That I’ll always be the only person in this house.
Slowly, I force myself to walk down the hallway, eyes travelling everywhere except for the door to my bedroom. I half expect to see the locks still on the ground, wood splinters still strewn over the floor from when he kicked my door in.
But they’re gone, of course. Shelby probably cleaned them up. The door is repaired and re-painted, and it doesn’t even creak when I open it to look inside my old room.
It’s caked in a layer of dust, but looks exactly like it did the day I left for Michigan. I force down the lump of anxiety rising in my throat and bite my lip as I step in, looking around, thinking about the boy I was back when I used to sleep in this room.
Back when I thought those locks on the door were going to be enough to keep him out. Enough to keep me from becoming him.
Turning, I leave my room and explore the rest of the house, not liking the way my heart feels. Shelby’s room is emptied out, with nothing but a few plastic bins in the corner. The railing on the staircase is loose, and the plaster in the hallway is cracking. The paint in the kitchen is peeling; it needs all new appliances. A few tiles in the bathroom are coming loose, and the color scheme hasn’t been trendy since the eighties.
My father’s room looks exactly like it always did, except, rather than the tight, military corners, the blanket is strewn from the bed, falling to the side.
I wonder if that was from the paramedics pulling him out. I wonder, for the first time, how they figured out he was gone. As far as I know, he wasn’t working construction anymore. Did he ever go out? Did people see him? How long did it take for someone to realize something had happened to him?
Bringing my hand to my chest, I rub at the anxiety balling up there, just next to my heart. What would it be like to know something could happen to you, and the people around you might not know for days?
When I get out onto the front lawn, I heave in a deep breath of the fresh air, the lingering smell of the lilac bush, now only half-blooming, at the end of its season. It takes a few moments for me to calm down enough to think.
Shelby is right, the place needs a lot of work. But the thought of going in there feels like jumping right back into the water after nearly drowning. I can’t do it.
Instead, I jump into my truck, shut the door behind me, and follow the familiar roads. I’m not quite sure where I’m going until I see the familiar sign outside the building and think of evenings coming here to pick my dad up, before things got really bad.
Like I’m in a dream, I walk in through the front door, and the smell of old carpet, ingrained cigarette smoke, decades of fried food all hits me at once.
“Jake?”
I swallow and glance behind the bar, seeing an older bald guy with a gut, holding a glass and looking at me with wide eyes.
“Lawrence,” I say, his name coming out like a breath. He looks much older than the last time I saw him, when he pushed that envelope of cash into my hands. He blinks, then clears his throat and sets the glass down.
“Hey, bud. Why don’t you have a beer on me? Come, sit.”
I can see it there in his eyes — the grief for my father. The knowledge that this was probably one of the last places my father came before dying. That I’m here now, following in his footsteps.
Suddenly feeling claustrophobic and not sure I can handle hearing anyone else’s feelings about the man, I shake my head and turn, pushing through the door before I manage to say, over my shoulder, “Sorry, man. I was just going.”
CHAPTER 15
LARA
“Just wait until Independence Day,” one of the older nurses says, looking at me with weary eyes. “Thatis by far the worst day to be in the ED.”
I nod, but my heart isn’t in it. Logically, I know that there are much worse days to be working, but this shift has been hard enough that I can’t muster up any gratitude.
All day, it’s been nothing but screaming babies with fevers, injuries that make my stomach turn, and people insisting they’re on the brink of death and need all the hospital’s resources thrown at them; people insisting they skip the line and come to the front, even as others are bleeding through T-shirts and dripping blood all over the waiting room floor.
Every time things get hard, I remind myself that once I graduate, I can get a position in obstetrics, where I really want to work. Where I can look after pregnant people and deliver babies instead of inspecting throats and trying to figure out where all the supplies have gone.
“Looks like there’s a guy who just came in on the end down there,” the nurse says. “Doctor Anderson says he needs stitches. Think you can handle it? You take that, then we can do rounds and get out of here.”
I grab the file from her and start making my way down the hall, already mentally preparing. If the doctor has delegated the stitches to a trainee, the wound can’t be that bad.
“Good evening,” I say, putting on my cheeriest voice as I sweep the curtain to the side and pump a few squirts of hand sanitizer into my hands. “Looks like you’re going to need a few?—”
The words die on my tongue when I look up and see the person sitting in the chair, holding his forearm in his hands. The arm is wrapped in a T-shirt, the blood soaked through and dark, though thankfully not dripping on the floor.
Was he in the waiting room this whole time? His eyes go wide as he stares at me, and the moment stretches out between us, both impossibly long and instantaneous.
