as she hung up the phone, she found herself staring at her fingers, clutching the edge of the bar so hard the tips had all turned white. Would prayer work at a time like this? Did the big guy upstairs listen to people who once vowed never to set foot inside a church again?
“No, it’s okay,” she said after a minute. “I’ll drive myself. I’m okay.” And she wondered if God could hear the lies she told out loud too.
Strange, Ash thought as she pulled onto Main Street a few minutes later. She didn’t think it had poured this hard all summer. Sure, maybe a quick shower here and there, but nothing so violent. Nothing that made her think that Paradise itself, its streets and its homes along with the people inside them, might be swept off the map. Her fingers shook against the steering wheel. Her stomach churned. She’d had to ask J.T. for directions to the hospital, and even though she’d written them down, she made two wrong turns and had to double back.
“Eddie’s been in an accident…”
Again and again she heard the words of his father, the tears bubbling in his voice, the control the man fought to keep. My God. The Wests had already lost one son. How could they go through it all again?
She braked hard and swerved to avoid a car abandoned in the middle of the road. Breath hissed through her teeth, and she fought for calm. Read the directions. Focus on one thing at a time. Okay, a turn at the blinking yellow light by the highway. A treacherous drive along aptly named River Street. A right turn by the Dairy Dome. Ash started counting breaths, to remind herself to inhale. Another half-mile, and the modest brick building that housed South County Medical Center rose up from the fog. Finally.
She steered into the visitors’ lot. Only one other vehicle occupied a spot, a brown pick-up truck with a dent in one side. She ran for the ER doors, which slid open as she approached. In the foyer stood an orderly. He looked her way but didn’t speak. She headed for the desk. No one there.
“Hello?” She rapped on the glass divider. After a minute a receptionist appeared, with a sweater pulled tight across her chest. For the first time, Ash realized the room was freezing, with the AC up full blast. She wrapped her arms around herself.
“Eddie West?” The words turned her tongue thick in her mouth. She tried to ask something else but couldn’t.
The woman glanced at a chart. “You family?”
Ash shook her head.
“Can’t tell you anything. Privacy laws.”
She backed away. Had they taken him upstairs, to another room? To surgery? She looked around the waiting area for his father. Not a soul.
“He’s asking for you…”
That meant he was okay, right? He wouldn’t be talking, or coherent, if he were really that hurt. Without seeing the walls around her, she moved through the waiting room on unsteady legs. In the far corner, she sank onto a blue plastic chair. Two magazines, their covers torn off, lay on a table beside her, and a coffee pot burped in the corner. Otherwise, the place was empty. No emergencies tonight, apparently, except for Eddie. How lucky for everyone else.
Ash closed her eyes. Mistake.
Eddie’s mouth on hers, his hands roaming her body, sprang to life behind her lids like it was a motion picture with a viewing audience of one. She stared at the clock above the door instead. Five o’clock. Five-oh-five. Barely the other side of afternoon. On any other day, they’d be sitting on the porch roof talking baseball. They’d be making fun of the neighbors, watching the street, telling stories. They’d be living.
She thought back to their Fourth of July party, counting the days. Two. Four. Five. Five days ago, Eddie and Ash had danced around the porch roof. Later that night, he’d kissed her. And by the next morning, she knew she loved him, somewhere in the back of her mind where the thought was so new it hadn’t even opened its eyes.
She tried to glance through a magazine, but the words and pictures blurred. She looked back at the clock and counted the erratic clicks of its old-fashioned hands. The telephone rang. A nurse walked into the waiting room on rubbery white feet, passing Ash without a glance as she pushed her way through the swinging glass door into the area beyond. Into the area, Ash assumed, where they looked