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Chapter One Hundred-Thirteen
Point of View: Kayla



When I got to the hospital to see Zoe at 6:30 AM, I wandered into her room and found her bed empty. I sat down in the chair next to the bed and folded my hands in my lap, waiting, assuming she was in the bathroom. I glanced around the room. The TV was on, there was a cup of water on the night stand, her crutches were leaning against the wall. Her crutches? I looked at the bathroom door, at the jamb along the bottom. The light wasn't on.

I stood up and walked to the bathroom door, knocking. "Hello? Aunt Zoe?" No response. I opened the door. She wasn't in there.

I turned around just as a small Japanese guy came in the room. He looked at the empty bed, then looked at me, and back again. He swallowed. "Hello," he said.

"Hey," I looked at the bed. "Where's my aunt?"

He blinked.

"Where's Zoe?" I asked.

"I don't know." He moved to the bed and started gathering up all the blankets and sheets and stuff, "I'm just changing out the clothes for her. I think she went for a walk. We got her a wheel chair." He rolled the stuff up into a sheet.

"Oh," I said. "How long has she been gone?"

"Uhh..." he paused. "She should be back soon. We'll be doing vitals soon, so... So they'll send her back here."

I nodded, "Okay." I sat down in the chair again. "I'll wait here for her."

He nodded and scurried out of the room, the sheets and blankets tucked under his arm.

I sighed and leaned back against the chair and stared up at the ceiling, wondering where Nick was, what he was thinking of, if he was okay, if he was in pain, if he was wondering where I was.

My life was a strange, twisting mess these days. I couldn't imagine what Nick must feel like if this was how I felt. Everything seemed to be happening at once. Life had gone crazy ever since that night Zoe had been woken up by the crash on our front lawn.

I could still see that night in my mind.

Zoe had snuck out of her bedroom, trying to be silent, but her crutches were loud, even muffled by the carpet, and I'd been awake, reading the script for the play. I stuck my head out to the hall. "Zoe? What's wrong?" but she was focused on getting down the stairs.

I followed after her as she made her way down the steps, across the foyer and onto the front lawn. The huge oak tree by the sidewalk was adorned with a mutilated cage of an Escalade. Red and blue lights were shining, cutting the night with their neon glow. The grass was soaked. My feet were freezing as I ran after Zoe, who moved with surprising agility with her crutches. We stopped a few feet away from the wreck. "Damn," I mumbled. I'd only ever seen crashes from afar, from the windows of the passing vehicle.

"Drunk driver," said Zoe, her voice heavy with remorse. I knew instinctively that she was wondering if it was one of her students, wondering if she could've done anything more to stop this from happening. Zoe had always been like that... always very protective and maternal.

Once, she'd heard a student of hers had been killed after texting while driving. Zoe had cried for days, saying things like she could've stressed the danger of texting and driving more, that if she had maybe the student never would've died.

"You two gotta push back," a cop had cried, waving us away.

"Is there anything we can do to help, officer?" Zoe had asked. She'd been almost pleading, not just offering. She wanted to help, she wanted to get involved. I knew she was probably thinking if it was her student that if she helped she could make up for the mistake she'd made in not stressing drinking and driving enough... that maybe she could reverse the wrong she believed she'd made.

"Just stand back."

Zoe glanced at me, and we backed away, but didn't completely leave. Zoe grabbed my hand protectively. I could feel her thoughts fusing through her palm and finger tips. Never do this, Zoe was begging me, Please listen to me when I say not to drink and drive. Never make this be me standing near your wrecked vehicle.

When the medics got Nick out of that twisted ball of metal, I felt as though I were going to be sick. He was barely recognizable as a man. He looked like he'd been inverted, his skin turned inside and his innards spread across the outside. Looking back now, it is amazing that Nick wasn't scarred beyond recognition in the aftermath of the accident, amazing that all the scars and cuts had healed seamlessly. I gasped and turned away, sickened.

They loaded him into the ambulance and pulled away. Zoe's hand tightened on mine nervously. In the distance, the siren wailed and Zoe sighed in relief, "He's alive," she whispered.

"How could he be alive?" I asked, shaking.

"Will to live," Zoe suggested. "An unfinished story." She stared down the street after the ambulance as technicians began cleaning up the mess of broken Escalade.

Zoe's words that night were as if she'd known then what the world would look like just a couple months later. Zoe had always had a knack for such statements, ones that seem prophetic in retrospect...

I looked at the clock and wondered where she was.

Finally, the door creaked open and the Japanese guy was pushing Zoe, in a wheelchair, through the door, her eyes puffy from lack of sleep and tears. She looked emotionally drained, heartbroken even, but resigned. "I don't understand what damage I was doing being there," she complained, not seeing me at first. "I don't understand why they can't just let him have a break... He needs someone..."

I stood up. "What?" I asked.

Zoe looked up at me. "Kayla," she said, surprised.

We stared at each other.