MEMORIAL COUNTY HEALTH CENTER: An ultra-boring white-and-blue sign is situated near the entrance of the main rural hospital in Beauty County, Rhode Island. The cookie-cutter building looks like every other new American hospital. (Personal photo/Josephine Saint-Martin)
Panic spreads through my chest. Without thinking, I stand up before pulling out my chair and painfully bump my thighs on the underside of the coffeehouse café table. “Evie?” I say, massaging my leg. “Are you hurt?”
“I’m okay,” she insists. “Just scraped up. Nothing broken.”
She’s okay! Oh, thank God. “Wait … You wrecked the Pink Panther?”
“No. Aunt Winona took it when we closed the shop. No idea where. She said she had to run some errand this afternoon. Can you try to call her? Maybe she’ll answer you. If not, can you call a car to take you here and pick me up? I’m at Memorial, the hospital north of town? I don’t want to be here anymore, cuz. Please. You know I hate hospitals, and the nurse keeps asking when my mom is coming to pick me up, and I already told them she’s in Nepal, and I just … I want to go home.” She sounds as if she’s on the verge of tears.
“Stay there. I’ll come get you one way or another, fast as I can,” I assure her, hanging up.
“What is it?” Lucky says.
“Evie’s been in a wreck,” I tell him, dialing my mom’s number. “I don’t know how. She doesn’t have a car. She said Mom took the Pink Panther on an errand—”
Is it wrong to want to strangle your own mother? I mean …
“—and she can’t get her to answer. Evie’s okay, I think?” I continue telling him. “She says she’s just scraped up. But her dad died in a hospital, you know? And she gets really freaked out about them, like super phobic, so I need to go get her, or at least calm her down—what the hell? Why isn’t my mom answering her phone? Now I’m going to have to call a taxi or a car or something?”
“Hey,” Lucky says in a calm, firm voice. “Evie’s okay?”
I nod. I’m out of breath. Gotta relax. Gotta slow down and breathe.
“All right. That’s the most important thing. My bike’s parked right there,” he says, pointing. He pulls out a ring of keys from his pocket. “I’ll take you.”
I blink at him, still holding my phone. “I don’t have a helmet.”
“You can wear mine. Don’t argue. This is a onetime emergency, and your head is more important than mine.”
I don’t see how that’s true. “How will we get her home?”
“She’s freaked out, yeah? Then she needs you there. Get there, calm her down, call a car or get in touch with your mom. But you’ll get to her faster this way. Come on.”
Sounds logical. And I’m too worried to question it. I grab my portfolio and follow Lucky across the deck of the creaking ship while he makes a phone call. I think it must be to his father, because while we’re heading down the plank back to shore, he briefly explains what’s transpiring in a hushed voice and says he’ll call back after we get there.
Once we cross the Harborwalk, I spot the red Superhawk a few yards away, parked on the street. He retrieves his helmet from a locked compartment behind the seat that has the same decal—LUCKY 13—and hands it to me, offering to stow my portfolio in its place. The helmet is ill-fitting, and I have trouble with the strap under my chin—my hands are shaking a little—until he helps me adjust it.
“All right?” he asks.
When I nod, he throws a leg over his bike and gestures for me to straddle behind him. The seat barely accommodates two, so I’m forced to fit my legs around his. I try to lightly hold on to his arms, but he moves my hands to his waist. “Keep your feet on the pegs—yep, that’s right. Steer clear of the wheel and exhaust. It gets hot. I’ll hold up a hand to signal when I’m stopping. Don’t fight curves. We won’t fall over. Lean on me if it makes it easier. Got it?”
“Have you carried, uh, passengers before?”
“Many,” he says, slipping on a pair of narrow sunglasses that fit like goggles around his eyes. “If you get freaked out, tell me. Try to relax.”
I’ve never ridden on the back of a motorcycle. I don’t even know how to ride a regular old bicycle, for the love of Pete! But it’s too late now. He twists the handle, and we lurch onto the street. I hold on like grim death, hugging him as we speed away from the Quarterdeck Coffeehouse.
