by S. L. Naeole
“Okay, Stacy, the ambulance is here to take you to the hospital. Vice-principal Kenner has called your dad and told your mom about what happened, alright? They’re all going to meet you at the hospital,” Madame Hidani told Stacy as the crowd made room for two paramedics who were pushing in a gurney, a large, black bag resting in the middle.
“Hey, sweetie,” one of them cooed as she wrapped a thick brace around Stacy’s neck. The other paramedic wrapped a black cuff around Stacy’s arm and took her blood pressure. Stacy answered every question, ever conscious of the audience that watched.
One of the paramedics grabbed a board that had been seated on top of the gurney and together with his partner they managed to place the board beneath Stacy. They lifted her up onto the gurney and after strapping her in, started their quick-paced walk out of the cafeteria, the entire student body of Heath High following in earnest, not wanting to miss a single thing.
The female paramedic had somehow managed to secure a bandage on Stacy’s head as she walked beside her, the pad quickly turning red as Stacy’s blood continued to pulse out. As they pushed the gurney against the rear of the ambulance, the legs popped and bent inwards, allowing it to slide into the back with ease. Lark stepped forward then and mumbled something to the male paramedic, who nodded his head and held his arm out, waving a path into the ambulance. Lark climbed up and sat down beside Stacy, reaching once more to hold her hand.
Next to me, Graham wondered aloud how Lark had managed to be allowed inside of the ambulance. I, too, felt confused. “I thought only family members were allowed in,” I added to his question while the two of us watched mutely as the rear doors to the ambulance were shut, the siren and flashing lights turned on, and the vehicle pulled away from the school.
I felt the tug on my hand and struggled to maintain my balance as Robert pulled me towards his motorcycle parked towards the front of the parking lot. “Get on,” he said quickly as he climbed on. I obeyed, my arms quickly encircling his waist. Graham, having witnessed our hasty departure, had taken the hint and was heading off towards his own car before the school staff could swarm down on us and prevent us from leaving.
The violent purr of the motorcycle’s engine told me that it was more than ready to do whatever it was that Robert had planned to get us behind that ambulance. Squeezing tightly, I held on we took off, not daring to look at the gaping faces that watched us leave.
It took less than a minute for Robert to maneuver his way through traffic and land directly in back of the ambulance. We remained there as it turned into the hospital and emergency-vehicles-only lane.
Get off here and follow them inside. Robert held the bike steady as I did as he said. Lark waited for me and the two of us walked inside the emergency room’s waiting room, our hands clasped. Stacy’s parents were there as were her brothers, including her twin Sean, who hadn’t been in school today for some unknown reason.
His face was paler than everyone else’s and after taking one look at Mr. and Mrs. Kim, I could see why. He must have been reamed by them for not being in school and protecting his baby sister, like he was probably expected to do. I wanted to feel bad for him, but there was very little room in me for concern for anyone other than Stacy at the moment, and what space did exist was reserved for Graham, who appeared just as one of the emergency room doctors walked in to give Stacy’s parents an update.
“So, this is the family for Stacy Kim?” he asked as he took in the seven Kims, cautiously looking over the five anxious and worried older brothers all standing with their arms crossed over their chests, already skeptical of whatever it was that he had to say.
Clearing his throat, he began to explain the severity of her injury, his tone growing more grave as he mentioned their inability to stop the bleeding. He turned to look at me and blinked in recognition. “Your father isn’t here, too…is he?” he asked nervously, his eyes searching even as I answered in the negative. “Are you sure?”
I nodded my head. “I’m Stacy’s friend,” I insisted, and stepped aside so that he could see that I wasn’t lying.
He exhaled in relief as he accepted that my father wasn’t going to pop out of some closet and start berating him like he had done after Robert had removed my casts…and forgot to put them back. I started to giggle nervously as everyone stared at me with unspoken questions written plainly on their faces.
“I guess I’m feared in this hospital,” I explained abashedly, my face warming at my embarrassment. “My dad kind of went on a little rampage the last time I was here, and I guess they remember me.”
