Sudden Impact - Lesley Choyce [15]
I should have kept my mouth shut, but I thought Kurt should know. “Kurt, Jason got himself messed up on his new motorcycle. He’s downstairs.”
Kurt leaned up in bed. “How is he?”
“I don’t know,” I told him. “I don’t know.”
“There goes the season,” Kurt said. What a weird thing, I thought, to think about soccer after all this. But then Kurt hadn’t seen what I had seen.
“Coach will be really ticked off,” I said, backing off from saying what I really thought. “I hope Jason is all right.”
As I walked out the door, I had to pass Kurt’s parents. Mrs. Richards grabbed my sleeve. “You had it all planned, didn’t you?”
“What are you talking about?” I closed the door solidly behind me. I didn’t want Kurt to hear.
“You could have killed him with your little rendezvous,” she said.
“It wasn’t my idea,” I pulled away and walked on. I didn’t need to take any of their crap.
Mr. Richards stalked behind me. “I’ve talked with the administration. This time, they assure me, you won’t be allowed back in the hospital. I’ve explained the problem to them.”
I stopped and spun around. How could they have it all so wrong? I didn’t even know where to begin. So I said nothing and walked onto the elevator.
chapter fifteen
A security guy in his early twenties, who looked like a bouncer in a nightclub, escorted me out of the hospital. “Sorry, kid,” he said. “It’s just my job. I don’t usually have to hassle girls. Just stay away, okay? You must’ve done something to make them unhappy.” I felt like a criminal.
Martha was sitting in the lobby. She saw me being ushered outside and followed.
“Leave the kid alone, Muscle Breath,” she told the guy.
“She’s out of here,” he said. “I’m done. Good-bye.” And he disappeared back into the hospital.
“What’s up?” Martha asked. “My shift was over so I thought I’d hang around.”
“Oh, God,” I said, trying to hold back the tears. “First Kurt. Now Jason.”
“Need a ride?”
“No, I don’t know where to go. I sure don’t feel like going home.”
“Well, what do you feel like?” She was trying to be nice.
I wasn’t thinking about Kurt right then. I was thinking about Jason. I’d seen him on the stretcher. It looked bad. “I feel like a vampire,” I told her.
“I don’t get it.”
“I asked everybody I knew what their blood type was. Kurt is B negative. They said he was going to need lots of blood for transfusions. Guess who was the only person I found with the right blood type?”
“Jason?”
“Yeah. And what I think Jason was trying to tell me before the accident, in his own weird way, was that he wanted to help. He really did care about Kurt and was willing to donate his blood.” What I was thinking just then was scary and awful enough that I felt ashamed.
Martha said it out loud for me. “And if he dies, you’ve got yourself an organ donor.”
I couldn’t look at her. A flood of tears came out of me and I hung onto her shoulder, sobbing.
“Tina, whether Jason lives or dies has nothing to do with you. And whatever we think right now will make no difference to Jason’s chances.”
“I guess I know that. And I don’t really want him to die. It’s just that this may be Kurt’s only opportunity. Especially now. I think that maybe he’s worse off since he ran away from the hospital. More damage.”
“I’m gonna see what I can find out about Jason,” Martha said. “Stay here.”
The minutes dragged on while I waited. Martha returned as promised. “Severe head injury,” she said, looking first at her hands and then down at the floor. “If he’d worn his helmet, he might have been okay, but it’s very bad. He’s on life support, the sort they use for patients that are what they call ‘brain dead.’ If his parents agree, they’ll pull the plug in eight hours. Absolutely nothing they can do.”
I closed my eyes and found that already I missed Jason. I missed his obnoxious macho jokes and his stupid antagonism. I thought about how he and Kurt had grown up in the same neighborhood. Their parents were old chums, and the two kids had often been