In the Wait: Jack

My son. 

My son.

My son.

My son.

I lean against the wall, shaky and nauseous, in the hallway outside the hospital room where I can hear Kate’s crying at Seth’s bedside. I wish I had a drink. I need a drink. The words - my son -  are a prayer. Head bowed, I squeeze my eyes shut. Please. Please, God, if you’re there. Please don’t take my son. But praying to an omnipotent being is a fool’s errand. A waste of time. I stopped praying a long time ago. 

A tiny voice speaks from somewhere inside me, but I can’t make out the words. It feels as if there’s a message I need but can’t grasp. Instead, I shake my head back and forth to clear it, swallow down the bile and pinch the bridge of my nose to keep the tears shut up, tight. I need a fucking drink. That is where I’ve put my faith because it numbs everything else. 

I open my eyes and look up. The hallways of the hospital is full of sounds and movement.  Nurses and orderlies, doctors and their stark white coats, and the sound of tears and machines. A place of healing that sounds like death. It makes me feel even sicker. 

The last time I was here - like this - was when my mother died, a pulmonary embolism. She’d been 51. Seth had been about five. It was a small irony. I’d dropped out of college to take care of my mother when my dad died unexpectedly and got a job at the mill. It wasn’t long after that I learned Kate was pregnant. Said goodbye to a possible return to school and a career in baseball and hello to marriage, fatherhood and caregiver.  Then Mom died. I was left with a life I’d never wanted and taunted by dreams of what could have been.

Only a few hours ago we’d been around the dinner table, the perfect picture of domestic family bliss. Except we’d fought. Seth’s goddamn disrespect a (i want s Word or expression about it being constant). The yelling. The anger. The mess. The tears. The stupid kid should have fucking listened to me. 

But his eyes, that last moment before he’d bolted out the front door, the amber color flat, tortured and cold. Exactly how I felt. I shudder now thinking about it. His last words had been: Over my dead body. I won’t. Now, he’s lying comatose in a hospital bed. 

The tears won’t stay back and drip from my eyes. It makes me mad because I can hear my father: Men don’t cry. Don’t be a baby.  I can feel his fingers digging into the skin of my arm or the sting of his backhand. 

I sniff and swipe the weakness from my eyes and  replay the events if only to try and make sense of things. 

Seth had run from the house and I chased him. I’d slipped down the stairs, maybe a little tipsy. He’d gotten in that truck. He’d driven away. When I returned to the house, Kate had looked up at me. “What have we done?” She’d said.

I’d yelled something at her. Something stupid. Something about how disrespectful the damn kid is. She’d stood and left me alone in the kitchen with the remnants of our war. An overturned dinner table, food littering the floor. A lamp on its side. A broken end table. 

I righted one of the dining table chairs and sat down. I needed a beer- actually a whiskey sounded like the better option - but I didn’t get up to get one, not right away at least. Instead, I studied the mess, willing it to fix itself.  With my elbows on my knees and my head in my hands, I fisted my fingers together in my hair and pulled. The pressure, the pain, relieved the ache inside of me. I wished with every uncomfortable and raw feeling swirling like a storm within my body that the mess littering the room like a debris field around me wasn’t an accurate picture of my family. 

I’m incapable to fix it. 

I’m a failure. 

I’m no good, nothing and a sham of what a man should be. 

Nothing works. 

Nothing is right.

I eventually got up, pulled a glass and the whiskey bottle from the cabinet and gave myself a health pour. I figured it would calm my nerves, refrigerator cure the rolling stomach and shave off the edge of my headache. It did, fixing the tremble and numbing what hurts. I left the mess and sat in the living room with my back to the chaos.

And then - sometime later - someone rang the doorbell. 

My blood boiled at first, thinking it was Seth, but why would he ring the doorbell? I shuffled over to the door. “Coming,” I said to the insistent knock.

I heard Kate’s padded footsteps in the hallway behind me.

When I opened it, two police officers stood on the other side of the door.

I didn’t let them in, but one of them glanced at Kate and then around the house behind me.

“We’re looking for Jack and Kate Peters.” The taller one looked down at his notes.

“I’m Jack. Can I help you?” I asked. I hoped my voice didn’t give away my drinking because I could feel that perhaps I was tilting on my feet, but what could they say about what a man does in his own goddamn house.

Kate stepped up to my side. I glanced at her and then back at the officers. It felt like slow motion.

“Mr and Mrs Peters, do you own a red 1972 Chevrolet pick-up?” He read from his notes and then looked up at us.

