I should get a better job. But apparently dressing up in colonial clothing and acting like I just toppled heads-over heels out of 1776, is the only thing I'm good at.
Cricket Fawcett is nothing special. She's your typical college dropout, wannabe ac...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
An ambulance arrives, what seems like hours after he had passed out, after I had finally regained my breath and some of my wits. The standard eight minutes feel like years with his head in my lap, two cold fingers pressed on the fluttering thrum of his fading pulse. The rest passes in a blur of sirens, a couple of cellphones, and a flurry of EMT's speaking in several different languages, some asking me questions, as others load Alex onto a stretcher.
"What happened to him? He's seems lost a lot of blood and the damage seems to severe for him to even be breathing, much less standing."
I stutter, and trip over a pathetic: "I don't know," as I twist my hands into my skirt, attempting to relieve some of my shock, and to no avail. I'm almost contemplating indulging in taking an Uber home, when another EMT absentmindedly ushers me inside of the ambulance, talking to another person over the noise. I vaguely recall a conversation between the girl who called the ambulance and one of the EMT's. I was too distracted to really take notice of it before, but as I sit down on the metal bench of the ambulance, frigidness bleeding through my skirt, the conversation replays itself in my head in a blurry memory.
"Who is she to him?"
"I don't know. His girlfriend or something."
I don't know what makes me grab his hand. Maybe it's pity that he's probably terrified, or fear that he'll die despite my best efforts, or the queer attachment that comes with bonding with a complete stranger purely out of circumstance. I don't know. But I intertwine my fingers in his. They stay that way until we reach the hospital. When I finally stumble out of the vehicle, the gurney is already gone, too fast, too urgent for me to keep up with, even if I had wanted to run after it. I shuffle through the sliding glass doors and down the freezing linoleum corridor anyway, like a zombie, and almost make it through the doors past the waiting room when a a nurse tells me to sit down. She tells me to lean on the 50/50 shot that he might be okay. I don't tell her that I don't even know him. I obey, and sit down in a hideous polyester orange couch near the grubby children toys, trying to playdown the fact that I am still wearing period clothing. I must look fucking insane. Embarrassed, and trying to ignore the stares and double takes of the people around me, I free my phone from my mess of a bag and resort to playing "Candy Crush"
5 hours, 20 levels and 5 cups of coffee go by, until I'm finally called up to the front desk by a nurse in pretty pink scrubs. She's pretty too: Dark skin, big black eyes and springy ringlets that are tied atop her head in a soft afro puff. Really young too, maybe only a few years older than me. She asks a few questions, for my signature, and the date, and then finally: "And what is your affiliation to the patient?"
The question I've been dreading. I need to be somehow related to him if I want to visit him as soon as he gets out of surgery, and I'm pretty sure that "random nineteen year old stranger" doesn't make the cut. Do I even want to visit him? It's not like I can just leave him here and hope that zombie "John Laurens" comes looking for him. I'm about to do something stupid- and I know it.
