Let's Get Lost (29 page)

who wanted to know if we were okay, until Nancy told him to piss off.

I couldn’t bear it any longer—pulled under from pain and the certainty that Smith wouldn’t show up.

Then I heard a faint
put-put-put
noise and we were lit up in the glow of headlights as a car crested the brim of the hill.

“He’s here,” I whispered, and saying it made it true because his little car was slowly coming toward us. “I look okay, right?”

Nancy snorted incredulously, but Ella was smoothing back my hair. “You look great,” she said without an ounce of sincerity.

I took a step forward—so it didn’t look like Nancy and Ella were holding me up—and waited patiently for him to open the door and uncoil himself from the driver’s seat.

“If this is one of your sick little jokes and you just need a lift back to town then I’m gonna leave you here,” he said savagely, walking around the car but not looking at me, like I was Medusa and the sight of me would turn him to stone.

I waggled the fingers of my good hand feebly. “Hey, hi, you.” I thought Ella and I had done a damn good job with our scene of the crime makeover, but he lifted his head when I spoke, then put one hand on the back of the car to steady himself.

“Bloody hell,” he growled, whipping around to glare at Nancy. “You said she was okay.”

“I said she was sort of okay,” Nancy replied haughtily. “Look, you have to persuade her to go to the hospital.”

“It’s, like, so rude to talk about me as if I’m not here,” I said to Ella, who patted my shoulder comfortingly.

“Get in the car,” Smith commanded, yanking open the passenger door.

“Why are you so angry with me?” I whined, shrinking back against Ella because his most withering expression was worse than when he wouldn’t look at me at all.

There was the toot of a horn and Nancy abruptly let go, so I had to cling to Ella. “It’s my brother—come on, Ell.”

Ella yelped in relief. “Gotta go, Is. Smith’s here now, and he’ll probably look after you,” she added doubtfully. “Can you come and get her, because I think she’s about to fall over?”

Smith’s face twisted darkly as he walked over. “You’re not going anywhere until you help me get her into the car,” he said in his most menacing voice, and Ella obviously wanted out because she was yanking me toward him with indecent haste, each step making me whimper in pain.

“Stop bumping her,” Smith hissed, lowering me onto the seat as gently as a doddery maiden aunt. Once he was sure that I was in, he shut the door very carefully, then said something to Ella, which made her burst into tears before she ran off.

I leaned back against the headrest, with a hand to my frantically beating heart, and shut my eyes as he opened the door and got in. There was a small click and I could feel the overhead light come on. Then his fingers on me, as he tilted my chin and brushed back my hair, which was sticking to my forehead.

“Looks pretty deep, I think you need stitches,” he said calmly. “Where else are you hurt?”

I opened my eyes with a superhuman effort and tried to lift my hand so I could touch him. He was too far away. “I just want to go back to your place and sleep. I’m so tired.”

“Where else are you hurt, Isabel?” he repeated mechanically, and I knew then that the only way to get him back was to be so broken that he’d be scared that he couldn’t make me right again.

“My arm,” I whispered, and it worked because he looked down at it in all its mangled glory and sucked in a breath. I couldn’t even look at it anymore—in fact, amputation was starting to seem like a valid lifestyle choice.

“It’s broken,” he said finally. “In about fifty different places, apparently. Right, I’m calling your dad, because I’m guessing that was pretty low on your list of things to do, and then I’m taking you to the hospital. Now remind me of your number.”

“I’m not telling you.”

“You are un-fucking-believable, you know that?” He was leaning over me, trying to snag the end of my seat belt without putting any pressure on my arm, and his breath hit the side of my face like a kiss.

“I know I lied to you about practically everything, but when I said I loved you, I meant it. I still do.”

“I’m going to put this down to a concussion,” he said, winding the seat belt around me and under my arm. “I’m taking you to the hospital, which is nonnegotiable, and we’ll take the issue of calling home under advisement, right?”

“Right. But you promise you won’t be mad at me . . . hate it so much.”

He didn’t say anything, just turned the key in the ignition.

I don’t remember much about the drive to the hospital, but every time I managed to drift off, his hand was on my knee, shaking me out of sleep, and he kept talking all the time, asking me stupid questions and prodding me when I didn’t answer.

