Chapter Thirty-Eight

Parker Lowell

"Is there anyone here for a Taylor...Taylor..."

Even as I heard the doctor hesitating for a last name, I didn't look up. Over the past hour or so, it seemed like there had been forty million Taylors called and an equal amount of Hansons, but the two names had yet to be called together. I had long since given up on sitting on the edge of my seat every time a Taylor was called or a Hanson was called, much the way I felt Gina doing with my cheek resting against her shoulder. I no longer even had the strength to open my eyes.

"Carlson? Taylor Carlson," the doctor concluded and Gina sat back disappointedly.

"Parker, are you awake?" she asked me, moving her shoulders so as to wake me up if I wasn't.

"No," I mumbled into her shirt.

I could almost see her rolling her eyes at me.

"This is all my fault...This is all my fault...," I heard some quiet mumbling from beside Gina.

"Lyle, could you keep it down? Some people are trying to sleep," I said.

Lyle had arrived about an hour after Gina had called him. His presence was less tha welcome by me, but Gina had insisted. Ever since he had arrived in the waiting room, he had been repeating that phrase over...and over...and over. I was about ready to kill him.

Gina, of course, took the kinder, gentler method of getting him to shut up.

"Lyle, it's not your fault. How could you have known this was going to happen?" Gina asked. He didn't answer. "You couldn't have. Nobody could have foreseen this."

It made ms sick how sympathetic she was to him. I had never hated him before as much as I hated him at that moment. I couldn't have explained why. Not even to myself. So I put the blame on thinking that he could have been there. This could have been prevented if he had stayed in the house with Taylor a little while longer. If he had come back for his backpack or his coat. Something.

"Hey, Parker," Gina said, lifting my head off of her shoulder with her hand. I slowly opened my eyelids, which felt like lead, to give her a bland, sleepy look. "What do you say we get you out of that shirt?"

I looked down at the shirt I was sitll wearing. There was still spatters or blood on it that had long since dried. It was strange, but I felt safe in that shirt. Like I had a part of Taylor with me.

"Why?" I asked. It made sense at the time to ask this question.

"Well, doesn't it bother you to be in that shirt?" she asked.

"No. Why?"

"Because, it's bothering me," she said, her voice cracking as her eyes filled with tears. I immediately broke down. I hate seeing Gina cry.

"Okay, what do you want me to change into?" I asked.

"I've got an extra shirt on under this," Lyle spoke up, indicating the sweatshirt he had on. "You could wear my sweatshirt."

I narrowed my eyes at him but agreed anyway by getting out of my seat and gesturing the way to the men's room, which I had become pretty well acquainted with seeing as how I had spent my first few hours in the hospital in it, crouched over.

We walked into the bathroom, me following him. He took the sweatshirt he was wearing off and gave it to me. He watched me as I put the sweatshirt on over the shirt I was wearing. I shuddered in it. I didn't feel safe.

As I pulled my hair out of the back of the sweatshirt, I looked at the shirt he had had on under it. It was a normal white t-shirt with a drawing of a racecar and some driver's name printed across it.

He looked down at his shirt, obviously wondering what I was looking at.

"Uh, Mark Martin," he said, shrugging. "My brother's favorite driver. I honestly don't care for the sport myself, but he goes to a lot of races and bought me this one time."

I nodded absently.

"That's not what I was looking at," I said, the fatigue I felt not letting me care too much about hesitancy or common courtesy. "I was looking at the red spots you have on it. Where did they come from?"

He looked down again, as if seeing the big red spots and streaks across the front of his shirt for the first time, surprised that they were there. I myself had no idea what they were. I just knew what they looked like.

"Oh, that," he said. "That's from a painting job I did a while ago. Someone offered me some good money to paint their house and I couldn't refuse. I guess I was wearing this shirt one day. Must be some of the paint got onto it. Now I fell stupid for having red paint all over my shirt."

He tried tried to laugh it off.

I simply nodded and began to turn away, readying to go out the door and back to the waiting room to see if there had been any news about Taylor while we were gone, but Lyle grabbed my shoulder as I turned away.

"Parker, look, I know you don't like me," he said. "But I just can't figure out why."

"Lyle, I'm really not in love with anyone right now," I said.

"But it's not just now," he pointed out. "Why don't you like me? What's wrong? Are you afraid I'm going to steal Gina away from you or something? I mean, I know it's just been you two all your life and you're probably not used to having a third person around so much and you probably feel protective of her and all that. And I respect that. Let me tell you, I'm not here to take Gina away from you. She loves you too much to let any person do that."

I rolled my eyes, though the last sentence had kind of gotten my attention.

"What Disney movie did you get that from?" I asked, moving to walk out the door before he could respond, but he grabbed my shoulders again. The feel of his cold fingers go down the back of my shirt sent goosebumps racing up and down my body. I shuddered slightly.

"Your, um, tag was sticking out," he said, sounding breathy.

I ignored him and went out the door instead.

As we walked back into the waiting room, we both instantly saw Gina talking to a middle-aged man with brown hair in a white caot. Actually, he was talking, she was nodding along with what he was saying.

I began running up to them.

"What's wrong? What happened?" I asked as I nearly knocked Gina over.

The doctor smiled a tired smile at my eagerness to find out what was going on.

"I take it you're the brother," he said.

"Something like that," I said. I still didn't feel right taking that title away from Isaac and Zac and the others yet. "What's going on?"

"He says that they think that Taylor should be all right," Gina told me. "He's still unconscious right now. They're not sure how long he's going to be like that."

I think I actually felt my heart swell with relief.

"What do they think happened?" Lyle asked curiously.

The doctor cleared his throat, giving me a long look.

"It's okay. He's more family than either of us are," Gina told him.

The doctor nodded.

"Well, we're not really sure what happened," he said. "I think you're all aware of his arm. Um, we're going to leave it up to the police to find out what really happened, but right now we're guessing that it was a, um, suicide attempt."

My eyes widened and I felt my heart drop to the floor.

Suicide. they thought Taylor had attempted suicide.

"But that's only a guess. We can't be sure until Taylor himself can tell us," the doctor said. "Right now we're looking for a counselor or something to help him for when he does wake up and what's happened to him--whether self-inflicted or not--sinks in."

"But he is going to be all right, right?" Gina said, trying to focus on the bright side.

"He should be, yes," the doctor said. "But things are still a little uncertain. Right now everything seems to be fine."

"Can someone go visit him?" I asked.

"I think we can arrange that," the doctor said, smiling at me like I was three years old. "But we can only do this one at a time."

"You go, Parker," Gina said. "We'll wait out here."

I didn't argue as the doctor led me down the halls to where Taylor was staying. Even though I was overjoyed that he was going to be all right, I still couldn't get the word out of my mind. Suicide.

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Index
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Nine