minutes to two hours.”
As long as she wakes up, I think. I know people don’t, always, especially when it’s emergency surgery and there’s a lot of bleeding and possible brain injuries —
He turns sharply, into a small waiting room lined with cushioned chairs and side tables covered in old issues of People magazine.
Instantly, I can tell that this is the special waiting room. The overhead lights are off, and the room is lit by floor lamps, making it slightly more welcoming than most waiting rooms.
I stop in the door, looking in, thinking this is the nice waiting room where they put families before they tell them someone is dead.
“Move your butt,” Bastien says behind me.
“Don’t tell me to move my butt,” I say, stepping into the room. “I’ll move my butt when I want to. There, I just wanted to.”
“You moved your butt as you were told,” Bastien says, but neither of us really have our hearts in this dumb sibling argument, so I let it drop and take my backpack off, put it on one of the padded benches.
My dad and Bastien look at each other.
“Come sit by me,” my dad says, easing into one of the chairs.
I sit next to him. The fabric is the same fabric as every doctor’s waiting room: stiff, plasticky, clearly waterproof. A single wooden armrest separates the two seats, and Bastien sits on my other side, his elbows on his knees.
They look tired. I think Bastien’s been crying. My father looks like he’s aged twenty years, and he leans forward, rubs his hands together, his gold wedding band glinting in the low light.
“Your mother was t-boned making a left turn on a green arrow,” he says. “The force of the initial impact on the passenger side spun her car around, and the car coming after her didn’t stop in time and hit the driver’s side rear.”
I just nod. There are already tears pouring down my face, and Bastien puts one arm around me, pulls me into his shoulder.
“She had an open forearm fracture, broken ribs, and a collapsed lung,” my dad goes on, his tone still clipped, formal, even though I can feel the blood drain from my face. “The surgery seems to have gone well, but we’ll also need to see how the next day or so goes. It’s possible that her oxygen levels could dip and that would require further intervention.”
I take a deep, deep breath, and stare at the dark beige flecks in the light beige floor tiles.
“But she’s out, right?” I whisper. “She made it through surgery? She’s gonna wake up?”
“She made it through,” he says, tone still grave, slightly formal. But then again, he’s always sounded slightly formal. “And the doctors say they have every reason to believe that other than a possible concussion, she has no brain damage.”
Bastien hugs me tighter as I breathe in, then breathe out, trying to control myself. I want to collapse into the floor and sob with a mixture of sadness and relief and anxiety, but I don’t.
Suddenly, there’s something on my hand. I look down to see my father, taking my hand in his, then holding it tightly.
I look at him. He nods once, his mouth a tight line, his jaw flexing.
“Thanks,” I whisper.* * *A while later — I don’t know how long — the door to our waiting room opens, and a woman in scrubs leans in, nods at us.
“She’s awake and wants to see you,” she says.
Silently, we follow her through the brightly lit beige hallway, past nurses at stations, past closed door after closed door. Finally, she stops in front of an open door, the inside curtain drawn around it.