Then I was on my own in the car, and it was like this battle between the tiredness and the pain, and finally I was on a trolley, the strip lights on the ceiling whizzing past as I was wheeled down a corridor.

Someone jostled my arm and I cried out thinly, shutting my eyes because the brightness stung.

When I opened them again it was because there was a light shining in my eyes with a doctor attached to it.

“Ah, you’re back with us, that’s good. Now, I need to know exactly what you’ve been up to?”

I might be a congenital liar but the doctor at the Royal Brighton Hospital almost had me beat. He wouldn’t buy any of my bullshit. Not the falling off my bike story I conjured up on the spur of the moment or my legal status as an eighteen-year-old or, well, any of it really.

He just held up a syringe full of yummy painkilling liquid and refused to stick it in me until he got parental consent.

“What part of ‘I’m eighteen’ don’t you understand?” I demanded, and he and the nurse exchanged exasperated looks.

“I’m not giving you any of this until you start telling me the truth.”

I bit my lip and was just about to try out a different story about being a homeless street urchin when Smith pulled back the curtain. “I’m her brother,” he said tonelessly. “Our parents are overseas—do you want me to ruin their twenty-fifth anniversary cruise and call them?”

I didn’t even care that I’d brought Smith over to the dark side, because whatever was in that needle made everything stop hurting, except my heart.

Yeah, my heart ached and broke into millions of little pieces all the way down to the X-ray department and then all the way to the treatment room, where two doctors popped my elbow back, emphasis on the pop. They wrapped my arm in gauze and started plastering—and Smith hadn’t left my side, but he looked like he wished he were at the bottom of the ocean. Like the distance between us was too great to be overcome.

All that was left was to apply butterfly plasters to the cut on my head and to hand Smith a prescription and a leaflet about plaster-cast care.

“If I told you that I wanted you to stay in overnight for observation, would that register with you?” the doctor asked me as one of the nurses went to find me a jacket out of the lost property.

I shook my head decisively.

“She doesn’t listen to anyone,” Smith said quietly from the chair he was slumped in. “You get used to it after a while.”

“I just want to go home,” I said, wriggling down off the trolley. “Thank you for looking after me,” I added politely.

“Oh, don’t mention it,” he said dryly. “I hope your parents enjoy that
cruise
.” He had the nerve to do air quotes, but I didn’t call him on it, because Smith was standing up and wrapping his arm around me because I needed him.

26

I knew it was 2:27 A.M. because the clock on the wall of the hospital canteen said so, but it felt much

later. I was that kind of wired that you get when you’re dog-weary but feel like you’ll never be able to sleep again.

There was a mirror on the wall opposite me, taunting me with its shiny surface, so all I could do was rubberneck my own reflection. I looked exactly like I’d been in a car crash. My hair was clumped in these blood-soaked rattails, my skin was a strange shade of putty, and my eyes were sunken. Then there were the millions of little cuts all over my face, the angry gash marching across my forehead, and that nasty little scab on my cheek.

I forced myself to look away and watched Smith walk toward me with a tray positively laden with calorific goodies, which was a far more pleasing treat for the eyes.

Smith shunted a mug toward me and then gestured at the pile of goodies on the tray. “What do you want? Biscuits? Crisps? The muffins look good . . .”

“Tea’s fine,” I said, taking a sip, then pulling a face. “Gross! I know I like my sugar, but how many spoonfuls did you put in this?”

He gave me a pale imitation of a smile. “Stopped counting after six. Meant to be good for shock, isn’t it?

Sweet tea.”

“I’m not really in shock anymore. Reality’s settling back in.” I paused for a second. “It sucks.”

“Does your arm hurt?” He was so good at that note of concern that I could almost believe that he meant it. “And that thing on your cheek . . .” Smith pointed to my hockey wound, which was scabbing over nicely. “That didn’t happen tonight, did it?”

“Sports injury,” I said shortly. “So, I was meaning to ask you . . .”

“And Molly said that she saw you this afternoon.”

The afternoon seemed like it had happened years ago. “Oh . . . She caught me at a bad moment,” I said delicately, experiencing an entirely different twinge of agony. She must have rushed home to give Smith a blow-by-blow account.