“Yes.” I nodded. My brain felt heavy and my heart became an anchor.

“We pulled your name from the registration in a car matching that make and model involved in a car accident earlier this evening.”

“Seth?” Kate asked. She reached for me, her hand curling around my arm and squeezing, even though I knew I was the last person she wanted to cling to for support. 

“The driver was transported to Cantos Medical.”

“Oh my god,” Kate began chanting. “Oh my god.”

I put my arm around her to steady myself.

Now, I take a deep breath. 

My son. 

Swallow the nausea. 

My son. 

I need a drink. I can’t. I want it. I can’t. 

Pushing away from the wall, I take a few steps down the hallway. When I make it to the doorway, I lean in, but I hesitate. Kate is sitting next to the hospital bed. She’s crying.  Seth lays in the hospital bed, his prone body hooked up to machines and breathing. His face is bruised. Some from the accident, but those aren’t the ones that suddenly jump out at me. It’s the older ones I note. Shame slams against me like I’ve run headfirst into a wall.

I’m afraid.

I walk across the room and lay a hand on her shoulder. “Kate?”

She draws away from me, as if she’s been burned, and she says, “I won’t speak in anger in front of Seth. He can hear. The doctor thinks so.”

I misinterpret her anger. “I know. I’m angry too.”

She swings around to look at me. “You’re angry?”  She’s seething. Her eyes are filled with emotions I recognize because I have felt them of myself: hate, loathing, sadness, regret. All of the blame.

Her look pushes me back, and I step away from her. I take another step, backing out of the room unable to hold my head up.

I eventually find myself in the waiting room, the whisper of voices spinning a web around the space, intersecting, crossing. My son’s name on their tongues. Seth. Seth. My son. When my eyes focus on the faces I see the girl - Abby. The reason for Seth’s change. She stares unseeing at the floor. I can’t seem to help the anger that explodes inside me when I see her. Someone to blame for my hurt. “You,” I say. It’s more of a whisper. “You!” This time a shout, and I’m pointing. I stalk across the room toward her as she looks up at me. “This is all your fault. You changed him.”

A man blocks my path, and then a second one, he looks like a priest. “Hey now,” one says. 

“Jack. You’re hurting,” the religious one says.

Yes, goddammit! I’m hurting. God! I’m hurting, but I don’t yell it like I want to. Instead, I crumple against them, unable to hold myself up and weep.

Like a baby.

I’m a baby.

I think of my son. 

My son.

My son.

My baby.

Oh, what have I done?

In the Wait: Carter

Williams's text has thrown me off, in a big way. I'd planned to get to school early and work out. It's what I do, after all, because I've got goals. My phone went off a few minutes before my alarm and when I opened my messenger app to read it, I figured it was a prank.

Williams: Seth's been in an accident

Me: FO, you prick

Williams: Srsly bro

I'd sat up in my bed, brought my knees up and rested my elbows on them, phone in my hands.

Me: For real?

Williams: Yea dude. My dad picked him up early this morning. Alive. Said it's bad

Me: WTF!?!?

Williams: I'm shook

Me: hospital?

Williams: Yeah. Headed there soon. Texting team

Me: C U there

I scoot to the edge of my bed still looking at my phone to try and find information and rereading the texts. Then I sit on the edge in shock, figuring something's off. I scroll through IG. Several videos of Seth and Gabe's fight the day before are there. Twitter. Someone's posted:

Peters in critical. WTF? #Freakchallenge messed him up. #crucifydaniels

The idea of Seth in the hospital isn't adding up in my head. I get up, drawing on some joggers, a t-shirt and my team jacket.

After brushing my teeth, I go downstairs.

"Morning, Carter," my mom says from the kitchen bar. "You just missed, Dad."

I back up and glance through the doorway. She's holding a cup of coffee.

"Something wrong?" She asks as her brows shift over her eyes.

"I just got a text from Williams. He says Seth is in the hospital." Saying it out loud doesn't make it any more real, less perhaps. I picture Seth - team captain, scoring leader, jokester - full of life. He's my best friend. There has to be a mistake.

"What?" My mom sets down the coffee mug. "Is it serious?"

"I don't know," I tell her and step fully into the doorway instead of leaning around the jam. "He said his Dad took Seth in and it's bad. I'm going to the hospital now."

"I needed you to take Michelle this morning-" Mom starts referencing my little sister and then shakes her head. "No. That's okay. I got it. Want me to meet you there?"

I tap the door jam with my fist. "No. That's okay. I'll text you."

"I'll call the school and let them know."