Sean mumbled something that sounded a lot like “freak” while Stacy’s mother made a soft clicking noise with her tongue at my admission. I had apparently committed some kind of Korean faux pas, though I didn’t know what, and rather than try to apologize—like that would have helped—I sucked my lips in and bit them…hard; anything to keep from having the attention brought back on me again.
Clearing his throat once more, the doctor told us that as soon as they had the bleeding under control, only Stacy’s parents would be allowed in to see her. Her brothers breathed a sigh of relief, obviously not prepared to see their sister in any situation where she would appear vulnerable. Lark stepped forward, her intent voiced to only me, and the doctor turned to face her, a pained look on his face. “And she wants to see you, too,” he said, his voice barely recognizable as he stared into Lark’s sightless eyes.
Graham opened his mouth to say something, but Lark turned around and shook her head. A silent warning that brooked no argument. Amazingly, Graham nodded. He walked over to a chair that was situated as far away from Stacy’s brothers as possible and sat down. Lark walked over to Stacy’s mother and began speaking to her in a soft whisper, the words foreign to my ears and I shook my head. It figures she’d be able to speak to her in Korean. Knowing that I’d be grossly inadequate amongst Stacy’s family, I sat next to Graham, he the outsider for the first time, and me simply falling into place.
“Doesn’t it bother you,” he whispered as he watched Lark and Stacy’s mother converse, “that you can’t speak a single word of Korean, and Lark can?”
I shrugged my shoulders and felt one corner of my mouth twitch as I answered honestly. “It would if I thought it mattered, but it doesn’t. Lark’s unique, so it’s expected of her to be good at just about everything. I’m about as abnormal as it gets, so if I find out I’m good at anything, it’s time to readjust my view of the world.”
A nurse appeared as I spoke and nodded to Stacy’s parents and Lark; the three of them followed her as she led them through a set of double doors, disappearing behind them without a word to Stacy’s brothers or us. I looked down at my hands and saw Graham had his gripped around his knees. I covered one with my own and squeezed. “It’s going to be okay, Graham,” I said softly. “A little cut on her head isn’t going to keep her down.”
Graham’s head bobbed up and down in silent agreement. “I know she’s going to be fine, Grace. It’s what comes afterwards that I’m not too sure of.”
“What do you mean?”
He glanced across the room and my eyes followed his gaze. Five pairs of eyes were staring directly at the two of us, scrutinizing our every move, and I realized that my hand was still covering Graham’s. I slowly removed it, smiling as I did so, and said in a low voice, “They’re not exactly the most cheerful bunch, are they?”
His grunt, an acknowledgement, his sigh a concession, and his slight chuckle a break in the tension as he looked up to see Robert walking in. “You ever notice that when your boyfriend enters a room, he looks like the angel of death? I mean, no offense, but he kind of has that quality about him…supernatural and…creepy all at the same time.”
I laughed nervously, my eyes growing wide as I looked at Robert, knowing he had heard what Graham had said. The grin on his face did little to ease my fears. Of course he’d find it funny. The possibility of Graham ever finding out just how right he is was pretty non-existent, but that didn
’t stop me from fearing the consequences should it actually happen. Stacy had accepted Lark and Robert being angels quite well, but even she didn’t know what Robert truly was…I dreaded ever telling her. And if Stacy, one of the most open-minded individuals I knew made me fearful of her reaction, what would happen if Graham found out?
As Robert sat down next to me, he nodded a silent greeting to Graham and removed my hand from my lap and replaced it back onto Graham’s. He’s your friend. He’ll understand. And if he doesn’t, I’ll kill him.
I felt the nervous bubble of laughter start up again and I clamped my hand over my mouth to stifle it, glaring at Robert as I did so. He looked over at the brooding Kim brothers and shrugged his shoulders. “Hospitals make her nervous.”
