Paper Flowers (Pretty Plastic People) ★

051. Unkept Promises

051. Unkept Promises

I pace while I wait for the ambulance to arrive.

Spencer's conscious—that's a good thing. Nathan's forced open the passenger side door and keeps an eye on him, making sure he doesn't pass out. There's a lot of blood, but I'm pretty sure it's originating from a single wound.

I walk back and forth, back and forth, from one side of the lane to the other. My driver is still parked, waiting. He's agreed to drive Nathan and me to the hospital once Spencer's ambulance arrives.

Sirens in the distance. I rub my temples and dare a glance back at Spencer and Nathan, and the totaled car. They're both lucky—so lucky. It looks like a collision that could've killed.

I'm worried about Spencer. He's gotten on my nerves lately, but at the end of the day he's one of my best friends. Relationship or not, he's there for me and I'm there for him. What if things had ended differently? What if our last words to each other had been full of hate and disgust?

The ambulance is here, and the EMTs put Spencer on a stretcher. He lifts his head, looking around wildly, and one of the nurses eases it back down. His eyes lock on mine, and my stomach drops.

"Come on," says Nathan. Suddenly he's beside me, his hand on my shoulder. "Let's head to the hospital."

We leave the car in the ditch and walk back to the silver van. I kick pebbles, scraping my feet against the scratchy pavement. Nathan's talking about tow trucks and calling the rest of the gang to meet us at the hospital, but I don't listen.

"What happened?" I ask him once we're on our way to the hospital. "You were driving super weird before you crashed."

He cracks his knuckles one by one. "Something was wrong with my brakes. They kept sticking. When I went around that curve I couldn't slow down and the car spun out of control."

"That was Liam's car, right? He took it in for maintenance before we went on vacation. Allison wanted him to, so we made sure it was good to make the long drive down here."

"Yeah, it was Liam's. I feel awful. He loves that car." Our driver merges on the interstate, and Nathan angles his head to look out the window. The ambulance is long gone, far ahead of us. "I don't know about the maintenance, though. Something was clearly wrong."

"Hm."

My phone is blowing up. I unlock it and scan the texts, most of them from Brynn, all of them concerned about Spencer.

Liam told me he got in a car crash!! she typed. Is he ok? We're on our way to the hospital now.

He'll be fine, I reply. Right? After all, he was talking and breathing before the ambulance came. I'm sure it isn't anything too major.

Part of me wonders if that's my guilt talking. I don't want anything to be wrong. It would be my fault then—my fault that Spencer and I didn't drive back together, that I lured him out for this "nice" dinner in the first place. All my fault.

My jaw hurts from clenching it so hard, a painful nervous habit. I jiggle my knee instead and watch the scenery as our driver pulls off at the next exit.

"Here we are," he says, pulling up at the curb of Arrivals. "I hope your friend's okay. You should probably get checked out too, kid."

Nathan nods and claps his shoulder. "Thanks, man."

I offer a tight smile and hop out onto the pavement. Suddenly, I can't breathe very well.

The rest of the group meets us in the waiting room, since we aren't allowed to go in to see Spencer yet. Nathan's checked himself in to make sure he doesn't have a minor concussion, so I'm left to fill everybody in. We sit in various chairs, flipping mindlessly through trashy celebrity magazines and walking back and forth from the coffee machine. I feel on edge—I hate hospitals. They always mean death and devastation and unhappy thoughts.