The hospital isn’t all that far away. Lucky takes side roads out of the harbor area, avoiding the tourist traffic and picking his way over to the main highway out of town. It’s so unsettling and strange on a bike, surrounded by bigger cars and trucks. It’s as if they all have armor and we’re naked as fools, dangerously exposed to the air and the sun and the thunderous sounds of the road.
We glide over hilly asphalt, and my stomach dips as if I’m on a carnival ride. I loosen my death grip on his torso and give in to the impulse to lean against his back. He’s solid and steady, and the sun warms the leather of his jacket, which is somehow a comforting scent.
We cross a multilane bridge over a river outside of town, and the motorcycle’s tires bump rhythmically over the bridge’s seams as the landscape changes to trees and flat countryside. After a couple of miles, Lucky slows as we round a sharp curve and approach black skid marks that lead off the road.
Was this where the wreck happened? A metal road sign is flattened, but there’s no sign of a car. I wonder if it was hauled away or if this is some other accident. I forgot to ask who she was riding with when she wrecked. Maybe that Vanessa girl from Barcelona.
Everything feels surreal. The skid marks. This bike. The solid feel of Lucky’s body under my arms … similar to the boy I used to know when we were younger, but very different now. Familiar, but strange. I hold on a little more tightly.
The landscape changes again as we approach an unincorporated community outside of Beauty, and after we pass a gas station and a couple of strip malls, a rural hospital comes into view. Lucky pulls into the ER parking entrance, slides the bike into an empty spot near the door, and shuts of the motor while I release my death grip on his waist. I can’t get off fast enough.
“Whoa, now,” he says as I wobble off the bike. My legs feel numb, and he’s gripping my shoulders to help me stay vertical. “Get your sea legs under you before you try to walk.”
“I’m okay,” I tell him, tearing off the helmet.
“Sure?” he says, retrieving my portfolio from his bike’s storage compartment, which I immediately grip to my chest as if it’s a security blanket.
“My pants are hot, and all my bones are still shaking.…”
He nods. “You get used to it.”
“I’m never getting on that thing again.”
“Never say never, Saint-Martin.”
“Oh, I’m saying it. Never.”
He stows his helmet without comment and says, “Come on. Let’s find Evie.”
The hospital is shiny and quiet. From the looks of things, it must have been built recently. The ER waiting room is practically empty, just a scattered few people, and most of them seem to be in the flu/cold group of emergencies, rather than the I-sawed-off-a-finger group. A nice man at the check-in desk looks up Evie’s name in his computer and, after making a phone call and logging our IDs, directs us to the second floor of a different wing.
Honestly, I’m utterly thankful to have Lucky with me. It strikes me that he was in the hospital five years ago when I left Beauty, getting skin grafts and healing from all his burns. For a moment, I worry that Evie’s not the only person who may have a hospital phobia, but when I try to catch his gaze, he seems to be okay.
Maybe he’s not thinking about it. Maybe it’s just my guilt.
After walking in circles, we finally find the right area; however, a nurse has to question two other staff members to track down where they’ve put Evie.
“I thought she wasn’t hurt?” I tell the nurse.
“She’s fine. Her friend is another story. Who are you? I thought she said she was calling her guardian to pick her up.”
Of course my mom is MIA.… Strangle, strangle, strangle. “I’m her cousin.”
“All right. Let me get you to her.” The nurse leads us to a private hospital room and turns to Lucky. “You all know one another, right? Family and close friends only.”
Lucky shoots me a questioning look, asking me with his eyes if I want him to bail.
I really don’t want him to leave. “We’re friends,” I say, hoping he’ll stay.
“Yes,” Lucky says. “We all know one another.”
Good. I’m relieved.
The nurse nods and tells me, “I’ll get the paperwork to release your cousin. In the meantime, keep it quiet in here, because her friend needs rest. Doped up pretty good, so you may hear some wild things. Fair warning.”
What friend? Vanessa? Her other friend from the party?
I look at Lucky. He looks at me. And as we step inside, I suddenly understand.
On the far side of the room, Evie sits under a bank of windows. Her eyes are closed as if she’s catnapping in a beam of sunlight, Cleopatra eyeliner smeared, and she’s curled up in a ball in a visitor’s chair—the kind that a spouse would sleep in while keeping vigil over their sick loved one. One of her forearms has been wrapped in a narrow, light gauze, and it looks as if a small cut on her face has been taped up.
