Page 49 of I Would Stay Forever
“Have you already checked in?” I asked, trying to keep my voice calm and neutral. I was not normally the one who got called in an emergency. As the eldest, Sebastian was always our go-to person if Mum wasn’t available, and I wasn’t sure why Imogen had called me instead but I wanted to show her that she hadn’t made the wrong choice.
Imogen nodded. “They told me to wait here to get an x-ray.”
I nodded, letting my pounding heart slow down a little more before I continued asking questions. With so little information to go on from the phone call, I’d been in a near-panic for the whole drive here.
“What happened?” I asked softly.
She squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head. “It all happened so fast. I was on my bike and then this car came around the corner. I swear I was in the bike lane, but he just…” She choked on the words, dropping her chin. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
I frowned as I tucked some hair behind her ear. “Sorry for what? You didn’t do anything.”
She didn’t respond, but she also didn’t look up. I sighed and looked around, giving her a moment to compose herself. There were only a couple of other people in the waiting room—I guess a Sunday afternoon in September wasn’t a big day for injuries. There was a lady in the back corner, holding a towel to her hand that looked like it was bleeding. A man a few seats down from her was leaning back in his seat, pressing his head againstthe wall and appeared to be napping. And somebody across the way was using three chairs so she could prop up her foot. Three people and my baby sister, who was biking somewhere over forty-five minutes away from home. What was she doing here?
I was debating whether I should try to ask when a nurse walked through the door that led deeper into the hospital and called, “Imogen Novak?”
Imogen’s head shot up, and she glanced at the nurse and then at me. I squeezed her good hand. “Go. I’ll wait here. I’m sure they won’t let me into an X-ray.”
She nodded and wiped away her tears one last time before walking across the room. The nurse greeted her kindly and she murmured something back, then glanced at me over her shoulder one more time before they led her off.
I sighed and rested my arms onto my legs, letting my head drop. I knew I should probably call someone—Mum or Sebastian or even Ainsley, who was probably wondering where the heck Imogen was right now. I wasn’t sure whether Imogen had tried to call them but had been unable to reach them or if she’d chosen not to call them for some reason and I didn’t want to overstep by reaching out if she had a reason not. Maybe she didn’t want to worry them until she knew what was going on.
Or maybe, something in my mind whispered,there’s a reason she was all the way out here and she doesn’t want anyone to know.
I couldn’t imagine she was doing something so nefarious that she wanted to keep it a secret, but I also had no clue why she would be out here. She didn’t know anybody who lived out here, it wasn’t a nice place for a bike ride, and even if she’d been on her way home, she wouldn’t have gotten back until pretty late for a school night, which would have raised a lot of questions. I just didn’t understand.
“Excuse me,” a man’s voice came from the direction of the reception desk. “I’m looking for my daughter—she left me a voicemail saying she fell off her bike and…”
I froze. There was no way. It couldn’t be him—how would Imogen have contacted him? His old phone number had been cut off and he hadn’t given any of us his new one. And I was sure that even if I had been able to call him, he wouldn’t have answered or shown up. And yet…
The receptionist was now telling him that his daughter was in an X-ray but he could see her as soon as she was out. But surely, there were other people getting an X-ray right now. Another teen girl who had also fallen off her bike and happened to be here at the same time as Imogen even though there were hardly any patients…
I didn’t want to lift my head. I didn’t want my fears to be confirmed. But how long could I keep my head down and pretend? When Imogen came out of the X-ray, we would both get up to go see her. Did I really want that to be the moment he noticed me?
Feeling like I was choking on air, I forced myself to lift my head—and came face to face with my father for the first time in six weeks.
twenty-four
My breakfast satuntouched in front of me as I stared at Imogen. More accurately, at Imogen’s cast. Turns out, she broke her wrist when she fell—but what stood out more to me was the reason that she was even out biking in the first place.
She was going to Dad’s new flat.
It hadn’t even occurred to me that Dad might still live close by. It made sense, of course, since his job was here, but in my mind he was in some far off land. Some invisible town for deadbeat dads who blew up their families and disappeared. I hadn’t thought about what it would feel like to see him. To go about my days knowing he was within the same city limits as me. Even when Imogen asked me about him in the car last week—and why hadn’t I realized she meant she was planning on acting on that so soon?—I didn’t think it would mean running into him.
And yet there he was yesterday, in the fluorescent lights of Urgent Care, hands shoved into the pockets of his coat and looking like a stranger I’d seen too many times before.
“Drivers really need to watch where they’re going,” Mum tutted, dumping eggs onto Imogen’s plate. Imogen—who had been eating toast for breakfast and never asked for eggs in the first place—just smiled weakly at her.
“I can’t believe he didn’t even stop to see if you were okay.”
“It’s really not that bad,” Imogen said, voice light, polite, distant. It was the same brave face she’d put on for Dad yesterday. She’d smiled up at him, reassuring him in a way he didn’t deserve after abandoning her for six weeks.
My grip on my spoon tightened as I forced my gaze away from her cast and looked down at the food in front of me. My bowl sat untouched, the cereal having gone soggy in the milk. It wasn’t the look of it that turned my stomach though. It was the memory of Imogen smiling at Dad last night, looking at him like he’d hung the moon and stars. Something in my chest splintered, cracking open beneath my ribs and making it hard to breathe. My heart sped up. My lungs burned. The kitchen closed in around me—too many walls, too much air, not enough space.
I need to get out of here.
I jumped to my feet, the chair scraping along the floor as I did. Everyone turned to look at me but I was already moving, telling them something about how I forgot about a group project meeting. It probably wasn’t believable, but if they asked about it, I didn’t hear them.
I bolted out the front door and practically leaped across the steps of the porch. The moment the soles of my trainers hit the sidewalk, I was sprinting.
