The Winner's Game(101)
As I’m running, I want to die, because I know I’m to blame. If I had just waited to dig up Bree’s treasure when the tide was out, none of this would have happened. Or if I’d listened to Bree and waited for the big wave to pass, she’d be fine right now. Instead, I got greedy, got sucked out to sea, nearly drowned. Now both of my sisters are in trouble, because of me.
What do I do if Ann is already dead when I get home?
What if Bree is dead too? How do I explain to my family what happened to her?
How do I tell them this is all my fault?
I slow for the last few steps leading up to the porch, but I know I can’t turn back.
I can hear Dad yelling inside the house. “Why isn’t the ambulance here yet? They should be here!”
“Calm down, Dell,” my mom says as I push open the door and rush inside. “I heard the sirens. They’ll be here.”
“Yeah, Dad, chill,” whispers Ann. Her voice is weak. She looks worse than she did before. “It’ll be here in a second.”
“No,” I tell them softly. “It might take a little longer…”
Fifteen minutes later I wipe a flood of tears from my eyes so I can see the ambulance pull away with both of my sisters in the back. There is no room for the rest of us, and nothing we can do to help anyway. All we can do is watch them go, and pray for a miracle.
As soon as we’ve gathered a few things, we climb into Dad’s car so we can hurry off to the emergency room.
“It isn’t fair,” I tell myself over and over while staring blankly out the car window on the drive to the Seaside hospital.
“Life is many wondrous things,” mumbles my dad, “but fair isn’t one of them.”
Chapter 39
Ann
I KNOW MY LIFE depends on me being in the ambulance right now, but every last ounce of me wants to be somewhere else. Just seeing Bree lying there—barely alive—hurts more than any physical pain I’ve ever endured.
Why did you have to run across the road? Please don’t die, Bree! We still have a game to play…
Though it’s hard talking through the oxygen mask they have over my face, the whole way to the hospital I keep telling her to hang in there, that it’s going to be OK. She doesn’t respond. Bree has an oxygen mask too, but even though it’s covering part of her face, I can tell that she’s in a bad way, because her cheeks and forehead are all swollen and bloody.
Please wake up, Bree! Please!
I keep feeling the biting sensation inside my chest as we’re screaming along the highway, but it doesn’t bother me much. The only thing that matters right now is Bree, and getting her safely to the hospital.
Once we arrive, we’re taken immediately in different directions—her to a trauma unit, and me to a cardiologist.
By the time my parents arrive, both sets of doctors have come to separate conclusions that the tiny coastal hospital lacks the expertise to properly treat either of us.
“What exactly is wrong with Bree?” I overhear my dad ask the doctor.
“Well…everything,” comes the sobering reply. “Spleen, lung, bones, and internal bleeding. But mostly what we’re worried about—and what we’re just not staffed to handle—is the brain. She’s taken quite a hit, and the swelling is extensive. We’ve treated the pressure, but she’ll be better off at a hospital in Portland.”
He glances over at me. “And Ann?”
“We’ve already contacted her doctors at Saint Vincent’s. They’re expecting her. We’re sending both girls there just as soon as the Life Flight crew is ready.”
It doesn’t take long before Bree and I are wheeled, side by side, to a red-and-white helicopter and are on our way back to Portland. It’s my first-ever helicopter ride, but I hate it. I want to enjoy it, but I can’t stop crying.
Bree still isn’t moving.
She won’t talk to me.
Doesn’t even make a sound.
The medics tell me I need to calm down, that my crying is only making things worse on my heart, but I can’t stop.
That’s my sister lying there!
My dad is with us in the helicopter, and he, too, keeps telling me not to worry, that everything is going to work out, but how can he know?
The butterflies in my stomach say not to trust him.
To help calm me—and my butterflies—they eventually inject something into my IV, and then the world fades…
The next day I wake up in a tiny room in a Portland hospital. My vision is fuzzy at first, but my ears work fine, which is probably why the first thing I recognize is the sound of my mom crying.