Next to her is the person we were warned about.
Hooked up to a monitor and bolstered by pillows, Adrian Summers reclines with his eyes closed on a hospital bed surrounded by IV stands. Lacerations cover one side of his face. One arm is heavily bandaged. His left ankle is wrapped in stretchy green bandages; it’s propped up by a couple of pillows.
“What the actual fuuu—” Lucky whispers.
Evie’s eyes blink open. “Josie,” she says, leaping up.
I race to her, and we embrace. She clings to me as if the world is falling apart. From the looks of things in here, maybe it is. “Are you sure you’re okay?” I whisper. “Is anything broken?”
“I’m okay, I’m okay,” she mumbles into my neck near my ear. “Just cuts and scrapes. Thank God you came. I couldn’t call Vanessa. She’s going to kill me when she finds out.…”
I pull back to look at her and ask, “What happened?”
“Nature. That’s what,” Adrian says in a scratchy voice.
I release my cousin to look at him. His eyes are bloodshot and swollen, and it’s pretty clear that he’s been medicated to the moon and back. “Deer ran out in the road. Swerved. But the bastard ran into my side. Luckily Evelyn got out okay.”
“I tried to help him out, but … ,” Evie says, still gripping my hand tightly.
“Stop,” he tells her. “It was a big ass deer. I couldn’t have lifted it myself, and the paramedics got there fast, so it’s all good. Well. Except for the broken ankle, five stitches on my arm, and all this glass in my face. But I’m in Morphine City right now, so it’s hard to care about that too much.”
“He will,” Evie says. “When it really hits him that he can’t row at Harvard.”
“Just for summer practice.”
“Maybe not for fall, either. You heard the doctor,” she argues. “Six weeks on crutches.”
“There’s more to Harvard than rowing. I just need to convince my dad of that.…” He pauses, frowning, and I follow his gaze behind me. “What the hell are you doing here?”
Lucky stares at Adrian, arms crossed. “Visiting a dumbass.”
“He drove me here,” I say.
“Well, he can drive himself back home,” Adrian says. “He’s a felonious deadbeat who threw a rock at my family’s business. I don’t want him here.”
Lucky snorts. “That makes two of us, bucko. Though it’s a little entertaining to see you on your back.”
“Screw you.”
“Like you screwed yourself?” Lucky says. “Guess you’ll have to wait a little longer for that Olympic medal.”
“Bet I get one before you finish vocational school, grease monkey.”
“Oh-ho-ho, that cuts!” Lucky clutches his chest dramatically. “It’s so tragic that I actually have to work for money instead of paddling a canoe for gold medals or waving at the Victory Day flotilla crowds from the deck of the largest yacht in the harbor while good ol’ Daddy Warbucks buys me Italian sports cars that I wreck.”
“Hey, the first car I totaled was German.”
“You totaled another car?” I say, stunned.
Lucky laughs darkly. “This is Wreck-It Ralph’s third accident. The second one at that exact same spot.”
“None were my fault,” Adrian assures me. “A truck veered into my lane last time, and the first one was when I was fifteen—I wasn’t even on a public road.”
“He smashed his father’s Porsche,” Lucky says. “But it doesn’t matter at Summers & Co, because a world-class surgeon and a replacement car are always on the horizon.”
Adrian groans and shifts his shoulder into a different position. “At least I didn’t have to scour junkyards for parts to rebuild a shitty motorcycle,” Adrian says as the numbers on the blood pressure section of the screen near his bed begin climbing. “I know I’m living a charmed life. I’m fucking happy about it. Zero shame. And I know that if you had the choice, you’d be sitting where I am right now too.”
“Enjoy sitting,” Lucky says. “Because I don’t think you’ll be doing much walking anytime soon.”
“That’s fine. I don’t need to throw rocks at windows for kicks. Is that how you show your lady friends a good time? Property destruction? By the way, I’ve been meaning to ask, Karras … What is it with your family and these Saint-Martins, huh? Just can’t stay away?”
What?
“I think the morphine has addled your brain,” Lucky mumbles.
“Stop it,” Evie says, dropping my hand. “Both of you!”
