SVH10-Wrong Kind of Girl (11 page)

"The poor thing!" Alice Wakefield said. "How awful."

"Jess," Elizabeth said, "we've got to go to the hospital!"

"Oh, no, not me," Jessica whispered hoarsely. "She wouldn't want me there."

"Well,
I
want you there," Elizabeth said firmly. "Mom, can we take the Fiat?"

"Yes, of course," the twins' mother answered. "But be careful."

Driving quickly through the streets of the quiet town, Elizabeth and Jessica were both lost in their own thoughts. For once, Jessica did not complain about being in the passenger seat.

"Oh, please, let it not be serious," she murmured softly. "Oh, Liz, it just can't be."

"She'll be all right, Jess. She's got to be."

Elizabeth slid the red Spider convertible into a space at the parking lot of Joshua Fowler Memorial Hospital. As the twins climbed out, they shivered at the sight of the enormous, ominous-looking building. With a glance at each other, they both remembered Elizabeth's ordeal there not too long ago.

They hurried up the long walk, through the hospital doors, and along the seemingly endless corridor to the reception area.

"Hello," said the nurse behind the desk. "What can I do for you young ladies?" It always amazed Elizabeth that nurses and doctors could seem so calm when they were surrounded with life-or-death crises.

"Annie Whitman," Elizabeth said.

The nurse looked over her files with exasperating nonchalance, then smiled at them. "I'm sorry. We have no Annie Whitman."

"They just brought her in," Elizabeth protested. "She tried to--it was an emergency."

"Oh," the nurse said. "Well, then, she might be in the Emergency Wing. Right through there."

Elizabeth led a reluctant Jessica through the large gray door at which the nurse had pointed.

The Emergency Wing was bedlam. On a stretcher just inside the door lay a man who had been hurt in an auto crash. A little boy with a stitched-up forehead sat nearby. Little knots of people sat huddled in chairs waiting for news of friends and relatives.

On one of the chairs in the crowded waiting room sat Ricky Capaldo. He was leaning forward, his head between his hands, so lost in grief that he didn't even notice that the twins had arrived. Elizabeth slid onto a chair beside him.

"Ricky," she said softly.

Ricky looked up at her, his eyes red, his face set in pain and worry. "Liz," he said. "Thank God you've come."

Jessica sat down next to Elizabeth. "Hi, Ricky," she said very softly. "How is she?"

"I don't know," he answered, looking down at his feet again.

"What happened?" Elizabeth asked anxiously.

"She took a bottle of pills. ... I don't know what they were," said Ricky.
"1
gave the doctors the bottle."

"Have they told you anything yet?"

Ricky shook his head. "I told her never mind what they'd done to her and what they were saying," Ricky cried. "But I guess it was just

more than she could handle She's only a kid, you know. How much can a kid take?"

Elizabeth watched Jessica sink back in her chair, a look of panic on her face.

"I just had a terrible feeling when she was absent from school again today," Ricky continued. "I can't explain it. I felt this horrible chill go through me. I cut last period and went over to her apartment--I've visited Annie there a few times since she ... since the tryouts. I rang the bell. I rang and rang and knocked on the door. Then I went to a pay phone and called. Why did I waste so much time?" he raged at himself.

"But you couldn't know," Elizabeth soothed, trying to calm him down.

Finally, Ricky related, he had raced back to the apartment and broken down the door. "I found her on the bathroom floor, white and clammy and not breathing. I don't know how long she'd been unconscious."

His voice cracked as he explained how he'd called for an ambulance and tried to revive Annie. "I yelled at her and shook her and prayed a lot," he said. "She mumbled something once, and that was all. Finally the paramedics got there, and we rushed right over here."

Ricky was drained by the ordeal. He sat there exhausted, yet unable to relax or let go until he knew how Annie was.

"How could they do this?" he snapped suddenly, sitting up. "What kind of stuck-up, mean kids could do this to a poor, scared girl?"

Jessica was crying now, tears running down her face.

Ricky saw her and slumped back into his chair. "Oh, no, Jess, I didn't mean it. I--you--I don't know what I'm saying!"

Jessica's sobs were audible now. She leaned her head over on Elizabeth's shoulder and wept uncontrollably.

"Stop it, Jess," Elizabeth whimpered tremulously. "You'll have me crying, too."

