Perfect Catch(38)

“I don’t want you to panic, Mrs. Darling.”

“It’s too fucking late for that,” Alice wheezed.

“Everyone is in stable condition.”

Stable condition. What did that even mean? Didn’t it just imply no one was on the verge of immediate death? Stable wasn’t the same as perfectly healthy.

“Wh-what happened?” Alice leaned against the dishwasher, and now all the cooks had stopped what they were doing to stare at her. One of the other waitresses had come in to scold them for the food being slow but stopped mid-rant when she saw everyone watching Alice.

Alice had no clue when she’d started crying, but her cheeks were wet and the front of her shirt had begun to soak through.

“There was a car accident. We have your husband and your daughter here. As I said, they’re both in stable condition.”

“My husband?” For a moment, the statement made her think they must have made some mistake. A different Darling child was in the hospital, because she had no husband, so these victims couldn’t possibly belong to her. “I don’t have a husband.”

The sound of paper shuffling was followed by the uncertain question of, “Kevin Darling?”

It was like getting the same bad news twice. Her short-lived relief was gone, replaced with double the amount of dread as before. “M-my brother. What happened?”

“Do you have someone who can bring you down here? We don’t suggest driving in…stressful situations.”

“O-okay. But they’re okay?”

“They’re both stable.”

“Stop saying stable,” Alice screamed, her mounting anxiety suddenly unable to stay contained.

“Mrs. Darling, I’m going to need you to be calm, please. They’re both fine. We do need you to come down to the hospital, though, and fill out some paperwork.”

As if Alice might have had better plans? Somewhere else to be right then?

She hung up before the woman could say anything else about insurance cards or papers. The whole kitchen was watching her in rapt silence.

“C-can someone dr-drive me to the hospital?”

She didn’t need to ask twice. Her manager angled her out of the kitchen, shouting back, “It’s not a goddamn sideshow, people. Back to work.” He didn’t even ask her what was wrong, having watched most of the conversation as it occurred.

Fifteen minutes later he pulled up to the emergency room entrance and dropped her off. “You let me know if you need anything, okay, hon? Seriously. Anything.” Normally it might have come across creepy, her sixty-year-old boss calling her hon, but all she felt right then was a kind of paternal worry she wouldn’t have gotten from anyone else. If she’d stopped crying—which she hadn’t—his concern would have started her going all over again.

After some difficulty with speaking when she got to the main desk, an orderly directed her to a different floor. Alice had begun to believe they were going to send her on a wild-goose chase through the hospital, and at the end she’d discover her family wasn’t there at all.

On the sixth floor she spoke with a nurse who guided her down the hall to a room. As they entered, Alice placed a hand on the nurse’s arm. “How are they really?”

“They’re st—”

“I said really. How are they really?”

“Your brother got the worst of it. Cops on the scene think he shielded her. Your daughter looks worse than she is, so don’t panic when you see her. It’s a lot of superficial stuff. We’re going to move her into the children’s wing tomorrow. We just want to observe them both overnight. But they’re fine. She has some bruising, a few cuts from the glass, but it could have been a lot more serious. Your brother has a broken arm and a broken leg. The arm is from the impact of the air bag on your daughter’s side.”

“Do you know what happened?” She wanted to get into the room to see them, but she had to know, had to understand what had caused this.

“Police said your brother was driving in the wrong lane,” the nurse said, her tone apologetic, like she didn’t want to tell Alice this had been Kevin’s fault. “They think he must have fallen asleep at the wheel. He overcorrected and drove off the road. Hit a tree.”

Alice imagined the whole scenario in her mind, like watching one of those awful videos in a driver’s training class. She remembered all the nights she’d cleaned up Kevin’s empty beer bottles. He would never…he wouldn’t do something so careless as drink and drive.

But even as her brain said he wouldn’t, she asked, “Was he drunk?”

The nurse must have thought the question was inevitable because she was quick to reply, “No. But there were high amounts of prescription medication in his system.”