“I just want to be alone,” she said.

Why, I thought. Isn’t that the last thing you want to be right now? Isn’t that what you’re crying about? “It’ll just be really quick,” I said. “I promise.”

I heard the door’s lock click to the open position. I burst in and, while simultaneously checking for external wounds, I collected all the medicine, our razors from the shower and any mildly pointy items. She stared at me without acknowledging my presence the whole time. I nodded to her and left the room, holding all of my objects in the fold of my shirt. The lock clicked again behind me. In that moment, I realized the glass could be shattered and used as a weapon if Lily chose to go to war with herself. I knocked again.

“What?”

“One more thing,” I said.

She unlocked the door. I nabbed the two glasses off of the side of the sink. She raised one eyebrow.

“I’m thirsty,” I said.

She laughed, painfully, like she couldn’t quite form the right sound.

We stayed up until five a.m. that morning. I spent the time fading between alertness and a fuzzy grayness as the sky turned from dawn to day. Ruby and I shared a bed, neither one of us wanting to be in a big, cold bed alone. I woke up every time she cursed and struck out with his fists. When I was awake, I was constantly thinking about Flint and how he was doing. I wondered if he would have known what to say to Lily to draw her out of the bathroom. All I could think of was, “Breakfast is here!” like I was the cook in some farmhouse banging a gong. She didn’t have windows, there was no way for her to tell whether it was morning or night.

Ruby rose as well. “It is not…”

I sat Lily down on the bed. “What are you going to do, Lily?”

She nodded. “I...Where...Where’s my phone?”

I smiled. A child of the new millenium. First thing when she comes to, she wants to check her phone.

I shuffled to the dresser, picked up her phone and tossed it towards Lily’s lap.

“How do I start?” she said.

“We’re over.” I said.

“I can’t give you any more chances,” Ruby said.

Lily jumped in. “I was the only one who believed in you. I hope someday you’ll understand how much pain you caused, but I won’t be there.”

We fell asleep two hours before our alarm went off. When we woke up, I realized Lily had slipped in between us on the bed. I wished we could all stay in this space, between chaos and resolution, night and day, anger and forgiveness. But it could not last and our alarm went off, encouraging us to shower before we showed our faces in front of every college EMS provider and their medical command physicians.

* * *

I felt like someone had packed sponges in my brain and poured syrup all over my body in the night. That is to say, I did not need encouragement to shower. We used up every second before arriving, only slightly disheveled at the lectures on the first convention level. Ruby shot off to go to Leaders of EMS, which she reminded me, that she was. I hesitated to remind her what else she was.

“You ready?” Lily said, already dragging me towards a room. “Hand traumas. They’re going to teach us about hand traumas.”

No one has ever said that sentence to me with more joy.

We bopped from lecture to lecture, soaking up knowledge from each person and their specialized skills. We learned about oxygen saturation and when to actually apply oxygen to patients, what to do when you’re a medical provider on a plane, and about the worst kinds of alcohol intoxications. I couldn’t stop thinking about John and Flint and Akul and Ruby. How had it gotten so complicated?

“Andi,” Lily said.

“What?”

“We’re leaving.”

I grimaced.

At lunch, I tried to convince myself that everything was alright. And it was, between myself Ruby and Lily. But when Akul, John and Sandy walked in, it became abundantly clear that it wasn’t.

They sat beside us and didn’t speak for the entire meal. That began the trend for the weekend, in which everyone who knew us ignored us. Lily was ignored because they were afraid she would burst into tears at any moment. I was ignored because Sandy had gotten John to be mad at me. And Ruby was ignored because Akul had chosen shunning as his punishment for betrayal. It started a trend for the rest of the weekend. We went to lectures and no one spoke to us. We went to their rooms to drink at night and no one spoke to us. I began to feel like I lived in a bubble. My head started to feel like my whole world, my imagination my only friend.

We arrived at school in one piece. When we backed up in the shoulder on the freeway, I was afraid we would die in some fiery death and the headline would read “EMT’s fight to save EMT’s but who can help those who can’t help themselves.” I tried to talk to John, but he refused to acknowledge me. The only thing I heard him say was “this is what you do to everyone else.”

I thought that was a little unfair but I didn’t say anything. Starting rows in cars was not something I was accustomed to doing. A remnant of driving in a car with my dad. In a car, I was never more than an arm’s length away and therefore never had the upper hand.