I pause not having thought about that. I nod. "Yeah. Okay." I turn and grab my keys from the dish in the hallway.

"Text me," Mom calls after me. "As soon as you hear something."

When I get to the hospital and find out where to go, I'm numb, like I'm not in my own skin but just watching my body walk through the spaces. The hospital is teeming with people, but they're all faceless entities. When I step into the waiting room, I see a lot of people. Matt Kaiāulu - freshman on the varsity team - gets up from a center group of chairs and walks toward me.

"Hey," he says and holds out his hand.

I take it and we offer one another a one armed hug while our hands are still connected.

"This is messed up," he says as he draws away. He has an accent in his voice which I think has something to do with being raised in Hawaii, but it isn't because he speaks Hawaiian.

"Heard anything?" I ask him.

"Not yet."

"Williams just said it was 'bad.'"

"Yeah. That's what I heard too."

I glance past him and see his sister, Abby. She's curled up into herself and holding onto their dad. I recall the fight yesterday, the instagram stories - Gabe and Seth trading blows - Abby on the periphery of it.

"There's room," Matt tells me, and I follow him into the chair grouping. He introduces me to his dad.

We talk about soccer which seems a strange thing to grab onto, but is like grabbing hold of the earth when gravity just failed. It's like I've touched a live wire and everything around me, movement, sounds, visuals, are bursting like cartoons. I don't feel like I'm here.

I glance at Abby when I pass her on my way to a seat. She doesn't offer me any words but raises her dark eyebrows over her brown eyes in acknowledgement. We haven't talked much before, so I don't interpret her interaction as rudeness. I'm reminded again how pretty she is - her soft brown skin, cute freckles across her nose and those brown eyes - and understand why Seth has it bad for her.

I remember when we all first saw her, the way we laughed and teased one another, because she was new and mysterious. Seth trying to be nonchalant but looked like an opened-mouth fool. The memory makes me smile. Then I think about her walking through the hallways with the Freak lately, sitting with him in the cafeteria. I frown. My boy's been hurt, and because of that, my loyalties lie with him.

Matt and I sit and talk and as we do more people arrive.

Sara - who looks like her world has been crushed - gives Abby the evil eye when she walks in. I look at Abby again, who isn't even paying attention to Sara, but I know they've got bad blood. Abby went after Sara after the video was shared. I didn't get it from Sara, but it wouldn't surprise me if it started with her.

Coach arrives, teammates and we clump up in the center grouping of chairs. Waiting.

"He said that the front of Seth's truck is crushed," Williams says. "Head on collision with another car. They had to get a second ambulance for that driver. Seth wasn't responsive."

I swallow down the nausea climbing the walls of my stomach into my throat hearing the details. It's easier not to know. "He was alive though?"

"Yeah." Williams nods.

"Any news, yet?" Someone asks.

Someone else says, "no."

Silence descends, and I figure we're all contemplating the big What If. I know I am. What if Seth doesn't survive?

Someone changes the subject to school - wrestling and basketball tryouts coming up. Safe.

I see Abby jump from her seat out of the corner of my eye and look up. Gabe Daniels has walked into the room. My stomach dips toward rage. I don't know why, really. Daniels has never done anything to me (we were once friends), but I'm thinking about that fight yesterday. I'm thinking about the way he's got his arms around Abby and his head buried against her neck. I'm thinking about my boy, Seth, who's fighting for his life, and it isn't fair. How does this guy get to be walking around and acting like he fucking cares. It makes me want to puke.

I stand and my teammates' faces swing toward me which I suppose is how things will go for a while. Seth is captain, and with him down, someone has to take the lead. "I don't like what I'm seeing," I say. "It makes me sick." I move across the room. The team follows. 

In the Wait: Sara

Sara is a character in the Cantos Chronicles and is instrumental in Abby’s narrative in Swimming Sideways.

---

I slump into the green chair against the ivory wall of the waiting room. My mother sits down next to me. I push a hand through my dark hair and move locks around to find a place the strands feel perfect that way if anyone is watching, it can't be said I don't take care of myself. I glance around the room to see who's here. Many of the faces in the waiting room are strangers but many are not. Carter is by Freak 2 and it makes my stomach churn with hatred. Maybe if I'd put out a slutty video of myself on the internet, all the guys would like me too. Anger slithers through me looking at her, rolled up into a ball on her seat, her head against a large man's shoulder - her dad probably - if she has any right to mourn Seth. She looks like shit. Her dark hair drawn into a messy bun, dressed like she just rolled out of bed. I don't understand why Seth -

But I push the unfinished thought away. I don't want to think about that now. I'm sitting in a hospital where Seth is and I don't know any more than what Britney's call had told me this morning: Seth was in a car accident. He's at the hospital. I'm here to be what a girlfriend would be - even if that isn't what we are. Right now.

