Then Everything Happens at Once, page 5
The point is, Bookworm Alex has to know I’m fat.
“Come on, Bay. Put the phone away and enjoy the scenery.”
“What scenery? Dirty snow . . . and more dirty snow. Oh, look—a bunch of other cars. Look there—a big warehouse.” I give him a wide smile full of sass.
The car gains momentum, then stops abruptly.
“Why is every moment of the day rush hour around here?” Freddie says, huffing a breath.
“Says the guy who’s been driving one day,” I say. “You sound like someone’s dad. Not mine, because I don’t have one, but, maybe Rianne’s dad or—”
Freddie opens his mouth to interrupt me, but then we get hit from behind and I jerk forward, my face connecting with the dashboard.
Six
This is the first time I’ve had a nosebleed, and that part is making me cry more than the actual pain. Drops of red land on my lap, and I’ve got nothing but my hands to hold against my face. At least my coat is red. I hold my head back, trying not to mess up Freddie’s car.
“Oh, shit,” Freddie says. “Your face. Are you okay? Oh, damn, Bay. Squeeze the bridge of your nose.”
The idea of pinching anything on my face right now makes my eyes water even more than they already are. I breathe through my mouth and try to focus on swallowing the blood before it chokes me.
Freddie reaches into the back seat and hands me a sweater to hold up to my face. He whips his head to look behind us, fury in his eyes.
I cough a thin spray of fresh blood into my hands and the dashboard. It makes me gag.
“Damn,” he says. “I can’t believe this.”
“Oh no! Your car!” My words are muffled behind my hands and my obstructed nasal passages. “Is my nose smushed?”
“I’m sure it’s fine,” he says. “Keep pinching it.”
Someone appears at Freddie’s window, and icy wind enters the car as the window goes down. “Are you guys all right?”
Freddie unbuckles his seat belt, then slips out of the car. “Did you just rear-end me?”
“Yeah, I did, but because someone rear-ended me first,” I can hear the man say, and he sounds calm considering Freddie’s accusatory tone. “It started a couple cars back. Not much of an impact, though, thank god. Hopefully the first guy has a rear dash cam.”
“My friend’s nose is messed up,” Freddie says, and the man leans over to take a peek at me. “Did someone call 911?”
“My wife’s on the phone with them now.”
There’s a knock on my door. I roll the window down a crack to an older lady. “Sweetie, are you okay?” she asks, and I nod from behind Freddie’s bundled-up sweater.
Sirens get louder, and with that a wave of embarrassment washes over me. I wish I could just grab my purse and walk home. I should’ve just gone to Lara’s. The most ridiculous thing is knowing that if I was anywhere else right now, I’d probably be spacing, my warped mind making up a dramatic scenario just like this, except with Freddie giving me mouth-to-mouth in some “Sleeping Beauty”–type romantic moment with no real consequences.
I cry all over again, thinking about the idea of my face being messed up permanently.
Freddie opens my car door and starts swiping at my arms with baby wipes someone must’ve given him. He’s being so sweet, and I can’t even enjoy it because I feel the intense urge to puke. My phone is somewhere at my feet. So many eyes are on me. I keep my own aimed low.
A paramedic comes to my side and asks me what’s going on, what hurts. When I’m coaxed into pulling the sweater away from my face, it looks like the bleeding has mostly stopped. The whole area throbs and feels three times its size as he presses against different areas of my face. He asks if I’m on blood thinners, and I shake my head no. I keep my nose purposely plugged, afraid of breathing through it. I bring my focus strictly to the questions I’m being asked, not wanting to think about everyone looking, about Freddie’s car being messed up, about the blood that is now stiff on my face with the cold having invaded this cursed car.
Today is not a good day.
Traffic begins to move, and all the cars are being funneled over to the right lane. Those of us involved in the pileup stay put, waiting for the police to deal with the scene, I guess. I see a man rubbing his neck, pain evident on his face, while another paramedic tries to lead him over to the ambulance. I see a mother cradling a toddler who looks riveted by all the people hanging around. Everyone’s breath comes out in clouds of vapor. Freddie keeps circling around to check on me, then he goes back to chat with the other people hanging out against the highway median.
The paramedic from earlier comes with a basin, telling me to aim my head down a little and continue pressing my nose without letting go for at least ten minutes. She has a kind face, and she doesn’t seem to be mad at me, which makes me like her even more. “We’re going to bring you in to get looked at, okay? Can you call a parent to come meet you?”
“Can’t I just go home and ice it?”
The paramedic offers me a sympathetic smile. “Look, it would be pretty foolish not to go get checked out. We don’t know how hard you hit your head.”
“I didn’t really hit my head,” I say. “Is everyone laughing at me?”
She tips her head to the side. “Why would anyone be laughing?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you want to call someone now?”
I shake my head. “I don’t think I can. Can you ask him?” I point to Freddie.
The paramedic smiles, then pushes herself up. “I’ll get your boyfriend.”
Behind my hands, I grin so wide and resist the urge to wrap this lady up with the lasso of love shooting out of my eyes. The fact that she believes Freddie could be mine makes her my favorite person in the world right now.
