Page 27 of Keep Me

In the car, Zane typed the hospital into his phone before he started the engine. The screen thought about it for a second. Then it said: 4:14 AM.

He put the phone in the holder, where I could see it. Maybe so I could see it. Maybe he never thought about it at all. He pulled out onto the empty street, and the number sat there, glowing, and somewhere under everything I was already doing the thing I do. Counting.

He is being looked after. He is two hours away. A present-tense verb.

Zane drove. I held the railing.

I was not panicking. I did not have that creeping feeling in my chest or in my stomach. There were not spiders on my skin and there was not a cactus in my throat. I felt calm. But not the comforting kind. A forced kind. An apathetic kind of stillness, as if I pretended everything was fine, maybe it would be.

I looked at the time. The numbers 3:13 glowed back at me. The ghosts were here. What more did I have left for them to throw?

“Maybe he had a heart attack.” I spoke the words. They were distant and flat and did not sound like they were said in my voice.

“Maybe,” Zane nodded.

I watched the way he reacted. He did not seem to tense his jaw muscles or stiffen his hands against the wheel like he usually did when he saw a truth he did not know how to show me.

Instead, his fingers just adjusted their grip on the leather, shifted to ten-and-two with a mechanical precision. The dashboard lights caught the edge of his silver watch, the one he had turned twice on his wrist back in the apartment. He did not look at me because looking at me meant letting the wind inside the perimeter. He just kept his eyes locked on the dark expanse of the freeway, his face a smooth, unreadable mask of absolute certainty.

Zane did not know what was going on. He did not have any more information than I did. I did not think he was lying but I could not help myself from looking for the clues, anyway. He did not know what happened. Realistically, I understood that. I understood it the way I understood wind. I knew the mechanics; I knew the purpose. It is black and white. Science. Yet I still found myself questioning where it came from every time I felt it on my skin, and I could not see any clouds in the sky.

People lie. That was the tricky part. People lie, and they lie and they lie. They always lie. I lie. I try not to, not as much. There was a time I lied like I breathed. It was so effortless and everyone around me swallowed the lies like the empty air they were. It made me realize that everyone was capable of filling my oxygen with falsehoods. Not just capable, but willing. Once you understand that, you look for it. You expect it. It is almost… as if you want it. Tell the lie. Let me catch you.

But Zane did not lie, not to me, not when something like this happened. Maybe, sometimes he bent time. Sometimes, he lets me find the truth myself. Sometimes he waits for when he was sure I was not going to break. But he did not lie. And neither did the dashboard.

The digital clock clicked to 3:14. Beneath it, the GPS arrival estimate hovered: 4:14 AM. An hour left. Sixty minutes of empty asphalt and high-pressure silence.

I looked down at Zane’s right hand, the thumb pressing hard against the steering wheel. Below his knuckles, the orange needle of the speedometer did not bounce. It sat perfectly horizontal, pinned to an unchanging eighty-five, cutting through the night with efficiency that felt less like driving and more like a countdown. He was keeping the pace. He was keeping the wall up.

“He filled the feeder,” I said to the passenger window. My reflection stared back at me, pale and floating against the dark blur of passing trees. “Austin said he was real specific about it. He told Austin to tell me.”

“I know,” Zane said. His voice was a low tone that did not vibrate. It was the floorboards beneath my feet, the frame of the car. “He’s strong, Seren. He’s been stressed for years. The hospital, they just need you there for the paperwork. The legal stuff. They’ll need someone to drive him home, make sure he’s set up properly, standard stuff. It will be okay.”

He was giving me the counter check. He was building a lean-to out of logic to keep the rain off my head, because that was his job. He was trying to be the ground.

And the terrible, beautiful tragedy of it was that I let myself take it. I tucked his words into the hollow space behind my ribs and let them grow into something that didn’t burn. Standard. Paperwork. The woman on the phone had used the present tense. We have him here. You do not use the present tense for a ghost. Ghosts are past tense; ghosts are the silence between the sentences. I let the hope sit there on my lap, right next to the unopened granola bar. It was a bet. I was gambling that the road would stay open.

3:22 AM. The GPS estimate shifted to 4:12. Two minutes gained. Two minutes less. For some reason I did not like that. I wanted it to shift away. 4:16. The future has not happened yet and if it stays there, I cannot see it. It’s a chapter that has not been published yet. I can’t read it and I do not really want to. I liked this chapter.

“We have a year left on the lease,” I said, my thumb tracing the plastic wrapper of the bar in my hand. “We signed it. I told him I would call him on Sunday night.”

“You will,” Zane murmured. He did not ease the needle down. His hands stayed locked on the wheel.

We both believed it. We were both sitting inside the word after, holding our tickets, waiting for the counter to open. Our bets were placed and we were ready for the payout.

The car hit the county line at 4:02.

Final stretch. Hours faded to minutes in that horrible way time manages. Time seems so forgiving. It seems endless. Seems like the empty highway we just turned off. Stretching forever. Maybe there’s traffic, and places to turn off but it did not just end. It never just stops. It goes and goes and goes and goes until it is a loop and you are back where you started.

That is not true. That is a lie. Time is not forgiving, it is evil. It wants to manipulate you; it wants to bend your mind and gaslight your reality. It wants to lull you into submission, into a calm that looks like peace, and that stupid, stupid feeling that there is nothing to rush about. Time is a liar and I hate it. There is never time and you should panic every time you look at the clock.

The air inside the cabin did not shift, but the light did. The amber of the highway receded, replaced by the bruised dark of West Bridge. The trees on either side of the road grew taller, thicker, their leaves blocking out the moon until the dashboard was the only source of light left in the world. And even that was dim.

Ten minutes. I did not know what to expect when we got there. I did not know what I was walking into and that was my least favorite kind of walk. I wanted the map; I wanted to know where the path leads. Maybe the heart attack was not bad. Maybe it was just a minor one. But maybe it was really bad. Maybe he would have to get his chest cut open and have his minuscule veins sewn back together by a stranger who does not even understand how his heart works. Yes, whoever it is will understand the beats, the pulses, and the mechanics, but they will not know how his heart works.

My phone did not buzz. It did not make a sound. But the screen, sitting face-up in the cup holder between us, suddenly flashed white.

“Seren.” Zane said my name like he knew it was going to bring me back from the ocean of my thoughts and the waves that were tumbling around. The waves had not taken me down yet, but the raft was starting to rock beneath me.