Aaron and Kat (Wattys 2017)

Chapter 12

KAT Saturday March 13th

I'm pretty sure that I didn't set an alarm but still I hear something that pulls me out of my sleep. It takes me a moment to realize that the song is not actually my alarm, but my ringtone. I pick up my phone and see that someone is indeed calling me. At three am.

'Hello?' I answer drowsily.

'Is this Kat Casey speaking?' A woman asks on the other end of the line.

'Yes.' I reply.

'This is Sandy calling from the ER of Lake View General Hospital. Your number was listed as the emergency contact in the phone of Marie Stenton, could that be correct?'

ER. Emergency contact. Slowly the words make their way to my brain.

'Is everything okay?' I ask. 'Is Marie okay?' Suddenly I'm wide awake. Marie is in the ER, which means something is very wrong.

'Marie was in an accident and brought in about twenty minutes ago.' Sandy calmly explains. 'We needed to call someone but your phone number was the only one listed as an emergency contact. She will be okay.' I need to go there. I need to get up and go there. I get out of bed and throw on the first clothes I can find, an old shirt and a pair of jeans.

'I'm coming as fast as I can.' I tell Sandy-from-the-ER and hang up before she can say anything else. Car keys. Where are the car keys? I also need to tell someone I'm leaving, so I quickly go to my dad's and Elise's bedroom to wake Elise.

'Marie is in the ER.' I say as soon as Elise opens her eyes. 'So I'm going to Lake View General.'

'Wait.' Elise says drowsily and she grabs my wrist before I can leave. She sits up. 'Slow down. What's going on?'

'Marie is in the ER.' I repeat impatiently. 'They just called me.' I wave my phone for emphasis. 'She got in an accident.' My voice is thick now.

Elise is awake now. 'You can't go on your own.' She says decisively. 'Wait for three minutes, I'm coming.' She grabs the car keys that are dangling from my hand. 'And I am driving.' She warns me.

Fifteen minutes later we finally get to the parking of the hospital. I kept urging Elise to go faster but she wouldn't. 'They said she was doing fine, so calm down. I want to get to the hospital in my own car, not in an ambulance.'

I jump out before the car even comes to a full stop and bolt for the ER. At least Elise doesn't try to stop me now.

'I'm here for Marie Stenton.' I pant when I get to the desk.

A woman with a nametag that says SANDY looks up. 'You must be Kat Casey.' She says. Great deduction, Sandy, but instead of saying that I just say 'yes.'

'Okay, you hung up before I could ask you, but I'm gonna need the phone number of Marie's parents. The one in the system is not in use anymore.' She says. She must see the disappointment on my face because she adds 'then you can see her.'

Marie's parents have a secret number, so that's probably why she couldn't find it on the Internet and they must have forgotten to communicate the change after they moved to another house last year.

I get out my phone and rattle of the number while Sandy writes it down and hear how Elise enters the Emergency Room. 'Okay.' She says. 'Marie has some broken ribs, a broken arm, and a concussion. But she's asleep now.' She points down the hallway. 'She's in room six.' I hurry down the hallway and let Elise handle the rest.

Sandy was right, Marie is indeed asleep. She looks so much younger and I feel like we're twelve again and I would watch my friends fall asleep long before I did during our sleepovers. I sink down in the chair next to her bed and carefully hold her hand, her usually tan skin now pale and punctured with an IV.