Page 99 of Silver Linings
After what feels like an eternity, we roll up to the hospital, and the wheels have barely stopped turning before I throw myself out the door into the bustling emergency room. The placeis packed full of people. Nurses are flying around, charts in hand, family members pacing the waiting room, biting their nails down to the quick, all while announcements are being made over the speakers. It’s an overwhelming, sensory overload nightmare cloaked as a health facility.
I scan the room but don’t see my parents anywhere before quickly walking to the front desk, sidestepping an anxious kid with the zoomies.
“I’m looking for Laurel Wells’ room, please,” I pant out of breath.
The woman at reception barely spares me an upward glance. “Relation?”
“I’m her brother.” She types something into her computer, nails clicking against the keyboard, ratcheting my anxiety up higher the longer she doesn’t tell me anything. “Is she—is she okay?”
“I can’t disclose that information.”
I am seconds away from running through the halls of this ER to search every room until I find my sister, to let her know I am here, that I’m sorry I hadn’t gotten here sooner.
Please let me be here on timethis time. An image of my brother’s body floating face up in a lake flashes through my mind, reminding me of the day Ididn’tmake it in time.
“She’s in room 3410–” I’m already sprinting down the hallway in search of her room, barely pausing long enough to check the directional signs hanging on the wall telling me I need to go up.
I dart up two flights of stairs and tumble out onto the third floor hallway, hanging a right, passing room after room bringing me closer. My chest is heaving from the cardio and anxiety fueling my every movement this morning when I notice I’m one door away.
Room 3410 is just up ahead on my left. I pick up my pace, steeling myself for the worst before bursting through the door to find—what?
“What the hell are you doing here?” Laurel half-shouts around a heaping spoonful of chocolate pudding.
Laurel—who’s sitting up in a hospital bed with wires coming out of her arm, with bruising and swelling covering her face. She has a leg and an arm both in castings but otherwise, she’s fine. Not dead, paralyzed or in a coma.
The pressure on my chest eases infinitesimally as tears fill my eyes.
“Did I hit my head harder than I thought, and now I’m hallucinating my oaf of a big brother standing before me?”
“Laur…”
“Quick, if you’re really Hendrix and not a mirage, tell me what priceless family heirloom I broke when we were kids.” She’s painfully serious as she holds my stare with raised brows.
“You broke half of grandma’s vintage dining set when you were eight.” That set had been passed down through multiple generations before she toppled too hard into the cabinet and sent half the pieces falling—then tried to blame it on me and Maddox before eventually fessing up to Mom.
She tries to adjust herself in bed but winces as pain coasts along her body. I rush over to help her, fussing over the pillows to help them hold her up higher.
“Why are you here, Hen?”
“Isn’t that obvious?” I grab her hand.
“Not really. You live across the country.”
“Mom called me in the middle of the night, sobbing hysterically, saying you’d been in an accident and that it was bad. I wasn’t really thinking after that. I just…got here as fast as I could. All I–” my voice breaks around the words, “all I could see was Maddie. I needed to be sure you were okay.” Nothing moreneeds to be said. She knows as well as I do the permanent scars that day left on us.
“I appreciate you for coming, but I’m okay. I’m just a little banged up.” She smiles at me, trying to ease the tension written all over my face.
“That’s clearly not true.” I nod at her broken and wrapped body.
Before she can reply, my mother pushes into the room carrying a tray of food. “I got you a plate of your favorite breakfa—oh!” Mom gasps when she sees me, nearly dropping the tray. Tears immediately well up in her eyes, a twin mirror to my own.
“Hi, Mom.” I stand and grab the food from her, setting it on the table next to my sister so I can wrap her up in a hug. She silently sobs against me, her shoulders shaking, and I squeeze her tighter.
“What are you doing here?” My whole body tenses at the sound of my dad’s voice coming in through the door.
“So many warm greetings this morning,” I mumble, turning to face my father. “Dad.” I give him a clipped nod.
“You’ve got some nerve showing up here like this after leaving the way you did.”
