Page 102 of Roommate
“Yeah. Okay.” He unbuckles his seatbelt. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry.” I dash around the front of the truck, past the store that we didn’t make it into. Then I climb into the driver’s seat and adjust the seat a few inches forward, because Kieran has the long legs of a giant. “Buckle up. Let’s go.”
* * *
During the twenty-minute ride, Kieran speaks with both his mother and his brother. From the one-sided conversation, and snatches of Kyle’s voice, I can piece together most of the crucial information.
Kieran’s dad was alone in one of their outbuildings, trying to fix some piece of equipment. But he isn’t very mobile these days, and some kind of spinning tool caught the loop on the end of a wrench he was holding.
The wrench became a spinning, high-speed weapon, and it slashed Mr. Shipley several times before he got free of it.
“He lost a lot of blood,” I hear Kyle say. “It’s bad. It’s so bad.”
“You keep saying that,” Kieran grinds out. “Why was he screwing around with the PTO shaft?”
“Because he does whatever the fuck he wants!” Kyle shouts. “He doesn’t listen to me. This isn’t my fault. Mom and I were out at the feed store.”
“I didn’t say it was your fault,” Kieran says quickly. “Who found him? Mom?”
“Rexie,” Kyle says. “Rexie saved his life. The minute I got out of the truck, there’s Rexie barking his head off. I knew something was wrong. I dropped everything and ran after him.”
Kieran hangs up the phone before we reach the hospital. He drops it like it’s burning him, and then he leans back in the seat and closes his eyes. “I can’t believe this is happening,” he mumbles. “This might kill him.”
“I’m sorry, babe,” I whisper.
“And I feel—” There’s a long pause before he speaks again. “Freaked. I guess that’s the right word. We never got along. Never. He doesn’t even like me. But I don’t want him to die in a farming accident.”
“Hey.” I reach out and grab his hand. “Your relationship is complicated. I get it.”
“Complicated is not the half of it,” he says.
“Don’t think about that right now,” I try. “Just get through this. Get your mother through this. Who else shall we call?” I pull into the hospital parking lot and start looking for a parking space. It has to be big, because I don’t know how to park a pickup truck.
“We should call my aunt Ruth,” he says. “She’ll know what to do.”
“And Father Peters,” I add. Now that I spend time every week with a Catholic priest, I finally understand what they’re for.
“Yeah. Him too. Thanks.”
* * *
We find Kieran’s family quickly, but then we all sit for hours in the waiting room, with no news.
Mr. Shipley is in surgery. Kyle looks red-eyed and sad. Kieran’s mom looks white with fear. There’s blood on her clothes, at least until Ruth Shipley arrives with fresh clothes to put on.
When I summoned Ruth Shipley, I apparently summoned the entire Shipley clan. Griffin and Audrey are here. Strangers keep glancing at Audrey, wondering if she’s here to have her baby, I think. That’s how round she is. Dylan is here, too, along with Grandpa Shipley.
Zara dropped off sandwiches that nobody is eating.
Kieran sits hunched in a chair. When I bring him a soda, he drinks it without noticing. Griffin and his other cousins stop by to speak to him in hushed tones, and Kieran nods at their kind words. But he seems to have retreated into himself.
Father Peters sits beside Kyle, an arm around his shoulder, while Kyle tries to hold it together.
Finally—seventy-two years after we arrive—a nurse manager comes out to brief the family. “He’s still in surgery, but that will be over soon,” she says. “He lost a lot of blood, but his vitals seem to be stabilizing.”
“That’s good, right?” Kieran’s mom asks.
“It’s a positive sign,” the nurse says gently. “It will still be a while before the surgeon can come out to explain the procedure.”
