A List of Cages(55)
“He’s going to be okay?” I murmur out loud.
“We’ll know more when we get the blood work back.” The doctor’s expression doesn’t fill me with much confidence. “I’d also like to run a CT scan and an MRI.”
“A CT scan? Why—”
Before I can finish, a nurse takes me by the shoulder and asks if I could step into the hall. Just outside are three police officers with crackling walkie-talkies. One of them, massive and scowling, marches toward me.
“ARE YOU ACTUALLY a cop?” I ask.
He glares and flashes his badge.
“So you’re not about to rip all your clothes off and start dancing?” Why I just asked that, I have no freakin clue. Maybe I’m having a mental breakdown. Officer Clark—according to the silver tag on his lapel—looks more like a stripper than a real police officer, or maybe his uniform just shrank in the wash. If he wasn’t pissed before, he definitely is now.
He crowds me against the wall, snarling, “Shut up, and hand me your ID.” I pull my license from my wallet, and he scrutinizes it carefully like it might contain clues, then passes it to another cop. “You’re the one that found him?”
“Yeah.”
“I need you to tell me exactly what happened.”
My story makes more sense this time around, but it still doesn’t make a lot of sense.
“You broke into his house?”
“Yes.”
“Because you had a bad feeling?”
“Yes.”
“And why did you have this bad feeling?”
I tell him that a few months ago Julian’s uncle hit him, so yes, I had a bad feeling.
“You report that?”
“No.”
There’s no obvious censure in his face—it’s the same exact glare he’s had all along—but I feel the criticism anyway. I should have reported it. I know that.
Then he asks: “Where are his parents?”
“Dead.”
“Any other family?”
“No.”
There’s something painfully bleak about saying that out loud. He has no family. None.
Then Clark starts asking me questions I don’t know the answer to: “Where does Russell work?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where is he now?”
“I don’t know. I really need to go back in there—”
“No, you need to answer my questions.”
I squeeze my head with both hands, resisting the compulsion to rip out my hair. “I don’t know.”
He frowns even more severely—something I didn’t know was possible. “Wait here against the wall.” He and the other officers huddle like a trio of football players, voices too low for me to catch.
I see Julian in my head, limbs twisted inside the trunk like he was pushed from the top of a skyscraper. The trunk was tipped over onto its side. The air holes were covered, but for how long?
What if I never thought to lift it? What if I never came at all?
One of the cops, this one a little younger and leaner, looks up from the huddle. “Did you take something tonight?” he asks me.
“What?”
He crowds in just like Clark did, looks deep into my eyes, and sniffs me. “Why are you tapping your foot like that?”
“I’m nervous! And I have ADHD.”
“Lower your voice. Right now.”
“I’m sorry. This has been an insanely stressful night, and I just want to see my friend.”
His dark eyes go semi-sympathetic. “Wait one more minute.”
Clark struts over and slaps my license into my palm. “We’ll be back later to talk to the boy.”
Awesome.
I head back into the little room just as Julian’s being rolled out. A nurse says they’re taking him to Radiology and it’ll be a while.
I stand in the now-quiet room, staring dumbly at the empty spot where his bed was a second ago. My legs are shaking and I remember freshman year, the time I passed out running cross-country in August. I remember the pounding head, the sick shaking body, the way the sky seemed to merge into a thousand black dots.
My legs go rubbery-weak, and I find myself sliding against the wall to land on the floor. Up close, the tile’s grimier than a hospital floor should be. I should tell someone about this.
I’m not sure how long I have to sit before I’m able to get back onto my feet and ask a nurse if I can use their phone. There’s only one number I know by heart.
It didn’t occur to me that after I hung up with Emerald, she’d call everyone we know. Julian would freakin hate it, but seeing my closest friends rush into the emergency-room lobby wearing pajamas or hastily-thrown-on, wrinkled clothes sends an unexpected burn to the back of my throat.
Emerald, Charlie, Allison, Jesse, Camila, and Matt stand in a semicircle around me with wide-worried eyes, and again I have to explain what happened. This time I get through it like a professional, calmly bullet-pointing all the pertinent facts.
They seem to take my pausing for a breath as the signal to start crying. Emerald and Allison tear up, and—Jesus—even Charlie’s eyes become suspiciously watery before he turns around with a furious scowl. My cheeks stretch up into what I hope is a reassuring smile as I tell them really, everything’s fine. They should go home and get some sleep. I’m met with stunned glares, and then, in almost synchronized fashion, they take deliberate seats. That esophageal burn magnifies while I spastically nod.