News travels fast in the digital age, and not long after Holly smacked Sergeant Borsch with the one-two punch of Don’t Know and Not Sure, teenagers started coming through the emergency-room door.
The first one on the scene was Heather Acosta.
“Where is she?” she panted, looking around wildly as if Sammy were her best friend, instead of the girl she’d tortured and wished dead for well over a year.
Holly groaned at the sight of her. She was not (and would likely never be) convinced that Heather was sincere in her newfound enthusiasm for Sammy. And despite Sammy’s willingness to let bygones be bygones, Holly was not one to forget Heather Acosta’s long history of deceit and revenge (not to mention brazen backstabbing). It was hard for her to believe that three “shell-shocking” days in Las Vegas had really changed Heather.
But there Heather was, gasping and gushing concern, her red hair flashing like a squad-car light as she spun around, searching for Sammy. “She’s not …,” she said, her voice trailing off as she cast her wide eyes on Holly, Meg, and Sergeant Borsch.
And since Holly, Meg, and Sergeant Borsch each held similar suspicions about Heather, none of them jumped up with assurances that Sammy would be all right. They simply stared.
What this lack of assurance triggered in Heather was a crumpling at the knees and a scream so fierce and pathetic and loud that emergency-room personnel began appearing to see if anyone was being stabbed in the waiting room (something that was, unfortunately, not unheard of at Santa Martina’s Community Hospital).
“Stop it!” Holly shouted at Heather. “We don’t know anything yet!”
But Heather was folded into herself on the floor, so deafened by her own primal wailing that she didn’t hear what Holly was saying.
And then Casey Acosta came blasting in and saw (and heard) his sister wailing on the floor, which immediately set him falling into the same pit of despair as his life with Sammy flashed before his eyes.
The tortured look on his face could have broken the heart of Death himself. If Death was around. Which nobody really knew at that point. (Although in the emergency room the odds were alarmingly high.)
What Casey’s reaction did do was kick Holly into gear. “No one’s said she’s dead yet!” Holly shouted, jumping out of her seat. “They’re still working on her!”
This did a nice job of shutting Heather up, but it didn’t happen fast enough for Nurse Cathy Abbey, who came ramming through the main interior door, shouting, “You need to SHUT UP out here!” Her pants were a tired blue, her shoes a scuffed white, and the geometric designs on her smock were a telling sign of her impersonal approach to patient care.
“Is there any news?” Holly asked.
“When there’s news, we’ll tell ya!” Nurse Abbey snapped, then withdrew through the emergency room’s swinging door of fate.
“So she’s not …?” Heather asked, looking up from her crumpled position on the floor.
“We don’t know!” Holly snapped, and then to her enormous relief, Marissa McKenze rushed in from outside, followed almost immediately by Billy Pratt.
Marissa and Billy were tried-and-true friends. Maybe not with each other, seeing how Marissa had dumped Billy for the smooth-talking Danny Urbanski, breaking Billy’s heart for at least a week. But Billy and Marissa had been through the thick of things with Sammy, and that’s what mattered now.
“What’s she doing here?” Marissa seethed after Holly had given all of them a quick recap. Like Holly, Marissa trusted Heather about as far as she could throw a tiger. “And who is she texting?”
“She’s not just texting,” Holly said, craning a little to see better. “She’s posting.”
“What? No! Tell her to stop! We don’t want a bunch of people here!”
But the reality was, neither Holly nor Marissa knew how to tell Heather to stop. The only person who seemed to be able to reason with Heather was Sammy … and sometimes Casey.
But Casey was fighting back tears as he whispered with Billy, and Marissa didn’t have the heart to interrupt their conversation to ask him to deal with something she could do herself. Even though she couldn’t.
Meg had noted Heather’s flurry of phone activity, too, and saw a different sort of downside. She leaned over and asked Sergeant Borsch, “Does Sammy’s grandmother know what’s happened?” The question was met with the blank look of a man in shock, so she added, “Rita’s the guardian—I’m sure they’ll need her here. And someone really should tell her before the rumor mill does.” Then, since the lawman still seemed too stunned to take action, she offered, “If you have her number, I could call her.”
Gil Borsch did, in fact, have the number, but even through the daze of his despair, he knew this was not the sort of thing he should break to Rita over the phone. So he pulled himself together and stood, saying, “I’ll tell her in person.” Then he gave his cell number to Meg so she could call him if there were any developments and hauled his heavy heart outside.
On the short ride over to Cypress Street, it occurred to Sergeant Borsch that he was the very worst person for this job. Since the facts were sketchy and the outcome uncertain, he didn’t know what to say. The situation was gray on gray, and Gil Borsch worked best when things were black on white.
So he called his wife. However, instead of acknowledging that he really needed to talk to somebody, he convinced himself he was doing it because she would want to know. After all, Deb was a huge fan of Sammy’s. She’d even asked Sammy to be a bridesmaid in their wedding! Never mind that Sammy had almost ruined the wedding with one of her daredevil escapades—that was beside the point. Deb loved her and would want to know.
Plus, he could try this breaking-the-news thing out on her.
Unfortunately, it did not go well.
Not due to Deb’s reaction.
Due to his.
Besides breaking down while breaking the news, Gil Borsch also broke the hands-free law while making the call—something he’d been quick to ticket other drivers for doing.
So after hanging up, he felt both broken up and dirty—worse off by far than he’d been before he’d made the call. But as awful as he felt (and as raw and red as his eyes now looked), he was already at the Cypress Street residence, and really, there was no turning back from duty. Especially since Rita and Hudson were both sitting on the porch, presumably waiting for Sammy’s postcurfew return.
Sergeant Borsch appearing at the Cypress Street residence (either via squad car or in his personal vehicle, which he now drove) was not, in and of itself, cause for concern for Hudson or Rita. The two had grown to know (and even like) the lawman, especially since he seemed to keep a weather eye out for Sammy and had delivered her home safely from one tangle or another more often than they cared to recall.
This time, however, neither the front nor back passenger door of Gil Borsch’s car swung open.
This time, no skateboard or backpack or high-tops emerged.
This time, Hudson was the first to realize, something was wrong.
“Sergeant?” he called, hurrying down the porch steps as Rita followed closely behind.
So, with a fumbling of words and barely checked emotions, Sergeant Borsch managed to convey the crucial points:
Sammy was hurt.
Badly hurt.
They needed to get to the hospital.
Now.
Old people are not known for their quick movements. But these two seniors became instant Olympic contenders, dashing and leaping and propelling into the house and out again as they snatched up keys and cash and insurance cards and dived into the Borschman’s car without invitation.
Gil Borsch just went with it. He jumped in behind the wheel, slapped his portable spinning light onto the roof, and gunned it back to the hospital.
The car was still rolling when Rita and Hudson (apparently still vying for slots in the Olympics) bolted out and ran for the emergency-room door, leaving Sergeant Borsch to find legal parking on his own.
Once through the door, Rita and Hudson skidded to a halt.
It was as though William Rose Junior High School were conducting an assembly in the waiting room.
Only there was no presenter.
Just chaos.
“QUIET!” a voice across the room bellowed, and when Rita looked to see who had made the sound, she saw a bullish woman with bulging eyes. “WHERE’S THE LEGAL GUARDIAN FOR SAMANTHA KEYES?” Nurse Abbey shouted.
“Right here!” Rita called, holding up her hand.
The flash mob of teens turned to face her. And while they didn’t break into a spontaneous rendition of Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody,” they were clearly in a Bohemian Rhapsody state of mind, parting to let this older woman through as they wondered, Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?…
Then they watched the guardian and the nurse disappear behind the Swinging Door of (Maybe) Death.