Left.
Then (after navigating a maze of corridors and asking directions twice) the girls turned a corner (to the left) and discovered they were not the first ones of their friends to arrive in the ICU waiting room—a quiet area between open corridors and a nurses’ station.
“Billy!” Marissa whispered (as whispering still seemed to be the proper mode of communication). “Is there any news? How long have you been here?”
Billy’s eyes were rimmed in red, and his face looked pale. It was as though all the blood that normally ran through his cheeks had been diverted to his eyes. “No change,” he said bleakly. “Casey’s in with her now.”
A surge of jealousy rushed through Marissa. She tried to stem it, telling herself that she was being ridiculous, but she couldn’t entirely stop it. Casey had only been in the picture for about a year. She’d been Sammy’s best friend since the third grade. She should have been the friend to see her first.
And then things got worse.
After talking to Billy for a bit (and learning that Lana and Darren had been there earlier with Rita and Hudson), Marissa noticed two people walking toward them from down the ICU corridor.
Casey was one of them.
Heather was the other.
“You’ve got to be kidding me!” Marissa cried (and it was not, I assure you, a whisper).
“Down, girl,” Billy warned her.
But Holly was shaking her head in complete solidarity with Marissa. “That is so not right,” she whispered.
“Check your weapons,” Billy said. “This is not about you or Heather or your stupid war. This is about Sammy.”
Which, Marissa knew, was right.
But still.
It was so wrong!
“How is she?” Billy asked when Casey and Heather were upon them.
Casey couldn’t seem to make eye contact with anything but the floor. “The same,” he said, his voice hoarse and tired.
And then, to everyone’s surprise, Heather threw herself into Marissa’s arms and sobbed, “It’s horrible! There are tubes and monitors everywhere, and she’s just lying there!”
As Heather sobbed, her globby mascara ran and her foundation smeared, and Marissa’s shirt (which was a lovely pastel yellow) became smudged and splotched and (thanks to Heather’s runny nose) snotty and, well, disgusting.
Compounding the undeniable grossness of the hug was the weirdness of it. Marissa tried to remember if she’d ever so much as touched Heather. Sammy certainly had (usually with a fist). But even in softball Marissa couldn’t remember having had any sort of physical contact with the wild redhead.
And certainly not a hug!
Plus, Heather only turned on the spigots in front of males. Friends, teachers, parents … anyone on whom the ol’ tear routine worked.
Which pretty much excluded the female students at William Rose, and it certainly excluded her!
So Marissa was dumbstruck. And (although awkward and gross) the hug threw her enough that before she could shove the snotty redhead off of her with a “What are you doing?” Heather sniffed and pulled back on her own. “She looks awful!” she wailed. “Just awful!”
Casey stepped in with a sharp “Heather!” then turned to Marissa. “Sammy looks like she’s sleeping, that’s all.”
“With tubes and wires and bandages everywhere!” Heather cried.
“Quit it!” Casey snapped.
With a huff, Marissa grabbed Holly and Dot and said, “We’re going to go see for ourselves.”
“Better wait a few minutes,” Casey said. “They kicked us out so they could … do stuff.”
“And it’s only two visitors at a time,” Billy called.
Marissa might have pressed on regardless, just to get away from Heather, but a nurse was heading their way. A nurse who was wearing a smock with a colorful pattern of guitars. Blue ones, green ones, yellow ones, red ones … it was a cheerful assemblage of six-strings, and it made for a pleasant pre-introduction.
As did her name badge, which said FAITH.
But then came the actual introduction.
Or, rather, request for information.
“Are y’all related to Samantha Keyes?” the nurse asked.
“We’re … friends,” Marissa said.
“But … you can probably verify … the man that was here before … her dad …”
The assemblage of six teens stared at her, not believing (and yet absolutely knowing) what was about to come out of her mouth.
“… is he really the Darren Cole?”
For the others, a protective shield of lies (or strategic non-answers) began to form, but Heather (in a strange and ironic twist) told the truth. “Yes, he is.”
It would take less than an hour for it to become clear that it would have been better—much, much better—to lie.
7—VISITORS
Lana Keyes and Darren Cole had arrived together at Community Hospital shortly after Rita and Hudson had been allowed to enter Sammy’s room (where they had displaced a solemn Billy Pratt, who had convinced a day-shift nurse that a night-shift nurse had taken mercy on his poor pummeled heart and let him stay).
And later, after a nurse (with panting puppies on her smock) had come in to enforce the two-person rule, Rita and Hudson had graciously exited, telling Lana and Darren to meet them down in the hospital cafeteria when they were done.
With Hudson’s reasoned influence over Lana gone, what occurred next was the stuff of which soap operas are made. Demands. Tantrums. Tears. Threats. Cajolery.
Your basic diva-driven drama.
And while Lana whipped the ICU staff into a soapy froth, Darren struggled with the nauseating sense that he’d already been robbed of the first fourteen years of Sammy’s life and couldn’t bear the thought of being robbed of the rest. He’d made peace in his mind (and with Lana) over what had happened, but that was because he had the future to look forward to. The next fourteen years and beyond, where he would make up for lost time.
But if that time was now gone?