"Are you okay, Babe?" My mom asks. She places her warm hand on my arm.

I shake my head and whisper, "No," instead of what I want which is to scream: NO! Seth is in the fucking hospital. MY SETH. That bitch doesn't deserve to be here!

I close my eyes shutting out what's around me and picture him: his beautiful golden brown eyes, his brown hair streaked with sunlight. His dimpled smile. I remember that night - our first night together - when he'd finally seen me. It was all I'd ever wanted: to be seen by Seth Peters. It had been at a summer party - end of June - at the lake. I'd ridden up with Cara. Drank. Danced. Bumped into him. He'd smiled at me.

"Hey there, Sara," he'd said and leaned forward to give me a light hug. He smelled spicy and my heart leapt being so near him. He'd been wearing a white t-shirt stamped with a rainbow and the word Hawaii; the cloth stretched around his lean body, the cotton taut in all the right places. I was sure he could hear the breath catch in my throat.

I offered him my own version of his smile. "Hi," I'd said. "I haven't seen you at any other parties this summer." I'd pressed my lips against his ear to tell him because the music was loud. It hadn't actually been necessary, but it allowed me to get closer to him, my hand on the bare skin of his arm. His hand was on my waist - my skin exposed to his because of my cropped top - and the warmth of his hand on me caused sunbursts to explode in my chest and heat my nerve endings.

"You've been looking for me?" He asked, the whisper of his breath on my cheek. I could smell the alcohol spinning a magical spell between us.

I leaned back so I could see his eyes and smiled. I didn't care that he knew I've wanted to see him. We were both alcohol loose and I wanted to jump into this ride and follow the loop-de-loops. I wanted him. I'd wanted it for so long. He was the reason I'd attended every party I'd ever been to. Seth. He was looking at me.

He tugged me closer, and we danced. He held my hips to his and we moved with a rhythm I'd once only imagined. The music wrapped around us like a blanket and everyone else seemed to disappear. The stars were out, bright and twinkling in the night sky. I thought about the water of the lake, and other revelers in it, doing their own dance and wondered if Seth would ever see me like that - as someone he'd want to slip into the cool water with. I'd been infatuated with him since eighth grade when my girl-clan had clumped at the edges of the basketball court watching our crushes and hoping they would look our way. That night he did, both of us tipsy. His hands slid over my body and I wanted him to. I kissed him so he wouldn't wonder about my want.

Opening my eyes, I return to the hospital waiting room from my mind and glance around again. The bitch who messed up everything is across the room. Abby with a-last-name-no-one-can-even-pronounce. More of the soccer team has congregated around her while I'm alone against the wall with my mom. They should be with me instead of an internet whore. I'm popular and he was MY SETH, not hers.

Tears burn against my eyes and then fall. My mom holds out a tissue to me. I take it and press it to the corners of my eyes.

Seth and I had been fine before she showed up.

That first kiss had been everything I'd imagined. The feel of his tongue. The rhythm of the way we could work together. It turned out I was a girl that Seth could see slipping into the water with. It hadn't happened that night, but at a summer pool party I'd thrown a week or so later. After everyone else had left or passed out, we slipped into the pool and then up to my room. My heart still trips around in my chest thinking about his hands on my body, the way we connected, the cadence and sway of our bodies together. Then I became the girl he held at every party after that. And sometimes - when I invited him over - he'd show up at my house and we'd find one another again in the frenzy of want. Always us. Seth and Sara. Sara and Seth. Exactly as it was supposed to be. Sure - we were always drunk, but it made it hotter and sort of perfect. He was finally my Seth just like I'd always wanted. All summer and into the first weeks of school.

Until that day in the hallway at school a couple weeks after classes started and he said: Look Sara, we aren't really together-together. My heart crashed into my chest and then he'd offered hope when he showed up at my house one more time. Hungry for me and what I could give him. Me. Then he stopped talking to me, stopped seeing me as if everything between us had dried out. He started seeing the bitch, brought her to a party even, and I tried to get his attention back, but even then, he was jaded by her.

I was left behind in the wake, floating untethered to anything as if a strong wave had rushed through and broke me. I couldn't find anything to hang onto. I'd given him my everything - every part of me. I wasn't ready to let it go, so when I found that horrible video of her. How could I not share it? I was certain it would bring Seth back - away from her. It hadn't gone the way I imagined.

