All We Can Do Is Wait(7)

She’d gone to Kate’s room to tell her about it, but she was studying and had just said, “Ignore it,” which Skyler knew she wouldn’t be able to do. And Kate should have known that too. Skyler stood in Kate’s doorway, waiting for more advice, until Kate sighed and turned to her sister, sitting up on her bed. “Just do your thing. Don’t respond, delete the message, and do your breathing thing. It’s fine. You don’t have to respond to a text message, no matter who it’s from.”

Skyler nodded. “I know, I know. Yeah. You’re right. It’s just . . . What if it is him?”

Kate sighed again. She looked tired. She was a full-time student at Lesley and working a job way across the city. She barely had any time to sleep, let alone counsel her little sister every time she had an anxiety attack. Or whatever this was. Things had been better for a little while at that point, but still, standing there in Kate’s doorway, Skyler wanted more from her sister, some reassurance, some magic cure-all.

Kate probably sensed that. “Skyler. You’re O.K. It’s over. It is. I promise,” she had said, before turning back to her textbook. Skyler wandered back to her room, the cramped little alcove in the corner of the second floor, clothes spilling off her raised bed, papers and blue books and other school ephemera littering nearly every surface. She tried her breathing thing, closing her eyes and inhaling deeply as she thought to herself, over and over again, Waves on the ocean, waves on the ocean. It’s just waves on the ocean.

It was a little mantra Skyler had learned to repeat to herself when she was younger and scared of flying. They took a long flight to Cambodia every June when school got out, and Skyler had hated the turbulence as the plane rumbled along, flying north, over the Pole, down into Asia. Kate, always seeming so serene and practical on those endless flights, had told her that the bumps might feel big, but they were actually pretty small. “Think about being on a boat. You bounce a little, but not much. It’s just little waves. That’s all it is.” And it helped. Like pretty much everything Kate said to her, did for her, this had calmed Skyler down.

Now, as the bus approached Fort Point Channel, another bridge looming, Skyler felt tetherless. She tried to focus on what she knew. The news had told her what? Cars that weren’t over the water yet had fallen into Charlestown. Cars that were had landed in the Mystic. Some people had managed to get out of their cars before they fell, but they still may not have made it off the bridge. The direction Kate was coming from, chances were she’d gone into the water, that she hadn’t made it to the Charlestown side yet. Skyler pictured the car, that familiar old Camry, bubbling and sinking.

Waves on the river.

Kate was a strong swimmer. Wasn’t she? Skyler couldn’t remember the last time they’d gone swimming. Maybe Buzzards Bay the Fourth of July before last. Maybe in their cousin George’s pool, in Philadelphia.

But this water was cold. It was November, and dark. It had begun to rain. The bus’s windshield wipers made low, mournful squeaks as they worked, and the night suddenly felt unbeatable, like there was no way anything good could come out of it, like the only thing waiting for Skyler when she got to the hospital was very bad news. She began to feel that familiar panic and worry rise up in her, curdling in her stomach and then pressing on her chest. She reached for her phone in her bag. It was now . . . 4:22 in the morning in Phnom Penh. Skyler’s thumb hovered over the green “Call” button, but a new feeling of resolve stopped her. If she was going to be alone now, if she was going to have to help herself from here on out, this is where it would start.

She would ride the bus until the last stop, then walk the remaining few blocks to the hospital, in the rain if need be. She would wait as long as she needed to, she would ask as many questions as she could. She would keep herself composed, she would not cry or break down or worse. She would not text the mysterious number back, both fearing and sickly hoping that it was him. She would not try to call her mother, wherever she was. She would not bother her old, tired, sweet, and stern grandparents, who’d already seen a lifetime of death and horror before Skyler had even been born. She would handle this herself, whatever this was.

The bus hissed to a stop, and Skyler gathered her things. She stepped out into the cool rain falling on Cambridge Street in a thin veil. There was the world again, immediate and loud, car tires sloshing through water, sirens wailing both toward and away from her. Boston was a jumble, dark and disorienting, and Skyler felt herself standing very much in the middle of it. Not the center of it, not the focus of all this chaos, but caught in its tightest, fastest winds, circling around her, whipping past and jostling her like turbulence. She steadied herself, took a few deep breaths, and then turned toward the hospital, running down Cambridge Street until she saw the fluorescent glow of the emergency room sign cutting through the dark and rain.

? ? ?

As expected, the scene at the hospital was overwhelming. People were pushing and yelling, a crowd of them by the reception desk. Skyler immediately felt helpless. How was she ever going to get past all these people to ask whomever she needed to ask about her sister? She considered turning and leaving—flight, ironically, coming so much more easily to her than fight. But she closed her eyes and planted her feet. Waves waves waves waves. She felt her panic dip down a little, relieving the pressure in her chest, her head not tingling quite so much. When she opened her eyes she felt surprisingly clear, as if everything had snapped into focus. She knew she had to take advantage of this likely brief moment, before her brain reminded her of the dire gravity of the situation she was in and she was once again knocked off course.