If he’d been robbed twice?
There was no peace to be found in that scenario.
Plus, he was wrestling with the unshakable notion that he was somehow responsible for what had happened to Sammy. He should have been there. He should have taken charge of the living arrangements. He should have done something, anything, to keep her safe.
There was also the powerful urge to get the guy who’d done this. To drag him up three flights and hurl him overboard.
No bushes required.
Or desired.
So inside Darren, anger, regret, revenge, and remorse rang loudly, but like phase-canceling waveforms of emotion, the result was silence.
The silence of disbelief.
And after the doctor (a physician by the name of Dr. Jha) had at last been consulted, the recommended course of action was still the same:
Wait and see.
With this new non-news, Darren corralled his emotions and took to his phone, searching the Internet, contacting friends, finding specialists, pulling every string he could grasp, looking for something, anything, that might help.
Lana, meanwhile, sobbed at Sammy’s bedside, working herself into a positive frenzy of questions and indictments. “Oh, darling,” she gasped, between sobs. “How in the world could this have happened? Why did you go back to that awful place? Who did this to you?” And then, after another makeup-messing bout with tears, “I just don’t understand why life has to be so horrible and hard and cruel! Samantha, please. Please, wake up!”
Overcome with emotion (and a conflicting desire to not become puffy-eyed), Lana sequestered herself in the bathroom, where cool water and a mirror were at her disposal.
Which left Darren alone with his daughter.
“Hey, kiddo,” he said, slipping his hand over Sammy’s.
“It’s your dad. Can you hear me?”
And then he just stood there with a rock (and no roll) in his throat.
He wanted to tell
her that everything was going to be okay and that he was on top of tracking down a specialist. He wanted to sound optimistic and assured and strong. Like a dad was supposed to be.
But what he really felt was scared.
More scared than he’d ever been.
So again, he was silent.
And he was just standing there, silently holding her hand, when an orderly swept in. “Oh, sorry,” the orderly murmured, gazing through long black bangs. “I’ll come back.” And before Darren could collect himself to ask questions or encourage him to go about his business, the orderly made a graceful exit, leaving the rocker alone with his fears (and his daughter, of course).
Then Lana came out of the bathroom with her dark glasses on, and after another few minutes of hovering around Sammy’s bed, she and Darren left the room and were almost immediately replaced by Casey and Heather.
So by the time Marissa, Holly, and Dot appeared on the scene, there had already been a steady stream of anxious (as well as unauthorized) visitors, and the ICU staff seemed to have lost its will to resist. Not only was it (for once) a slow day in the ICU, but the staff’s preoccupation with an Internet search on Darren Cole resulted in a definite relaxing of the rules, which became evident when (despite Billy’s citing of the two-visitor rule) nobody interfered as Marissa, Holly, and Dot all entered the corridor that led to Room 411.
Not being a rule breaker, Dot was aflutter with nerves as they moved down the corridor, but Marissa managed to steel herself and channel Sammy, saying, “Just act cool.”
Holly, of course, was already familiar with this concept, having regularly broken many rules (not to mention laws) during her young life. So, between the two of them, the three of them made it down to Sammy’s room without incident.
“Look at her,” Marissa whispered when they’d surrounded the bed. “She looks so …”
“Peaceful?” Dot whispered.
Marissa nodded. “Yes.”
“I’ve heard you’re supposed to talk to people who are in comas,” Holly whispered from the foot of the bed.
Dot nodded. “And stimulate them.”
“Stimulate them?” Marissa asked.
“Like touch them?”
Dot (being a gentle soul) reached out and stroked Sammy’s leg through the bedding. But Holly (whose soul harbored painful splinters and cracks) did not have deep reserves of patience and went straight for the toes.
“What are you doing?” Marissa whispered, because Holly had dug beneath the covers and was wiggling and tickling and pinching.
“Wiggling and tickling and pinching,” Holly replied.
Unfortunately, the only one this activity seemed to stimulate was Marissa. “Stop it!” she cried. “How would you like someone wiggling and tickling and pinching you when you couldn’t do anything about it?”
“Maybe I’d wake up and slap ’em!” Holly snapped.
But she did stop.
And then she burst into tears.
“Oh, Holly,” Dot said, scooping an arm around her. Then she looked at Marissa and mouthed, “We’ll meet you outside,” and eased Holly out of the room.
Which left Marissa alone with her best friend.
“Sammy,” Marissa said, pulling up a chair beside the bed after she’d stared at her friend awhile. “You need to wake up, okay? You need to wake up and take your finals and finish junior high and start high school and live your life!” She frowned, then added, “Okay, so the thought of finals would make me want to stay asleep, too, but you know what I’m saying!” And then, feeling like the words were coming out all wrong, Marissa started babbling. “Look, you have to wake up. Everything is finally going great for you! You’ve got an awesome boyfriend, you’ve got an awesome dad, you’re out of the Highrise, and Heather’s not lurking around trying to sabotage you anymore!” She frowned again. “That doesn’t mean I like her or trust her, but at least things are better than they were before.…”
Feeling off track again, Marissa shook her head and said, “Never mind about Heather. Worry about me, would you? I don’t know what I’d do without you!” She went quiet for a minute, then sighed and said, “Remember last year when I got caught at the top of that stupid chain-link fence behind the Heavenly Hotel? I was stuck and petrified, and you came up and unhooked my pants and helped me down. My life has been like that. I wind up somewhere, stuck and scared, and you always seem to know how to help me down. Like with Danny? I was so stuck and helpless and stupid, but you helped me get over him.”