"I can't help it," Jessica sputtered.
"I
did this. You know I did. I'm the one who put Annie in there."

"Now, Jess, just take it easy," Elizabeth said, fighting back her own tears.

"She wanted to be a cheerleader, but oh, no! High and mighty Jessica Wakefield wouldn't let her," Jessica agonized.

Her sobs had hardly quieted when suddenly a distraught, wild-eyed Mrs. Whitman rushed into the Emergency Wing followed by her boyfriend Johnny.

"Where's my baby?" Mrs. Whitman screamed, turning wildly around toward anyone who would listen. "Where's the doctor?"

"Take it easy, Mona," said Johnny, catching up with her.

"Don't you tell me to take it easy," she yelled, pulling away from him.

A stern-faced attendant in a starched white coat walked up to Mrs. Whitman and spoke sharply to her. "Please, madam! This is a hospital."

Finding someone to direct her trouble to, Mona

Whitman grabbed the woman with both hands. "Where's my baby! What are you doing with her?"

"Who are you talking about?" the attendant asked calmly, extracting herself from the clutching hands.

"Annie Whitman!"

"Oh, yes," the attendant said. "She's in the emergency room now. They're doing all they can."

"Is she going to be all right?"

"We don't know yet, Mrs. Whitman. There's nothing to do but wait."

"Wait?" cried Mrs. Whitman. "I can't wait! Oh, my kitten! My kitten! Why did you do such a thing?"

She staggered to a chair and collapsed into it, breathing raggedly and digging into her purse. She found a pack of cigarettes and took one out with shaking fingers. Johnny lit it for her. Only then did Mrs. Whitman notice the twins and Ricky.

"Ricky," she said, jumping up and hurrying over to where he sat with Elizabeth and Jessica. Ricky, lost in worry over Annie, looked up, startled, when he heard his name. Mrs. Whitman then glanced at Jessica. "And you're a friend of Annie's, we met one night...." Her sentence trailed off distractedly.

"That was me, Mrs. Whitman. Elizabeth. This is my twin sister, Jessica." Jessica lowered her head in shame, afraid to meet Annie's mother's

eyes, but Mrs. Whitman had already turned back to Ricky.

"They say she tried to--they say she took ..." Mrs. Whitman couldn't go on. Tears streamed down her face, and she put her hand to her mouth.

Ricky stood up and put a comforting hand on Mrs. Whitman's shoulder. He guided her to an empty seat next to Elizabeth and eased her into it as Johnny looked on in silence from a few feet away.

"She'll be OK." Ricky tried to sound convincing. "She's
got
to be." His words were as much for himself as for Annie's mother.

"Ricky," Mrs. Whitman said, "I'm so glad you're here."

"Ricky brought her in," Elizabeth said.

"How can I thank you, dear boy," said Mona Whitman, looking into his sorrow-filled eyes. "You've been so good to my kitten, calling her and coming to visit. You care for her, don't you?"

"Yes, ma'am," Ricky whispered,

"Can you tell me why she did this?" Mrs. Whitman shook her head vehemently. "I can't understand it."

"She did it because of the way kids treated her at school," said Ricky.

"You mean that cheerleader business?" she asked.

"Yes, mainly."

"She did mention that," Annie's mother said. "She said somebody kept her off the squad. Why would anyone do that to my kitten?"

Ricky looked at his feet. Elizabeth looked at Jessica, who, moving like someone who'd been drugged, wandered over to the only window in the emergency room and stared out at the hospital grounds in a daze.

It seemed like years later when a nurse walked over to them, looking frazzled and exhausted, and told them that Annie's stomach had been pumped and that she was sleeping.

"We're moving her to a room upstairs," she said.

"Is she going to be all right?" Mrs. Whitman demanded.

"We won't know that until she wakes up," the nurse replied. Then she turned away and disappeared through the heavy metal doors at the far end of the emergency room.

Mrs. Whitman and Johnny, the twins and Ricky Capaldo ended up together in the hospital cafeteria sipping coffee with little interest, waiting for news of Annie and praying fervently that she would pull through. Every conversation that had taken place earlier was repeated over and over again. The terrible question of why Annie had done it hung over them all. Jessica shrank back in the booth where they were all huddled. She couldn't look at Mrs. Whitman, or at Ricky either.

