Then someone helps me hobble over to the ambulance and it turns out, nope, I was wrong—everything definitely still hurts.
“I should go with him,” Celine’s saying, not like she’s asking but like it’s common sense, really, so Holly and Rebecca better step aside before she makes them.
Except for once, her never-ending confidence doesn’t work, because Zion says, “Only one person can go in the ambulance with him—”
“Yes,” Celine grits out. “Me.”
“And it’s going to be me,” Zion says, “because I’m the responsible adult here.”
Celine laughs in his face. “Listen. I’m going with him one way or another. I don’t know what else to tell you.”
And I don’t know what she’s playing at, but at this rate she’s going to lose all her BEP matrix points and—
Wait.
“Can you manage, mate?” the paramedic asks as she helps me into the ambulance.
I don’t answer. I’m too busy thinking—Celine wants to leave? With me? Right now? She must have forgotten. “Celine,” I call, loud enough to hurt my own head. I can’t see her; she’s behind me and I’m not looking around because moving my eyes is not a lot of fun right now, but there’s a pause in her argument with our supervisors. “Don’t come with me,” I say. She can’t quit now. She’s almost halfway through this expedition. She has to get the scholarship. If I can’t get it, she has to. I think I tell her that. “Celine,” I repeat when she doesn’t respond, “don’t—”
“Okay,” she says, her voice rough. “Fine. Okay.”
* * *
The last time I stayed at a hospital—the only time, actually—they took my tonsils out. This time, they put bandages all over me, give me medicine, and say I’m under observation. An old nurse with a Glaswegian accent I barely understand tells me I’m a verra lucky boy because I have no broken bones. I would consider cracked ribs broken, but okay, I guess? It’s hard to care too much about details when you are wallowing in a pit of despair—which is also very hard to do when you’ve been put on a sunshine-yellow-painted pediatric ward because you are still seventeen, but I manage anyway.
“Feel up to eating yet?” Zion asks. He’s been asking every ten minutes for the last several hours.
“No,” I mutter. I am too sad to eat. Also, I feel really nauseous. But it’s mostly the sadness.
“There’s jelly,” he cajoles.
“No.” I look him in the eye. “Thank you.”
He sighs. His dreadlocks sway mournfully.
First, Celine doesn’t want me, and now I won’t get a scholarship. The first part feels like my heart’s been ripped out and the second fills the hole left behind with burning but impotent rage. Why did I have to fall down the bloody hill? Running away from Celine, no less. I’m furious with myself. In fact, I’m so busy glaring at my crisp white hospital sheets, it takes me several seconds to notice my actual mother waltz into the ward. By the time I recognize her presence, Dad’s already followed her in. Then comes, horror of horrors, Mason. Just like that, three-quarters of my immediate family stride past the rest of the beds on the ward and surround mine in a cocoon of overloud questions and not entirely unwelcome concern. Someone draws the curtains all around us, and it begins.
“My baby!” Mum wails. “What happened?”
“Look at you!” Dad says, horrified. “Is someone seeing to my son?” He looks around like a nurse might crawl out from under the bed. “Hello?” He’s wearing a suit underneath his wool coat. Mum is wearing—oh God—scrubs underneath hers.
“Did you come from work?” I demand.
“Of course we did!” Mum says, outraged. “No child of mine will suffer alone in some foreign country!”
“Mum,” Mason sighs, “it’s Scotland.”
I notice, even with my blurrier-than-usual vision, that he’s wearing his Forest Academy uniform. “Did you leave practice for me?”
“Obviously not.” Mason snorts, just as Dad says, “No, he skipped it. By the way, your sister wanted us to FaceTime you when we arrived, but—”
“I told her it probably wasn’t a good idea,” Mum finishes. “You have a concussion.” She pauses, then repeats as if riding a fresh wave of horror: “A concussion!”
Zion chooses this moment to stand up and intercede. “Mr. and Mrs. Graeme, hello, we spoke on the phone.”
“Ah!” Dad has found someone to question. “What’s happened here, then? How did he fall? Bradley is not reckless. He is typically very careful. So I’m not entirely sure—”
I zone out. It’s incredibly easy. I have a lot to think about, like worrying a loose tooth.
When I start paying attention again, Zion has escaped and Mason is eating my jelly. “Hey,” I say. “That’s mine.”
“Come and take it, then.”
I would, but there’s a tiny kernel of worry in the back of my mind regarding the possibility of minute but potentially deadly spinal damage that the doctors missed but that I could make worse if I move too much and I don’t want to give that worry any ammunition. I have erected an emergency shield in my head for all my unwanted thoughts to bounce off of, but that sort of thing can’t last forever, and I don’t have the energy to be mindful or take care of myself or whatever you want to call it. I am exhausted.
“Stop tormenting your brother,” Mum says, and Mason huffs.
“How are you feeling, kiddo?” Dad asks. There are deep grooves bracketing his mouth, and it’s entirely possible his hair got even grayer since I last saw him. My fault. Mum’s expression is tight, too, her eyes shadowed behind her glasses for all she’s trying to smile. I know they’re worried about me, but the honest answer is that I feel vile in every sense of the word and I bet I will for a long, long time.
So what’s the point of mincing words? You know what trying to keep people comfortable gets you? Heartbreak. “I feel terrible. I didn’t finish the expedition, I won’t get the scholarship, and—” I can’t say anything about Celine. I won’t. I swallow it down like jagged glass. “My ribs hurt, and my head hurts and I skinned my hip really bad and it feels gross and I’m—” About to say something I maybe shouldn’t but desperately want to because why the hell not? “I’m not going to study law.”
There is a long pause. Then Dad says, “Come again?”
I suck in a shallow breath and look up from the sheets. At his face. At Mum’s confusion. Back to Dad. “I’m not studying law. In October. I did something.”
There’s another pause. Then my brother snickers. “Oh my God. What did you do?”
I lift my chin and say firmly, “I applied to study something else.”
Dad appears to be frozen. Mum asks carefully, “Applied to study what, sweetheart?”
“Um. English.”
Dad is still frozen. I am slightly （massively） concerned.
Mason is laughing so hard he’s clutching his stomach like a cartoon, my jelly abandoned. “What? Why?”