day.” I said nothing, and she added, “Have you?”
I shrugged dismissively, and her eyes widened.
“ Have you been here every day?” she asked.
“Well, obviously not every day,” I said. Her face fell, and I added, “I had work and stuff. But I was here pretty much every second I wasn’t at work.”
A gust of air pushed out of her lungs, and she swallowed hard.
“Why?” she whispered.
“Is it hot in here?” I asked, pushing out of the chair and storming into the hallway. “I’m going for drink. Do you need anything?”
She shook her head, and I barged out of the room before I ended up saying or doing something I’d regret.
Chapter Nine
Katherine
Luke let the heavy wooden door slam behind him, and I stared at it as if I could somehow force him to walk back in.
Had he really been here nearly every day for eight months? Why would he do something like that? Was it some sad sense of obligation because our parents were getting married? That had to be it. Maybe he just had some kind of old-fashioned nobility or something.
I tried to piece together everything that had happened. Maybe I missed something. I was still a little groggy, and some of the details of the accident had somehow muddied themselves in my addled brain.
Let’s see. I met him and his father. We ate somewhere. Mexican food, wasn’t it? The beach. Car accident. Then I woke up in the hospital. Nope, that was it. He’d known me for all of two hours before the accident. There was nothing that should make him feel obligated to spend every day for eight months stuck in a hospital instead of going out with his friends and living a normal life.
It just didn’t make sense. I mean, he’d called me—what was it? Oh, right… a stuck-up bitch, or something to that effect. He’d just met me, and he thought he knew me.
He’d been terribly unfair to me, and I remember he’d hurt my feelings somehow. I couldn’t quite remember the details, but I remembered running away from him—hiding—hoping he wouldn’t find me.
But then… he brought flowers. He’d apologized. I’d accepted. Maybe I was wrong about him. But that still wouldn’t explain why he’d come to the hospital all that time. He could have just forgotten about me. He had no reason not to.
The door creaked open, and Mom and Steve walked in. I suppressed a disappointed sigh and Mom smiled and hugged me.
“It’s so good to see you awake,” Mom said, kissing my head.
“I can’t believe I was out for eight months,” I said. “What about Berkeley?”
“They agreed to give you a year of deferred enrollment,” Mom said. “Steve talked to them.”
“Thank you,” I said to Steve, and he nodded. Then I asked Mom, “Can I ask you something?”
“Of course, honey, anything,” she answered.
“Luke said… was he… did he visit me any?” I finally managed to ask.
“Every day,” she answered. “We all did. Luke didn’t even miss a day when he sprained his ankle at work.”
“Really?” I asked.
“He’s a lovely young man,” Mom said. “What a sense of duty to his family.”
Family. Right.
“Well, I’m awake, now,” I said. “He doesn’t have to keep wasting his time coming up here anymore.”
I heard the door creak, and it closed as if someone had been standing there and decided not to enter.
“I’m sure he’ll still be up here pretty often,” Mom said, patting my hand.
“Maybe,” I shrugged.
“Of course he will,” Steve said.
But that was the last I saw of him for a long time.
Chapter Ten
Luke
Hearing her say that was like a punch in the gut.
“Well, I’m awake, now,” she’d said. “He doesn’t have to keep wasting his time coming up here anymore.”
That statement just kept playing itself over and over in my head. Was she really so ungrateful that I’d spent practically every
Michaela MacColl, Rosemary Nichols