Crash Into You

Chapter 62

Rachel

ABBY GRIPS THE PASSENGER DOOR. “I’m going to be sick.”

“Throw up in my car, and that will be the last thing you ever do.” Spotting the exit for the hospital, I cut over two lanes and shift down. Isaiah’s been teaching me some tricks after school. Never in a million years would I have thought I’d be using those skills to race to the hospital to see if he’s alive.

“You were doing ninety and switching lanes like we were being chased by the police.”

“Are you sure he’s here?” Because I’d prefer for Isaiah to be at any of the other hospitals in the county over University. This is where they bring the awful trauma cases.

“Yes.” Abby loosens her hold on the door as we approach the stoplight at the end of the ramp. “Echo told me.”

Isaiah called me and I never called back. My last words to him were in anger. What if he thinks I don’t love him? My fingers beat against the steering wheel, counting how long it takes for the cross light to turn yellow. “Are you sure she said University?”

“Yes.”

“That’s where they take the worst trauma patients.” I admit my fear out loud.

Abby releases a heavy sigh. “It’s also where they take people with no insurance. He’s a foster kid, Rachel, and a line item on the government’s budget. That is where they’d take him. Not the fancy-ass hospital with the flat-screen televisions.”

Like Isaiah taught me, my foot hovers over the gas while my other presses on the clutch. My fingers grasp the gearshift. A solid wall with no windows, a practical fortress, University Hospital looms over us two blocks ahead. I watch the cross light turn yellow, and my eyes flick to my light, waiting for the green.

In one instantaneous movement, I lay off the clutch, step on the gas and shift into gear the second the light flips. Next to me, Abby curses.

* * *

Abby and I run past the sliding glass doors of the hospital and hesitate. The bland waiting room with beige-painted cinder block walls is cramped with people. Wet coughing hacks, crying babies and the sound of someone vomiting makes me turn my head. In the corner, wearing too many layers of clothes that haven’t been washed, a man hunches over and talks to himself.

Abby nudges my elbow. “Over there.”

My heart soars out of my body when I spot Isaiah. He’s hugging his roommate, Noah. Strong arms wrapped around each other in a brief embrace. They separate, and I cover my mouth when I see the wound on his head, the bruises forming on his face, the blood dried on his clothing.

Stepping forward out of the shadows and touching Isaiah’s arm is one of my many nightmares: Beth. She smiles up at him, and when he smiles back my heart shatters.