Then, unexpectedly, Seth showed up at my house. He'd thrown pebbles at my window to draw me out to the pool house. I'd been shocked but that part of me who still wanted Seth and Sara was elated. He'd talked strange and disjointed. That conversation a few weeks ago has been running like a loop in my mind since. This was after his surfing accident, after I'd shared bitch's internet shame that made her Freak 2, after everything had changed. He'd asked me that stupid question: Why do you like me?

A fresh bout of tears start thinking about it, and faces in the waiting room swing toward me. I turn my face into my mother's shoulder and her arm comes up around me.

Why do I like me?

The truth was I couldn't believe that he liked me, that he ever had, but when he kept coming back, I could feel the stitching of the parts of me fortified. I'd always liked him. He was Seth Peters. I'd written his name on my folder and signed my name as Sara Peters in my diary. I'd imagined he and I together because it just was what I'd constructed in my mind. He was perfect. Good looking. Popular. Athletic. Funny. And his question - his stupid question - opened up a fissure inside me because why would he like me? I'd thrown the same question back at him. And then instead of saying why he might have liked me, he'd said: I'm sorry I used you, for hurting you. The gap had widened and suddenly I was falling through.

But I can't believe it. I won't believe it. He's my Seth. Has always been MY SETH!

There's movement across the room drawing me back into the waiting room, and I look to see who it is.

Freak 1 - Gabe Daniels - steps into the doorway and Freak 2 gets up and walks into his arms. They cling to one another like they have a right.

My eyes narrow.

The rumors have been burning about them leaving everything else smoldering with smoke. Freak 1 and Seth got in a fight the day before. Was it about her? That stupid bitch who's ruined everything. Why the fuck does Freak 1 think he has any right to be here? What if it's his fault Seth is here in the hospital?

Freak 2 is clinging to him like she's an extension of him. What about Seth?

I pull out my phone and text Cara and Bri: you wouldn't believe who has the nerve to show up at the hospital.

In the Wait: Gabe

The following is an excerpt from the 3rd novel in The Cantos Chronicles called The Bones of Who We Are (2019) . All rights reserved.

__________________________________________

My eyes open to the exposed rafters above my bed. There's a chill in the air, and I burrow deeper under the covers to block it out. I close my eyes to return to the bliss of sleep.

School.

Shit.

You'll see Abby.

Abby!

My eyes fly open as heat spreads across my chest. I smile and my cheeks heat with a new awareness of my body and hers. What we did last night. I remember the feel of her in my arms.

I love her so freaking much.

I'm up and out of bed.

Your father supposedly loved your mother. Look what he did. I shake my head of the thoughts. Nothing is going to steal the golden joy I've got today.

Nothing.

I'm dressed.

My thoughts are a flurry.

I wonder how this is going to go down at school. Should I kiss her? Hold her?

Oh shit! The fight. Will I be suspended?

My phone vibrates. I smile hoping it's from who I want and knowing it probably is.

Abby: You awake?

My heart constricts thinking about her. Good morning. I write and add an emoji with heart eyes. As if she were with me, I feel her lips, her tongue, the way we struggled to say good night in the cab of the truck. "I love you," I'd said unable to stop now that I understood, unable to stop my hands touching her, making sure she was real.

Now, I can't stop smiling.

The three dots come up and stay that way for a long time. I feel the crease between my eyes as my eyebrows draw together. I wonder what she's thinking and have a moment of panic. What if she thinks she's made a mistake? My heart stumbles a moment, careening to a halt before slamming into a wall and sputtering back to life with an erratic pace. What if maybe I'd imagined everything? I type: What's up? You okay?

Abby: No.

I lean against the bathroom counter, my joy trickling down the drain behind me. The phone is in my hands, chest high, and I'm watching those three dots taunt me. It was too good to be true. I was a fool.

Abby: Going to the hospital.

I breathe, unaware I'd been holding my breath. At first there's a moment of relief she hasn't sent me a message which says we've made a mistake because I know last night was not a mistake for me. Within the span of a split second, my relief turns to concern. Why would she need to go to the hospital?

I write: Why? WTF? What's wrong?

Abby: It isn't me.

Me: Who?

Abby: It's Seth. There's been an accident.

My mouth drops open and closes. There's a mistake. I swallow down the doubt as I dial her phone. Maybe it's nothing and there's been a mistake. Abby answers on the first ring. "What the fuck are you talking about?" I ask.

