Bending Under Pressure (34 page)

At first, I don’t know where I’m going. My body is on autopilot as I drive. I come to a stop on Dead Man’s Curve. Yes. Speed is what I need. It’s the perfect distraction. With a deep breath, I flex my fingers on the steering wheel and then grip it tightly. My foot slams down on the gas. My car struggles at first, but soon the needle of the speedometer is climbing higher and higher.

My heart is pounding in my chest as I start passing eighty-five. The quick glance at the speedometer was a mistake. I scream at the sight of a deer standing in the middle of my path. Without thinking, I swerve.

When I read books, they always describe the crunching of metal, the feel of the motion of flipping over, or life passing in front of the character’s eyes. It’s nonsense. My eyes close on instinct and the world eerily stops as if time is frozen and all my senses have been stripped from me.

No sound.

No motion.

No feeling my heart thumping crazily against my ribs. No feeling whatsoever.

Nothing.

Nothing at all.

“O
h, wow. Is she doing okay?” Mom asks.

I just finished telling her what went down at the wedding. “I don’t know. She didn’t talk on the way back. She’s said she would text me later.” I reach into my pocket for my phone and realize Haley never got her phone back. “Well, she would if she had her phone. Can I drive back over there to return it?” I ask.

We hear sirens of emergency vehicles as they rush past the house. Mom and I frown at each other.

“Wonder what’s going on,” she says. It’s odd for anything to be happening here, so something is going on for sirens to be heard. “How about I ride with you?”

“Okay.” I’m not sure I could turn her down anyway.

My stomach starts churning when Haley’s car isn’t in the driveway. Where is she? The town is so quiet that we can faintly hear the sirens from somewhere down the road.

“Did she have somewhere else to go?” Mom asks.

“No. She was upset though, so maybe she’s at the courts.”

“Let’s find out.”

I back out and head that way. But when I see fire trucks, ambulance, and cop cars, all their lights flashing from Dead Man’s Curve, I turn there instead. Please tell me she didn’t. Please, don’t let it be Haley.

“What are you doing?”

“Making sure it’s not Haley.” About halfway down the road, I see it. Her car is in the middle of a field, lying on the passenger’s side, and is totaled. I hurry to park behind a cop’s car and get out of the car, not even taking the keys from the ignition. Everyone seems to be surrounding something on the ground, so I run there, ignoring my mother’s calls for me. A paramedic moves slightly and I see a flash of blonde hair. “Haley!” I shout.

“Woah there.” A police officer is suddenly in front of me, keeping me from going to her. “They need to do their job, so I need you to stay out here.”

I stop fighting him, but stare to where she’s being strapped to a board to be loaded onto the stretcher. She isn’t moving. Shouldn’t she be moving? God, she’s still in her dress. The red stains blotting it make me nauseous.

“How bad is it?” I hear Mom ask. The officer hesitates to answer her, so she adds, “She’s his girlfriend and I want to be able to tell her mother something when I call her to let her know what happened. Besides, it’s not like you don’t know us, Harold.”

He nods. “She has several lacerations. Her arm may be broken. We won’t know about any more injuries until she gets to the hospital, though. We can’t ask her if she’s in any pain because she’s unconscious. That’s all we know at this point.”

“Thank you.” Mom’s hand touches my shoulder. “I’m going to call her mother.”

They’re carrying her toward the stretcher, where it’s waiting on the road behind the ambulance.

“Can I ride with her?” I ask the officer. “In case she wakes up and she’s scared? Please?”

He nods and leads me over to the ambulance. She’s already in the back and Harold lets them know I’m riding with her. I climb in and take a seat next to her. What was she thinking? What happened for her to wreck and land in the field like that? All I can do is stare and watch as they work on her. The closest hospital is twenty minutes away. The ride there is the longest twenty minutes of my life.

What worries me the most is that she still hasn’t regained consciousness. I’m stuck in a waiting room when Mom arrives only a minute after we get there. Rita and Walter arrive next. They look terrible, between having the flu and now the stress of this. If I wasn’t so worried, I might even laugh when a nurse makes them put on masks, so no one else gets sick. They take them back into the emergency room and Mom and I are left waiting.

Dad and Cam arrive next.

It seems like forever before Walter ambles into the waiting room. I shoot up and hold my breath. I’ve been trying not to think about the possibility that she wouldn’t be okay. Right now, Walter needs to confirm that for me.

“She’ll be okay.” A whoosh of air leaves my lungs as he continues. “She’s beat up, though. They’re going to hold her a while longer. She broke her arm. The seatbelt and airbag seems to have bruised her ribs, but nothing is broken or cracked. She has a concussion and doesn’t remember what happened right now. The police said they only thing they can tell is that she was speeding. She’s really lucky that she wasn’t hurt worse.”

“Can I see her?”

“Yeah. We’ll go back in a few minutes.” He pauses, his eyes searching mine, and then he says, “What happened, Keelan?”

“I don’t know. I mean, things didn’t go well at the wedding, and she was upset, but I dropped her off. She went inside as I was leaving. I was coming back to return her phone, saw she wasn’t there, and we were going to see if she went to the courts. That’s when we saw the cops out at Dead Man’s Curve.” Part of me wants to blurt out how it’s my fault. If I hadn’t taken her racing, she would’ve never been speeding on that road. She would’ve never gotten into a car accident because of it.

He shakes his head. “What did he do this time?”