Robert wrapped his arm around my shoulder and pulled me in towards him, pressing my head onto his shoulder and sighed. “Sorry,” he said soothingly. The one-word statement was nothing short of a blanket apology, but it accomplished its goal, and I mouthed a “thank-you” that I knew he felt from the movements of my lips and jaw, and had heard from my thoughts.
The hours seemed to slowly drag on as we waited for someone to reappear and let us know what was going on. I finally had had enough of the waiting and asked Robert to tell me what was taking so long.
Are you sure? He was hesitant, knowing that I had never used his ability for my own personal needs, never wanted to. It kept me normal…as normal as possible, anyway.
But this was different. I wasn’t asking just for me. This was about Stacy, and Graham, and even her brothers, who had grown tired of trying to stare Graham down and had now moved on to simply trying to stay awake; two had already failed at that.
Robert searched my eyes, peered through my mind and saw that this was important to me. He smiled at this small concession I was making, and then closed his eyes for a split-second. He reopened them before I even had a chance to thank him, and his smile grew wider.
She’s okay. They’re done sewing her up—three stitches that she’s already bragged about to her father…twice—and will be out as soon as all the paperwork is completed.
I felt the whoosh of release as the worry and stress left me. Stacy was going to be alright. Things were going to be okay. I turned to Graham to tell him, my mouth open and poised with the beginnings of the great news, but Robert’s grip on my shoulder turned fierce, almost painful.
How will you explain to him that you found all this out because I read the minds of the people in the emergency room?
My mouth closed as I realized what I had nearly done. Robert had reassured me that Graham would be accepting, but I didn’t possess as much confidence in that as he did and I knew that I didn’t want to lose Graham over Robert—I had nearly done that once already and I didn’t think I could deal with the consequences if I lost him completely.
It felt like a stab to my subconscious, the sudden and wholly unwelcome flashback of what Lark had said just a few hours earlier in the library. I wasn’t capable of accepting the consequences that my lies and the subsequent truth would bring.
“Oh damn,” I muttered.
“What?” Robert chuckled, his voice filled with humor, already knowing what my answer was.
“I hate it when she’s right. It’s just going to make her feel more superior,” I groaned, sinking into my chair and burying my face into Robert’s side.
He pulled me in closer and I felt his mouth press against the top of my head. “She may feel superior, but she’s just as lost and naïve as you are,” he whispered against my hair, his cool breath sending shivers down my spine.
“What time is it?” I asked, needing a distraction from the heat that was starting to build in me from the contact.
Without moving he answered that it was nearly five. I lifted my head with a jerk, my eyes round and large at the announcement. “Dad! Janice! They don’t know! They’re going to wonder why I’m not home yet, or why I haven’t called—oh this isn’t going to sit well with them. I’ve got to call them,” I cried, and stood up, my body turning around in circles as I tried to figure out where the payphones would be located.
As if on cue, seven cell phones of varying makes, models and sizes appeared in front of me, all attached to the hands of their owners: Five Kim brothers, one boyfriend, and one best-friend. “Well…um,” I struggled as I looked at each one like they were foreign objects, the business of how to use them fleeing from my mind in just that moment.
“What are you, some kind of cell phone magnet?” a voice asked behind me. I turned around to see Stacy being wheeled out of the emergency room in a rickety wheelchair, Lark standing alongside, Stacy’s father holding the handles and pushing.
“You’re out!” I shouted, reaching my arms out to hug her.
“Wow,” she gasped as I squeezed her, my arms wrapped awkwardly around her and part of the wheelchair. “You’ve gotten pretty good at that. Now let go so I can breathe again.”
“Oops,” I squeaked, quickly loosening my arms and pulling them behind me. “So…what’s the verdict?”
She pointed to the mass of gauze and tape that covered a third of her forehead as she answered. “I’ve got three stitches, three, and I didn’t need any anesthetic. They marveled at my high pain threshold. I’ll probably be a legend here.” She took in the five pairs of rolling eyes and rolled hers in return.
