Page 10

The week after the crash is the longest and darkest of my life.

I’m supposed to be doing a hundred different things—scheduled interviews, sponsorship appearances, meetings with the team—but

instead I flesh out my migraine excuse and beg the team to give me some time off. They send the team doctor up to see me the

day after the race, and I look like such shit he barely even examines me before calling up Stefan, Harper’s team boss, and

telling him I’ll need to be off for at least a week. He gives me a bottle of sumatriptan and naproxen for my “migraine” and

advises plenty of fluids and rest. I need to be ready to race again in Austria in two weeks.

The team pays for me to stay in the hotel suite an extra week, and after the doctor leaves, I fall asleep for the first time

in two days and sleep for almost fourteen hours. When I wake, there’s an awful, stupid moment of confusion where I forget

what’s happened. I stretch my hand out to Jacob’s side of the bed, and when my hand hits the cold sheets, I remember all over

again.

I can’t bring myself to move any of his things, except his sweater, which I can’t seem to let go of.

I almost wear it to the hospital, but then I worry it might start smelling like a hospital instead of him.

I tuck it under the sheets, put the “Do Not Disturb” sign on the door, and then go to the front desk to double-check that no one will go into my room.

They look at me funny, but I don’t care.

I have to get back to the hospital, and if I come back and find some housekeeper’s moved Jacob’s coffee cup, or something, I think I might lose it.

I manage to find the right hospital parking garage this time, following the signs for USI, and as I ride up the elevator to

the ninth floor, a rich-looking couple riding with me exchange a furtive look. For a second I wonder if they’ve recognized

me, but then I catch a glimpse of myself in the elevator doors after they step out on the seventh floor. I still haven’t showered—I

couldn’t bring myself to do it, not when I saw Jacob’s shampoo sitting on the shower ledge—and I look absolutely disgusting.

My hair is dirty beneath my ball cap, and my skin is pale and rough with stubble. I must smell like garbage.

There’s no one in the waiting room today, and the door to the unit is open. A ward clerk is on high alert just inside the

doors.

“Bonjour,” she says. “Qui êtes-vous venu voir?”

“Er—Jacob Nichols?” I say, cursing my rudimentary French. Her mouth purses into a frown.

“No press,” she says firmly. “No media.”

“I’m not press,” I say. “He’s a friend.” She still looks doubtful, so I force myself to add, “I’m a driver.”

“Hm,” she says, still frowning. “ID, s’il vous pla?t?”

I dig out my driver’s license and hand it over. She pulls out her own phone, and I see her type my name into a search engine. A moment later, she looks up. “Ah. You drive in Formula 1, yes? Allez-y.” She waves me onward. “Room nine-two-four.”

My feet slow as I approach the room. I don’t know what I’ll do if Jacob’s family is in there. But the door is ajar and by

some miracle there’s absolutely no one inside. A rough noise slips out of my throat as I rush to Jacob’s side.

“Hey,” I choke out. “Hey, you.”

I snatch up his right hand in both of mine. His fingers are limp and unmoving. Fuck, his skin is cold. And he still has that

stupid breathing tube in, making that awful rhythmic noise.

“Don’t die, okay?” I say, even though I know he can’t hear me. “Don’t you dare fucking die.”

I’m desperately close to crying again, and I know I have to let go of him before someone walks in. I squeeze his hand tightly,

then lean forward and press my lips to his temple.

“Don’t die,” I repeat in a whisper. “Promise you won’t die.”

The sound of footsteps in the hall outside gives me just enough time to drop his hand and step backward before a nurse walks

in. He’s got a pinched, arrogant sort of face, and he scowls at me straight off the bat.

“Qu’est-ce que vous avez fait?” He waves me out of the way and peers at Jacob’s hand. The IV in it is bleeding around the

edges. Fuck, I must’ve done it when I squeezed his hand.

The nurse looks at me like I’m trash and says something in rapid French. Then, to make things even worse, Jacob’s brother,

Paul, walks in.

“What’s going on?” he demands, his sharp eyes taking in me, the nurse, the bleeding IV. “Why’s his IV bleeding?”

I take another step back, wishing I could melt into the wall.

Paul’s eyes narrow. “You were here yesterday, weren’t you? We aren’t talking to the press.”

“I’m not with the press,” I force out. “I’m one of the drivers.”

His scowl fades a little. “Oh. Which one? Josh? Patrick? Auguste?”

Cheeks burning, I shake my head. “No, I’m—Travis? Travis Keeping?” I don’t know why I say it like a question.

Paul’s eyes narrow again. He doesn’t watch Formula 1, I remember. He once told Jacob it was “overrated.” “I don’t remember

hearing your name before,” he says. “And I talk to my brother all the time.”