If she had, he didn’t show it, just blew slightly on his tea. “She’s sorry about ripping your coat, by the way.”

“A rip is the least of that coat’s worries.” I thought of my poor, puke-stained coat in the back of the totaled car and shuddered.

“So is this how it’s going to be?” Smith asked me suddenly, his expression resolute.

“Is this how what’s going to be?” I snatched up a packet of biscuits and ripped open the plastic with my teeth. I still felt nauseous, but I needed something to do with my mouth that didn’t involve talking.

“Same old Isabel, even now . . . Getting good and evasive about the truth? Answering a question with another question?”

“I’m afraid so,” I told him sadly because it was so good, so unbelievably good, to be sitting across from him, watching the curve of his bottom lip and the flutter of his eyelashes as he blinked, to have his undivided attention. “Why did you lie for me?”

He looked up from his contemplation of a bag of fluorescent orange cheese crackers. “Because you were in pain and you needed a shot and he wasn’t going to give you one.”

So he still cared about me? Or else he knew that the sooner they shot me up, the sooner he’d have me out of what was left of his hair.

“Well, thanks. Sorry you got dragged into all of this, but I didn’t know who else to call.”

“Don’t mention it,” Smith said shortly, and I had the good sense to go back to nibbling along the edge of my biscuit, which tasted like cardboard.

I knew that I was putting off the inevitable. He was going to leave me again. Maybe he’d give me a lift first, but he didn’t want to be with me. Couldn’t bear to be in the same room with me, because it made his brow wrinkle up and his fingers twitch nervously as he sorted through the cup of condiment sachets.

“Excuse me, darling?”

I looked up into a vaguely familiar face, but it was the faint Irish lilt that made my stomach lurch and beads of sweat blossom along my forehead.

“Oh, hi,” I muttered unwillingly.

“You’ve broken your arm? That’s a pity. And how’s your Dad and that little brother of yours?”

“They’re fine, y’know. Everyone’s good.” I could tell that Smith was watching this exchange with great interest, like it was another piece in the puzzle. And God, she was pulling out the chair next to me.

“I’ve got five minutes before my break’s over,” she said, and I wanted to punch her stupid kindly face in.

“You and I can have a nice little chat. Is this your boyfriend?”

“No!” Smith and I snapped in unison and he didn’t have to sound quite so emphatic about it. “He’s just a friend who happens to be a boy. Allegedly.”

Smith raised his cup in a mocking salute and the nurse, what was her name (Mary? Margie? Maggie?) shot me a conspiratorial look, like we were just having a lover’s tiff.

“I’m Marie,” she said to Smith. “I looked after this young lady’s mum this summer, didn’t I, poppet?”

“I’m Smith.” They solemnly shook hands. “I looked after Isabel this autumn, didn’t I?”

Then he winked at me like he knew that I needed to be mad at him, just a little, to be able to deal with Marie sitting across from me.

“I thought about you,” she was saying, her hand creeping out to pat my cheek, until I shifted back. “You got yourself into such a state. Never seen anything like it.”

“Yeah,” I muttered indistinctly, inching my chair sideways so I wouldn’t have to look at her pity head on.

“I didn’t mean to upset you,” Marie said, folding her arms over her buttresslike chest. “But we all felt sorry for you, losing your mum like that—and your wee brother, poor little thing, we just couldn’t get him to stop crying.”

“He cried for, like, weeks,” I said, remembering Felix shuddering with sobs that sounded as if they were being wrenched out of him.

“And you didn’t cry at all, poppet. We were all worried about that.”

It was time for this horrific scenic trip down memory lane to end. Didn’t the hospital provide their staff with tact training?

“Yeah, well, aren’t you going to be late?” I asked her rudely.

She didn’t look that pissed off because she was so big with the understanding. Just gave me another one of those “I get you” looks, which were starting to make me want to gag, and got up. “You take care of yourself, darling—keep that arm elevated.”

“Well, it was nice to meet you,” Smith piped up when I made it plain that I wasn’t going to say anything.

I waited until she waddled to the door, then shoved away my half-empty cup and stood up. “I hate this place, I’ve got to get out of here,” I spat. “I can hardly breathe.”

He caught up with me by the exit, ’cause I could move pretty fast for a banged-up girl in a plaster cast.