“Anyway, the bleeding took a while to stop and I’ve got a nice concussion to boot, but other than that I’m fine. They insisted I be pushed out in a wheelchair—some stupid hospital policy that they wouldn’t ignore—otherwise I’d have walked out on my own. I’m starving because they wouldn’t give me anything to eat, and I’m so ready to kick Erica Hamilton’s ass.”
She turned her head to glare at Graham as she continued. “I don’t know what you ever saw in her, but whatever it was, if it was in her face it’ll be gone come Monday.”
“Stacy,” her father chastised, but his gaze was fixed on Graham. The look wasn’t hard to read. It said quite plainly that Graham wasn’t good enough for his daughter. Especially if his ex-girlfriend was attacking her and sending her to the hospital; Graham looked down at his feet and said nothing.
“What? I’m not going to do much damage, but Bimbo Barbie is definitely not going to be going out on many dates when I’m through with her. Who’d have thought I’d be taken down by that walking peroxide bottle?” Stacy grunted, ignoring her mother’s hissing and her father’s groan of disapproval.
Sean laughed at his sister’s comments. “Maybe hanging out with the freak and the hottie threw off your sense of equilibrium.”
It didn’t take much to figure out who the “freak” and who the “hottie” was, and I genuinely wasn’t bothered by it, but it took even less for him to quickly blurt out an apology as both Robert and Graham released menacing growls at the insult. What did bother me was that I knew that Graham had been more insulted by the quip referring to me, rather than it being an insult to Stacy. It shouldn’t have been that way.
“Oh please,” Stacy laughed. “We’re all freaks. But at least we can get dates, unlike you, Casa-no-game.”
This time, the laughter spread—with the exception of the parents…and Sean—and the tension that had been thicker than wool was finally lifted.
Lark helped Stacy to stand, her face still filled with concern, though not to the same degree as it had been at the school. “Are you sure you want to go home? You could stay here for the night, you know. The doctor did recommend it.”
Stacy jeered at the suggestion. “I’m not an invalid. It’s just a stupid concussion. I’m going to be fine and I’m definitely going to school tomorrow; I don’t care what that man in the white coat says, I’m not staying home.”
Stacy’s mother launched into a rant entirely in Korean, with words that I was certain weren’t meant for innocent ears, judging by the wincing and cringing that came from her sons, as well as by the way Lark’s perfect upturned mouth shaped itself into a perfect line.
The
yelling continued as everyone walked out of the waiting room towards the elevators that would take us to the parking structure. I stood with my hand firmly clasped in Robert’s, frequently turning my head to look behind me at Graham, whose face held a wide mix of emotions, the least of which was amusement.
“Are you going to follow Stacy home?” I whispered to him, and frowned when he shook his head. “Why not?”
Seven heads whipped around, seven pairs of eyes all glaring at me, as though I had committed some heinous offense for even bringing the subject up—another faux pas.
“Grace, just go home, okay? I’ll be alright. In fact, Lark, I think you should catch a ride home with Graham while I deal with…this,” Stacy said with frustration. “I’ll call you guys later on tonight.”
That short, seven word sentence set off another barrage of foreign words as the Kim family entered the elevator, completely filling it to capacity. As the doors shut, I felt an urge to giggle at the ridiculousness of it all.
“What floor are you parked on?” Graham asked Robert, breaking the unnecessary silence that remained long after the elevator doors had closed.
“Third. You?”
“Second.”
The ding of the bell announcing an empty car quickly ended that short-lived conversation, and the four of us piled into the elevator. I pushed each respective floor button and waited in silence as the elevator lurched up. It remained quiet until we came to a stumbling halt and the doors dinged open again.
“I’ll see you at home, Grace,” Graham said softly as Lark filed past him, her walking stick conspicuously absent from her hands. It was the first time I had noticed it was missing, and I prayed that it wasn’t absent on purpose. My thoughts must have been heard, because I soon recognized the clattering sound of her folding stick opening up.
“Okay,” I replied, lifting my hand to wave good-bye but having the doors shut on us before he could see.
“So what gives?” I asked as the elevator started rising again.
“What do you mean?”