I'm back in the school office last night after the fight. It's like slow motion in my mind. I see his head hung and the way he glances at his father. The fear. The look he gave me as Dale and I walked out. I remember thinking maybe I should do something, but what?

My throat constricts. I think I might be sick.

"Williams called Matt this morning," she says. I hear her tears. "His dad transported Seth to the hospital late last night; it's bad."

There are a million questions going through my mind, but nothing comes out. My throat has closed, and my stomach flips over on itself. I breathe through my mouth fighting the nausea.

"Gabe?" She asks.

"I'll meet you there," I say and hang up, confused and needing to move at the same time as though there's an itch deep inside my legs working its way up through my spine and out my mouth. A strange animalistic sound, part sob, part yell, part warrior cry, comes from inside me. It's deep and guttural, rooted in emotions so visceral I wouldn't have found them if I had been looking. I sink to a crouch on the bathroom floor, curled into myself as though it might protect me from the pain or to hold in my grief.

"Gabe," Martha knocks on the bathroom door, and when I don't answer she opens it. "Gabe!" She sees me, breathing as though my lungs are coming out from my mouth, she's on the floor with me. "What is it? Are you okay?"

"It's Seth," I choke. "Something's happened."

"Oh. Oh," she says and holds me against her. "What is it?"

"I don't know. Abby called. He's been in an accident. She's going to the hospital." The information comes out in short bursts of breath. "It's my fault," I tell her, look at her. "My fault," I say.

"No. No," she says my face in her hands and comforts me.

"I should have known. His dad-"

Martha holds me at arm's length so she can see me. "We don't know anything, yet," she says. "I'll take you down there, okay?"

I nod.

"It may be something minor." She offers hope.

I accept it, but there are no hopeful kites floating in the sky of my mind. It's bad. When we walk into the waiting room of the Intensive Care Unit and I see the grim faces of those inside, I understand this isn't a room of hope.

Abby, who's waiting in the room with her dad, jumps up when she sees me and rushes into my arms.

We wait.

***

"I've been looking for you," I tell Abby later when I find her in the main lobby of the hospital. She'd disappeared, followed Seth's Mom from the waiting room, and I haven't seen her since. I waited. And waited. And waited. Accusing eyes burned holes through me while I did which propelled me from the room when she didn't return. The silent accusation from fake people at school – Seth's friends - aren't any different than what is already scrolling through my mind like a 24-hour news alert: Freak fought Seth. Seth in hospital. Freak's fault.

After wandering the hallways and feeling claustrophobic with the hopelessness of illness and death, I go to the lobby. That's where I find her. She's drawn herself into a tiny space of a functional chair, her knees to her chest and her arms wrapped around them, as if she's trying to disappear. The despondent way she looks I feel in my soul like hundreds of nails pounded into my flesh. Her cheek is resting on her knees, and she stares unseeing, or seeing something that isn't concretely in the hospital lobby with us.

She looks up at the sound of my voice.

She's been crying.

I want to draw her into my arms, to offer comfort. I want to smooth the stray lock of her dark brown hair hanging over her golden cheek behind her ear and allow my hand to rest on her head. I want to lean over her, be a shelter for the pelting pain. I want to return to the cocoon we'd insulated in ourselves the night before, but it has broken open and spilled us out defenseless and unprepared into a painful world.

We can't.

With Seth lying in the hospital bed battling death, how do I deserve that?

She loved him first. She has always said she loves him. She might have told me she loved me last night, and I her. We might have taken comfort in one another's bodies, but, now, I'm not sure it's enough today.

The pain and guilt I feel are like leaden weights tied to my feet and dragging me to the bottom of a very deep sea. I'm the interloper. I've taken. I've betrayed. I gulp nothing, but it's a huge load of pain that feels like swallowing nails.

She looks away and stares out the window. "I saw him," she says. Tears slip from her eyes and create wet spots on the fabric covering her knees.

"And?" I ask but don't want to. No. I don't want to know, because the truth of what has happened isn't something I want to think about. I don't want to think about how I've committed the ultimate betrayal of him with the girl he loves, and now, she's sitting here looking like a wilting flower. I don't want to think about his body lying upstairs in the hospital room. I don't want to think about walking away from him last night, after the fight when my dad picked me up, and the look on his face when he saw his own father – a monster like my own. I don't want to think about the tears climbing up my throat, tears I don't deserve to cry. I don't want to think about it, because I don't want to lose her; I don't want to lose him. It all feels like my fault.

A sob catches in her throat. "Bad," is the only clear word I catch.