Finally they were allowed up to Annie's room. Elizabeth and Jessica trailed the others down the long, antiseptic corridors, all too clearly remembering the time Elizabeth had been rushed here after a nightmarish motorcycle accident.

The girls half expected to see John Edwards, the young doctor who had been assigned to Elizabeth's case. But the man who greeted them at the door to Annie's room was older, more seasoned-looking.

"I'm Dr. Hammond," he said.

"I'm her mother," said Mrs. Whitman. "How is she?"

Dr. Hammond betrayed no emotion. "I wish I could tell you everything is fine, but we just don't know yet. You can't tell me how long she was unconscious before the ambulance arrived?"

Ricky stepped forward. "I found her, Doctor. But I can't say how long she'd been out. I just don't know."

Mrs. Whitman, Johnny, and Ricky entered the room and rushed to Annie's side. Mona Whitman took hold of her daughter's limp hand. Elizabeth and Jessica moved to the foot of the bed, looking at the pale figure stretched out in front of them. She seemed lifeless, and there wasn't a trace of color in her face. Jessica felt faint. She reached for the metal guard at the end of the bed to steady herself. The twins looked on in silence for a few minutes, and then Elizabeth ushered her sister back out of the room to a waiting area halfway down the ., hall, where they sat quietly.

Ricky came out and paced the hallway, then went back into Annie's room. Time crawled by.

Suddenly Mrs. Whitman's cry pierced the sterile air. She darted out into the corridor. "Doctor! Nurse! Somebody! My kitten's awake!"

"Doctor Hammond, room four-fifteen--stat. Dr. Hammond, room four-fifteen--stat," a voice crackled over the loudspeaker. In a few minutes Dr. Hammond came striding swiftly toward Annie's room. He asked Mrs. Whitman, Johnny, and Ricky to step out for a moment.

"What did she say?" Ricky asked Mrs. Whitman as they joined Elizabeth and Jessica in the waiting area.

"She moaned and said something I couldn't understand," said Mona Whitman. She lit another cigarette and puffed nervously.

When Dr. Hammond came out of the room, his face was set in an unhappy frown. "She should be coming around much better than she is," he said worriedly.

"Is she conscious?" Mrs. Whitman asked.

"She slips in and out. Right now she isn't conscious."

"When will she be all right again?" Mrs. Whitman pressed.

"I wish I knew," he said. "When people try to take their own lives, they often don't want to be brought back. When you catch them in time, as in this case, they have another chance. But they have to want that chance, you see."

"What do you mean, Dr. Hammond?"

He seated himself on the couch in the corridor and drew the grieving woman down beside him. "Mrs. Whitman, I don't know why your daughter did this to herself, but she seems to have no will to live."

Twelve

No will to live
... no will to live. The words echoed mercilessly in Jessica's head as she raced down the halls of the hospital. Frantically she pushed through the front door, bursting out into the night air, gasping for breath. She ran across the circular driveway at the hospital's front entrance and continued across the wide, plush lawn. She felt her throat closing up, her breath short, her blood rushing wildly.

No will,
thought Jessica.
And all because of me.
Her legs shook. She ran a few more steps and then collapsed onto the soft grass, next to a little Japanese rock garden. She gulped in huge breaths of the early evening air.

I'll go away,
Jessica told herself in agony.
I'll get a bus to Los Angeles, and then a plane to
... She buried her face in the grass, tears wetting the earth beneath her.

"Jess! Jessica!"

She heard the call faintly and looked up to

see Elizabeth coming across the lawn toward her.

"What are you doing out here?" Elizabeth said as she hurried over and wrapped her sister in her arms.

"Leave me alone."

"Are you all right?"

Jessica's response was an uncontrollable wail. Of course she wasn't all right! She would never be all right again.

Elizabeth gently rocked her twin in her arms. Jessica's sobs grew softer, punctuated by deep, long sighs. Finally she was quiet.

"Running away like that can't possibly change things or help Annie." Elizabeth's voice sounded tired. "And neither can blaming yourself. Why don't you stop?"

"I can't. It
is
my fault. Oh, Liz, I didn't know she wanted it so badly. Really I didn't! I wish I were dead!" Jessica kicked the ground, and tears fell afresh as hours of pent-up despair poured from her.

"C'mon, Jess," Elizabeth crooned, not knowing what else she could say.

"How can I be such a selfish, spoiled, impossible, vindictive--"