Page 28 of Keep Me

“I know,” I said. But I did not reach out to the white light.

“You should answer it,” Zane told me. I did not look at him because his eyes were too seeing and they would hurt me.

“We’re almost there,” I reminded him, pointing to the glowing numbers. “Nine minutes. Let’s just wait till we get there.”

“Seren,” Zane’s voice was firmer and the shift in his tone made me turn to look at him. His jaw was tense and his knuckles were white against the wheel. He was looking back and forth between me, the road, and the thing he did not want me to see.

The phone kept ringing. I stayed still. The car slowed down. Zane was pulling the car over to the side of the road, not bothering to put his blinker on because there was no one behind us. Everyone else was asleep and paused and we were going so fast it scared me.

“What?” I asked him, not forming the full sentence.

He did not answer as the car stopped completely. He put it in park. My phone screen went dark again, and for just a second, the pressure of the air around us lessened, the waves calmed and my raft was not rocking.

Then the screen turned bright again. The flashing number I did not want to recognize.

“Seren,” Zane urged me again, a hint of desperation cracking through the calmness Zane usually used when he spoke to me. I bit my lip again.

Zane sighed, and he was the one who reached for my phone. He kept looking at me like he was not sure why I was stuck here, frozen. But he knew I froze when the bad things happened. Zane knew that about me. I froze; I always froze.

“Hello,” Zane’s voice answered the call, I watched him press the speakerphone button and held the phone closer to me. I wanted to take it, but I was still frozen. So, how can one move when there’s ice flowing instead of blood?

“I’m calling for Seren Garcia.” The calm clinical voice was the same and it had not changed, had not been asleep, had not been paused.

Silence, a second, a week, a year, forever. I don’t know.

“Yeah,” I finally said what the ice allowed me to. “I’m here.”

“Hi, Seren. I’m calling from West Bridge Medical Center, we spoke on the phone earlier.”

“Yeah,” I repeated the word because there were not any other words to say.

“I’m just confirming you’re on the way to the hospital.” She said it like a statement, but it was a question and I knew it was a big one.

“Yeah, we’re almost there,” I told her. “Nine minutes away.”

“Okay,” she said quickly. “Thank you, that’s all…”

“Is he there? Can I talk to him?” I asked her and I was not even sure where the question came from. There was an urgency there that I did not want there. I wanted the urgency to go away and live hidden in my bones like it usually did, refusing to come out and refusing to make me feel alive.

Silence. Riptide. “No, I’m sorry, I’m not able to do that right now. We will see you in a few minutes when you get here.”

“Is he awake?” I asked her, knowing she was lying to me. She was lying to me because he was sedated with tubes in his mouth about to have his heart cut open. I knew it.

Silence. Tidal wave. “We’ll see you when…”

“Is he dead?” He was not dead. I knew that too. I just needed her to confirm it.

Silence. Tsunami.

“Miss Garcia…” She didn’t say no and everything was hit by salted ocean water and the water wanted me to drown.

“If he’s dead you have to tell me,” I said sharply. I sounded very rude and I did not care. My head felt very calm, but my heart was beating so loudly I thought it might explode. “Tell me if he’s dead.”

But then, my rudeness fell and pleading came out of my mouth as I pulled the phone toward me, as though the closer my voice the more she would understand me.

“Tell me if he’s dead. Please.”

“Seren,” her voice changed from clinical to slightly mother-like. For a fraction of a second, she reminded me of Lucy and the way she handles me so delicately. “Are you with someone?”