No reply.
Sitting down, I slowly picked at my meal and decided to check his blood sugar through my app. What if he went really low while he was driving and got in an accident, or was lying unconscious on a grocery store floor?
120.
Normal.
Minutes ticked on and I barely could focus on what the guys were saying.
Excited for tonight but I don’t need fancy stuff. Come home.I texted.
No reply. It was late now, an hour had gone by, and I was seriously worried. I couldn’t just sit here.
I stood. “I’m gonna go look for Ethan. I’m worried.”
Nick looked up at me. “Relax, mama, he’s probably trying to decide which condoms to buy.”
His date barked out in laughter, but no one else did.
James, my silent hero, stood. “I’ll drive you. We can check out the local grocery store.”
It was a small town, there weren’t many places he could be, and it had been almost an hour now. Roads were slushy with ice and I was officially panicking.
Pulling out my phone again, I called him and got the busy signal.
What the fuck? My stomach sank.
“I feel like something terrible has happened,” I told James, on the verge of tears as he grabbed the SUV keys.
“Let’s have a look around. Hopefully we’ll laugh about this when he shows up saying he got stuck in the snow or something.”
Maybe his bike did get stuck in the snow, although there wasn’t much snow down here; it was all up on the mountain.And why wasn’t his phone working?
I focused on my breathing, trying in vain to text and call Ethan like a psycho girlfriend.
James pulled out of the neighborhood where we were renting the cabin and we drove in silence for a few minutes. No music, no talking, just the frantic beating of my heart.
As we pulled out onto Milton Road, the road that took you to the grocery store, my heart leapt into my throat.
There was an ambulance. The sun was setting, and just seeing the flashing lights had my stomach in knots.
“Fuck! That’s Ethan’s bike,” James muttered, just as the ambulance took off, sirens blaring.
Oh fuck. Oh no. Oh God.
My hands shook as I tried to remember to breathe. James gunned it and tailed the ambulance, but as we passed Ethan’s crumpled bike, my eyes went wide and tears streamed down my face, blurring my vision. I spun around frantically looking for a car or anyone that could have hit him, but it was just his bike, lying there in the median, a bag of strawberries and broken bottle of champagne spilled out into the street. A sob formed in my throat. There wasn’t much snow on the ground in town; I didn’t see any ice.
Maybe he hit an ice patch that I couldn’t see. Oh God. Why did he go to the store? I didn’t need special shit.
Please don’t die, I prayed. My heart couldn’t take it.James reached across the car and took my hand into his, squeezing it tightly.
“He was wearing his helmet. He will be okay,” James said in an almost robotic voice.
I was glad James was with me, because I couldn’t think straight, I couldn’t talk right. I was in shock.
After getting to the hospital, James questioned the front desk lady within an inch of her life. He would have made a good police interrogator, all scary and demanding.I just stood there and mumbled that he was diabetic three or four times, not knowing what else to say.
Ethan had only been brought in a few moments ago. They were still assessing his injuries, but he’d been wearing his helmet, so that was looking good.I focused on the helmet and thanked God a million times that I’d made him start wearing one.
