Anywhere but Here (24 page)

I nod.

“Cole! You need to get these girls out of the bathroom. Can you do that?”

Clear the bathroom.
I take a breath, and wonder how long I've been holding the same air in my lungs.
Breathe. Get them out of the bathroom. I can do that.

Maybe they're wrong about Lauren. Maybe it's indigestion.

As soon as Hannah's out of the way, I take Lex by the shoulders and physically lift her to the side. As I move the few steps down the hallway to the bathroom, I do the same to another dozen girls. I'm a bulldozer removing boulders. Eventually, I clear my way to Lauren, who is sitting on the vinyl floor staring at the blood on her toga. Her skin is the same color as the sheet, which seems eerily impossible. Her entire body is shaking.

This is not indigestion.

Is there supposed to be this much blood when you have a baby?

Lauren looks at me as if I'm a knight who will save her, but my brain is threatening to shut down again. I can feel my heart beating. The human heart is not supposed to beat this fast.

Behind me, the word “pregnant” ripples from mouth to mouth in a sound wave traveling away from the bathroom.

“Cole?” Lauren says. I sink to my knees beside her, not sure where it's safe to touch her.

“Can you get me out of here?” she asks.

Outside, the stereo stops. I hear Hannah shouting instructions. “Everybody out! The party's over. Greg, call an ambulance.
Dallas, get the fucking hat off your head and turn on some lights in here. Somebody give me a cell phone.”

Behind us, girls are pressing into the bathroom again. The pressure's building like the weight of snow on a mountain cliff, ready to bury us.

Lauren is still staring up at me, skin damp, eyes wide and scared.

I move to a squat, snaking an arm under her shoulders and another beneath her legs. “Had enough of this party?”

When she nods, I scoop her up in my arms, then shoulder my way out of the bathroom. Once I'm in motion, my brain seems to work. Maybe that's the trick to crisis management. Stay in motion.

“Cole, I haven't talked to her yet! Stay away!” Lex screams at me. I refuse to break focus.

The kitchen is crammed with people and the deck is no better, so I carry Lauren all the way to the driveway.

“The ambulance is on its way,” Hannah says, following us.

A wave of people pours out of the house and gathers around, pushing close. Some of the girls are crying; they all seem to be yelling.

Lauren grows heavy in my arms but I can't exactly lay her on the snow or the gravel.

Lex is here too, shrill and insistent.

“Leave her alone, Cole Owens!”

Lex seems to think she's supposed to be between us. When I don't respond, she swings her purse at my head, and then she actually starts kicking me. Kicking me! The girl's wearing high-heeled boots.

Eventually, I manage to get the door of my truck open and settle Lauren on the passenger seat.

“You can't take her!” Lex screams. She has backup now—a gang of drunk girls who echo everything she says.

As Lex winds up to kick me again, I consider grabbing her foot. But what would that accomplish? It wouldn't get help for Lauren any faster. I can hear a siren growing closer, so I angle the truck's passenger door between my legs and Lex's boot, and I put my jacket over Lauren.

“I think I'm dying,” Lauren whimpers.

“You're not dying,” I tell her. “The ambulance is coming. Can you hear it?”

“If I'm not dying, my parents are going to kill me,” she says.

I consider this. “It's possible. But only after they kill me.”

A fire truck is the first to arrive, and an ambulance squeals up behind. Flashing emergency lights paint the masses red, then blue, as if we're all at some alien dance club. The sight of men in uniforms finally makes everyone back up. The crowd grows quiet.

It's only me and Hannah and Lex standing by the truck when the men drop red bags and a stretcher beside us. Lex is still ranting, but I'm concentrating on the deep voice of the paramedic. It's like Valium, slowing everything.

“So what happened here?” he asks.

“She needs a hospital,” I blurt.

“She's pregnant,” Hannah says. I wince at the word. “She was bleeding all day and didn't tell anyone and then she was drinking, and she fell, and . . .”

How does Hannah know all of this?
It's as if my ex-girlfriends have formed a secret society behind my back.

A crying Lex interjects something unintelligible, and a second paramedic puts a hand on her shoulder to calm her. There is stuff streaming from Lex's nose the way little kids on rainy days have unnoticed snot.