I sit down next to her and draw her into my arms anyway. She turns against me and cries big heavy sobs which need the support of an extra set of arms. I give that to her. I love her - my first lover. And I love him - my first friend. This pain can't be born alone.

She's heavy, leaning into me, bunching up my shirt in her hands. I tighten my arms around her warm body and restrain my own tears even if I feel them like razor blades in the back of my throat. The grief is a storm hurled with ferocity, gusty and frightful. Despite the bluster which mirrors the emotion careening through my own spirit, Abby in my arms brings me comfort. I find reprieve to the thoughts swirling around in my mind. As the storm of emotion subsides into a gentler rain until it passes, we continue to hold onto one another. Shelters.

Abby presses her face against my chest, her head under my chin. Eventually she says, "He's hooked up to machines. They are breathing for him."

I close my eyes, regret too heavy to keep them open, and draw her tighter.

"And his mom was trying to be brave. She said, 'he was a good boy, until me.'"

"Did she really say that?" I don't believe it.

"Close enough," she says and begins to cry again, softer this time. "It's my fault. This is my fault," she says.

I shake my head. No. No way. If anyone is to blame, it's me. "No, Abby."

She nods. "I came between you. The fight. The accident."

I pull away from her, just drawing back enough so I can see her face. Her eyes are rimmed with her anguish and regret, red and filled with still unshed tears. I shake my head. "No. You aren't to blame for this." I draw her back into my arms, but she pushes free.

Leaning away from me and no longer touching she says, "You aren't blaming yourself?"

I search her face, memorizing it. "I'm the only one to blame."

Her grief changes. It melts off of her face and reorganizes itself into something more substantive – like rock. Her eyes have hardened while her mouth has thinned out. "That's ridiculous."

"As ridiculous as blaming yourself?"

She turns in her seat, facing forward and her feet on the floor now.

I know she won't hear me – won't understand why this is my fault. She won't hear I knew he loved her. She won't hear Seth loved her first. She won't hear I betrayed him by loving her. While I might have conveniently dismissed all the harm Seth perpetrated against me, in the midst of this cyclone, my own betrayal is the eye of the storm around which everything else swirls.

I shift in my seat next to her, mirroring her body language.

Hearts broken – not by one another – but moving toward it.

We sit like that, saying little to nothing, locked in our own pain and grief, blaming ourselves but incapable of absolving the other.

Her father finds her. I watch her leave the hospital. She doesn't look back.

Martha finds me and takes me home.

Later, when the haunting of my culpability becomes insistent, and I'm unable to sleep, I climb from my bed. I pick up my phone charging in the dock on my desk. Sitting back down, I open up the screen and press the messaging app to text Abby, the blue glow from the screen illuminating the darkness around me. I miss her. I need her to fill the awful space in my chest. She is, after all, the only one I want to talk to.

I press her name and press the bubble to type the text. The keyboard opens and line blinks at me, waiting. But I don't type anything.

I want to say: I love you.

I want to say: I need you.

I want to say: I'm hurting.

I don't. I watch the blinking line.

Then I turn the phone off and the room is submerged in darkness again.

I set the phone back on the desk and lay back in bed staring up at the dark ceiling.

There is a storm swirling in me like a hurricane filled with all the debris of my life. The rejection, the pain, the ugly truth of who I am and where I've come from. Seth lying in that hospital bed is an indication. I didn't help him. I made it worse. As the emotional storm swirls, I drift a million miles from her. I don't deserve to reach out for her. I deserve to trade places with Seth. It was always meant to be that way.

In the Wait: Abby

The atmosphere in the hospital is barren even though the spaces are burgeoning with people. Faces are drawn, serious, lined with focus and concern. Inside the building, as my father, my brother, Matt, and I move through the sterile hallway, there is nothing that communicates growth here, only waiting. The waiting room is a testament to it. The tension presses against my lungs, making it difficult to breathe. A glance around the room and I see faces crumpled with tears, neutral with disbelief, or in the act of rejecting the news. I'm bargaining - if I just open my eyes from this nightmare, then Seth being here won't be real; my being here won't be real.

"What's wrong?" I'd asked entering the kitchen. My family was assembled in the room in clumps. "What's wrong?" I repeated and panic replaced the nausea.

"Matt got a call this morning from one of his teammates," Dad said. His arm was around mom.

Mom wiped her eyes with a tissue. "There was an accident last night."

"A car accident," my dad added.

My stomach rolled. "What? Who?"

