Hospitals are always so white. Even when they paint the walls, it still feels white. Or green. But that sick-looking green.
When I returned to the land of the living, a man in a long white coat had his hand down my top.
“Wow!” I said, inhaling hard. Which I shouldn’t have. Because inhaling hurt. “Why does that hurt so much?” I asked. The man in the white coat didn’t say anything for a moment. Then he pulled the stethoscope away from his ears.
“Because you have a collapsed lung, young man,” he said. “You are very lucky.”
“Am I?” I asked. I didn’t feel lucky. I felt like I was going to stop breathing at any moment and not start again.
Which might be okay, because if breathing hurt this much, maybe I should just quit it.
There was a shuffling in the room. I watched Sam rise from a chair behind the doctor. He had stubble on his face, and his eyes were bloodshot.
“Sam,” I said. “What are you doing here? Actually, what am I doing here?”
Sam laughed and reached out a hand to me. “Man, you hit that guy hard. Don’t worry, though, the police were looking for him anyway. He’ll be in jail a long time, thanks to you. Then you stuffed him in a trunk? With a collapsed lung? That is hard-core.”
“I stuffed someone in a trunk?” It came back to me in a flash. The whole mess from beginning to end.
“Yes,” Sam said, laughing. “Yes indeed, my man.”
“Is Bryce all right?” I asked.
“Yeah, man, he’s fine. His dad came and got him.” He shook his head. “I don’t think that is going to go all that well.”
“No?” I replied.
“People have to accept that they are who they are.” Sam stared at the window for a minute. “Never try to prove to people that you’re something other than who you are, Alex. Just be the best you you can be.” He laughed. “That sounded dumb.”
“It sounded true, Sam,” I said. “What about you?”
Sam looked across the room at a man I hadn’t noticed before. A cop. “I have some explaining to do,” Sam said. “But I convinced them to let me stay here until you woke up.”
“But you weren’t really a part of it,” I said.
Sam shrugged. “Don’t worry. I’ll be all right. And hey, now that you’re an official member of Backcountry Patrol, we’ll need you out there soon.”
I smiled. Then the police officer took Sam by the arm and led him out of the room. Hope stepped inside as the door was closing.
“You’re all right,” she said. I shrugged, which hurt more than it should have.
“So are you,” I said. “What happened?”
“Well,” Hope replied. “You crushed a lung, dumped a criminal in the trunk of a car, and then I finished off the hard work.”
“Which was what exactly?”
“Convincing the kidnapper to drop his gun.”
“And how did you do that?”
“I said I’d shoot him,” she said with a smile.
“Okay, but he had a gun too, right?”
“Sure, but he wasn’t too worried about a girl in a puffy pink snowsuit. Big mistake.” She blinked a few times. “Those guys are amateurs. They were in over their heads. The guy with the gun dropped it like he’d had enough. Like he’d been waiting for this to happen.”
I could imagine.
“Taken out by a little girl,” I said.
“Little girl?” Hope said. “No. He was taken out by an official Backcountry Patroller.” She sat down in the chair beside my bed. She looked very different out of her snow gear. She looked like an actual girl. Enough that I almost forgot how annoying I’d once found her.
Hope looked out the window at the light rain that was falling on Vancouver.
I thought for a moment about what to say next. “You know, you were pretty amazing out there.”
“Thanks,” she replied. “So were you.”
“Would you actually have shot him?”
She looked at me as she considered her answer. “You know what? After all we’ve been through? I think I can pretty much do anything now.”
“Anything?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she said, looking me right in the eye. “Anything.” And I didn’t doubt her for a second.