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“We’ll drop you off at the hospital,” Lucas said. “Let’s get out of here before they accuse us of anything else.”
CHAPTER 9
LUCAS
Seventeen.
That’s how many people had died. I counted. Fifteen people had died at the scene, and another two at the hospital.
I barely remembered how we got back to the school that night. My head swam with all the thoughts I’d picked up from the crash. There’d been so many, yet I could remember each one, as if their words were playing over and over in my mind like a recording.
This can’t be the end.
I hope my wife makes it.
I have lived.
That last one was sad and finite, the way he spoke it in past tense. His life was over.
The worst ones were the loudest, as trauma always produced the most regrettable thoughts. I listened to each with reverence, and did my best to accept each one in turn. That didn’t make the blow any easier to handle, though.
The atmosphere was tense the following day. The halls were oddly quiet, and even the cats seemed to move at a slower pace, like they too could sense the melancholy of it all. I met up with Nadine for breakfast, but neither of us said much of anything.
Nadine finally spoke as we left the cafeteria. “How are you doing? Be honest.”
“I’m… processing it,” I said simply, though it was anything but simple. I truthfully didn’t know how to answer the question.
Nadine gazed up at me as we headed toward the grand staircase. “We’re going to get through this together—”
Nadine stopped in her tracks when someone stumbled on the stairs in front of us. The person she’d nearly ran into tripped down the last two stairs and clutched the railing to keep from falling flat on his face.
It was Quentin. He had a line of stitches across his forehead and bruises all over his face. He looked past me, but his eyes didn’t seem to focus on anything. He tried to pull himself upright, but Nadine and I rushed over to him.
I pressed on his shoulder. “Sit down.”
He collapsed onto the bottom stair and looked up at me, confused. “Lucas?”
“Fuck, Quentin, you probably have a concussion. What are you doing here?” I asked.
He shook his head. “No, no, I’m fine.”
“Didn’t the doctors give you pain killers?” I demanded. “We have potions for this kind of thing!”
“I refused them,” he said, without explaining further.
Nadine sat on the stair next to him and conjured a bottle of water. “You look really pale. Here, drink something.”
He hesitated, but he uncapped the water bottle and began sipping it.
“What’s going on?” Nadine asked. “Weren’t you admitted to the hospital?”
“They discharged me,” he said. Color started returning to his cheeks now that he was sitting down. “There aren’t enough beds. They had to send some of the injured to the school’s infirmary as it is. The doctors can hardly keep up.”
Seventeen people may have died last night, but there were dozens more that needed serious medical treatment.
“Not like I can afford it anymore, anyway.” Quentin conjured a piece of paper, which he handed to Nadine. “The doctors discharged me with this.”
Nadine gaped, and I glanced down to see a long string of numbers. It was a medical bill, and a hefty one at that.
