What Happened to Goodbye(22)
Author: Sarah Dessen

Beep.

“Mclean, it’s me. I’m going to take the kids to the grocery store, so when you call try me on my cell. If I don’t pick up, it just means I’m in that dead spot just before town, so leave a message, and I’ll call you back just as soon as I get it. Can’t wait to make plans! I love you!”

Beep.

“Mclean? Um, hi. This is Opal, from the restaurant? I’m here with your dad. . . . He’s had a little accident.” A pause, at the worst possible time. I heard an intercom, some buzzing. “He’s okay, but we’re at the hospital, and he says his insurance card is at the house, and you’d know where it was. Can you call me back at this number when you get this?”

Beep.

“Hi, honey, me again. I’m back from the grocery, saw you didn’t call yet, so when you do, just try the home—”

I fumbled with the phone, hitting the END button once, twice, trying to clear the screen so I could call out. My heart was suddenly racing, those words filling my head: accident, hospital. And behind them, harder to see: okay. Okay. Okay.

My phone took forever to dial, each beep seeming like an eternity as I looked around the full courtyard in front of me, seeing nothing. Finally, an answer.

“Hello? ”

“Opal,” I said. “It’s Mclean. I just got your message, is my dad okay? What happened? When did he—”

“Whoa, whoa,” she said. “Take a breath. Mclean? It’s all right. He’s just fine. Here.”

Now I could hear that I was breathing hard, almost panting. The sound, primal, filled the phone for the next few seconds and then, like a dream, my dad was suddenly there.

“I told her not to call you,” he said. He sounded bored, like he was waiting in line at the post office. “I knew you’d totally freak.”

“I am not freaking,” I told him, although we both knew I was. I took a breath as instructed, then said, “What happened?”

“Just a little knife slip.”

“Really?” I was surprised.

“Not mine,” he said, sounding offended. “It was one of the prep guys. I was teaching a little fillet class . . . things got out of hand.”

My heart was finally starting to beat normally again as I said, “How out of hand?”

“Just a few stitches,” he replied. “And a puncture of sorts.”

“I’m surprised you even went to the hospital,” I said, which was the truth. My dad’s hands were covered with scars from various accidents and burns, and usually, unless he’d hit a vein or something, he’d wait until after work to deal with it, if he did anything at all.

“It was not my idea,” he grumbled. “Trust m a bront>

“You have to go to the hospital when you cut open your hand!” I heard Opal say in the background. “It is company policy. Not to mention common sense.”

“Anyway,” my dad said, ignoring this, “the upshot is that I need my insurance card. Which I think is at the house . . .”

“It is,” I said. “I’ll get it.”

“But you’re in school. I’ll just send Leo.”

I thought of Leo, big and gangly, banging around in the file box where I kept our important papers. “No,” I said. “I’d better do it. Look, I’ll be there soon.”

“Wait,” he said just as I was about to hang up. “Don’t you need a ride?”

That, I hadn’t thought about. I was about to tell him this when I happened to look across the courtyard to a single bench by the entrance to the gym. There a girl sat, a green floral purse beside her, wearing a green raincoat with matching green earmuffs, sipping a Diet Coke through a straw.

“I think I’m covered,” I told him, getting to my feet and picking up my bag. “I’ll be there soon.”

“This one time,” Deb said as she edged her small, tidy car into the right-turn lane, “my mother spilled an entire cup of boiling water on her stomach. You know, like the kind you get at a coffee shop, to make tea with, superhot? We had to take her to the emergency room.”

I nodded, forcing a smile. “Really.”

“But she was fine!” she added quickly, glancing at me. “Totally fine. Didn’t even scar, although we were both sure she would.”

“Wow,” I said.

“I know!” She shook her head, slowly accelerating as signs for the hospital began to appear. “Modern medicine. It’s amazing.”

I peered ahead, taking in the big red EMERGENCY with an arrow beneath as it appeared. Despite my dad’s assurances, I was strangely nervous, my stomach tight ever since we’d hung up. Maybe Deb had picked up on this, and it was why she’d pretty much talked nonstop since I’d approached her and asked for a ride. I’d barely had time to explain the situation before she had launched into a dozen stories to illustrate the point that Things Happened, But People Were Okay in the End.

“It’s just a knife cut,” I said for about the tenth time. I wasn’t sure if this reassurance was for me or her. “He gets them all the time. It’s part of the job.”

“I can’t believe your dad is a chef!” she said, easing into the turn lane. “That is so exciting. I hear Luna Blu is amazing.”

“You’ve never been there?”

She shook her head. “We don’t eat out much.”

“Oh.” I wasn’t sure what to say to that. “Well, I’ll have to take you sometime. To thank you for the ride.”

“Really?” She seemed so surprised I had a twinge of pity, although I wasn’t sure why. “God, that would be so great. But you totally don’t have to. I’m just happy I coud help out.”

As we headed up the road to the emergency room entrance, I saw a couple of doctors pass by, both in scrubs. Off to the left, a man in a wheelchair with an oxygen mask was sitting in the sunshine. None of this helped my nervousness, so I distracted myself by saying, “Yeah, but it must get kind of old, right? Being a student ambassador, and everyone always asking for something.”

Deb leaned farther over the steering wheel, peering at the parking options. She was so precise and responsible, in her perfect green headband, her neat car with a memo pad stuck to the dash, a pen clipped to its side. She seemed older than she was, older than she should be. “Not really,” she said, turning into a nearby lot.

“No? ”