Destined

18.

I didn't realize that I'd fallen asleep until I felt the back doors open. My head had been leaning against them so when they opened I almost fell backwards. One of the men had caught me immediately and pushed me back inside the truck. Adrian had woken up shortly after. He realized the truck had stopped and picked up his head slowly off of my lap. "We're here?" He asks.

"Yeah," I tell him.

The men make their way past us to pull Amber out of the truck.

"Follow us," one of them say. Me and Adrian jump out of the ambulance steadily chasing after the men. They we're moving so fast it seemed like they had been running from us.
"Should I call my Mom?" Adrian asks me.

I nod my head. Both of our parents deserved to know where we were..but the last thing I wanted to do was tell my Mother I was at the hospital with Amber. She was already having doubts on letting me continue to be friends with her, and for some reason she always thought Amber was a bad influence. Of course she was at times, but obviously tonight wasn't her fault.

Adrian dials his Mother's number. It rings for awhile until going to voicemail.

"Shit. It's like 1 in the morning, she won't answer," Adrian says rolling his eyes. "I know she's sleeping."

"What about your Dad?" I ask.

"Oh yeah," Adrian says. He dials his Dad's number, and he answers on the 3rd beep.

"Dad, I'm at the hospital with Dj. Amber's here, and she's not okay," I hear Adrian say.

I hear his Dad over the phone asking multiple questions about where we were at and how we got here; and another about why Adrian had finally decided to call him. He tells Adrian that he should have called him the moment he walked out of their house.

"Dad this isn't the time for you to be yelling at me," Adrian says. He looks at me with an irritated expression. "Dj what hospital is this?"

"I don't know, let me go find out," I say making my way away from him.

"No, you can't leave me by myself," he grabs my wrist, turning his attention back to Amber who was half way down the hallway. "Adrian I have to find out what hospital were in, catch up to Amber okay? You'll be fine," I say unfolding his fingers from me.

He nods, running after Amber who had already disappeared down the hallway.
I wasn't sure if he had hung up on his Father, but from what I noticed he still had his phone close to his ears.

I walk towards a desk where I see an elderly woman writing on paper. I look at her name badge, trying to get her attention.

"Can I help you?" She asks me, noticing my presence immediately. "Yes, I just wanted to know what hospital this was,"

"Oh, this is North Vista sweet heart," she smiles, focusing her attention back to whatever she was writing.

"Thank you," I half-smile back at her. I definitely wasn't in a smiling mood. "Oh wait another thing," I say turning towards her again. She looks at me with a confused expression, dropping her pen completely.

"The ambulance just brought a young black girl in here, I'm not sure where they took her," I say calmly. The more calm you are in a hospital the more information they will give you. I learned that after my Grandmother passed.

"She should be in the new patients room. She will be in there until an adult-or preferably one of her parents comes to fill out her personal information, then she will be taken into a regular room to get some additional tests started. Right now they're doing drug tests on her to see if she has anything in her system. We do this with every teenager that comes in because drugs seem to be the highest leading cause of death these days amongst you all," she says. I look at her name tag again. Her name was Martha.

"Thank you," I say looking at the ground. "And where is the new patients room located?"

"Down the hall, 3 rooms down the right," she tells me. "Any more questions honey?"

"No, thank you so much," I showed her a genuine smile for answering all of my questions without getting annoyed. I could tell she enjoyed her job.
She smiles at me once again, turning her head around to grab a folder.

I begin to walk down the hallway Martha had told me Amber had been down. When I got to the door, I knocked to make sure Adrian was in there. He opened the door, guiding me in quickly. His phone was still glued to the side of his head.

"Did you find out what hospital this was?" He asked.

"Yeah, it's North Vista," I tell him, taking a seat next to Ambers bed.

"Dad it's North Vista," he tells his Father. "Okay, alright Dad. See you in a bit," Adrian says, hanging up the phone. "He said he would be here soon, him and our Mom."

"This is horrible Adrian," I say putting my head in the palm of my hands. "What have they done to her so far? Drug tests right?"

"I think so," he says, leaning back in his seat. "The empty pill bottle you found makes me think-"

"That she overdosed," I say, cutting him off.

"But why would she do that? She's never done that before," Adrian's voice softens. It was like he had blocked out the possibility of Amber being assaulted.

"Adrian.." I begin. I honestly didn't want to tell him that his sister could have been raped. I didn't want to believe that at all, but from the looks of it it seemed like it would have been the only reason as to why Amber felt like she needed to do what she did tonight. I wondered where she had gotten the pills from.

"What?" Adrian looks at me.

"Nothing," I shake my head. I couldn't tell him that. Just thinking about it made me emotional and I knew if I told him about it he would cry. That was just something I couldn't deal with right now.