“Well, she’s right. You’re getting pretty good,” says Freddie. “You beat me today.”
“Only ’cause you let me,” I say, trying to suss out whether or not he actually did. It’s so silly, but it’s a small nagging doubt in the back of my mind.
“Ha!” Agnes shakes her head. “You think this boy lets anyone win when it comes to the pool?”
“She’s right,” says Freddie.
“Well, Ramona Blue,” says Agnes, “looks like you’ve got some things to consider.”
“What’s to consider?” asks Freddie. “If you’ve got your high school transcripts, you don’t even have to take the SAT to get in since it’s a community college. And I bet there might be some scholarship money if you can make the swim team.”
“Or even federal grant money if you get on it soon,” says Agnes.
I shake my head. “Okay, let’s not get ahead of ourselves here.” But my cheeks glow, and I can’t believe I actuallytold someone else about Coach Whitmire’s offer. I decide I should call her Coach. It feels wrong to call a woman her age by her first name.
I tell myself if Agnes and Freddie didn’t even bring up me staying here and taking care of Hattie and the baby, then maybe my future isn’t so obvious after all. Maybe the future is still unwritten.
When we pull into the driveway, Bart is pacing across the porch. It’s odd, but somehow very much like him. As we open the car doors, he rushes to us. No, tome.
“We gotta get you to the hospital,” he says, clasping me by my shoulders. It’s the most words I’ve ever heard him string together at once. “None of you’s been picking up your phones.”
The color drains from my face, and my mouth goes completely dry of words.
Freddie checks his cell. “Mine was on silent.”
Agnes opens the glove box. “Shoot, I forgot it was in here.”
I pat down my pockets, but I know I left it at home. I always answer my phone.
Bart’s pushing Freddie and me into the backseat, and my body doesn’t even have time to respond to what’s happening.
I think I’m crying. My whole body feels frantic and everything is moving too slow and too fast all at once. My immediate thought is Hattie, and then I think,Oh God, no.My dad. He was in a wreck. He’s hurt. One of them is hurt. But I can’t even cobble together the words to ask what thehell is happening. And worst of all, I can’t breathe.
“Bart,” says Agnes as we’re backing out of the driveway. “Bart, what’s going on?”
“It’s the baby. It’s your sister, Ramona. Some kind of lady problems. Your dad said to get you to the hospital pronto.” He takes the keys from Agnes and hops behind the wheel. “You three get in.”
Eulogy has a few urgent-care clinics, but the closest hospital is about fifteen minutes away in Gulfport. And now I really am crying. Tears and snot drip down my face, and my wet hair has soaked through the back of my T-shirt. I didn’t let Hattie trim it a few weeks back before Christmas. I was annoyed with her about something stupid. She’s supposed to touch up my blue, too. And I don’t know why, but all I can think about is my damn hair and how if she’s not around, I’ll have to cut all of it off, because I can’t manage it on my own.
My sister and my unborn niece are in the hospital. Their lives could be in danger and all I can think of is my hair. It’s such a tiny, meaningless thing, but it feels catastrophic. And somehow I think my brain is protecting me by forcing me to concentrate on this inconsequential thing.
I duck my head down between my knees and breathe. Just breathe. Freddie rubs his hand up and down my back the whole way there. His touch is a temporary relief.
All I can think about is that I was so silly. I was so silly for just moments ago imagining I could ever leave this place.
There is lots of waiting before anyone will let us see her. Dad is sitting near the nurses’ station, and Agnes and Bart have left to get coffee and whatever other stuff they can find in the hospital cafeteria.
I sit next to my dad on a tiny bench, curled into a ball, snug against his side. Freddie sits across from us, and I know that, if at all possible, he feels even more useless than I do.
Hattie woke up in a pool of blood. No one was home. She was alone. That’s all we know. I wasn’t there for her. The doctor promised us she’d let us see Hattie as soon as her condition had stabilized. The bleeding hadn’t stopped.
This horrible little part of me keeps thinking that maybe if she loses the baby it won’t be such a bad thing. I’m disgusted with myself for even entertaining the thought. I try to scrub it from my brain, but the guilt has already sunk down deep into my belly.
Briefly, my eyes meet Freddie’s, and he tries to offer me so much in that one glance, but it’s like I live in this tiny little bubble, and the only other people I have the capacity for are Dad and Hattie. In this moment, Freddie is a stranger. He’s an outsider, who will never understand what it means to be a Leroux.
Suddenly the extreme contrasts between our worlds are so apparent. For a brief time in history, we overlapped. His life didn’t seem so different from mine. But here, in this waiting room, I am reminded of my priorities. Before I belong to anyone, I belong to Hattie. I belong to my sister. I belong to our life in this little town.
The doctor comes in just like I’ve seen in so manymovies. Dad and I stand up right away. I can count on one hand how many times I have been to a doctor, and the gist of it is that if a bone wasn’t broken or if a fever didn’t break a hundred, medical attention was nothing more than a luxury.
