Wrecked Read Online Free PDF

ask it, like everything’s normal, like today’s just another day. My father releases me.
    “Because everybody’s incompetent,” he says. “And I’d rather deal with familiar idiocy than with unfamiliar idiocy.” It’s what he always answers, and it helps me pretend that my hands aren’t trembling and that I’m not sore all over and that I didn’t kill anyone.
    “How does your eye feel?” my mother asks. Which begins to ruin my pretending.
    “Like it has a toothache,” I tell her.
    “We leave for the ophthalmologist in half an hour.”
    “Okay,” I say.
    “Then we’ll see if you can visit Ellen.” Now my legs are trembling a little too. I sit down and cross my legs and arms, try to hold everything still.
    “Can I go wake up Jack?” I ask.
    “No,” they both say, right at the same time.
    Dr. Pluto is all business.
    “Hyphema,” he tells me and my mom. He looks more like a football player than an ophthalmologist. His whole head is shaved, and he’s huge. When he puts my face in this vise, his hand palms my head the way I’d palm a tennis ball.
    “Are you still here?” I ask the room. Because I can’t turn my head now.
    “Behind you,” my mom says from behind me and to the left. I didn’t care if she came in or not. She wanted to, though.
    First Dr. Pluto uses this machine to shine a vertical yellow light right at my eye.
    “This is called a slit lamp,” he tells me, even though I didn’t ask. When he’s done with that, he puts a drop in my eye, tells me the next procedure won’t hurt, and fiddles with the vise a little.
    “Does that feel okay?” he asks.
    “I guess,” I say. I mean, my head is in a vise.
    Now it’s a different machine. It moves closer and closer and closer, until it touches my eyeball really fast and there’s this beautiful bright blue light everywhere, and then it’s done.
    “I’ll need to see her every day to monitor the pressure and to make certain there’s no rebleeding,” Dr. Pluto tells my mother while she helps me get the strainer back on. “A hyphema is really just blood in the anterior chamber. It’s a tear in the eye, probably from the air bag.”
    My mom asks him something, but I stop paying attention.
    The air bag. The smell of new plastic. “Hooow looong, hoow hong, hoow loong …” Screaming, stopped.
    Ellen’s mom owns a women’s clothing store called Cinnamon Toast. According to the tags of speckled brown paper on each item, Cinnamon Toast specializes in flowing styles and natural fibers. Usually Mrs. Gerson is wearing something in flowing style and natural fiber, and today is the same as always. Muted green slacks and a pale lavender blouse. She reaches for my face as soon as I walk into the fifth-floor waiting room. She cups my cheeks in her palms.
    “That thing is awful,” she tells me, meaning the shield, and she pulls me into lavender. “I’m so glad you’re all right.” She smells like Ellen’s house: lemons and perfume. It’s nice but embarrassing to be in her arms, so I ease away after a second.
    “Are you all right?” Ellen’s father asks, holding me, straight armed, by the shoulders and staring at my face. Aching in my eye. Aching in my throat.
    “Yeah,” I tell him. His eyes are swollen and bloodshot. “How’s Ellen?”
    “Well,” Mrs. Gerson answers in this bright, fake voice. “She’s got a tube in her mouth to help her breathe, a tube in her chest to reinflate her lung, an IV for antibiotics, an IV for pain, a catheter to help her pass water, a cast on her leg, and nothing for her ribs. They’ll heal on their own.”
    “A collapsed lung is bad, right?” I say. Mrs. Gerson’s attitude is confusing me. It doesn’t match Mr. Gerson’s face.
    “She’s going to be fine, Anna,” Mrs. Gerson tells me. I see a nurse behind that long counter glance up and try to make eye contact with her, and I see her refuse to make eye contact back. That starts me shaking so hard both of the Gersons notice. Ellen’s mom