What My Best Friend Did Read Online Free Page A

ahead of me, not this.
    I drop my head and dart past them as soon as I’m able to. Scanning the waiting room, I can see no sign of Tom, only a drunk verbally abusing the receptionist, so I step away hurriedly, moving toward the corridor that I think will lead me to the ICU.
    But once I’m back up there, I pause outside the heavy doors leading on to the unit. He will be here by now, won’t he? I don’t want him in there without me, but I don’t want to sit waiting alone either.
    The doors unexpectedly swing open, nearly hitting me as a doctor marches through with energy. “Sorry!” he says automatically, though he also frowns slightly as if he’s thinking, “Bloody stupid place to stand,” so I walk through. I can’t just stand there like a weirdo doing nothing.
    The nurse looks up expectantly and then smiles with recognition as I enter the room. Tom is not there. I don’t look at Gretchen, just put my bag back under the chair and sink down on to it uncomfortably. As I wipe my nose, which is streaming from the cold outside, I wonder for a moment if the nurse can tell I’ve been crying. But she’d expect me to have been, wouldn’t she?
    Eventually, after staring at the floor for what feels like forever,I shoot a glance at Gretchen. I can’t help it, I don’t want to, but she looks just the same as when I left. Calm and, ironically, untroubled—but equally, she looks sick, colorless. Once, I would have wanted her to be sitting up in bed, excited and shrieking, a wide smile across her face as I pushed her down the corridors, making doctors and nurses leap to safety as we hurtled past them. That couldn’t happen. Not now.
    Oh, if I could go back and change it all, I would! I really, really would. I would give anything to be us just starting out again. I should have done what she asked, I know I should have. She needed me and I didn’t do it …
    I can feel myself creasing and crumpling up inside. I’m scared and the chair suddenly feels like it’s shrinking under me—the whole room feels too small. Gretchen looks scarily fragile, vulnerable, and yet I am too terrified to touch her. My own friend.
    I start to cry, and that is, unfortunately, how Tom finds me as he bursts into the room in a creased work suit, tie askew, shaken and breathless from having run in to find us.

THREE
     
    H e visibly blanches at the sight of Gretchen hooked up to all manner of machines and a drip. Literally stops in his tracks in the doorway, like Road Runner screeching to a halt.
    The nurse opens her mouth to say something, but I’m too quick for her. The reassuring sight of someone so familiar to me is totally overwhelming, and through my tears I say, “Oh Tom! You’re here!” as I’m midway up and out of my chair. It scrapes back underneath me and the noise goes through all of our teeth, but I don’t care—I just fling myself into his arms so hard I almost knock him off his feet.
    He automatically wraps his arms around me, hugs me. It’s tight and reassuring and he presses me very tightly to his chest. I can feel the shape of his pec muscles under his clothes and even though I want to stay there, because he’s hugging me so close, all I can breathe in is shirt, so reluctantly I pull back and, as I do,his arms loosen around me and drop to his side. I look up at him and he’s just staring at Gretchen, shocked rigid.
    “What the hell has happened?” he whispers. All of his usual poise and calm seems to have drained away. “No one would tell me anything—I was terrified.”
    I gulp and try to get myself under control as tears slip off my nose.
    “What’s wrong?” he says, stunned, unable to take his eyes off her. And then he repeats himself. “What’s happened?”
    I hesitate. I have to be really careful. “I got a call, I went around to the flat … There were pills everywhere and …” My voice dissolves into a mess of tears.
    He pales and opens his mouth to speak, but the nurse gets there first.
    “Can we