Free Twisted by Laurie Halse Anderson Page B

frame of her goggles. The coach ignored her and told us to take her to the trainer’s office.
     
    The office was like an emergency room, with a moaning soccer player bleeding from the mouth on one table and a shivering football player whose foot was stuck in a bucket of ice on another. We laid Hannah down on an empty table. I left messages for my parents at their offices and on their cell phones while the trainer, a short woman with red-rimmed glasses, checked out Hannah’s head.
    When she finished poking and asking questions, she washed her hands.
    “Well?” I asked.
    “Nothing critical, but she needs to be seen by a doctor.”
    Hannah tried to sit up. “It’s just a little headache. I have to get back.”
    Yoda gently pushed her down. “Forget it.”
    The trainer finished drying her hands. “He’s right. Your doctor will order an X-ray of the skull to rule out fractures. He might want an MRI, too, if he suspects bleeding on the brain.”
    “Her brain is bleeding?” Yoda asked, the color draining from his face.
    “Shhh, not so loud,” Hannah said.
    “I doubt it,” the trainer said. “But doctors like to order tests, and it’s better to be safe than sorry. So no more field hockey today. Are you eighteen yet, Tyler?”
    “In November,” I said. “Why?”
    She glanced at the clock. “If you were eighteen I could release her to you. We’ll keep trying to get ahold of your parents.”
     
    To say I was shocked when my father showed up an hour later doesn’t come close.
    Dad never showed up for emergencies, not ever. Not when I fell off my bike and needed stitches, not when I fell off my skateboard and needed pins in my arm. Not when Hannah had pneumonia so bad that after they saw the X-rays they put her in intensive care and Mom sobbed in the plastic chair and there was nobody to take me home because I was only five.
    But it was Dad standing over Hannah, brushing the hair off her forehead and talking to the trainer about what he should do next.
    “Where’s Mom?” Hannah asked, as confused as I was.
    “Her van broke down outside Hamilton,” Dad said. “Shhh.”
    Hannah’s good eye found me and asked, WTF? I shrugged. Dad was looking even rougher than usual, like he was in training for a marathon or was on chemotherapy. But he was there and that counted for something. Half a point, maybe.
    Then his cell phone rang. He glanced at the number.
    “I’ll be right back,” he told the trainer. “Have to take this call.”
    He stepped outside and closed the door, but we could hear him when he started yelling.
    “Is he talking to Mom?” Hannah whispered.
    I listened. “No, somebody named Stuart. It’s work.”
    She closed her eyes.
    When he came back in, the trainer gave Dad a piece of paper with instructions on it. We helped Hannah to her feet. She batted our hands away and grumbled.
    Hannah rode with Dad to the ER so a doc could check her out, just in case. Yoda wanted to go, too, but Dad gave him the evil eye and said this was a family matter.
    I wound up driving Yoda home in his car because he was so freaked out. Exploding Death Stars was one thing; watching your girlfriend get knocked out cold was another.

34.
    The concussion turned out to be minor. The only damage was that Hannah’s team lost and she had to sit out the next four games. She sat them out on Yoda’s lap. He claimed that her black eye was cute. If aliens had crawled out of my sister’s forehead and nested in her nose hair, he would have called it cute.
    The day after Hannah’s accident, Dad had to leave for some mysterious meeting in Omaha or Topeka or God Knows Where. He and Mom had a screaming match in the kitchen before he left. The postal look on his face when he stalked out to the taxi made me think I should steal the gun hidden in his bottom drawer and toss it in the river.
    Mom kept busy photographing dogs in Santa hats and antlers for other people’s Christmas cards. I helped her by combing the real-estate listings for