this time.
The hand is connected to a guy.
“Dr Spiker,” he says, “I’ll get her into the ambulance.”
My mother sniffles into my gown. She rouses herself, stands erect. She is Back in Control.
“What the hell are you doing here, Solo?” she snaps.
“You left your phone and briefcase behind when you got the call about the –” he jerks his chin toward me, “the accident. I followed in one of the Spiker limos.”
I don’t recognize this guy or, for that matter, his name – because, really, what kind of a name is Solo, anyway? – but he must work for my mother.
He looks down at me, past the tubes and the panic. He is scruffy-looking with too much hair, too little shaving. He’s tall and wide-shouldered, muscular, blondish. Extremely blue eyes. My preliminary taxonomy: skater or surfer. One of those guys.
I’d really like him to get his hand off me because he doesn’t know me and I’m already having personal space issues, what with the tubes and the IV.
“Chill, Eve,” he tells me, which I find annoying. The first phrase that comes to mind involves the word “Off ”, preceded by a word I have absolutely no chance of pronouncing since it includes the letter “F ”.
Not in the mood to meet new friends.
In the mood for more painkillers.
Also, my mother calls me “Evening” and my friends call me “E.V.”. But nobody calls me “Eve”. So there’s that, too.
“Please reconsider, Dr Spiker –” The doctor trails off.
“Let’s get this show on the road,” says the guy named Solo. He’s about my age, a junior, maybe a senior. If he does work for my mother, he’s either an intern or a prodigy. “Will you be coming in the ambulance, Dr Spiker?”
“No. God knows what micro-organisms are in that ambulance. My driver’s waiting,” my mother says. “I’ll need to make some calls and the back of an ambulance isn’t the place. I’ll meet you at the lab.”
The doctor sighs. He flips a switch and my contraptions still.
My mother kisses my temple. “I’ll get everything set up. Don’t worry about a thing.”
I blink to show that I am not, in fact, worried about a thing. Not with the morphine drip taking the edge off.
Solo hands my mother her briefcase and phone. She vanishes, but I can hear the urgent staccato of her Jimmy Choos.
“Bitch,” the doctor says when she’s out of earshot. “I don’t like this at all.”
“No worries,” Solo says.
No worries. Yeah, not for you, genius. Go away. Stop talking to me or about me. And take your hand off me, I’m nauseous.
The doctor checks one of my IV bags. “Uh-huh,” he mutters. “You an MD?”
Solo half smiles. It’s knowing and a little smug. “Just a gofer, Doctor.”
Solo gathers up my bagged belongings and my backpack. Suddenly I remember I have AP Bio homework. A worksheet on Mendel’s First Law. When a pair of organisms reproduce sexually, their offspring randomly inherit one of the two alleles from each parent.
Genetics. I like genetics, the rules, the order. My best friend, Aislin, says it’s because I’m a control freak. Like mother, like daughter.
I have a load of homework, I want to say, but everyone’s buzzing about purposefully. It occurs to me my Biology worksheet won’t be all that relevant if I’m dying.
I believe death is on the list of acceptable excuses for missing homework.
“You’re going to be fine,” Solo tells me. “Running 10Ks in no time.”
I try to speak. “Unh onh,” I say.
Yep. Can’t pronounce “F ” with a tube in your mouth.
Then it occurs to me: How does he know I like to run ?
3
SOLO
SO. THIS IS the boss’s daughter.
I’d seen pictures of her, of course. You can’t go into Terra Spiker’s office and not see photos of her daughter. My favorite’s this one where Eve’s crossing a finish line, all sweaty and flushed, with a killer smile on her face.
I glance down at the stretcher. Eve’s got a serious bruise coming up under both eyes. Still, you can see the resemblance to her mom. High cheekbones, big, deep-set eyes. Tall, slender.
That’s about it for similarities, though. Terra’s a total ice queen bitch: frosty blonde hair, calculating gray eyes.
Eve . . . well, she’s different. Her hair is sun-streaked gold, and her eyes are this mellow brown color.
At least I’m pretty sure they’re brown.
They’re a little wobbly at the moment.
There’s not a lot of room on the narrow bench in the back of the ambulance. I nearly go flying when they pull away from the emergency room and crank on the siren.
I grin. “Floor it, dude,” I yell to the driver.
The doctor sitting on the other side of Eve’s stretcher sends me a What the hell? scowl.
I know it seems wrong to enjoy this, but still: the siren and the powering through the streets of San Francisco while all the other cars scatter? Very cool.
Besides, Eve’s going to be fine.
I think.
We’re at the bridge in no time. The bridge. The Golden Gate, still the best, never get tired of it. I fantasize sometimes how great it would be to ride a longboard down the cable. Yes, it would almost certainly be a long plunge to a hideous death. But before that it would be amazing.
I sit with my elbows on my knees, trying to hunch my shoulders forward a little. I have good shoulders, might as well reveal them. I know she’s checking me out. Fair enough, because I’m checking her out.
“Ah ahhh ahhhh!”
Eve cries out suddenly. She’s in pain. Bad pain. So it’s possible she’s not really checking me out.
“Doc,” I say, “can’t you help the girl out?”
He leans over to check the IV tube. It’s gotten kinked, the flow cut off. He straightens it and tears off strips of white tape to hold it in place.
“She’ll be better in a second.”
“Cool,” I say. I lean in close so she can hear me. “I got him to crank up the morphine,” I say, speaking loud and slow.
Her eyeballs kind of roll toward me. Unfocused. For a second I think, What if I ’m wrong ? What if she actually dies ?
All of a sudden it’s almost like I want to cry. It’s not gonna happen, obviously – crying, I mean – but there’s just this sudden wave of sadness.
I shake it off as well as I can. But once you start seeing the Big D, the Reaper, sitting beside you, it’s very hard to stop.
“Don’t die, okay?” I say.
Her dilated pupils are looking for me. Like I’m a target and she can’t quite line up the sights.
So I get close again and I kind of touch her face and aim her head at me. Unfortunately, I lean my other hand on her leg – the wrong one – and there’s some yelling from Eve and from the doctor.
Which makes it impossible for me to say what I had planned