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I hate hospitals. I hate the white walls, the smell of antiseptic, the buzz and hum and beep-beep-beep of all those machines that are the only signs of life coming from most rooms. At least, most rooms on the floor I was on.
Wayne looked impossibly small on the raised hospital bed. There were tubes coming out of his nose and mouth. The caramel curls above his left eye and temple had been shaved back so that the doctors could stitch his head together where it had smashed through the windshield of Matilda’s Camaro. His left eye was swollen shut, and his right forearm was in a neon green cast.
Soft sobs filtered in from the hallway. Joyce Russell, Wayne’s mother, buried her face against my mom’s shoulder.
“Janie, why don’t you sit with Wayne while your father and I talk to his parents?” my mom whispered, gently shutting the door to Wayne’s room to allow his mother some privacy while she had her meltdown.
I inched my way over to the only chair in the room, a stiff gray recliner seated along the side of Wayne’s broken face. A good friend would have taken his hand and whispered comforting and encouraging things that might rouse him from his coma. But I wasn’t a good friend. I was the worst friend ever.
I had left him at a party with his drunken girlfriend, knowing that she was his ride home. I had come home and walked right past my parents, watching Jeopardy in the living room, and I hadn’t said a word. It didn’t matter that I had told Wayne I wouldn’t rat him out. It didn’t matter that I hadn’t drunk anything and left the party as soon as I realized there was alcohol. That wasn’t enough. I knew that now, staring at Wayne’s mutilated face.
More sobs came from the hallway. I glanced through the slatted blinds that spanned the wide display window along the interior wall of Wayne’s room. Matilda’s parents had joined mine and Wayne’s. Their voices were muffled, but I heard Matilda’s mother clearly above the others. “She’s gone. My little girl is gone forever.”
I stumbled from the chair and into the bathroom attached to the hospital room. The tile floor was cold against my knees as I puked my guts out in the toilet, clinging to the handicapped railing to keep from falling in face first.
I couldn’t count the number of times I had wished Matilda dead. She was vain and cruel, and she had everything, including Wayne. Be careful what you wish for, said the nagging little voice in the back of my mind that had reprimanded my every sour thought for as long as I could remember. The voice was a cross between my mother and my perky-as-Prozac second grade teacher who had been full of similarly wise one-liners.
During algebra class, where I regularly fantasized about Matilda’s demise, her death was usually achieved by splashing her with a bucket of water or dropping a house on her. Everyone would cheer and sing, and then Wayne and I would ride off into the sunset together on the back of a unicorn, naturally. It certainly didn’t happen via drunk driving, and it never involved Wayne getting hurt or ending up in a coma. This was all wrong.
A sick, twisted part of me was still happy that Matilda was gone, and as soon as I recognized it, I was heaving up bile in the hospital toilet again.
“Janie?” Everyone had been drawn back into Wayne’s room by the sounds of my retching. My mom slipped into the bathroom and closed the door behind her. “Oh, honey.” She grabbed a handful of paper towels and wet them at the sink before kneeling down beside me.
My dry heaving subsided as she wiped my face clean. When she finished, I stood and rinsed my mouth in the sink. My mom washed her hands, pausing to dab at the streaked mascara under her eyes. Her soft, orange curls were in a perfect halo, and I vaguely wondered how she managed to look so put together, even at four in the morning on a Saturday. I frowned at my washed out reflection next to hers. I looked like road kill. My braid was coming undone, and my tee shirt was wrinkled, since I hadn’t bothered to change into a fresh one when we got the call.
My mom finished messing with her makeup and tried to smile at me. “Wayne’s going to be fine. You’ll see.”
I nodded slowly, too afraid to open my mouth. She still thought I had been studying late at Chloe’s house the night before. I had made it home long before curfew, thanks to the humiliating sendoff Matilda had given me at the party in her drunken stupor. It was anyone’s guess when my parents would find out that I was at the party, but they would find out. Wayne’s dad was a police officer, and he would see to it that every single person was accounted for.
For a second, I hoped that I might be able to convince Officer Russell that I hadn’t known there was alcohol at the party, but Matilda’s little outburst had been heard by everyone there.
“What’s the big deal, Janie? Afraid you might get drunk and say something stupider than usual?” she had shouted at me as I stormed off.
Wayne had followed me to my car. “You can stay if you want, Janie. You don’t have to drink to have a good time,” he had said.
There were a million reasons why I couldn’t stay at that party. If the cops showed up, there was a chance I could lose my scholarship. If I had to watch him and Matilda suck face all night, I would have to dig my eyeballs out with a spoon. The reason at the top of my list though had been as simple as being a coward and unable to handle anymore humiliating quips from Matilda the Hun.
I assured Wayne that I was just tired and promised that I wouldn’t tell his parents, after he gave me the same pleading look that I remembered from when we were six and he snuck into my backyard with the last of his mother’s homemade brownies. It had been nicer when it was just the two of us savoring the spoils of his mischief.
If I had known that he was going to get himself all banged up and comafied, I would have begged him to leave with me. I would have made an anonymous call to his dad. I would have done something differently.
My mom put her hand on the bathroom door and paused, sparing me another gentle smile. “Ready?”
Wayne’s room was empty again, except for a nurse, busy checking his vitals. I stopped to steal another glance at him, memorizing every scrape and bruise so that I could recall them later after the shock wore off and I was alone with my guilt.
My mom rubbed a hand over my back. “We’ll come see him again tomorrow,” she said, directing me towards the door.
Matilda’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. Hunt, were still in the hallway talking to Wayne’s parents. I only recognized them from the commercials they did for their Hubbard Lake resort. Mrs. Hunt noticed me and grabbed my hand as I walked by. “Were you a friend of Mattie’s?”
“Uh, I, I...” My heart froze in my chest, refusing to lay another lie on top of the one I was already regretting.
“She grew up with Wayne. We live next door to the Russell family,” my mother interjected, much to my relief.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” I added quietly. It wasn’t really a lie. I was sorry she was hurting. I was sorry her little girl was gone forever. I wasn’t sorry that Matilda happened to be that girl.
My lack of guilt for Matilda’s death spawned some vicious hybrid form of guilt that had a direct link to my stomach, and I felt it churn again. I swallowed down the bile in my throat and took my hand back from Mrs. Hunt.
“Susan,” Officer Russell pulled her attention back to the conversation they had been having before I distracted her. “Why don’t you and Ned go home and get some rest. We can go over the rest of the insurance paperwork tomorrow.”
My mom gave Mrs. Russell a hug goodbye, and we went down to the lobby where my dad waited, holding three paper cups of coffee. He handed one to each of us. It was the first time he had ever offered me coffee. I had a feeling that the crappy brand the hospital gave away would turn me off of the stuff forever, but I drank it down anyway, letting it scald my tongue and throat.
“We better get on home,” my mom sighed. “I need to bake a few casseroles to take over to the Russells and the Hunts later.”
Like a casserole was going to fix anything. According to my mom though, the first thing people forgot when there was a disaster was food. She said that’s why there was so much of it at wakes.
Just the thought of food made my stomach grumble again. The stale hospital coffee swirled around in my gut violently, but I finished it off anyway, wishing I had something stronger.