In Search of Tomorrow ✓

Thirty-Four

I didn't even get fully inside the front door. Heart racing, I turned right back around and stepped back onto the porch. My legs felt unsteady, like they weren't even mine. I didn't even realize Katie was right behind me until she shut the door and unlocked her car.

"Get in," she said anxiously, and I opened the passenger door and slipped inside without question.

Katie pushed the speed limit to the hospital, and I tried hard to steady my breathing, wondering how I could have been so carefree only an hour ago. Was Clare okay? What if something terribly wrong had happened, and I hadn't been there when—

I choked when I tried to swallow and, tears stinging my eyes, tried to focus on the road ahead. It was dark, though, and all I could see were the headlights of cars and masses of shadows.

Katie and I didn't speak. She had her hands clenched firmly around the wheel, her knuckles splotched with white. When we finally pulled up to the hospital, the car hadn't even come to a stop before I'd unbuckled my seatbelt and went to open the door.

Everything was a vague blur. I remembered Katie going up to the desk and telling them who I was; some nurse clothed entirely in white took me up an elevator. We walked along the hallway and I found myself swaying lightly on the spot—I wasn't even conscious about where I was walking.

I wanted to ask the nurse if my little sister was okay, but when I opened my mouth nothing came out. All I could do was lock my jaw and follow the nurse down several hallways and to a door.

When the door opened, I saw Clare lying on the bed, pale as a sheet, with even more machines than usual hooked up to her. A faint beeping was still echoing around the room, and I sighed with relief.

"She's doing okay," said the nurse—they were the first words I heard clearly. "We had a scare earlier and had to rush her into surgery. Her condition is still very unstable, though, so we're just going to have to wait and see."

I sat down on the chair near her bed, where I'd slept so many nights, and reached out for Clare's blanched hand. She almost looked as if she could be peacefully sleeping.

I'd sat there for hours and was just about to stand up to leave when, somewhere deep in my consciousness, I sensed that something was wrong. I'd barely reached a hand out to brush her cheek when the beeping on the machines intensified.

My mind went blurry again as the nurse's head shot up from her clipboard, and she hurried over to my sister. The beeping was now urgent and pleading, and just because my mother had died on the scene of her crash and hadn't had to go to the hospital didn't mean I wasn't aware of what that beeping signified.

I sat down on the chair, hard, slamming against the back of it. I was barely conscious of another nurse taking my elbow and leading me gently out of the room. When I was sat down onto the firm cushion of a hospital chair, I was so limp I hit my head on the wall behind me.

I couldn't hear anything going on in Clare's room. Nurses rushed in and out, looking urgent, clutching tools and clipboards. A few minutes later three or four of them rolled Clare down the hallway in her bed. One of her white hands was dangling limply over the side.

As much as I wanted to, I couldn't find it in me to cry, and I squeezed my eyes tightly shut, guarding myself from everything that was going on. A few moments later, a cool hand pressed against my shoulder.

"She's in surgery again," said the nurse quietly when I opened my eyes. "Her condition is critical. We're doing everything we can."

Numbly, I nodded. The nurse studied my sympathetically and then disappeared back into Clare's room. To make myself feel better, I imagined she was cleaning things up so that everything would be ready when my sister was hurried back inside for a speedy recovery.