Extraordinary Means

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

SADIE

I WOKE TO beeping and pain and the smell of hospital. Lane was there, or maybe I just imagined him, telling me that I was in the medical building, that I was still at Latham. But it was the wrong part of Latham, the place you never wanted to wind up.

There was the pinch of an IV, and liquid flowing through it. It was all so hazy, so out of focus, a bad photograph of a blurry moment, and then darkness.

It felt like there were knives inside of me, straining to get out. My head throbbed as though something had punched a hole in it, and I imagined myself escaping through that hole, flying outside of the pain, and my body, and being done.

But I wasn’t done. I had so much left here. I had . . . something in my hand. A button. And the nurse was talking to me, saying . . . saying to push the button for morphine.

She explained as she helped me use it that it would take away the pain. But it wouldn’t, because I’d been at Latham long enough to know that pain can’t be taken away. It has to leave on its own. And I wasn’t sure mine was the type of pain that wanted to go away.

WHEN I WOKE again, it felt much later, but I wasn’t sure. I blinked up at the ceiling, trying not to cry from the horrible ache in my chest.

I groaned softly, and Lane was there again, bending over me with an anxious look in his eyes.

“Hi,” he said.

“You’re here,” I whispered.

“They tried to kick me out, but I put up a fight,” he said cheerfully, and then shrugged. “Not really. I’m two rooms down, I just snuck over.”

“Breaking the rules,” I murmured.

“Well, I learned from the best.”

Lane showed me how to raise my bed so I could sit up without actually sitting, and I realized he was wearing a hospital gown.

“You’re hurt,” I mumbled.

“Nah. They gave me a sedative and brought me up here to sleep it off. I’m pretending it hasn’t worn off yet, so I get to stay,” he said with a lopsided grin.

I tried to smile back, but I probably just winced.

Lane held a cup of water to my lips, and I attempted to take a sip.

“Wow, hot,” he joked as it spilled, wetting the front of my hospital gown.

“Keep it in your pants. I mean, gown,” I said.

Lane chuckled, then suddenly went serious.

“Sadie, what happened last night?” he asked.

At first, I was confused. What had happened? I was in the woods—and then—and then—oh God.

“Michael,” I whispered, the horror of it flooding back until I was drowning in the memory of it.

I told Lane everything that I remembered: that I’d gone alone to meet Michael, and that he’d told me he had TB, and it was my fault.

“That’s bullshit,” Lane said. “Who knows where he caught it?”

“I know,” I said. “But it was—he wasn’t himself. He was in a rage. He attacked me.”

“I’m going to kill him,” Lane said, shaking his head.

“Marina was right,” I murmured, suddenly exhausted from so much talking. “People are afraid of us. We’re their monsters. Except they’re the ones who are afraid of what they don’t understand. They’re the ones who ruin everything.”

I started to drift back to sleep.

“Sadie?” Lane said.

“Wake me when the nightmare’s over,” I told him, and then I floated off on a sea of morphine.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

LANE

I WANTED TO stay with Sadie, but Dr. Barons kicked me out, promising that her family would be there soon. When I’d asked him if she was going to be okay, he’d given me a patronizing smile and said that he sure hoped so.

It felt strange exiting the medical complex and walking through Latham’s quad and pathways on a Saturday afternoon, while everyone was lying in the grass with music and books and board games. I was out of sync with Latham House again, I realized. No longer a part of its rhythms.

I went straight back to Cottage 6 and knocked on Nick’s door. He opened it looking awful. He was wearing his ratty bathrobe, and his hair stuck out in a million directions. His face looked naked without his glasses.

“How is she?” Nick asked desperately. “They wouldn’t let me up.”

He looked so concerned, like Sadie was his to be concerned about, and in that moment I hated him. I hadn’t come to give him news about his friend. I’d—well—I’d come because it was his goddamned fault Sadie was lying in a hospital bed, hurt with what the nurse said were two broken ribs and a concussion, and if I couldn’t kill Michael, Nick was the next best thing.

“Not good,” I said.

“I should have gone with her.”

“Yeah,” I said, an edge to my voice. “You should have.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Nick asked.

“That you should have gone with Sadie like you were supposed to instead of getting drunk alone in your room.”

“Fuck you,” Nick said.

“Fuck you.”

I don’t remember hauling back and hitting him, but I must have, because he staggered backward with his hands over his face, cursing, and my fist stung like hell. Instantly, I felt better. But I couldn’t say the same for Nick.

“Shit! That hurts!” he whined, revealing a trickle of blood over his eyebrow.

“Might want to disinfect that cut,” I said. “Good thing you keep alcohol in your room.”

I WENT BACK to see Sadie that evening. The nurse didn’t want to let me in at first, but I kicked up such a fuss that Dr. Barons came down to see what was going on.

“Ah, Lane,” Dr. Barons said. “I’d like to speak with you in my office.”

So I followed him down the corridor to his office, where he grilled me on how exactly I’d known where to find Sadie.

I told him what I knew, about how she was meeting some guy Michael from town who worked at the Starbucks, although I didn’t know his last name. And then I’d filled in the part Sadie had told me, about how Michael had claimed he had TB and accused Sadie of giving it to him, and how he’d attacked her.

Dr. Barons sighed, looking grim.

“You’re sure about this?” he asked.

“Positive.”

He brought in the police next. Two middle-aged cops from town, who put on surgical masks before talking to me, then asked me to go over it again. The whole thing took forever, and I was anxious to get up to Sadie’s room and see how she was doing.

“Is there anyone else we should talk to?” the beefier cop asked.

I didn’t even hesitate before throwing Nick under the bus with that one.

DR. BARONS FINALLY took pity and let me go up to see Sadie, although not before making me put on a surgical mask and scrub the hell out of my hands.

Sadie’s family was already there. Her mom, young and pretty, with Sadie’s blond hair, filling out paperwork in a chair. Her sister, Erica, twelve and gangly and dark-haired, playing a game on her phone.

“You must be Lane,” Sadie’s mom said. Her eyes smiled at me from above her surgical mask. “I’m Naomi, Sadie’s mother.”

“Nice to meet you.” I almost stuck out my hand, a reflex, but remembered not to just in time.

“Thank you so much for staying with her this morning,” she said.

“Of course.”

While Sadie’s mom didn’t exactly seem thrilled to have me there, she at least let me stay. I told her that Sadie and I had been at summer camp together, too, and she asked me how I’d liked it. I lied politely and kept up the small talk, because I wanted her to like me, because I was afraid she’d ask me to leave.

I must have fallen asleep in the chair next to her bed, because when I woke up, Sadie was staring at me.

“You’re up,” I said, stretching.

“Shhhh,” she whispered. She looked slightly better, but still so pale. She tilted her head toward the hallway, eavesdropping.

Dr. Barons was out there, talking with Sadie’s mom just outside the doorway. He gravely mentioned the fractured ribs and the concussion. But then his voice dropped lower as he said that Sadie had suffered a small hemorrhage in the woods, brought on by the attack. He was worried that if it happened again, she wouldn’t survive it.