live? Where will I sleep?”
My father opened his billfold and extracted a stack of paper money.
“Here. Use this to stay in a hotel and buy food until you find them. I will miss you Abigail,” he said in a voice scratchy with emotion. “You were a good daughter.”
Were.
Feeling like I was in a dream, I took the money and stuffed it into my skirt pocket. I climbed down from the buggy, took one last look at the man who’d raised me, then turned and walked through the sliding glass doors into the bright, busy emergency department.
“May I help you, hon?” a woman called to me from behind a high desk. “Are you okay? Do you need to be seen?”
“Be seen?” I asked in confusion, still dazed by the fact I’d been ex-communicated by my own father. Who was clearly afraid of me.
“Do you need to see a doctor? There’s blood on your clothing. Are you hurt?”
“Oh. No. I’m... fine,” I mumbled. “But my friend is here. I think. Josiah Yoder? Can you check and see where he is?”
“Sure. I can see if he’s been admitted.” She typed on a keyboard, peering intently at the screen before her. “Oh yes. He came in last night. Car accident—but I guess you know that already. He’s in the ICU now. They limit visitors, though.”
“Was anyone else brought in from that accident? Another young guy?”
My shaky memories contained images of Reece’s face and an overturned red sportscar engulfed in flames. But I also felt sure I’d seen him run away from the crash scene. It was all a jumbled mess in my mind.
“No. I’m afraid Josiah Yoder is the only one who uh... survived the accident,” the woman said.
Studying my face for a few seconds, hers softened. “You know what? Why don’t you go on up to the nurses’ station on Floor Six? Talk to the charge nurse there. Maybe they’ll let you in to see him for just a few minutes. The elevator is right around that corner there.”
I thanked her and walked in the direction she pointed, finding the bank of elevators and pushing the glowing button to summon one.
I’d never been in a hospital before, but I’d been to a shopping mall with Hannah, and we’d ridden the elevators there.
Back then it had seemed very exciting and “worldly.” Now I felt like I was living in a whole different world. Nothing seemed real to me, as if this was all a continuation of a nightmare.
Hannah and Aaron were dead. Reece must have died too, and I... I wasn’t sure what I was now—maybe somewhere in between alive and dead?
Maybe seeing Josiah would help. He’d been through the same horrific experience I had. He would understand how I felt.
Now that I thought about it, maybe he would be able to relate in every way to what I was going through. He and I were the only two to “survive” the accident. Maybe he’d been bitten last night as well.
Something leapt in my chest. Was it wrong that I was almost hoping he had been? I didn’t want him to be shunned by his family and community, but if he had become a vampire as well, I wouldn’t be alone.
We could figure out our next steps and learn how to navigate this new life—if you could call it life—together.
That hope was dashed as soon as I spotted him.
Once again, my unusually acute new sense of smell detected his signature scent. He was in the first ICU room on my right as I approached the nurses’ station.
The large window gave me a clear view of his bed. While my injuries, including the bite on my hand, had healed overnight, Josiah was in rough shape. In fact, if I hadn’t picked up on his scent, I might not have believed it was him.
Both his eyes were swollen shut, the lids grossly misshapen and stained with red and purple. The rest of him didn’t look much better.
There were huge scrapes on his forehead and chin, I guessed from the asphalt, and matching ones on his right forearm and knuckles. The left arm was entirely covered by a cast, as was his left leg.
My vision blurred, and I turned away from the window taking deep breaths and pressing a fist against my midsection which felt tied up in knots.
I approached the nurses’ station in slow motion. “Hello. I’m a friend of Josiah Yoder’s. Can I… see him?”
The nurse’s answering expression wasn’t encouraging. “There’s a limit on how