The door finally opens on a thin guy in pale blue scrubs.
“Oui? Est-ce que je peux vous aider?”
I clear my throat. Behind him, I can see a long row of glass-walled hospital rooms.
“I’m looking for Jacob Nichols,” I mumble. Trying to keep my voice down, even now.
“Vous êtes famille?”
I hesitate this time, but only for one heartbeat. “Yes.”
“Oui, entrez,” he says, waving me forward. “Salle neuf cent vingt-quatre.”
I follow him, moving on autopilot. “Is he okay?” I manage.
“He is not my patient,” the guy says, switching to accented English. “Voilà, c’est là.”
He points to a room up ahead and then hurries away. I stumble along a bit farther—I can see “924—neuf cent vingt-quatre” engraved on one of the frosted glass doors just ahead. Time slows down as I walk forward. I can hear voices from inside. I can see shadows moving.
The door is half open. Someone is crying inside, a woman. His mother, maybe? My heart thuds painfully. I’ve never met his mother. She doesn’t know that I exist.
I step closer, and then I can see him.
My whole body goes numb. I have to clutch the doorframe to stay upright.
I had hoped—
I had thought—
I know it’s stupid, but a small part of me still hoped he was one of the ones with minor injuries. I was expecting... I don’t know. A split lip. A gash in his forehead. I was so stupid, I hadn’t even thought of broken bones.
He looks so, so much worse than I could’ve imagined.
One leg is casted and hanging from some medieval-looking contraption on the ceiling, and there’s a catheter draining bloody urine into a bag, and another tube coming out of his chest. IVs are dripping fluid into both arms, and there’s a heart monitor beeping over the bed, and another, bigger IV dripping stuff into his neck.
And... he isn’t breathing on his own. I’ve seen enough medical TV shows to know that’s a breathing tube sticking out of his mouth. There’s a bag attached to it, and tubes running into a massive machine on the side of the bed, and rhythmically, the bag inflates and deflates.
His face isn’t bruised or cut up, but that almost makes it worse, somehow. He looks so fragile. So breakable.
There’s a middle-aged woman with short blond hair sitting at his bedside, her face puffy from crying and one white-knuckled hand pressed to her lips. A thin, middle-aged man stands behind her, clutching her shoulders. On the other side of the bed, a brawny guy in his mid-thirties is talking on his cell phone, one hand pressed to his forehead.
“I don’t know—I don’tknow, Lil, they haven’t come to talk to us yet. No, not since downstairs—”
His voice is tense and vaguely familiar. He must be Jacob’s older brother, Paul. He calls Jacob a couple of times a month. He has a huge, booming voice that always comes through the phone like it’s on speaker. He’s a businessman of some sort, and he’s always asking if Jacob has a girlfriend, or if he wants to be set up with one of his own girlfriend’s “hot friends.”
The girl on the other end of the phone must be Jacob’s older sister, Lily. I’ve seen pictures of her. She’s twenty-seven, with dirty blond hair just like Jacob’s. She works as an event planner somewhere in America, always frantically busy with a hundred different weddings and bar mitzvahs and things. She only calls Jacob about once a month, but when she does, she keeps him on the phone for hours.
His family’s like that. All of them, thick as thieves. No drama. No secrets.
No secrets except me, I mean.
I stand there stupidly until they catch sight of me. For a moment, their eyes light up, like they think I’m the doctor. Then they see my jeans and T-shirt, and their faces drop.
“Can we help you?” Jacob’s father says in a tight voice.
It takes me a second to push out an answer. I can’t think, with Jacob lying there. All he has on is some stupid hospital gown. He’ll be so cold. He’salwayscold. Irrational fury clenches my chest. Why haven’t they put any blankets on him?
“I’m sorry,” I mumble. “I’m... he’s a friend of mine. From racing.”