There’s no mistaking the suspicious tone in his voice. He must think I’m a real piece of shit, sneaking in here to get dirt

on his dying brother.

“I’m... not in F2,” I say throatily. “I’m in F1. With Harper Racing?” I clear my throat. “You can look it up.”

“I will,” Paul says. He whips his phone out and taps at it for a minute, then looks up again, his frown a fraction smaller.

“We can’t be too careful,” he says, not quite an apology. “Stupid reporters have been trying to get in all weekend. And I

haven’t heard him mention your name before,” he adds sharply.

I don’t know what to say to that. I doubt he’d believe the truth, even if I blurted it out right here and now.

“What happened with his IV?” Paul asks the nurse, forgetting me for a moment. “Does it have to be changed?”

“No, I have fixed it,” the nurse says in English, shooting me a dirty look. “The doctor will be here any moment.”

“Good, thank you,” Paul says briskly. The nurse leaves, and Paul parks himself in a chair by Jacob’s side. He gives me an

expectant look. “Nice of you to visit.”

It’s an obvious dismissal, but now that I’m here—now that I’ve touched Jacob’s skin—there’s no way in hell I’m leaving.

“Everyone’s wondering how he’s doing,” I say, as steadily as I can. “All the other F1 drivers. I’m sure they’d all like to

hear an update.”

Paul opens his mouth—to disagree, I’m sure—but he’s too slow. An older lady with gray hair and dress clothes, the same one I saw the first night, steps into the room.

“Ah, Monsieur Paul, bonjour,” she says, holding a hand out for Paul to shake. “And who is this?”

She holds out her hand to me.

“Travis Keeping,” I say, shaking it. “I’m a friend.”

Paul shoots me a swift, skeptical look, but the doctor nods, unaware of the tension between us.

“Very good,” she says. “I’m Dr. Kajetanowicz—Dr. K, you can call me.”

“How’s Jakey doing?” Paul asks. My jaw tightens in irritation. Jacob hates when Paul calls him that. He’s only told him about

fifty times.

“Let me take a look,” Dr. K says.

She steps up to the bed and begins her exam. There’s something in her manner that makes me trust her implicitly, but watching

her examine Jacob is profoundly unsettling. She lifts his eyelids up and flashes a light in his pupils, listens to his heart

and lungs with her stethoscope, and lifts up his hospital gown to examine some terrifying bruising all over his stomach and

sides. I get my first look at the tube in his chest, stuck in between two ribs and secured with a bunch of white gauze and

paper tape. She peers at the machine his breathing tube is connected to, looks at his catheter, examines his legs. The whole

time, I want to step in and stop her. I want to wrap Jacob up in blankets and tell them all to leave him the hell alone.

Finally, she steps back and moves to stand at the end of his bed. She gestures for me to sit on the other side of the bed,

opposite Paul, and I sink gratefully into the chair.

“As we discussed the other night,” she tells Paul in her gentle accent, “Jacob has suffered an extreme traumatic injury. There are the obvious issues—his broken leg and hip, broken ribs and punctured lung. Those will heal with time. But it is the injuries we cannot see as easily that are causing the most trouble.”

She moves to the side of the bed again and lifts up his gown to show us the bruises. “These bruises are not from impact, they

are from internal bleeding. Jacob had a bad laceration to his spleen. The surgeons removed his spleen yesterday. He does not

need it to live, though its absence will make him more vulnerable to certain infections. Down the road, he will need extra

immunizations to prevent against those types of infections. He also had a deep liver laceration, which is more difficult to

fix. The surgeons think they’ve stopped the bleeding for now, but his blood pressure is still too low, and his blood counts

are not good. He will need another blood transfusion this morning.”

All the color is draining from Paul’s face. “Another one? But... didn’t you say it could be bad for his lungs to give him

more blood?”

Dr. K nods. “You’ve pinpointed the problem exactly,” she says. “We need to have Jacob on this medicine”—she points to one

IV bag—“to keep his blood pressure up. He needs this one”—she taps another bag—“to prevent infection, and this one to keep

him sedated. Unfortunately, all of this means pushing fluid into his body. When you have a pulmonary contusion—bruising to

the lungs,” she adds, seeing my confusion, “fluid can leak out of the tissues and cause pulmonary edema—fluid on the lungs.

Adding a transfusion on top of these three means more fluid, and more risk of respiratory failure.”

“But—can’t we do the transfusion tomorrow, then?” Paul asks.

Dr. K shakes her head. “Jacob’s blood count today is sixty-eight. It should be around one hundred and forty. Without enough red blood cells, he can’t get enough oxygen to his organs.”