The paramedics examine Lauren, calling numbers to each other. Then, like choreographed dancers, they step away from the truck and whisk a stretcher into place, lifting Lauren onto it like a life-size practice doll.

My brain must be in shock again because as Lauren's loaded into the ambulance, I find myself thinking that the stretcher is a cool invention. It wheels out, the legs unfold to the exact height of my truck, then fold back up to be slid into the ambulance. While I'm pondering the mysteries of hydraulics, Lex
climbs in beside the paramedic and sits by Lauren like a watchdog, as if she rides in ambulances every weekend. As if she's Lauren's best friend.

I try to join them, but the paramedic reaches out and puts a hand on my chest.

“You been drinking?” he asks.

I shake my head. I never got to drink that beer I popped.

“Follow us, then. Use the ER entrance.”

Then the ambulance doors close in my face like theater curtains and I can't help worrying that “The End” has appeared in scrolled letters.

Cursing, I race back to my truck and climb in, revving the engine to clear the bystanders from behind me. I'm about to rip backward when the passenger door opens and Hannah climbs in.

“What the . . . ?” I'm supposed to follow my pregnant ex-girlfriend to the hospital with my other ex-girlfriend in the truck beside me? I open my mouth, but I have no idea what to say.

Hannah, apparently, has no shortage of words. “I was going to make her see you. I swear. We've been talking a lot in the last couple weeks. I thought it was completely unfair of her to shut you out. She said she'd talk to you tonight. But then it was crazy in there, and when I saw you . . .”

I have this urge to wrap my arms around Hannah. I want to rest my forehead right in that dip above her collarbone. . . .

No.

The ambulance is out of the driveway, turning onto the main road. Right now, I have to follow Lauren.

I reach for the gearshift, and the truck door whips open. Again.

“Move over.”

There are very few people who would argue with Greg when he sounds like that. Without a word, Hannah slides onto the console, and Greg climbs in beside her.

“What are you thinking?” he says to me. “Go!”

And with a spray of gravel, I floor it.

•  •  •

Again, I'm remembering the time Lauren called me to her house and I found her curled on the couch, a pillow pressed against her stomach. She was trying to tell me something until she noticed Hannah idling outside.

“Fuck.”

“That's how it usually happens,” Greg says. His head has rolled back against the headrest and his eyes are closed. “I told you months ago that something was wrong with her.”

“I know,” I say.

“You knew?” Hannah asks Greg.

“Only since Cole announced that she didn't have a thyroid problem.”

“I know,” I say again, before either of them can tell me how stupid I am.

That lunch hour in the school foyer, discussing Lauren's disintegrating fashion sense and Greg's dating plans—the whole scene rotates around me. The giggling girls. The posse surrounding Lauren. The guy trying to jump onto the snack stand counter. Greg sitting beside me, tenting his fingers and working up the courage to tell me he wants to date Lauren.

But this entire scene
wasn't
rotating around me. All the big things were happening to other people. I was just a bystander. Just the guy behind the camera. A scrap of space junk in a universe of shit.

“Sorry.”

Greg snorts. “You so completely do not deserve that girl,” he says flatly.

Hannah says nothing, but I feel her shoulders curl inward.

I'm about to agree. I don't deserve Lauren. Or Hannah. Or Greg either, for that matter. But then we're at the hospital. We fling ourselves out of the truck and all three of us run—run—across the parking lot, our togas flapping behind us like surrender flags.

“We're here for Lauren Michaels,” Greg says to the woman at the desk, who looks entirely uninterested in emergencies.

“Have a seat.” She waves vaguely to the waiting room chairs without looking up.

We move in unison across the room, pulled together somehow by her indifference.

“Did someone call Lauren's mom?” I wonder as we drop into the orange plastic chairs.

As if in answer, the glass doors sweep open and Lauren's parents race into the room with a blast of cold air. Her dad goes straight to the desk. Her mom sees us as we jump up from our seats, and she stops.

“They took her inside,” Greg says.

“I didn't know, until . . . ,” I blurt, much less helpfully. I can't help feeling like there's accusation in Mrs. Michaels's eyes.

She doesn't respond. Maybe she doesn't even know what I'm talking about. Her husband says her name, and they both half-jog past the desk and down the hallway. Greg, Hannah, and I flop back down.