Freddie comes over a moment later.
“Can you call my mother? I feel like I’m going to say something stupid if I do it.” Mostly I’m afraid I’ll start bawling if I hear her voice right now.
He nods and pulls his phone out of his pocket. The paramedic explains to him what she told me. I don’t hear what he says to my mother because he wanders away while he talks.
“Do I have to pay for this?” I ask.
“Pay for what?”
“The ambulance ride.”
She laughs a little. “I think someone watches a little too much American TV.”
A police officer appears next to me. He crouches next to the car.
“Hey there,” he says, and even though he sounds nice enough, I feel as if he’s going to cuff me and drag me away for being a dramatic loser. “How are you doing? Can you tell me what happened?”
“I’m not sure. We got hit and I went forward.”
“The airbags didn’t go off, huh?” the officer says.
“I wouldn’t say we got hit, really. More like bumped,” Freddie says, pointing to his chest, then pressing a hand against it. “My seat belt didn’t even squeeze, and I barely hit the guy in front of me.”
“Well, your friend sure went flying, didn’t she,” the officer says. “You were wearing your seat belt, too?”
Cold fear spreads through me, and for a moment I think I’m about to pass out. Because no, I wasn’t wearing one. In this moment, I regret and despise every single thing that’s made me fat. I curse pizza, and whipped-cream drinks, and cheese, and my stupid genes, and the fact that I dislike exercise. How the hell—when I’m not even able to bend over fully because my big squishy stomach is in the way—did I manage to fold over and hit the dash? Why couldn’t my fat be used for good, for once?
“I would’ve, but I . . . couldn’t.” My voice is thin and low. Freddie is on his phone, and I steal glances at him to make sure he doesn’t listen.
The officer reaches for the belt hanging to my right. “What do you mean? It’s not working?”
“It doesn’t reach all the way around.”
The officer pulls on the seat belt until it locks up. “It does seem a little short.”
“I’m sure it fits a regular person,” I mutter.
Freddie stands next to me, staring at the ground. He heard that part, and his face makes it clear just how uncomfortable the whole thing is making him.
This right here is the worst thing I’ve experienced. This is worse than all the times I’ve been made fun of by complete strangers or evil little fools at school growing up. It’s worse than the combined looks of people who watch me as I approach their personal space—on a bus, in a restaurant, on a plane, in a movie theater—like I’m about to flatten them from not knowing how to handle my own body.
Is this the worst day of my life? Probably not, but I’m sure it’ll make the Top Five.
“You can arrest me,” I tell the cop. “Take me away now.”
The officer laughs. “How about you get a ride with the medics? Make sure everything’s okay.”
“Sure, okay. Let’s go.”
“Bay,” Freddie says. “Want me to meet you there?”
“No. It’s fine.” I keep my head down as paramedics walk me over to the ambulance.
Seven
The hospital is a lot of waiting. There are people scattered about the waiting room, which is made up of rows of blue chairs against floor-to-ceiling windows that look into the lot where the ambulances arrive. A few look dead in their seats. Some are coughing up bits of invisible germs all over their neighbors, which is something that would drive my mother up the wall, and it’s why I always go right for a mask whenever I enter a hospital. A lady is picking her arm so savagely that her fingernails are bloody. There’s a near-naked guy being dragged to the ground by three security people as he shouts about the power of the Lord flowing through his veins. I keep the thin yellow mask over my nose and mouth, and I bathe my hands in sanitizer whenever I touch any surfaces.
The triage nurse I saw a few minutes ago told me to get comfortable, because the wait will be long. It goes by priority, and busted noses with controlled bleeding are far down the list compared to heart attacks and strokes. She gave me a small plastic bag full of tiny ice cubes to put against my nose, at least.
“Saturday night in the ER—this isn’t your day, huh, honey?” this old lady in front of me says. She has kind eyes, thick black hairs sprouting from her chin, and a massive butt squished into the tiny seat of her walker.
“I guess it’s no one’s day in here,” I say.
“I’m just here ’cause I got bad kidneys and none of my doctors wanna do anything about it. But I’ve got to keep pushing, because I’m trying to get ahead of this virus, you know? No one believes the few cases we have will lead to a pandemic, but mark my words, coronavirus is coming. It’s already here.”
I nod, averting my gaze because I really don’t want to be talking right now. Is pandemic even a word? Maybe it’s like pandemonium and epidemic put together?
“You’ve got the right idea, wearing that mask,” she says, tapping a finger against the side of her mouth. “Maybe you’re smarter than the rest of us.”
“I just don’t want to get my sister sick,” I say. “She gets sick easily.”
“Oh, that’s honorable, honey.”
My phone buzzes with a call from my mother, and I pick up right away.
“Baylee—what is happening? I’ve been trying to reach you, but it kept going to voice mail. Where are you? Are you okay?” she says.
“Phone signal is kind of weird in here,” I say. “I’m fine. Just broke my nose, maybe?”
“Oh my god,” Mom says, and I am glad I’m talking to her now and not earlier. I can resist the urge to start crying now that I’m composed. “What happened?”
“Someone rear-ended Freddie’s car a little. I just bumped my nose. It wasn’t Freddie’s fault.”
