“What the hell happened?” I breathe, staring at my phone screen. Cody’s smiling face is my phone’s wallpaper. “Maeve,” I mutter, letting the first tear fall.
She grabs my face, wiping the tears that fall. “He’s going to be okay.”
“We were just there,” I whisper.
Maeve drives. Fast. The world streaks past the windows, the rain falls harder with each passing mile, and I keep touching the pink Swarovski pendant at my throat, praying that Cody is okay.
It takes more than half an hour before she’s pulling up to the UW Montlake emergency room. Maeve doesn’t bother parking straight.
“Go,” she says, voice full of fear she’s trying to hide for my sake. “I’m right behind you. Go, Adela.”
I shove the door open, shut it behind me, and run.
The sliding door’s part, spilling bright light across the clean tiles. The front desk lady ignores me completely as I walk towards her.
“I–– I need to see Cody Ravenshaw. He was brought in–– I don’t know how long ago, maybe thirty minutes? Maybe longer? Someone called me from his phone and––”
The woman behind the counter looks at me with no expression. “Are you family?”
“I’m––” My voice catches. “I’m his girlfriend.”
Her expression doesn’t change. “Only family members are allowed in the room at this time.”
The floor tilts beneath me. “Please. I need to see him. I was just with him tonight. He was fine, and now –– now I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know what’s happened. You don’t understand. I need to––”
“I’m sorry, Miss. I can’t––”
I inhale sharply, pulling myself together the way my mom trained me to. I lift my chest in an easy inhale, straighten my spine, set my shoulders, and lift my chin. I’m not going to beg. I’m not going to plead.
“My father is Charles Kalkaska,” I say, the words leaving my mouth with pure steel. “Mayor Kalkaska. This ER is technically UW, to which he has made numerous generous donations. So, unless you want my parents demanding to speak with your supervisor, you’re going to take me to his room.”
The nurse blinks, thrown off just enough.
Another nurse walking behind her stops and looks between us. She steps forward. “Come with me,” she says. “Right this way.”
I’m moving before the woman behind the desk can protest. She doesn’t look bothered one bit as I walk away.
Maeve catches up to me halfway down the hall, slipping her hand into mine, squeezing once, grounding me in the chaos of my panic.
The nurse leads us past curtained bays, past beeping monitors, past a man groaning softly as a nurse adjusts something near his leg. Every sound feels amplified –– the shuffling feet, the low murmur of voices, the clatter of metal on metal.
“We stabilized him,” the nurse says, not slowing her pace. “He’s in Room 14.”
I don’t realize I’ve stopped breathing until she opens the door.
And then breath becomes impossible.
Cody lies on the bed. He’s so still, he could be carved from marble. But marble doesn’t bruise. Marble doesn’t swell. Marble doesn’t look like this.
His face is mottled with dark, violent bruising, one cheekbone angry and swollen. There’s a cut near his hairline. His neck has marks — purple blooms beneath the skin, like hands or impact or something worse. His arms, visible beneath the thin hospital sheet, show more bruises, sharp-edged and chaotic.
He looks nothing like the boy who kissed me hours ago. Nothing like the boy smiling in my phone wallpaper. Nothing like the boy who whispered I love you with his forehead against my shoulder.
I clutch at Maeve, who’s at my side, feeling like I’m going to tumble over. “Maeve,” I whisper in complete shock. I’m no longer in my body; my voice sounds distant as I try to puzzle together what happened to Cody between the time that we left and now.
She doesn’t say anything.
His phone sits on the bedside table, screen dark.
