Anything but Ordinary(61)

He didn’t look up. He pointed outside.

She pushed open the heavy metal slats and looked wildly around. The air felt like it had gotten frigid, and for some reason smelled like snow. Bryce licked away more blood. A door slammed down the street. It was the B60.

“SYDNEY!” Bryce screamed. Her sister’s name echoed down the row of empty buildings. Bryce started hobbling toward the car in her heels. She didn’t care how she looked. “Sydney, stop!”

Sydney stood up from the backseat, her arm draped over the door. “Bryce, Jesus. What?”

Bryce leaned on the car, wheezing. “Don’t get in.”

Her eyes darted to the driver. Sydney glanced, too. He looked calm, sober. When Sydney looked away, though, he brought a hand up to his mouth, burping. He was clearly amused with himself.

“Did you run into something? Go inside and wash your face.”

“No!” Bryce shook her head. “I won’t. You come with me.” She sounded like a stubborn kid, but she couldn’t get out much more. Her thoughts were trudging through the alcohol.

Sydney rolled her eyes. “Bryce, I’ll be five minutes. We’re just going to get some fries.”

But Bryce couldn’t forget the feeling, the incredible urge to get Sydney out, out, out. Pounding on the glass. The terrible lurch forward. Glass, and red. How could she explain?

Sydney sat in the backseat, pulling the door gently away from Bryce. She wasn’t coming. Bryce would stand in front of the car if she had to.

“You have to take me home!” Bryce blurted out. “I’m sick. I’ve got a bloody nose. Please. I’m not feeling well.”

Sydney sighed. “You can’t wait five minutes?”

“No, now.” Bryce grabbed her arm and yanked her from her seat. Sydney’s foot kicked an open bottle and vodka sloshed out all over the floor. Bryce gripped Sydney tighter.

Bryce was panting, her makeup running in sweat down her face. Sydney shrugged at the driver.

“I guess I’ll see you later, Jack.”

The engine revved and the little blue car streaked down the street, the other backseat passenger slamming the door as it sped away.

Bryce’s muscles relaxed. She let go of Sydney’s hand. Warmth was creeping back into her limbs.

“Now what?” Sydney turned to Bryce. “You want to go home? I don’t suppose you’ve acquired a car in the hour we were here.”

Bryce clutched for her purse, but it wasn’t there. She looked at Sydney, whose phone was tucked in her leggings.

Bryce called 411 on Sydney’s phone as her sister looked at her and smoked a cigarette, puzzling.

“City and state?”

“Nashville, Tennessee.”

I do my best studying in the middle of the night, he told her once when they were entwined in the grass. When nothing is awake but my brain.

“What listing?”

“Vanderbilt Medical Center.”

After speaking with the front desk and the confused night nurse at the neurology wing, Bryce got connected to Sam’s room. The line rang and rang. Her heart sank. He wasn’t there. But then, a click.

“Hello?” Carter whispered.

Bryce felt a smile growing wide on her face. “I had a feeling you were there.”

Sydney cleared her throat, making a “get on with it” motion with her hands.

“Can you pick us up?” She told him where they were, and that it was an emergency. She hung up and they waited.

But it wasn’t an emergency anymore. Sydney was there, next to her. That’s what she was telling herself, trying to slow her frantic heart as the heat crept up her spine again, dotting her vision in black. She tried to breathe normally.

“Bryce?”

She held on to Sydney’s arm, trying to keep her balance. She lost her sight, her feeling, no longer sure if she was vertical. In a blur, the pavement swerved toward her.





on’t ever do that to me again.”

Sydney, Carter, and Bryce sat at the Grahams’ kitchen table. They’d had a quiet car ride home.

“I thought you were about to go into another coma.” Sydney was drinking tea, her pale hands wrapped tightly around her mug. She kept sneaking glances at Bryce when she thought her sister wasn’t looking.

“I’m sorry,” Bryce said. She couldn’t say it enough. She shouldn’t have gone out, she shouldn’t have drank, she shouldn’t have gotten herself worked up enough to pass out on the sidewalk.

As soon as Bryce had hit pavement, she was awake. The first words out of her mouth were, “Don’t take me to the hospital.”

Maybe it was the way Bryce had clutched her, or that Carter had pulled up seconds later, but Sydney had listened. Now she finished her tea and went to bed without a word.

Carter looked at Bryce, his eyes searching. He scooted his chair close to Bryce’s, and laid his hands on its surface, waiting.

“I’m sorry to you, too,” Bryce said.

“For what?” Carter said simply, his palms turned up briefly.

Bryce put her hand in his.

For the first time in what seemed like forever, she saw his smile. His blue-gray eyes were bright. With his other hand he reached toward his pocket, where he kept his Vanderbilt Medical ID card clipped to the fabric.