Free WILDly by wildly Page B

lying there motionless was shocking. I couldn’t believe how
weak he looked, as pale as the sheets, with the heart monitor
beeping insistently in the background. It had me really upset, so I
could understand why Lisa was going bonkers.
    She clearly
knew the Reds, because when she saw all of us, she tried to smile.
Alex looked bad, but so did Lisa. She was pale with bright red
cheeks, red puffy eyes; she was sloppily dressed and her hair was
standing up all over the place. She tried to speak, but instead she
started to cry.
    I blamed myself
for leaving her over the weekend. I should have stayed with her for
support. After all, she was a very good friend. And to think that
Alex had been with me for a good part of the weekend, when she’d
been the one worrying about him! Guilt pushed up bitter into my
mouth. For the second time I vowed to stay away from Alex on Lisa’s
behalf.
    Only after
Peter hugged her and told her over and over that Alex was going to
be fine, did she calm down a little.
    I felt even
guiltier when I found out that Lisa had brought him in some time
during the early morning hours, after he had phoned her and told
her that he was getting worse. She drove all the way out, helped
him into the car and brought him here. Apparently he fell into a
coma shortly after they arrived at hospital.
    What bothered
me the most was the fact that she must have seen me there, in the
cabin alone with Alex. And that in the midst of all her trouble and
his illness, the two of them thought about me, because they left me
Alex’s car, clothes and the GPS to get home. These two people had
been having real problems of their own, but they’d put me first.
They had supported me despite my childish tantrum-attack.
    Oh, I felt like
such a selfish idiot. And to be honest, I was very nervous to see
her reaction towards me.
    We all stayed a
while and then persuaded Lisa to take a little break from the
hospital. She needed something to eat and a bit of rest, seeing
that she had been guarding his bed since who-knows-when this
morning. I wanted to ask her how she was holding up, but I couldn’t
get myself so far; I was too afraid of her response.
    We left the
hospital, and on our way to the dorm we stopped at a roadhouse to
get Lisa something to eat. We arrived thereafter at the dorm with a
fleet of cars: mine, Alex’s Lexus, Lisa’s little white Mazda and
the Reds’ two Mercs. It was conspicuous but luckily it was after
ten on a Sunday evening and quiet.
    The guys
insisted on checking our rooms first, but juniors weren’t allowed
to have any boys in their rooms. So we had to sneak them in,
especially as we had parked in front, overlooked by all the senior
rooms. In spite of the fact that I had vowed not to use the
emergency stairs again, there wasn’t any other option. I definitely
didn’t want to risk public humiliation or the prospect of the Reds
potentially witnessing an embarrassing scene with a statue. With a
crack in my voice, I mentioned the alternative.
    No one looked
intimidated when they saw the stairs, not even Lisa. Maybe she was
too tired to care. But for me, this time was even worse than
before: these four guys weren’t exactly lightweights. Lisa went up
first, slowly, and then the guys went up one at a time while I
waited below. There was one little step that really squeaked, close
to the top. It bent under Benjamin’s weight, and made a loud
knocking sound. Luckily it didn’t give and everybody made it
safely.
    The guys walked
though the emergency door with us and checked our rooms thoroughly
before doing the hallway, the stairs and the bathrooms. Peter and
Leo would take turns to guard the dorm during the night and
Benjamin and Wilfred would do the next day. It had been a long day
for them as well and they left immediately.
    Lisa fell onto
her bed, face down.
    Then there it
was, the awkward moment that I feared, alone with Lisa. She
definitely had hard feelings towards me, because she pretended that
I wasn’t