The Friend Zone(79)

“Sloan, Brandon has been in an accident,” I said calmly. “He’s alive, but I need you to get your purse and come with me.”

I knew immediately that I’d been right to come get her instead of calling. One look at her and I knew she wouldn’t have been able to put a foot in front of the other. While I mobilized and became strong under stress, she froze and weakened.

“What??” she breathed.

“We have to hurry. Come on.” I pushed past her and systematically executed my checklist. I gave myself a two-minute window to grab what was needed.

Her gym bag would be in the laundry room, already filled with toiletries and her headphones. I grabbed that, pulled a sweater from her closet, selected a change of clothes for her, and stuffed her laptop inside the bag.

When I came out of the room, she had managed to grab her purse as instructed. She stood by the sofa looking shaken, her eyes moving back and forth like she was trying to figure out what was happening.

Her cell phone sat by her easel and I snatched it, pulling the charger from the wall. I grabbed her favorite throw blanket from the sofa and stuffed that in the bag and zipped it.

List complete.

Then I took her by the elbow, locked her front door, and dragged her to the car.

“Wha…what happened? What happened!” she screamed, finally coming out of her shock.

I opened up the passenger door and put her in. “Buckle yourself up. I’ll tell you what I know on the way.”

When I got around to the driver’s side, she had her phone to her ear. “He’s not answering. He’s not answering! What happened, Kristen?!”

I grabbed her face in my hands. “Listen to me. Look at me. He is alive. He was hit on his bike. Josh went on the call. He was unconscious. It was clear he had some broken bones and a possible head injury. He’s at the ER, and I need to get you to the hospital to be with him. But I need you to be calm.”

Her brown eyes were terrified, but she nodded.

“Right now your job is to call Brandon’s family,” I said firmly. “Relay what I just said to you, calmly. Can you do that for Brandon?”

She nodded again. “Yes.” Her hands shook, but she dialed.

I drove fast and carefully while Sloan made calls. I scanned the road and went twenty over the speed limit on the freeway. I zipped around cars using my blinker and hand waves. When we got to the hospital, I dropped her off at the emergency room entrance and parked, then ran with her bag to meet her at the front desk.

“He’s in surgery,” she said tearfully when I jogged in through the automatic doors of the ER, my shoes squeaking on the white shiny floors.

I looked at the woman behind the check-in desk, like a robot gathering data. I could see everything. The age spots on her forehead, the gray wisps along her hairline. The sterile, white countertop and the shimmer in the petals of pink roses in a vase behind the desk. “Where can we wait? And can you inform the doctor that his family is here?”

We were sent to a private waiting area for the neurology department on the third floor. Brightly lit, plastic potted plants tucked in the corners of the room, serene blue walls, uniform gray tweed upholstered chairs, magazines and boxes of tissues on every end and coffee table.

Sloan scanned the room. Maybe it was the finality of it—the cessation of forward movement—but this was when she officially broke down. She buried her face in her hands and wept. “Why is this happening?”

I wrapped her sweater around her and put her in a chair. “I don’t know, Sloan. Why does anything happen?”

I knew what things had to be done, what I had to do to make her comfortable. But I couldn’t feel any of the panic or grief that I saw in Sloan. I felt like I was watching a movie with the sound off. I could see what was happening, but I couldn’t connect to the characters.

We waited. And waited. And waited.

A police officer came in and asked Sloan some questions. Confirmed Brandon’s name and address. Then he told us that the woman who had caused the accident had been arrested for driving under the influence.

Sloan sobbed again when she heard that.

I covered her with her blanket and got her a coffee. I plugged in her phone, made her eat half of a tuna sandwich.

Family began to show up and they huddled around the waiting room, whispering and crying. Brandon’s mom prayed in Spanish over a rosary.

I sat next to Sloan, feigning emotion, doing all the motions. Looking somber and rubbing her back but feeling empty and removed because my crisis response was still in effect.

Now that the rush was gone, the velociraptor paced. I couldn’t shut off my brain and the need to be doing something. But the only thing to do was wait. I bounced my knee and picked at my cuticles until they bled. I texted Josh and kept him posted. They’d found a replacement for him at work, but he couldn’t leave until 8:00 p.m.

Then, ten hours after the accident, the doctor came out.

Sloan bolted from her chair and I followed, ready to absorb what he said with an accuracy that I would be able to transpose onto paper, word for word, two days later.

Brandon’s mom wrapped her sweater tighter around herself and stood shoulder to shoulder with Sloan. Brandon’s dad put an arm around his wife.

I tried to figure out the outcome from the doctor’s lined, angular face, but he was unreadable.

“I’m Dr. Campbell, the resident neurosurgeon. Brandon is out of surgery. He’s stable. We were able to stop the internal bleeding. I had to remove a large piece of his skull to alleviate the pressure on his brain.”