This Is Ours

PART FOURTEEN

On the fifth ring, someone picks up. “Hello?”
“Is this the school office?”
“Yes, this is Debbie, I was about to head home actually.”
“Wait, don't do that! Uhh, can you please send the nurses to room 10, West Tower third floor- boys.” I say rambling everything I shouldn’t know about Chris’s lodgings. “Chris Ariti is injured and bleeding, I don’t think a bandage is going to be enough, please it’s an emergency.”
“Well, of course my dear, I’ve sent the message to the infirmary. You just sit tight and wait. I’ll get them to come faster.”
Debbie hung up  and I fiddle with my dress. Waiting.
Chris groans and winces. But he seems to be losing consciousness so I don’t want to ask him how he got hurt no matter how curious I am. I look around the room. It’s a lot messier than ours although it’s the same design and spacing. Every inch of the guys’ wall is filled up with some kind of poster. Superheroes, politicians, musicians, athletes. Everywhere. The bed next to which Chris is lying must be his, because it is the weirdest assortment of objects sitting next to each other. Football, books, textbooks, crumpled up paper, guitar picks, sheet music, trophies.
“Seriously,” I murmur, “You sleep with your trophies?”
Chris’s eyes flutter and he tries to sit up but turns a violent shade of green so I force him back down. There’s an odd, musty smell in the air. I’ve smelt it somewhere before.
When Debbie arrives with two nurses, I tell her everything. How he tapped on my door and I came up to his floor (I leave out the part about my window parkour) and as they’re listening, they drag me along as they get him outside his room and out the West tower and load him up in an infirmary van. The nurses tend to him in the back while Debbie checks all the facts with me. One of the nurses peek in front, “Tell the driver to find JGH,”
Debbie conveys the message to the driver and he speeds up.
“What’s JGH?” I ask.
“The nearest hospital from here.”
“He needs to be admitted?”
Debbie hears the incredulity in my voice and says soothingly, “Are you guys close?”
“What? No.”
“I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about.” she says loftily. Debbie has coloured hair and wears large glasses. But she looks the same age as me. “What’s your name?”
“Kiara.” I reply curtly, “Are you a student here?”
“I’m flattered.” she throws her head back and laughs, “But no, I graduated two years ago.”
I’m irritated because she’s so chill when Chris is dying in the back. I think I hear him make ghastly retching noises.
“When can I leave?” I demand.
“I’ll have to take down some notes and things. The nurses say someone has injured him, so it might become a case Ms. Sara will be interested in. She hates these kinds of things as I’m sure you know, sometimes, these disagreements and fights  turn violent.”
“I don’t think he’s in a fight with anybody. That’s pretty much impossible. Everybody loves or is in love with that weirdo.”
“Yes but-”
“No seriously. He’s just too nice. In an unhinged, maniacal type of way, but still.”
“So what do you think happened?”
Now that I think about it, why would someone want to injure him? Certainly not anyone in my tower. We were all busy with the party planning. The seniors have a general test tomorrow so they weren’t outside the rooms. The juniors’ favorite person had to be Chris from the way they flock around him.
It was a weekday so he would have come directly from karate class to the cafeteria. I didn’t get to see him because none of us East tower girls had gone to dinner. Which means, if it was an attack and not some lame incident where he tripped and fell and hurt himself, it had to have happened between his walk from the cafeteria to the room. But it was unusual for Chris to travel alone, without at least four of his teammates/ fans/ cult following him. Something was going on. Nobody was there in his room either. He must have realized how heavy the wound was when he got to his bed. He must’ve noticed the noise from our building and hoped someone answered.
Oh good. It’s you.
That’s what he’d said.
“I don’t know Debbie.” I say finally, “I really don’t know.”
But in the back of my mind, the puzzles start finding each other. A soupy, swirling mist of what I’d seen turn themselves to fit. The wound under his shirt. The bitter smell. The absence of friends. The things on his bed.
Oh good. It’s you.
That’s right, Chris. I think it was best that it was me.