I shake my head at them the moment his name is said: "Seth." I barely made it to the bathroom to be sick.

Now, I squeeze my dad's hand with mine reassuring myself he's here with me. He offers a comforting squeeze in return and leads me to a thinly cushioned seat.

I'm not sure what I feel. Numb. Everything came out of me when I got the news earlier which has left me feeling strangely empty. It's as if I've become a shell of myself, cracking across seams and with the slightest pressure I will collapse in on myself. Though, simultaneously, I'm antsy, as if I need to move, need to find purpose, need to fix this. I just can't, and that makes me feel useless. The swirling mess of emotions inside me are a building tornado.

I watch the doorway, waiting for Gabe. He said he was on his way. I watch the doorway, waiting for news about Seth. Waiting.

My knees are pulled up to my chest, feet on the seat in front of me, one arm wrapped around my knees and my hand still drawing on my father's strength. Matt is next to me, but he gets up when one of his teammates - Carter - walks into the room.

My heart has sped up thinking it might be Gabe, but sputters when it isn't.

Seth's friend is a ghost of himself. His blond hair is messy, as if he's rolled from his bed and come straight to the hospital the moment he did. My free hand goes to my own hair pulled into a haphazard bun. Carter's usually flush cheeks - colored with life and good nature - are nearly translucent, his lips drawn into a tense line. Near the doorway he and Matt hug and exchange words. I can't hear anything but the low rumble of their transaction, whatever is said meant to be between them. Matt returns with Carter on his heels.

"This is Carter," Matt tells my father.

Dad has stood and lets go of me so that he can shake the other boy's hand. They talk about something familiar and safe: soccer. It's strange given the situation, but maybe not when all any of us want is to return to what is normal. Dad sits back down in his chair and takes my hand once again. I lean toward his stability.

Carter's dark blue eyes meet mine and he lifts his chin. "Hey," he says and doesn't offer anything else.

I acknowledge him with a nonverbal lift of my eyebrows. There isn't much reason to offer any more, and I'm pretty sure we don't think much about it the circumstances as they are. We've been on opposite sides of the social chasm all year and only united in a common concern for a mutual friend in the now.

He sits on the opposite side of Matt from me, and I listen as they talk about soccer - the subdued tone of their words offer a sort of comfort. They move onto discussion about basketball and then video games to fill the space and time with normalcy. There's something comforting in eavesdropping if only to fill my ears with something real rather than the loop of worry in my brain.

Where is Gabe?

"You need anything?" My dad asks me.

I shake my head and glance down at my phone wishing Gabe would text, or call, or something.

People enter the room.

People I know. Some I don't.

Matt speaks to teammates who build a cell around us.

Some people leave the room.

Sara arrives. She looks perfect, the porcelain doll whose edges are soft and rounded, but breakable. Her green eyes stop at me and narrow. I think about what she did because of Seth, my violent response in the cafeteria, and wonder if she's thinking about it too because she turns on her heal and walks to the opposite side of the room.

More people arrive. The room fills to capacity.

Then - finally - Gabe appears in the doorway - tall, beautiful, and I feel myself finally able to take a breath.

His usually caramel colored skin looks ashy, and the corners of his full mouth pulled down with the worry on his face. His bright blue eyes are dull and rimmed red with unshed tears, or tears that have already fallen that he hasn't shared with me. He's in his black sweatshirt though the hoodie isn't up, hands shoved into the front pocket. As he looks around the room - I assume for me - he runs a hand over his curly hair.

Our eyes collide.

I jump from my seat and walk into his open arms.

Martha, his mom, is with him. She lays a comforting hand on my shoulder and then moves into the room toward my father.

"I'm so glad you're here," I say into this chest.

His arms contract, drawing me closer, and I can feel his body fold up around me, his chin fitting into the space near my ear. "I don't know what to do. What to think," he whispers. "I keep seeing him yesterday, after the fight." His voice sounds different, unbalanced and full of regret. He isn't crying, but I can hear the tears wrapped around his vocal chords.

The night before, when he'd arrived on my doorstep after their fight, he'd had a similar, off-kilter sound. Then we'd found comfort in one another's arms and bodies, and the world seemed to reorient, but now everything has changed as if our time together was a temporary reprieve. I don't want it to be true.

"Together," I tell him to combat the lie in my head, "We'll figure it out together," I say, but I'm not sure in that moment I believe it even if I want to. The only thing moving in my blood is fear for Seth even in spite of what he's done, and guilt for leaving him behind.

I clasp Gabe to me afraid that if I loosen my hold we might both slip away.