“You’re at . . . did . . . to take . . . now?” Mom’s voice cuts in and out.
“I can’t really hear you.”
The call gets dropped, so I begin a text letting her know what’s going on.
[Mom] Juliana is heading over, so I can come get you. I want to speak to the doctor.
My mom’s best friend, Juliana, is the only non-nurse person with enough training to stay alone with Rebecca. While I wait, holding the makeshift ice pack against my face, I think about this hospital, and the fact that she won’t dare bring my sister to this place unless it’s an absolute emergency. My mother always says these kinds of smaller hospitals have no idea what to do with kids like my sister, so whenever possible, we drive out to Toronto, to the specialized children’s hospital, for all of Rebecca’s appointments.
Still, any hospital equals bad vibes.
I take the mask off my face when I feel some wetness coming through from the slight ooze of blood from my nose.
“What the hell happened to you?” a man whose breath smells like beer says to me. There’s dried food or vomit on his shirt. He gestures with a thick index finger to my torso, then up to my face. That’s when I remember what I must look like.
“I was dead, but then I came back to life,” I say.
It takes him a minute to process. Then he laughs.
My compact mirror reveals smudged makeup because of the crying and rubbing of my face. There is redness over the bridge of my nose, and my nostrils are crusted red. There are still streaks of old blood running down my chin. My hair looks like it belongs on a dug-up body, or like I suffer from uncombable hair syndrome, which is a thing that I have googled before. There are dried blood droplets sprinkled over my jeans, and a few even soaked into my brand-new bra, totally clashing with the hot pink. I groan and google how to remove blood from fabric.
The bra thing is bad, but not as bad as the fact that Freddie knows I’m legally too fat to be in his car.
My phone regains a bar of reception and a slew of texts pop through.
[Freddie] Is everything OK? How’s your nose?
[Freddie] Let me know how it goes.
[Freddie] I’m taking my car to get shampooed—no big deal. 😋
[Freddie] Know what? I think I’m going to work this little mess into my screenplay—it’ll add a lot of action.
[Freddie] So basically it’s actually a good thing this happened.
[Freddie] Except for your nose, though.
[Freddie] But really—I hope you’re okay.
[Freddie] ???
His concern makes it even worse. He’s such a decent guy. But I can’t ever see him again, not after this.
I sign into the spotty hospital Wi-Fi, and soon my phone buzzes. A conversation has been unfolding in the group message window, too extensive for me to be able to scroll up and find its beginning. I flick my thumb down once and start reading wherever it settles.
[Lara] Did you even clear it with your parents first?
[Rianne] It’ll be fine! I’ve already invited EVERYONE.
[Lara] How have you invited everyone already?
[Rianne] I sent texts and DMs to the usual people and it might already be spreading like wildfire.
[Lara] Did you invite a bunch of people we don’t know again?
[Rianne] I can’t control in which direction the fire burns. 🤷
[Lara] 🙄
[Rianne] Relax. It’s not like I put it on TikTok. Anyway. BAYLEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WHERE ARE YOU????????
Lara is typing her response, but I insert myself into the conversation before she can finish.
[Baylee] I’m not sure if I can come on Saturday.
[Rianne] BAYLEE!! This is for your birthday!
[Baylee] My birthday is not next Saturday. It’s the week after, and it’s on a Friday???
[Rianne] That’s what I was saying earlier! I’m on the schedule to work on your birthday! ☹
[Baylee] Oh.
[Rianne] Plus they have me opening the next morning because of stupid March break! So we’re having your birthday next weekend instead! I switched with the other closer for Saturday night.
[Baylee] I actually have a good excuse why I might not be able to come. Trust me.
A separate text from Lara comes through.
[Lara] What’s your excuse? Mine is Trey, but Rianne said she’d make sure he’s barred from her house.
[Baylee] Well that’s nice of her. I would be OK with Trey and Freddie not being there.
[Lara] ???
[Baylee] . . .
[Lara] Where are you? Are you on your way yet?
[Baylee] I’m sort of unavailable at the moment.
[Lara] ???
[Baylee] I’m in the emergency room. I might’ve broken my nose.
[Lara] WHAT??????????? HOW????????? ARE YOU OKAY???????
It’s not that I have a problem with my best friend knowing what happened, but it’s just really difficult to feel like some kind of victim who deserves concern when it’s more that I’m a complete fool who suffered a ridiculous freak accident on account of my abdominal girth.
[Baylee] I’m OK. It’s a bit of a ridiculous story.
[Lara] Wanna video-chat?
[Baylee] I can’t. There are people everywhere, and I didn’t bring my earphones.
Finally, I’m called away from the waiting room, into an actual small room with a stretcher where I see the doctor for maybe five minutes. She seems pretty confident that whatever I smooshed is minor, and my nose doesn’t need realignment or anything like that. A nurse swoops over, handing me some Advil and a cup with barely an ounce of water.
“Go back to the waiting room, and we’ll call you back in to be reassessed in a bit,” the nurse says. “Do you have a parent coming?”
“Yes.”
I go back to sit in the waiting room, grabbing another face mask on my way.