She’s upset. She was just in a wreck. She’s in a hospital, and she hates hospitals. I get all that. But right now, I’m really confused. “Can you just explain,” I say to her in a quiet voice, shielding my face with one hand in a poor attempt at privacy, “why in God’s name you were riding in the car of an ex-boyfriend who was drunkenly embarrassing us at a party a couple of weeks ago?”
“Josie,” Evie pleads.
“An ex who said horrible things about our entire family, including basically calling me and my mother whores in front of whole bunch of people.”
“Not my proudest moment,” Adrian calls out from the hospital bed. “But I don’t remember everything I said that night.”
“Well, I’m not going repeat what you said about me,” I mumble, refusing to look at his face. Or mention what you showed everyone. “Though maybe you don’t remember that, either.”
“Seem to recall being called an asshole by certain parties in the room,” Adrian says, directing this toward Lucky. He turns back to me to say something else, but Lucky quickly cuts him off.
“Whoa, whoa! Hey,” Lucky says, holding up his hands. “That nurse will come in here if they hear us, and you need to rest. Maybe we should do this another time?”
I start to argue, but Evie interrupts and looks at me as she says, “I asked Adrian to talk with me today, okay? He apologized for … his behavior the night of the party, and I was trying to ask him if he could talk to his father and get him to drop the whole window thing with Lucky. There. Are you happy? Is it not enough that everything he’s worked for at Harvard next semester has just been lost? You two aren’t the only people going through shit, you know.”
I’m too shocked to respond. I guess everyone is, because for a strained moment, there’s nothing but the sound of Adrian’s monitors. While I’m picking my jaw up off the floor, the nurse comes into the room with a wheelchair and Evie’s release papers. Evie signs them in a huff, ignores the wheelchair, and storms out of the room.
“Thanks for stopping by. A pleasure,” Adrian says, closing his eyes. “Now I’d advise you to leave before my father comes back and catches you in here. He’s likely to make you pay to replace all the windows in the store to match the new one, just out of spite.”
Lucky doesn’t bother to say goodbye. He just leaves the room, heading in the same direction that Evie went, and stops when he sees her striding into the ladies’ restroom. “Welp, that was fun,” Lucky mumbles. “Guess we took her mind off her hospital phobia.”
Yeah. Not happy about our methods. Upsetting Evie is the last thing I wanted. And now that I’m out of Adrian’s hospital room, I’m a little embarrassed we had an argument with a guy who just wrecked his car and broke his ankle, asshole or not.
I didn’t handle any of that well. At all.
“Sorry,” Lucky says. “But after what he did to you … If I’d known he was in there, I wouldn’t have gone in. Hope Evie’s okay.”
Me too. Exhaling a couple of times to rally my courage, I start to tell Lucky that I’ll go check on her, but movement through a pair of doors near the restroom snags my attention.
Cat-eye glasses, bright retro-red lipstick. Mom.
She strides toward us, handbag tucked under her arm and face lined with worry. She’s walking alongside some guy I don’t recognize.
Lucky spies her too, and I can practically feel all the energy around him withdrawing like a turtle on the side of a highway sensing an out-of-control semitruck headed its way. “I’m gonna take off. Your mom doesn’t seem to like me much.”
“Yeah,” I say on a long exhale, “I’m going to be in so much trouble for being here with you.”
“Not sticking around for that. I’ve already filled my drama quotient for the day.”
“Wait!” I whisper loudly to his back as he turns to leave. “What about our payment arrangement? This doesn’t change anything.”
He turns his head toward me briefly, eyes cast downward. “I need to think about it.”
Before I can respond, he shoves his hands in his jacket pockets and takes off down the hall. When he passes my mom and the young ginger-haired guy she’s with, he says something briefly, a stiff nod of his head, and then he’s gone, disappearing around a corner.
Dammit. None of this is going right.
Now I have to deal with my Mom, strutting in here on the arm of some young-and-pretty dude in topsiders and a pastel polo shirt, in front of God and everyone.… It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know he’s the reason she wasn’t answering her phone this afternoon.
So, yeah. Think I’ve filled my drama quotient too. Unfortunately, I don’t have the luxury of walking away from my supremely messed-up family.
Not yet, anyway.