Chasing Cars

Chapter Twenty Nine

     April ninth. Two days until my surgery. Mostly, I was excited for the opportunity to walk again, but Krystine made me nervous with her constant talk of how I'd wind up dead. She had her own ways of being supportive, and she tried her best (for the most part) to not mention it. I spent a few hours with Andrew each day since the scheduling; mostly telling him about the rescheduled date and how he'd better wake up before the eleventh or he might never see me again. We could hear the nurses talking, saying there was only a small chance he would wake up, since his lungs and other internal organs were too badly damaged to give him the right amount of energy.

I was sitting on an uncomfortable chair, drawing random pictures and offering to buy Andrew cars and things to get him to wake up, but after a while I gave up and drew silently. There was no reason for me to be there, but home felt too isolated and Krystine was gone on a shopping trip with her mother, so I hung out with Andrew. Flipping to a new page in my book, I started to draw a Dalmatian puppy that looked similar to the one I found on my phone days before. Eventually I got so into my drawing that I forgot Andrew was even there.

"You know, it's kind of awkward when you're just sitting there and not saying anything," a raspy voice spoke. I barely heard it, as I was too deep in concentration, but when I realized that I wasn't around a whole lot of people, I looked up sharply. Andrew still looked the same, sitting in his bed with all the same monitors around him, but there was one thing that was different than before. His eyes were open.

"W-What...how..." I stuttered over my words, a Karev-ism that hasn't made an appearance in a while. My friend coughed, but then narrowed his eyes. "What?" I asked nervously. The doctors had explained to me that sometimes, patients with comas wake up and have no idea what happened. They said it was possible for Andrew to wake up and think I was a nurse, one of his relatives, or some stalker that spends her time in patient rooms for random reasons. "Karev. The staring. It's weird," he moved his head to look away jokingly and made a raspy gasp-like noise that sounded alarming, but I came to realize it was him trying to laugh. Clearly he was okay; he didn't think I was a random stalker.

"Sorry," I smiled. "I'm just surprised you're awake." I didn't even know where to begin with a conversation. The shock of him waking up made me flustered and unable to do anything other than sit there like a statue. "I was just joking," he laughed again. It sounded like he was choking. I had to admit, his voice sounded absolutely awful. "You sound-" I began, but was cut off. "Like I've been smoking seven packs a day? Yeah, I know," he coughed, smiling still. "Do I look as bad as I sound?" He heaved. The glint in his eyes suggested he was in a humorous mood, but I couldn't bring myself to tell him just how bad the damage really was.

Silently, I got back into my chair and dug around in a closet until I found what I was looking for. As I raised the mirror to him, I expected tears. A gasp. A string of hateful comments. But the actual reaction was much different. "Tell him you think he looks ugly!" He exclaimed. Andrew's dark humor shocked me. He was quoting Charleston! I lowered the mirror and looked at him. "Why are you laughing like that? Are you psychotic now?" I joked, "Do you need me to get a nurse?"

"Don't you see, Kari? We beat Charleston! I told you we would!" He looked like a little kid, the way he was smiling. I couldn't even try not to return it. The past few months had been crazy, but we got through it. The impossible task of defeating Charleston was merely a bonus for everything we'd gone through. "We should write a book. The Ugly and the Cripple: How to Defeat Abusive Principals." I laughed. "You weren't ugly until a ceiling fell on your face. Besides I can't write."

For hours after that, we joked about his face and talked about what had been going on since the fire. I forgot to tell him about my surgery, but that didn't even matter. I got my best friend back, what else could I be thinking about? When I had to leave, Krystine called me to come over and I told her about what had happened during the day. "It's good he's awake!" She exclaimed when I told her the news.

Krystine and I parted ways at the corner of Fairview and Sutton after a long chat session. When I began to head to the bus station, a police cruiser pulled up next to me. "Excuse me, ma'am. The city curfew is at ten, it's eleven-thirty," the officer inside said, sounding excited. I tried to explain that I didn't live in Carolina Falls, and that I was only visiting a friend, but he still made me get into the car with him.

It was the quite the struggle for him to get my wheelchair into the trunk, but I didn't offer any help with folding it, as I shouldn't have needed to go with him in the first place and I wanted to be petty. He was young and obviously new to his job, which made him way too chatty on the way to the police station. Ignoring his attempts at conversation, I watched the world go by through the car window. Carolina Falls is much larger than Rosewood, and far more intimidating. The lights from all the stores lit up the sky in a dusty orange color.

"We're here," the officer called from the front seat when we reached the station. He opened my door from the outside and motioned me out. "You coming?" He asked. "I can't walk, remember? You picked up a cripple," I answered bitterly and rolled my eyes. His face flushed with embarrassment and he stuttered over his words in attempt to apologize. For the next five minutes, he struggled to get my chair out of his trunk, but we eventually made it inside.

"Good Lord, Albert. Who'd you bring in this time?" Asked a hard-faced woman. She was seated at a large desk and didn't even look up when we came in. It seemed like this was something the officer does a lot. I was introduced to the woman, Hannah, and then Albert described my "offence" to her. With a sigh, Hannah searched me in her computer. "Karev Grey, seventeen, Rosewood..." She stopped reading. "Albert. The girl lives in Rosewood. Not here. Did you bother checking your ID before dragging her here?" She hissed.

"I tried telling him that," I sighed. Hannah switched her computer off and crossed her legs, flashing a death stare in Albert's direction. She apologized for wasting my time and gave me Dairy Queen coupons for the trouble. While Albert got reprimanded by his boss for taking a disabled person to the station for no reason, Hannah drove me home, apologizing the whole way. "It's not your fault," I said quietly, feeling rather embarrassed about wasting the woman's time.

The night was clear, and I stayed outside for a good hour before heading off to bed. I knew I had only a small amount of time before I had my surgery, and that terrified me way too much for me to be able to sleep. I was ready for it, but all my confidence at being the one to survive it was fading. Nothing would have prepared me for it.

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So....reading this over has made me hungry....