Sudden Impact - Lesley Choyce [6]
“How much worse?” I asked.
“We’re not sure. Everything is under control.”
“Is he going to live?”
Suddenly Mr. Richards seemed angry with me for asking. “Live? Tina, everything is going to be all right. This is just … one of those things … it’s not a life or death situation. Kurt will be fine. It’s all under control.”
I looked him straight in the eyes, but he turned back to his wife. “Now go on home. We don’t need you here, and you’re upsetting my wife.”
I saw a doctor walking our way. He had a clipboard.
“Can you tell me how Kurt Richards is doing?” I asked him. I wanted to hear the news straight from the doctor, not just from Kurt’s dad.
He looked at his clipboard then up at me. “Who are you?”
“His friend,” I said. Why didn’t I have a right to know something?
But already two hands had grabbed me by the shoulders and pulled me roughly aside. Kurt’s father pointed a finger toward the elevator, and I backed away.
“Any news?” he asked the doctor.
“He’s stable for now,” the doctor said.
“Good,” said his father. “Then everything is going to be okay.” He said it like it was all over and life was going to shift back to normal.
Somehow I knew better. I had a feeling that Kurt’s father was trying to convince himself and his wife that there was no further danger. And that wasn’t what I had seen in the doctor’s eyes.
Still, I couldn’t stand another confrontation. I slipped onto the elevator and left.
chapter seven
Six days went by, and no one would tell me a thing. Kurt’s parents hung up when I called. I tried getting up to the third floor in the hospital again, but each time I tried someone told me that since I wasn’t family I wasn’t allowed.
Nobody at school knew anything. The story going around was that Kurt was getting better and he just had to stay in the hospital for “a while.” It was one of the hardest weeks of my life. I flunked every test that came my way and couldn’t read three lines in a book without forgetting what I had just read.
Then I was at my locker after fifth period and who shows up but Jason, chewing bubble gum. “So, are you going to be there for the unveiling of the new improved Kurt Richards today?” he asked. Then he blew a pink bubble in my face.
“What are you talking about?”
Jason sucked the gum back in and it caught on his cheek. He tried to untangle it from the puny growth of hair on his top lip. “We’re invited to visit the fallen hero,” he said sarcastically, “the living legend of the soccer field who didn’t even last one game into the season.”
I could have slapped the smirk off his face. “Who invited you?”
“His mom.”
It figures, I thought. Leave it to her to invite a dork like Jason and not me. But it sounded like good news to me anyway. It meant Kurt was improving. I heaved a sigh of relief.
“What time?” I asked.
“Three-thirty.”
“What room?”
Jason took out a slip of paper and read the number. “Three fifty-seven.” Then he popped his gum into the slip of paper, wadded it up and batted it with the palm of his hand across the hallway. “Should be good for a laugh,” he said.
I slammed the locker in his face and walked away. I should have been mad at the jerk, but all I could think about was going to see Kurt. I would be there, invited or not. My heart jumped up in my throat.
I got to the waiting room at three-thirty and, this time, no one stopped me. When I walked off the elevator I heard the snickering first; then I saw Wicket, Jason, Dorfman and Leach—all guys from the team. None of them were really good friends of Kurt’s. Kurt was a loner like me. That was why we had always understood each other so well.
“Hi Tina,” Wicket said, trying to be polite.
“Thought you weren’t invited,” Jason teased. He knew there was tension between Kurt’s folks and me. I said nothing. Jason was hugging his motorcycle helmet like he’d been doing