Page 96 of Bending Under Pressure

No sound.

No motion.

No feeling my heart thumping crazily against my ribs. No feeling whatsoever.

Nothing.

Nothing at all.

“Oh, wow. Is she doing okay?” Mom asks.

I just finished telling her what went down at the wedding. “I don’t know. She didn’t talk on the way back. She’s said she would text me later.” I reach into my pocket for my phone and realize Haley never got her phone back. “Well, she would if she had her phone. Can I drive back over there to return it?” I ask.

We hear sirens of emergency vehicles as they rush past the house. Mom and I frown at each other.

“Wonder what’s going on,” she says. It’s odd for anything to be happening here, so something is going on for sirens to be heard. “How about I ride with you?”

“Okay.” I’m not sure I could turn her down anyway.

My stomach starts churning when Haley’s car isn’t in the driveway. Where is she? The town is so quiet that we can faintly hear the sirens from somewhere down the road.

“Did she have somewhere else to go?” Mom asks.

“No. She was upset though, so maybe she’s at the courts.”

“Let’s find out.”

I back out and head that way. But when I see fire trucks, ambulance, and cop cars, all their lights flashing from Dead Man’s Curve, I turn there instead. Please tell me she didn’t. Please, don’t let it be Haley.

“What are you doing?”

“Making sure it’s not Haley.” About halfway down the road, I see it. Her car is in the middle of a field, lying on the passenger’s side, and is totaled. I hurry to park behind a cop’s car and get out of the car, not even taking the keys from the ignition. Everyone seems to be surrounding something on the ground, so I run there, ignoring my mother’s calls for me. A paramedic moves slightly and I see a flash of blonde hair. “Haley!” I shout.

“Woah there.” A police officer is suddenly in front of me, keeping me from going to her. “They need to do their job, so I need you to stay out here.”

I stop fighting him, but stare to where she’s being strapped to a board to be loaded onto the stretcher. She isn’t moving. Shouldn’t she be moving? God, she’s still in her dress. The red stains blotting it make me nauseous.

“How bad is it?” I hear Mom ask. The officer hesitates to answer her, so she adds, “She’s his girlfriend and I want to be able to tell her mother something when I call her to let her know what happened. Besides, it’s not like you don’t know us, Harold.”

He nods. “She has several lacerations. Her arm may be broken. We won’t know about any more injuries until she gets to the hospital, though. We can’t ask her if she’s in any pain because she’s unconscious. That’s all we know at this point.”

“Thank you.” Mom’s hand touches my shoulder. “I’m going to call her mother.”

They’re carrying her toward the stretcher, where it’s waiting on the road behind the ambulance.

“Can I ride with her?” I ask the officer. “In case she wakes up and she’s scared? Please?”

He nods and leads me over to the ambulance. She’s already in the back and Harold lets them know I’m riding with her. I climb in and take a seat next to her. What was she thinking? What happened for her to wreck and land in the field like that? All I can do is stare and watch as they work on her. The closest hospital is twenty minutes away. The ride there is the longest twenty minutes of my life.

What worries me the most is that she still hasn’t regained consciousness. I’m stuck in a waiting room when Mom arrives only a minute after we get there. Rita and Walter arrive next. They look terrible, between having the flu and now the stress of this. If I wasn’t so worried, I might even laugh when a nurse makes them put on masks, so no one else gets sick. They take them back into the emergency room and Mom and I are left waiting.

Dad and Cam arrive next.

It seems like forever before Walter ambles into the waiting room. I shoot up and hold my breath. I’ve been trying not to think about the possibility that she wouldn’t be okay. Right now, Walter needs to confirm that for me.

“She’ll be okay.” A whoosh of air leaves my lungs as he continues. “She’s beat up, though. They’re going to hold her a while longer. She broke her arm. The seatbelt and airbag seems to have bruised her ribs, but nothing is broken or cracked. She has a concussion and doesn’t remember what happened right now. The police said they only thing they can tell is that she was speeding. She’s really lucky that she wasn’t hurt worse.”

“Can I see her?”

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