We wait. Hannah takes my hand, which is more helpful and less uncomfortable than I would have thought. A few more of Lauren's friends show up and perch, sniffling softly, on the other side of the waiting room. A man in green hospital scrubs sweeps through from outside, his hair sticking up as if he was called out of bed. He too disappears down the hallway.

We wait.

Greg calls his mom and I listen as he summarizes the events. I consider calling my dad, but I wouldn't know how to start explaining this particular situation.

Hannah goes to find a bathroom, leaving Greg and me side by side.

“I messed up,” I say, staring at the scuffed floor.

“Yeah. You two will work it out, though.”

“No. I mean, yes, I messed up with Lauren. But I messed things up with you too.”

Greg just grunts.

“You're a better friend than me.” Some people have a talent for that. For turning up exactly when you need them and being exactly what you need. I'm not one of those people.

Hannah sits down again.

After a while, my butt seems permanently molded to the plastic chair.

The door from the parking lot slides open, and everyone in the waiting room looks up expectantly. It's Greg's mom. She hands us each a pair of pants and a T-shirt. Once we've pulled them on and ditched the sheets, she drops into the seat beside Greg, her shoulder against his. She sits there without saying anything. For the first time since elementary school, I find myself loving Greg's mom.

We wait.

This time, it's the clicking sound of high heels that makes our heads snap to attention. Lex emerges from the ER, looking as if she was pulled behind the ambulance instead of allowed to ride inside.

“She's okay so far,” she says. “They say she lost a lot of blood, but she's stopped hemorrhaging for now.”

My jaw relaxes a little, and I wonder how long it's been clenched. Maybe since Dallas's house.

“What about the . . . ?” one of the girls asks from across the room.

“We don't know yet.” Lex doesn't look at me. No one looks at me.

Finally, I can't stand it anymore. This is not a sit-in-the-waiting-room sort of situation. I get up and walk toward the swinging doors that divide us from the ER.

“Only family members allowed,” the woman behind the desk says.

“I'm the father of the baby.” The word “father” falls like a brick off my tongue, but at least it gets me past the desk. In the row of green-sheeted compartments, I find Lauren lying on a hospital bed, face turned slightly away from where her mom stands gripping Lauren's dad's arm.

Mrs. Michaels glares at me. There's no question this time. She knows.

“I'd like to talk to Cole,” Lauren says. Her skin is still frighteningly pale, but she doesn't sound as scared anymore.

When her mom sniffs, Lauren turns to look her in the eye. Her mom glances away. Mr. Michaels pats his wife's arm and avoids looking at his daughter.

The two of them squeeze by me, stiff like icicles, careful to ensure their clothes don't brush against mine in the narrow opening between fabric walls.

Once they're a few steps away, I perch on the edge of the bed. There are no chairs in this enclosure, only machines.

“I should have talked to you earlier,” Lauren says.

“I should have figured things out months ago.”

“You were already with Hannah. . . .”

“What did they say? The doctors?”

Lauren bites her lip. “Nothing yet. The doctor came and left. The nurses did an exam. They said the bleeding's stopped. Someone's supposed to come and talk to me.”

I take her hand.

I'm not used to the hospital being this quiet. For once, there's no old lady groaning in pain, no loud, beeping machines, no crazy man yelling from the hallway about his bowel movements. There's only the efficient slap of the nurses' shoes as they pass back and forth. Red numbers blink at me from the terminal beside the IV stand, and fluid drip, drip, drips down the plastic tubing into Lauren's arm. I hold her palm lightly, rubbing my thumb across it. Mostly to reassure myself.

In the week before my mother died, her skin loosened itself, bagging under her eyes and folding itself down her neck like a balloon with the helium seeping away. Before that, Mom would sometimes look tired or pained or angry. In those last few days, she started to look . . . absent. I didn't ask the nurses about it, not even Tracy or the once-a-day doctor on his hurried rounds, because I didn't want to hear their answers, and I didn't want Mom to hear them either. Dad and I stopped
talking too. It was the end of August. I went to the hospital every lunch hour and every afternoon. Dad would go early every morning before work and late each night. We barely saw each other. Sometimes we left notes to each other on the table with Mom's portions of hospital food. Unread notes tucked underneath trays of uneaten food.