97Cory
The policeman squats in front of me with his notebook. I'm numb, but I try to answer his questions, all the while trying to see over his shoulder where the paramedics are loading Jessica on to a gurney. I want to go with her but it's not allowed, and since my car is being towed as I sit there on the curb, I can't even follow.
He sees me watching and looks at me strangely. "You know her?" I tell him I used to, and then I have more questions to answer. I tell him her name, what little I know about her, and ask if he will take me to the hospital. The ambulance pulls away, its siren groaning to life, and while I watch it go I know he's still watching me but I don't care. "Yeah, okay," he says finally. "As soon as we're done here."
I lie. I tell the nurse I'm her boyfriend because I know they'll make me leave if they know the truth. I sit in the waiting room for what feels like forever, until someone comes and gives me a report. She's out of surgery and stable, and I want to sink to the floor with relief. I can see her in a little while, he says, and leaves. I collapse into the chair again and thank God over and over. I didn't kill her.
I'm still there when they bring her to her room. There's a cast covering most of her left leg and a bandage around her head, but she looks peaceful as she sleeps. I try to stay out of the way until they get her settled and everyone leaves. It's just the two of us now, and the room is quiet. I move out of the corner and sit in the chair and watch her. And I remember.
Jessica Blake and I rode the same bus from second grade until my family moved away after junior high. By fourth grade it had become my mission to look cool in front of the other guys. So what did I do? I tormented Jessica Blake. About her skinny legs, her nerdy good grades, her out-of-style clothes, whatever I could think of. The guys would laugh and look at me like I was a hero while the target of my bullying would press herself against the wall of the bus and try to ignore me. Sometimes when I was especially cruel and relentless, she would get this look on her face like she wanted to cry, but she never did. I would smile proudly and give high fives in celebration of her humiliation, but all the time something inside me knew I was a fraud. And that she was way tougher than I was.
Six years later, and she's still showing me she's stronger than I'll ever be. Because instead of taunts and name-calling I've hit her with two thousand pounds of steel, and yet she's still breathing.
The light from the window is dimming by the time her father arrives, and he doesn't see me there in his hurry to get to her. He takes her hand and whispers her name as I slide silently from the room, released from my watch, and yet I can't leave. I sit on the closest bench in the hallway and wait.
Some time later someone sits down beside me and I rouse from my half-sleep. It's the cop who drove me here. He's off-shift, he tells me, and he wanted to come by and check on her. On both of us. How are you holding up, he asks me cautiously, and I don't have an answer.
A/N: Yes, I know I didn't put quotation marks around stuff. I did it on purpose. :)