Falling Read Online Free PDF Page B

not!” I snapped, frightened. “You must not have been in the car. Or you must have ... been thrown.”
    “How long ago was this?” he asked.
    “A week and a half,” I replied quietly.
    “Didn’t anybody wonder where I was for the last week and a half?” he asked, tearing up again.
    I couldn’t help it, I started crying again too.
    “We thought it was you in the car. We buried you a week ago.”
    Linc’s face was paling and he didn’t say anything for a long while. “Like, with a funeral and everything?”
    I just nodded.
    “Everybody thinks I’m dead?” My strong, macho brother trembled and turned white. “So, if I’m not dead, then who did you guys bury in my grave?”
    Now the blood was draining from my face. I could feel it. “I don’t know,” I whispered.
    Grandma got up and left the curtained room. I was too shocked to chase after her or to be grateful when she returned with a nurse.
    I explained in a whisper a short history of what had seemed to happen and she left to get the guy with the clipboard. He in turn listened and left to call the state police. When the two cops showed up, they were already familiar with the accident and seemed as confused as I felt. They only talked with us for a few minutes before leaving to call a supervisor.
    The afternoon dragged into evening. Linc was transferred to a private room, thankfully complete with a real armchair and couch. The interviews with the police continued and were supplemented by exams with more doctors and nurses suddenly concerned Linc may have been thrown from a car. Both were interrupted occasionally by the lab people drawing more blood or a tech coming to take him for another X-ray or CAT scan. I left the room only once, to call my home answering machine and change the message to tell my dad to call the number to the hospital. He had a cell he brought with him on the road but it almost never had service.
    Grandma and Linc were both asleep when the nurse finally came to tell me I had a call.
    “Hey Dad,” I said quietly, aware everyone at the nurses’ station was pretending not to listen.
    “Bixby, what the hell is going on?” he bellowed into the phone.
    I turned my back on my audience and cleared my throat. How was I supposed to explain his dead son had come back to life and that we needed him when none of that made any sense? Dead people don’t come back to life and we hadn’t needed Dad since he had pretty much bowed out of our daily lives after mom died. “Me and Grandma are at the hospital in Grand Rapids. There was some awful mistake—well, not awful now, but it has been for the last couple weeks. Well, I mean, now it’s going to be awful for someone else—”
    “Bixby!” my dad shouted.
    “Linc’s not dead,” I blurted out. “He’s hurt, and he must have been in the car crash and he has a head injury and doesn’t remember anything but he’s not dead,” I said in rush.
    “I’m in Iowa,” my dad said. “I’ll be there in five hours.”
    “Kay,” I whispered before he slammed the phone down.
    I snuck back into Linc’s room but could have probably paraded in on elephants. They were both out cold, snoring like it was a competition.
    I curled up in the armchair with a thin blanket and closed my eyes. I felt myself starting to drift when a little icicle of fear stabbed me in the chest.
    I had no idea what was going to happen when I fell asleep.
    I popped the chair out of the reclining position. There was no way I was going to let myself go to sleep.
    Morning, and my dad, found me red eyed but awake. I got a cursory hug from him then he went to stand awkwardly at the foot of Lincoln’s bed. I excused myself to do what freshening up I could with water and the caustic soap provided in the tiny bathroom.
    Dad was talking to a doctor in the hallway when I made my way back. I overheard the words “recovery” and “miracle” but dad shooed me away with a glare when I tried to stop and listen.
    “Everything okay?” I