By the time I finish explaining it to him, he’s furious, and it’s time to go to see Haley. I follow him through a heavy door and down a hallway. We turn and he stops outside the third curtain, which is pulled aside. There’s a cast on her arm. She’s in a hospital gown, so I don’t have to see her dress. There are some cuts and scrapes on her arms and face, but I don’t see whatever caused all the blood.

Haley is staring up at the ceiling, her eyelids slowly opening and closing as if she’s trying not to fall asleep. Rita stands. I can’t tell if she’s happy to see me or not.

“Walter, will you go home and get her a change of clothes?”

He nods and leaves. I walk over to her right side since Rita is on the left. Haley’s eyes shift to mine and a goofy, dopey grin lifts her lips. She doesn’t say anything though.

“They gave her some pain meds, so she’s a little loopy,” Rita explains.

“Am not,” Haley replies without taking her eyes off me. “Why are you all dressed up?”

“Because I thought you might like this instead of a University of Virgina shirt.”

She laughs, but abruptly stops. Her face contorts in pain and she lifts her hand to her head. “That hurt.”

“Sorry, Hales,” I say with too much seriousness.

She holds her hand out and I gently cradle it in mine. “Why? You’re cute. I’ll get over it.” Rita and I both laugh at that. Then she blinks and looks confused. “Why are we in the hospital?” Haley frowns as she looks over herself. “What happened to me? Mom?” The fear in her voice breaks my heart.

“You’re okay. You were in a car accident. Remember?” It takes a minute before she nods. “Tell me what happened,” Rita pushes gently.

Haley’s eyes flick to mine. “I was speeding, and I glanced down and saw how fast I was going. When I looked back up, there was a deer, and I tried not to hit it. That’s all I remember.”

“How fast were you going?” Rita asks.

Haley hesitates. “Eighty-five,” she whispers.

Rita sucks in a breath. “Haley, the speed limit is forty-five. Why would you be going that fast? That’s not just a little over the limit. They could take your license, not to mention how it’s amazing everyone that you didn’t die in that wreck.”

“I was upset, and I wasn’t paying attention,” she lies. Her brows pull together and she frowns again. “My head hurts. Can’t I have something for pain? When can I go home?”

“They’ve already given you something. You’ll go home whenever they say you can go home,” she replies curtly. Her mom’s anger falls away, her eyes welling with tears. “I’m glad you’re okay, Haley.”

“I’m sorry,” Haley says as her voice cracks. “Have you called Dad?”

“Not yet. I’ve been too busy worrying over you. I’ll call him and let know what happened. Will you be okay with Keelan until I get back?”

She nods. “I don’t want him to come. If he says he wants to, tell him no.”

Rita agrees, kisses her forehead through her mask, and then leaves us.

“How are you feeling?”

“Everything hurts, and I really want to sleep.”

I press my lips to her forehead, a feather light kiss, and whisper, “I’m sorry.”

She frowns. “Why?”

“You shouldn’t have been out there, especially not without me.”

“Why? So you could be in a hospital bed too?”

I shake my head. “Maybe not. I would have hit the deer head on.”

Her eyes do a little roll. Walter comes through the curtains, holding a pair of pajamas in his hands, plus a coat.

“I grabbed a tank top because I figured it might be easier for you. Then we’ll drape the coat over you to keep you warm. Where’s your mom?”

“She went to let Dad know what happened.”

He nods and focuses on me. “We’ll take care of her from here. Your family is probably tired and ready to go home.”

“Your family?” Haley questions.

“Yeah, Mom was with me when I went looking for you and we found you. Dad and Cam came afterward. I guess I better go.” I didn’t want to leave her. The last time I left her, she went and hurt herself. There doesn’t seem to be another option though. I kiss her cheek, hand her phone to Walter, and give her one last smile before I leave.

“I
was thinking about going to see Haley today,” I tell Mom at breakfast.

“I was thinking you could finally tell me what happened with Natalie. She called yesterday and said you’ve been ignoring her again.”

I scoff. “How? You just gave me my phone back yesterday. I told her not to call anymore anyway.”

“Why?”

“What did my birth father do to land in prison?” I blurt out. I’ve actually been wondering about this, but only because Natalie is so adamant about me meeting him and Dad said they wouldn’t be comfortable with it when I first brought it up to him.

Mom stares at me. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“Natalie keeps pushing me to visit him, and I keep telling her no. We disagreed about it and I told her I’d rather not have a relationship with her, but if I did, I would be the one to call her. I gave her as much of a chance as I could, but I really don’t want her in my life. That’s what happened. So what did he do? What did she do?”

“Are you sure you want to know?”

Well, maybe not. Mom seems reluctant, so maybe I should retract my question. I think. “Just tell me.” How bad can it be?

“He was convicted of murder and she as an accessory after the fact as well as drug charges.”

This time, I’m staring at her.
What?
A thousand more questions rise among my disbelief. My heart is beating as hard as it was last night when I saw Haley’s mangled car. My birth father is a murderer and my birth mother helped him? No wonder Dad didn’t want me to go visit him. How could Natalie let Kiera visit him?

My mouth is sealed closed. I set my spoon down in my bowl of cereal and stand. “I think I’ll shower and go see Haley.”

“Keelan,” Mom calls; I don’t turn to face her, but I do stop.

“Just leave me alone for a while.”

“Okay.”

With that, I continue on my way upstairs. The last thing I want to think about for the rest of my entire life is what she just told me. I should’ve never asked. The moment I think about how racing down Dead Man’s Curve would be the perfect distraction, I immediately eject it. Haley had the same thought and look what happened to her.