Park Avenue Prince(71)

“Mount Sinai West,” she replied.

“I heard. I’m on my way,” Harper said.

“Grace . . .” I wanted to hold her so badly. I’d swap places with her in an instant if God would let me. An oxygen mask obscured her face, and her arms lay straight at her sides. I slid my fingers over the smooth skin of her arm. Where was her coat? I glanced down her body. Her legs. They’d been twisted and covered in blood when I’d seen them.#p#分页标题#e#

“Where is she bleeding?” I asked, but didn’t catch the response through the fog in my head.

I fixed my stare on Grace, willing her to wake up, willing her to be okay, willing my life force into her.

The ambulance stopped and the doors swung open. I followed the paramedics, who slid Grace’s stretcher out onto the street. As my foot hit the asphalt, my legs weakened and I fell to one knee. Someone lifted me under my arms and I found my footing, chasing after Grace’s gurney.

As I got through the doors, someone’s hand pushed at my chest, trying to stop me. “Sir, you can’t go through there. They need to perform an exam. Take a seat and someone will come to check you over.” She handed me a clipboard.

“I’m fine,” I said as I strained to see where they were taking Grace.

I dared not blink in case I missed news of her.

Finally, I sat, ignoring the clipboard. I waited. And waited.

“Sam.”

I looked up to find Harper standing over me.

“Is she okay?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

“Sam,” she yelled, pushing at my shoulders. “Where is she?”

Thankfully, one of the nurses came over and answered Harper’s questions.

Helplessness, a feeling I’d spent so long trying to avoid, consumed me. I didn’t want to listen to Harper—I wanted to see Grace. I slumped forward, my head in my hands, my elbows resting on my knees. Why had I insisted we take a cab? If we’d taken the subway, we wouldn’t have been on the road. Or if I’d hired a driver, or just been sitting on the other side of the taxi . . .

“Sir, can you follow me? I need to do an exam,” said a nurse in pink scrubs as Harper took the seat next to me. I didn’t want to; I wanted to sit here and wait for Grace. I needed her to be okay. Even if I were fighting impossible odds, if I sat here, maybe there was a chance.

When my parents died, no one had told me anything. I never saw them in the hospital, never saw them stretchered off into the ambulance. I remember being at the hospital, on a bed behind a curtain, and then being taken overnight to a stranger’s home. I wouldn’t let that happen this time, this time I’d get to say goodbye.

“No. I’m staying here,” I said.

“We’ll have to perform the exam here. You’ve been sick and you’re likely in shock. I have to insist—”

“Okay, fine. But I’m not going anywhere.”

As the nurse poked a thermometer into my ear, I spotted Grace’s parents at the reception desk.

“Harper,” I said, nodding at them.

She went over to Grace’s mother, then gave her the clipboard, as if the responsibility for Grace’s welfare had been passed from me to them.

That was how it should be.

I had no business in Grace’s life. I’d taken things too far.

The electric doors opened for the first time since Grace had gone through them. I stood to speak to the person who walked through, but it was only a courier and of no use to me.

“Sit down, sir,” my nurse said, pushing me toward my seat and handing me a white plastic cup of water. “Take small sips.”

She shouldn’t be here, wasting her time on me when there was Grace to look after. “Can you see about Grace?”

“They’re still doing tests,” she said, resting her hand on my shoulder.

As she left, her parents approached me. What could I say to them? I’d failed to keep their daughter safe. “Are you okay?” her mother asked me.#p#分页标题#e#

“I’m sorry,” I stuttered.

Harper moved down a chair and Grace’s mother sat beside me and patted me on the knee. Her father paced in front of us.

“I should have stopped her.”

“It wasn’t your fault. Harper said a car ran into the side of the cab,” Grace’s mother said.

How did Harper know that? Had I told her?

I nodded. “She was getting out. I should have made her get out of my side.”

“Hush,” she said. “There’s nothing you could have done. Have they given you an exam? You should insist on a CT.”

“I’m fine. It’s Grace—”