And although Sammy would almost certainly have loved the comparison between Marissa’s relationship with Danny Urbanski and being stuck on the detached and decrepit chain-link fence behind the seedy Heavenly Hotel, she gave no indication of this.
She just lay there, silent.
And as Sammy lay there, silent, Marissa thought. And remembered. And then she began to fill that silence. “Actually, the fence was nothing compared to going into the Bush House.… Do you remember that? And finding Chauncy LeBard all tied up with a monster mask on? Was that scary, or what?” She thought some more. “And that time in Sisquane? When we went looking for a missing pig and wound up battling it out with a drug dealer?” She shook her head. “I thought for sure we were going to die! But at least he was the one trapped in the cellar that time, which was way better than the time we were trapped in a basement by that gang guy! Remember that? With all those creepy black widow spiders?!” She shivered. “I knew we were gonna die that time. I still have nightmares about being trapped down there.”
At this point Marissa realized that if Sammy could hear her, she might well be giving her nightmares. So she steered away from memories of deadly gang leaders and drove the conversation toward a brighter destination:
Hollywood.
“What about that time we snuck away to visit your mother? Remember how we threw that mattress out of the window so we could jump on it to escape that crazy mummy lady? And how that guy Max …”
But suddenly Marissa realized that she was heading off a cliff with that misadventure, too—that their unauthorized trip to Hollywood had also involved a very creepy ending.
So Marissa swerved in another direction.
“How about that time we went ice blocking after the Farewell Dance and Billy had those chicken bones and was acting like a pirate going ‘Aaargh,’ and then—” She came to a screeching halt. “Shoot! That one turned out all scary and gruesome, too!” She stared at her friend and shook her head. “It was even worse than finding those two skulls in the graveyard on Halloween.” She shivered again. “And that turned out to be organized crime! Organized crime, Sammy! How do we get ourselves into these things?”
And then, as she took a deep breath to calm herself, a voice behind her said, “We need to make a list.”
Marissa spun around.
Heather Acosta was standing right there.
“How long have you been spying on us?” Marissa demanded.
“I wasn’t spying,” Heather said. “I was actually just trying to be considerate.”
“You want to be considerate? Leave!”
“Look, I know you hate me,” Heather said, moving forward. “But you need to get over it.”
“You get over it!” Marissa snapped, and immediately wished she hadn’t because not only did it sound childish, it didn’t make any sense.
Still. It felt right because Heather was so … Heather.
And her being there was so … wrong.
But Heather wasn’t leaving. She was now standing on the opposite side of Sammy’s bed, and had (to Marissa’s horror) reached over the safety rail to hold Sammy’s hand. “All that stuff you were talking about?” Heather said as she looked at Sammy. “We need to make a list.”
Marissa was fixated on the hands. “A list of what?”
Heather turned to face her. “A list of people Sammy busted.”
Marissa was dying to tell her it was a stupid idea. It was Heather’s idea, after all, so it was, by definition, either stupid or evil
.
Probably both.
Plus another knee-jerk retort was dying to shoot out of her mouth: Well, you’d take up the first ten slots, wouldn’t you?!
But the words didn’t come out because Marissa immediately knew that Heather’s idea wasn’t stupid.
It was a great idea.
One the police should have already thought of.
But before she could figure out how to agree with Heather without actually agreeing with Heather, Heather gasped.
“What?” Marissa asked, because the redhead’s eyes were stretched wide.
“She … she …” Heather blinked across the bed at Marissa. “I think she just squeezed my hand!”
Marissa pounced forward to grab Sammy’s other hand. “Sammy! Can you hear me?” She waited, and when there was no response, she shook her friend’s shoulder. “Sammy!”
But again there was no response.
No squeeze.
Not even a twitch.
And after a few more attempts at getting a response—any kind of response—all that remained were dashed hopes and the awful suspicion that, once again, Heather was lying.
8—RANKLED
After the nursing staff had concluded that there was no evidence (other than Heather’s word) that Sammy had actually moved, the teens gathered in the ICU waiting room, where Heather switched gears, announcing, “I’m going to go talk to the police about making a list.”
Well, Marissa was not about to let Heather do that without her, so she immediately said, “I’m going, too.”
“Are we tracking down the Borschman?” Casey asked.
Marissa nodded. “There are a lot of people Sammy helped put in jail. Maybe one of them did this to her.”
Billy jumped up. “I’m in!”
“Us, too!” Holly and Dot said, and suddenly they were off, whooshing out of the waiting room and along the hallways in a gust of purpose, arriving at the steel elevator door just as it was whooshing open.
And this little dust devil of teenagers would have whooshed right into the elevator and down to the lobby, but they found themselves temporarily blocked by two people (and a large camera) intent on whooshing out of the elevator.