Fuck, I think I might be sick.
“He’s fine,” I say out loud, as though that can make it true. “He’ll be fine.”
Siri interrupts the broadcast again to tell me to make a turn, and for the next twenty minutes I can barely hear any of the radio as Siri guides me through a series of complicated roundabouts and side streets. By the time I’m back out on open road, Lisa is signing off, and John is promising to keep us updated as more information is available. I hit the off button as a news broadcast starts up, and Siri tells me that in seven minutes, my destination will be on the right.
In seven minutes, I tell myself, I’ll find him waiting for me with minor injuries. I can already picture it—he’ll be in some awful, sterile hospital room, and there will probably be all sorts of people at his side, but he’ll see me come in and crack a smile, crooked and subtle and just for me. I’ll keep my distance until I can get him alone, and then he’ll make some smart comment about me worrying about him and roll his eyes like I’ve been foolish. He’s like that, always playing things off, never admitting weakness or defeat. But if Parrot and the others are as bad off as it sounds, he’ll be shaken. I probably won’t have much time to be alone with him—fuck, his parents flew in for this race, didn’t they?—but I’ll take his hand and kiss the very center of his palm—
“In three hundred meters, your destination is on the right,” Siri says, jerking me out of my thoughts.
As I turn into the hospital, I’m thankful for the bits of French I’ve learned over the years. Stationnement, that’s the parking lot,although I’m not sure if it’s quite the right one. The hospital seems to have several different buildings, and I drive past three separate entranceways before I find a parking spot.
I find the closest entrance and walk into a small, quiet waiting room with a registration desk. I get a horrible sense of déjà vu as I walk in. I haven’t been inside a hospital since my dad died. He was already dead when I got there. The ER doctor had called to tell me. For a moment, I feel a flicker of hope—Jacob can’t be dead yet, because no one’s called to tell me.
Then I shake my head at my own stupidity. Even if he’s dead, I’m the last person anyone would think to call.
The sign by the registration desk says “Enregistrement—Chirurgie Cardiothoracique,” which doesn’t sound right at all. The woman behind the desk is speaking in rapid French to an elderly gentleman holding an appointment card. I wait behind him for about five seconds before I spot a sign on the hall to the right that says “URGENCES.” I take off at a run—that must be the ER.
There are a few more signs along the way, but the hospital is so big I keep getting lost. It doesn’t help that they’re doing construction on some of the buildings. I’m getting increasingly desperate, typing “Hôpital Nord emergency room directions” into my phone when I spot a hospital volunteer wearing a bright red vest.
“Est-ce que je peux vous aider?” she asks cheerfully.
“Emergency room?” I blurt out, too anxious to remember what it was called in French.
“Ah, oui,” she says, before switching to heavily accented English. “You will go down this hall, just here, then you are turning left, down the long hall, then there is a door that leads—away? Non, outside,” she corrects herself. “You are walking straight across, there is main registration.”
“Thanks,” I choke out, already hurrying away. Down the hall—left—down the long hall, which is so long I start to worry I’ve lost my way. But, no—there’s the door that leads outside. I emerge onto a sunny sidewalk. Across the road is the entrance to another building, with a bright red sign that says “URGENCES.”
Someone honks as I sprint across the road and through the doors. The air conditioning is bitterly cold after the heat outside, and the waiting room is filled with people, some of them looking pale and sickly, others red-faced and impatient.
At the registration desk, one of those red-faced, impatient assholes is berating the clerk, who wears a thin, beleaguered smile. I don’t understand a word of his rant, but I don’t have to. He’s being a dick about the wait, never mind the fact that there are people here with actual emergencies.
The girl behind the desk purses her lips as the jackass finally stomps away, and yet after he’s gone, she gives me a patient smile and gestures me forward. She says something in French, too quickly for me to understand.
“Er—Anglais?” I say awkwardly.
“Oui, a little,” she says, still smiling kindly. There’s a line forming behind me now, but she looks me right in the eye, as though she’ll wait as long as it takes to help. People like her don’t get paid enough, I think.
“I’m looking for someone who was brought in,” I say. I have to swallow twice on a paper-dry throat before I can spit out his name. “Jacob Nichols.”
“Ah.” The girl types something into her computer and squints at the screen. When she looks back at me, there’s something terribly pitying in her gaze. “And you are—friend? Famille?”
“Family,” I lie.
She nods. “He was in emergency, but he is transferred now, to USI. You take the elevator—là—to ninth floor. Press the bell and tell them who you look for.”
“USI,” I croak. “Is that—is that bad?”
Her eyes soften even more, and I think I might vomit. “It is—” She hunts for the words. “L’unité de soins intensifs. Intensive care.”
Intensive care.
I don’t remember to thank her. I just stumble away, those two words ringing in my ears.
The elevator ride takes a year. There’s a middle-aged woman riding with me who asks me something in French and then looks offended when I don’t answer. She gets off at the fifth floor with a little huff of irritation, and I ride the rest of the way alone.
The doors open right into the intensive care waiting room. I don’t need to speak fluent French to know that’s what it is. The walls are painted a depressing shade of gray, and everyone sitting in the expensive-looking chairs has the same pale, tight look on their face. These people look just how I feel. Like they might fall apart at any moment.
At the far end of the room is a door with a buzzer next to it and a placard of complicated-looking instructions. I press the buzzer and then wait, in perfect silence, for the door to open. No one in the waiting room looks at me or makes a sound. Just like me, they live in bubbles. Nothing exists outside of their fear.
