Page 17 of If Only You Hurt

Speaking of which, I realize I should have heard from Laney by now. Her class ended a while ago. I look down at my phone, but I have no missed calls. She only has intro to psych today and should be done with it by now, but maybe she got caught up with friends.

I let that go and just take in the views. I capture a few pictures but decide to walk back to the hotel to grab a different lens for my camera that I forgot thanks to the jet lag. I am fighting sleep as I get closer to my hotel, but I’ve found the more I push through when I travel to other time zones, the quicker I adapt.

The moment I get in my room, I feel my cell buzzing in my pocket. I place my camera bag on the bed and reach into my pocket. My mom’s name flashes across the screen. For a moment, I think about calling her back, as I really want to get back out and get the photos I need for tonight. But something causes me to push that aside and answer. She’s normally good about simply texting and only calls if something’s up.

“Hey, Mom, how?—”

I’m interrupted by my mother, “Grant! Oh my God! Thank goodness you answered!”

“Mom? What’s wrong? Is Becca okay? Are the kids okay?” I hear the panic in my own voice. I hear my mom sniffling on the other line.

“Grant, everyone here in New York is fine. It’s not them, it’s Laney. Oh my God, Grant. There was a mass shooting at her school.”

I don’t hear anything anymore. I drop my phone, and I feel my knees give out. I fall to the ground, and I’m struggling to breathe. No, not my Laney. I just talked to her. She has to be okay. She has to be okay.

I have no idea how long I sit, trying to get oxygen into my lungs. I hear my mom screaming on the phone, probably panicked that I went silent. Somehow, I find the strength to pull the phone up to my ear again.

“She has to be okay. Please tell me she’s okay.” I’m crying now. Sobbing actually. I can feel my heart shattering as I wait to hear how Laney is doing.

“She wasn’t shot. But she was there. She saw it, Grant. All I know is that she’s in shock. Her parents are driving to her now. She’s at the hospital, more for observation than anything. At least that’s all we were told.”

The moment my mom says Laney is alive, I take in a breath. My mom keeps speaking, telling me what hospital she’s at while I’m packing my belongings. Once I hang up with my mom, my movements are a blur.

I email my friend and let him know an emergency back home calls for me to fly back to the States. Then I look at flights and find one with more connections than any flight I’ve taken across the world, but I book it because I need to get to her. She needs me. I need to get to her. I need to hold her. I need to see she’s okay with my own two eyes. Unfortunately, I don’t consider that her life, as we all know it, is forever altered. And this is just the beginning of a new path.

Twenty-three hours later, I’m sitting beside Laney while she sleeps. Jana and Kirk sit opposite me, and Jana still has tears falling down her cheeks. I’m emotionally exhausted. I had no idea what state I would find Laney in when I got here. I keep looking up at her monitors, each time feeling a sense of validation seeing her heart rate flashing with the EKG monitor.

I hold her hand while she rests. Even her expression looks stressed. Her brows are furrowed, and she’s restless as she tries to sleep. I’ve slept by Laney’s side enough to say she’s never had a night terror. She’s never so much as laughed in her sleep. She usually has no issues finding comfort when dozing off, but in this short span of time where I’ve watched her take a nap in this bed, she has twitched, thrashed a bit, and whimpered. I even saw a tear fall down her cheek. My girl is hurting, and all I want to do is wipe away the events that destroyed her life yesterday.

Soon she starts to stir, and she slowly opens her eyes. The moment her mind must catch up with the reality of what she just experienced in the last thirty hours, her face is panic-stricken. She looks to her left to find her parents. She doesn’t smile at them like she usually would. Her face is vacant; lost is the woman I left behind just a month and a half ago. In her place is someone who saw things no one should ever witness.

When I got here, Kirk told me what he knew about the incident. There were two shooters—two students who felt wronged by the university and apparently took it out on innocent lives. Fucking cowards; using guns to show their strength instead of simply talking about their issues.

They chose the large auditorium near Laney’s classroom where the professor they were after usually taught. But the class had moved locations for that one day, so they began their rampage throughout the rest of the campus, splitting up and taking out whomever crossed their path. Unfortunately, Laney’s class was one of the ones they found with students in it.

Artie, Laney’s friend, shoved her in a closet but left himself exposed. He died in her arms. Kirk said that Laney was found with her friend in her lap, the shock evident on her face when she was assessed. She wasn’t harmed by the shooters; however, the loss of life she witnessed put her in a state of shock, and she hasn’t really said much since she was admitted.

Laney’s gaze moves from her parents over to me. Empty. That’s all I can say about her eyes. She looks lost, or maybe she simply lost too much too quickly yesterday. It’s hard to tell. But what I do know is that somewhere, my Laney was left behind, and this shell of her is in her place right now.

“Hey, Bean.” I squeeze her hand and move my palm to cup her cheek. She looks down at my hand intertwined with hers. I pull her hand to my lips and kiss her knuckles. She barely reacts to the motion. She just looks at me and then moves her gaze back to her parents.

After about another minute of this back-and-forth motion, she puts her head back on her pillow and turns toward me, in a fetal position, and closes her eyes. It’s like she needs to protect herself from this world, and I don’t blame her.

Laney stays in the hospital one more night. While the nurse is getting discharge instructions in place, I’m in the hall with her parents, figuring out the next steps for her. Laney hasn’t spoken since I arrived, and her parents said she hasn’t spoken to them as well. We will come up with a plan and then tell her to see if she approves. We have to let her lead, and we will follow.

We decide that going back to Nebraska might be what’s best, but we have to get her apartment here figured out. If she wants to return to school, she will have to tell us, although a decision now isn’t necessary. The school is locked down at the moment until the investigation is over.

Right as we are about to go back into the room, a young man around my age is walking toward the room. He looks distraught, and I’m immediately on alert. I have no idea who this person is, and now everyone is a suspect to me. I move in front of the door, waiting for this person to introduce himself.

“Hi. I’m Eugene. My, um, boyfriend was, uh…” He begins to cry, and I realize he’s a student at the school, and he most likely experienced a loss, much like my Laney. “…my boyfriend was Artie. He passed away.”

The connection is immediate for me. I only met Artie through video chats with Laney in the past, and I have never met his boyfriend, but I remember Laney mentioning Eugene in passing this past summer. I pull him into an embrace, and I feel his shoulders shake.

I whisper, “I’m so incredibly sorry for your loss. Artie is a hero. He saved my Laney.” That’s all I can say before I, too, feel the tears well up in my eyes. This could have turned out so differently like it did for Eugene and so many others, but right now, Artie is a hero to us all in this hallway.

“May I go in and see her? I wanted to come by earlier, but I’ve been trying to wrap my head around everything.” I nod, unable to remove the frog from my throat.

I step aside, and Eugene opens the door to Laney’s hospital room. The moment she sees him, she gasps and starts crying, opening her arms to him, and he runs toward her. I see them sobbing in one another’s arms while the door to the room slowly shuts, and I feel even further from my girl in that moment than I ever have in our lifetime.

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