‘Oh my god, I have to come home. Dad, I have to come home! She doesn’t have anybody but me, and I’m across the Atlantic. Oh, but that fucking party is the night after tomorrow and it’s the sole reason she brought me and she’ll definitely fire me if I’m not there. Think! I need to think!’
‘Andy, it’s late there. I think the best thing you could do is get some sleep, take a little time to think things over. Of course I knew you’d want to come home right away, because that’s the kind of person you are, but keep in mind that for right now Lily is not conscious. Her doctor assured me that the chances are excellent that she’ll come out of this in the next forty-eight to seventy-two hours, that her body is just using this as an extended and deeper sleep to help itself heal. But nothing is certain,’ he added, softly.
‘And if she does come out of it? I’m assuming she could have all sorts of brain damage and horrible paralysis and things like that? Oh my god, I can’t stand it.’
‘They just don’t know yet. They said that she is responsive to stimuli in her feet and legs, which is a good indication that there’s no paralysis. But there’s a lot of swelling around her head, and it won’t be possible to know anything for sure until she comes out of this. We just need to wait.’
We spoke for a few minutes longer before I hung up abruptly and called Alex’s cell phone.
‘Hi, it’s me. Have you seen her?’ I asked without so much as a hello. I was now a mini-Miranda.
‘Andy. Hi. So you know?’
‘Yeah, I just got off the phone with my parents. Have you seen her?’
‘Yes, I’m at the hospital now. They won’t let me in her room right now since it’s not visiting hours and I’m not family, but I wanted to be here just in case she wakes up.’ He sounded very, very far away, completely lost in his own thoughts.
‘What happened? My mom said something about how she was driving and hit a cab or something? None of it makes any sense to me.’
‘Uch, it’s a nightmare,’ he sighed, clearly unhappy that no one else had told me the story yet. ‘I’m not sure I know exactly, but I did talk to the guy she was with when it happened. You remember Benjamin, that guy she was seeing in college who she walked in on having a threesome with those girls?’
‘Of course, he works in my building now. I see him sometimes. What the hell was she doing with him? Lily hates him – she’s never gotten over that.’
‘I know, that’s what I thought, too, but it seems they’ve been hanging out lately and they were together last night. He says they had gotten tickets to see Phish at Nassau Coliseum and drove out there together. I guess Benjamin smoked too much and decided he shouldn’t drive his car home, so Lily volunteered. They made it back to the city with no problems until Lily ran a red light and then turned the wrong way down Madison, straight into oncoming traffic. They hit a cab head-on, on the driver’s side, and, well, uh, you know.’ He choked up at this point, and I knew things must be worse than anyone had let on.
I’d done nothing but ask questions the last half hour – to my mom, my dad, and now Alex – but I couldn’t bring myself to ask the most obvious one: Why had Lily run a red light and then tried to drive south on an avenue that only ran north? But I didn’t need to, because Alex, as always, knew exactly what I was thinking.
‘Andy, her blood alcohol level was nearly twice the legal limit.’ He stated this matter-of-factly, trying not to swallow the words so I wouldn’t ask him to repeat them.
‘Oh my god.’
‘If – when – she wakes up, she’s going to have even more to deal with than her health: she’s in a lot of trouble. Luckily, the cabbie was OK, just a few bumps and bruises, and Benjamin’s left leg is completely smashed up, but he’ll be fine, too. We just need to wait for Lily. When are you coming home?’
‘What?’ I was still trying to process the fact that Lily had been ‘seeing’ a guy I’d always thought she hated, that she’d ended up in a coma because she was so drunk when she was with him.
‘I said, when are you coming home?’ When I was silent for a moment, he continued. ‘You are coming home, aren’t you? You’re not seriously considering staying there while your best friend on earth lies in a hospital bed, are you?’
‘What are you suggesting, Alex? Are you suggesting that this is my fault because I didn’t see it coming? That she’s lying in that hospital bed because I’m in Paris right now? That if I had known she was hanging out with Benjamin again none of this would have happened? What? What exactly are you saying?’ I shrieked, all of the confusing emotions of the night boiling over into a simple, urgent need to scream at someone else.
‘No, I didn’t say any of that. You did. I just assumed that of course you’d be coming home to be with her as soon as possible. I’m not passing judgment on you, Andy – you know that. I also know that it’s really late for you already and there’s nothing you can do in the next couple hours, so why don’t you call me when you know what flight you’re on. I’ll pick you up at the airport and we can come straight to the hospital.’
‘Fine. Thanks for being there for her. I really appreciate it and I know Lily does, too. I’ll call you when I know what I’m doing.’
‘OK, Andy. I miss you. And I know you’ll do the right thing.’ The line went dead before I could pounce all over that one.
Do the right thing? The right thing? What the hell did that mean? I hated that he had just assumed I would jump on a plane and race home because he told me to. Hated his condescending, preachy tone of voice that immediately made me feel like one of his students who’d just been caught talking during class. Hated that he was the one who was with Lily now even though she was my friend, that he was the one acting as a liaison between my own parents and me, that he was once again sitting on his moral high horse and calling the shots. Gone were the old days, when I might have hung up comforted by his presence, knowing that we were in this together and would get through it together, instead of as warring factions. When had things become like this?
There was no energy left to point out the obvious to him, namely, that if I left early to come home, I’d be fired immediately and my entire year of servitude would have been for nothing. I had managed to suppress that awful thought before it took full form in my mind: that my being there or not being there would mean absolutely nothing to Lily right now, since she was unconscious and unaware in a hospital bed. The options swirled around in my mind. Perhaps I would stay just long enough to help with the party and then try to explain to Miranda what happened and make a plea for my job. Or, if it appeared that Lily was awake and alert, someone could explain that I would be on my way as soon as possible, at that point probably just a couple more days. And while both of these explanations sounded somewhat reasonable in the dark hours of early morning after a long night of dancing and many glasses of bubbly and a phone call telling me my best friend was in a coma because of her own drunk driving, somewhere down deep I knew – I knew – that neither of them was.
‘Ahn-dre-ah, leave a message at Horace Mann that the girls will be missing school on Monday because they’ll be in Paris with me, and make sure you get a list of all the work they’ll need to make up. Also, push back my dinner tonight until eight-thirty, and if they’re not happy about that, then just cancel it. Have you located a copy of that book I asked you for yesterday? I need four copies – two in French, two in English – before I meet them at the restaurant. Oh, and I want a final copy of the edited menu for tomorrow’s party to reflect the changes I made. Make certain that there will be no sushi of any kind, do you hear me?’
‘Yes, Miranda,’ I said, scribbling as quickly as possible in the Smythson notebook the accessories department had thoughtfully included with