I don’t answer him, just grab his hand and follow Emmy, who’s blazing a trail, her flip-flops squeaking over the tile floor.
We get to Eva’s room first. It’s not really a room, just one of those pleather examining tables behind a sea-foam-green curtain. A nurse in blue scrubs with little sunshines all over them is fitting a butterfly bandage over a cut on her forehead, just over her left eyebrow.
“Oh my god,” Emmy says, eyeing some bloody gauze and what looks like a huge pair of tweezers on the metal tray next to the table.
“I’m fine,” Eva says weakly. Her eyes go to mine, but I skirt my gaze away.
“Fine, my ass,” Emmy says, popping her hands on her hips.
“Whoa,” Luca says. Even I blanch a little. Emmy never swears.
“She really is fine,” the nurse says with a smile, but it quickly fades as she looks between Emmy and Eva, a confused pucker between her brows. “Are you . . . I’m sorry, are you Eva’s mother?”
Silence fills the room until Eva inhales a choked sob, one hand covering her mouth to hold it in.
“No. I’m Emmy Michaelson,” Emmy says quietly, firmly. “I’m Eva’s guardian.”
“Oh.” The nurse swings her head around, staring at all of us, her brown ponytail bobbing. “Well, that explains how different you two look from each other!”
Emmy just stares at the woman.
The nurse clears her throat and pastes on a professional smile. “I just brought Eva up from some tests. No concussion, just a cut on her head from some glass. Not too deep, though. The doctor will release her shortly.”
“Fine. Thank you,” Emmy says.
“Can I go now?” Eva says, barely a whisper. She’s staring at her lap, her shoulders rising and falling with deep desperate breaths. “Please. I want to go home. I want to go now.”
“Soon, honey,” Emmy says, brushing a curl out of Eva’s face as the nurse cleans up the dirty bandages. Eva tangles her fingers with Emmy’s, gripping tight. “I’ll go find the doctor and ask, okay?”
Eva nods and releases Emmy’s hand. My own hands tingle, needing to touch her, hold her, press a kiss to that ugly butterfly bandage with the little peek of red seeping out the side, the harsh crimson burn on her neck from her seat belt.
But I don’t.
Suddenly, my fingertips feel heavy—?too dark purple, too Maggie, a hurricane waiting to make landfall.
So instead, I walk out of the room, ask a nurse heading down the hall where Mom is. She asks my name. I tell her and she spits out a number.
Luca doesn’t follow me to her room. Neither does Emmy.
It’s just me, just us, Maggie and Grace, blasting through the world and breaking shit on our way through.
Mom’s in a real room at the end of the hall. She’s lying on a bed, clad in a hospital gown, a blue blanket over her legs. Her left arm is in a brace, and there are a few other scratches here and there, including a large bandage near her right temple, but she’s awake.
“Baby,” she says, smiling through droopy eyes.
I don’t return her greeting, but sit on the edge of the bed and gesture to her arm. “Is it broken?”
“No, just a sprain. But they’re keeping me overnight because I bumped my head pretty bad. Hit the door or something.”
All I can think about is how the hell we’re going to pay for all this. For that tube in the crook of her elbow. For that bandage on her head. For that sling on her arm. It’s not like we have health insurance. We’ve never had health insurance. As a kid, I got all my shots at the county health department.
Emmy took me.
“And I have to talk to the police,” Mom says, spitting out the last word like it’s a swear. “It’s absolutely ridiculous.”
“Why is it ridiculous?”
“It was just a little accident. They’re making it into this huge deal.”
