Chapter 32

I sat in the waiting room, an arm draped over Jackie's back. Her elbows down on her knees, her head in her hands almost at knee level. She rubbed her eyes again and again as she cried. The tears had eventually stopped streaming for me, and I could turn to everyone. And see their reactions.

Amanda called Kaitlin's parents and they came immediately.

Her parents were somewhere, probably in there with Kaitlin where we all wanted to be.

Craig was sitting next to me, his arm around the back of my chair. He kept scratching the back of his ear or neck, and looking uncomfortable. At the same time, I knew the guys were trying to hold in their emotion. Mike was the only one who was not. Tears were streaming down his cheeks as he sat across the mini aisle from me. I looked at him, one of the guys who had become one of my best friends. They had all been my best friends before, but now things were different. I rubbed Jackie's back a bit, and got up. I walked over to him, and sat down next to him. I rubbed his shoulder.

"Are you okay?" I whispered.

He looked over at me, and the tears told me. Of course he was not okay.

I slipped an arm around him, and leaned his head against my shoulder. "Don't worry," I said, trying to convince the both of us. "I'm sure she's fine. Don't worry about her."

We both know that I was trying to cheer us up, and it wasn't working too well.

God what would we do if we lost her?

I could not even allow myself to think of it.

But what if...

Stop, I told myself.

A long time passed.

Then the doctor came out.

We all jumped to our feet and rushed over to him.

"How is she?" I asked, knowing that we were all afraid of the answer.

"We still can't tell," he told us, giving the whole group a glance. "The best thing for you kids would be to head home and get some rest." We had already been there seven hours. I know it sounds like a while, but that is what happens when someone gets hit by a car and gets knocked unconscious.

I nodded. "Will you call when you find anything out?"

He agreed, "Of course."

I nodded, and the rest of the group gradually consented.

Mike stepped up as we started to collect our purses and jackets or whatever. "Can I see her?" he asked, his voice hoarse.

The doctor patted his shoulder. "I think you should head home son. I promised your girl right there that I would call you the second I found something out. So don't worry about a thing," the doctor reassured him.

He nodded, "Okay, thanks."

The doctor waved us all a goodbye and went back inside.

We all piled back into our cars. This time Jackie and Luke were with us, and Luke left Ben to drive his car. We headed to some random restaurant to get some dinner. We hadn't eaten anything all day, and those seven hours at the hospital had not exactly been good.

We needed to fuel up.

We sat there in one of those round table booths that are always in the corner of random restaurants. We ordered our usuals, for me that meant a chef salad. They always made the best ones there. We just sat there, all eating quietly. Jackie was starting to dry up, and blew her nose every once in a while. Mike didn't talk, but was comfortably nestled between Jackie and Amanda. Luke was on Jackie's other side, me next to him, with Craig next to me and then Amy and Ben. Chris was next to Amanda. We ate, and didn't talk very much. Our cell phones were sitting in the middle of the table, waiting for the phone call. It didn't come.

We ordered coffee when we were all done in hopes of just killing time.

I wished that something would hurry up and happen. God I wanted to know what had happened out there. I turned to Jackie as I stirred some sugar into my coffee.

My phone started ringing, but it wasn't the phone call that we wanted. We had all called our parents a little while after we had called Kaitlin's, and had explained the circumstances to them. Thank god they had all understood. All of our plans were canceled for the day and night, whatever would be happening tomorrow was not looking likely anymore, because we all knew we would be sitting up that night by the phone waiting for the call.

It was Peter.

"Hello?" I asked, hearing the emotional exhaustion in my voice.

"Hey," he said softly. "How are things?"

"We don't know. The doctor suggested we all get out of there, so we all just came here to Lisay," Lisay was the name of the place where we were eating.

"Sounds good. Look, Mom and Dad were wondering if you wanted to invite everyone to stay over here."

"Are you serious?"

"Yeah, they thought that you guys all might want to be together and everything, and they figured that you guys could do it at our house."

"Oh my gosh, that is amazing, thank you so much."

We talked a few more minutes, and then hung up.