Story code: ST-001244
Part 3: The Diagnosis
The metallic, overwhelming stench of raw gasoline tore through the cool night air, cutting straight to the back of Kevin’s throat. He stared down at the jagged piece of the silver rearview mirror resting on his highlighters. Dried blood crusted the sharpest edge.
He reached out and touched it. The glass bit into his thumb.
The sudden, sharp pain acted like a physical switch in his brain. The cinderblock walls of his mental alibi-the safe, quiet library basement-shattered into a thousand pieces. The crushing weight of dissociation collapsed, letting the actual memory of two in the morning flood back in with violent clarity.
He hadn’t been in the library at two. He had walked out to the intersection of 5th and Main to clear his head, suffocating under the panic of his chemistry midterm. He remembered the screech of tires. He remembered the deafening crunch of metal against concrete. He remembered pulling out his phone, putting the screen between himself and the horrific reality of the fire, using the camera lens to distance himself from the dying man inside. He remembered recognizing Eric’s jacket. He remembered the blinding panic that followed, scooping up the broken mirror piece from the asphalt in a blind stupor before sprinting back to the library to hide.
The text message on his phone burned in his hand. Someone in that crowd of onlookers had seen him run. Someone had watched him shove the evidence into his bag.
Kevin zipped the pouch shut. His hands stopped shaking, replaced by a hollow, sickening calm. The lie was over.
He didn’t wait for the campus shuttle. He hailed a rideshare from the edge of the quad, sitting in the back seat in total silence as the car sped toward St. Jude’s Hospital. The driver kept glancing in the rearview mirror, but Kevin only stared at his own blood-stained thumb.
The fourth-floor waiting room of the burn unit was bathed in brutal, humming fluorescent light. It smelled of heavy duty floor wax and stale coffee. Kevin pushed through the heavy wooden double doors.
His parents were the only people in the room. His mother sat on a vinyl sofa, her face buried in her hands, her shoulders shaking rhythmically. His father stood by the window, staring out at the dark city skyline. He looked like he had aged a decade since Thanksgiving.
His father turned at the sound of the doors. The raw grief on his face instantly mutated into a rage so absolute it seemed to suck the oxygen from the room.
“I told you,” his father whispered, his voice trembling with a terrifying, coiled violence as he took a heavy step forward. “I told you what I would do if you came here.”
“David, stop,” his mother choked out, looking up. Her eyes were completely bloodshot. She looked at Kevin, not with anger, but with a devastated, desperate confusion. “Kevin. Why? You were there. We saw the video.”
“Dad, wait,” Kevin said, his voice cracking as his father closed the distance between them.
Kevin dropped his heavy backpack onto the linoleum. It hit the floor with a loud thud. He unzipped the main compartment and pulled out the crumpled organic chemistry midterm, the giant red forty-three glaring under the harsh lights.
He held it out like a shield.
His father stopped, his fists clenched at his sides, staring at the paper. “What is this? What is wrong with you?”
“You took the EMT basics course last summer, Kevin,” his mother pleaded, standing up, her voice rising in pitch. “You know triage. You know trauma response. You’re our premed student. You could have pulled him out. You could have done something. Why did you just stand there recording your brother?”
Kevin looked at his mother. The absolute faith in her eyes was worse than his father’s rage. It was the crushing weight he had been carrying for two years, the weight that had finally broken his mind on the street corner at two in the morning.
“I didn’t take the EMT course,” Kevin said. The words tasted like ash.
His father’s brow furrowed, the anger faltering for a fraction of a second. “What are you talking about? We paid for the certification.”
“I used the money to pay for a tutor,” Kevin breathed, tears finally spilling over his eyelashes and tracking down his pale cheeks. “And it didn’t work. I failed.”
He dropped the midterm onto a stack of waiting room magazines.
“I’m failing everything,” Kevin said, his voice echoing in the sterile room. “I failed organic chemistry. I failed biology last semester. I was put on academic probation in November. There is no medical school. There is no science program. I’m getting kicked out of the university at the end of this week.”
His mother stared at him, her mouth slightly open. “No. No, you sent us your grades…”
“I photoshopped them,” Kevin sobbed, his chest heaving as the entire fabricated reality of his life collapsed onto the hospital floor. “I photoshopped everything because you took out the second mortgage for me. I didn’t know how to tell you it was all for nothing.”
His father stepped back, as if Kevin had just struck him in the face. “The crash. The video.”
“I was on the street,” Kevin wept, wrapping his arms around his own torso. “I saw him hit the pole. I saw the fire. I pulled out my phone because I was terrified. And when I saw it was Eric… I froze. I just froze.”
“You have training,” his mother whispered, violently shaking her head in denial. “You know what to do.”
“I have nothing!” Kevin screamed, the sound tearing his throat raw. “I don’t know how to do a primary assessment! I don’t know how to extract someone from a burning wreck! I’m not a doctor! I just stood there because I didn’t know what to do, and I was too much of a coward to try!”
The echoes of his shout died against the acoustic ceiling tiles.
His mother slowly sank back down onto the vinyl sofa, staring blankly at the crumpled chemistry test. His father didn’t move, his hands falling limply to his sides, looking at his youngest son as if staring at a total stranger. The rhythmic hiss of the ventilation system was the only sound left in the room.