Chapter 7

Brrrrriiiiinnnggg!

That’s one sound you really don’t want to hear at three in the morning. It’s probably a wrong number, but you can’t just sleep through it, because it might be really bad news.

I waited a moment to see if either of my roommates would answer the phone, but neither made a move apart from loud snores. Crap.

I lugged myself out of my bunk, and grabbed the phone on the third ring. “Yeeehnng?”

“Jason?” Crap.

“Unnhhh…yeah…who’s this.”

“Jason, it’s Erin. Can you meet me at the hospital?”

I was suddenly wide awake. “The hospital?”

“Yes.” She could hardly get the words out, she was crying so hard. “It’s…it’s Hannah…she…I don’t know what’s going to happen…”

“Ok, wait a second.” I was already pulling on my jeans, holding the phone between my chin and shoulder. “What happened? Is she sick? She thought she might be coming down with something.”

“No, it’s…” She gulped. “I don’t want to talk about it over the phone. The ambulance just left, and I’m going in my car. I can swing by and pick you up if you can be standing in front of your dowm in about one minute.”

“Yeah, sure, no problem. See you in a second.” Click.

I grabbed a t-shirt and a jacket as I ran out the door, shoving my feet into a worn pair of flip-flops as I went. Erin pulled up with a screech of tires, I hopped in the car and we were off. The hospital was only a three-minute drive from campus, but it felt like an hour.

“So, um…” I paused, trying to moisten my dry mouth, “what, uh, you know…”

Erin’s tears began to flow again, and I could see that she was struggling to steer the car. “Oh Jason, I never saw it coming. None of us did. I mean, I knew her life was kind of tough, but she seemed to be dealing with it all so well…she seemed…you know, happy. She seemed ok.”

A ten-ton block of ice seemed to have settled in my stomach, but I didn’t want to believe that it could be true. Not Hannah.

“I was late getting back, because I’d been out to dinner with Travis, and we’d stayed out later than we meant. So I got home, and when I opened the door, I saw that Hannah was in bed, but she’d left a desk lamp on. She usually does that when she goes to bed before I get home, she’s always been so thoughtful…” Erin made an odd choking sound, but swallowed, and composed herself as she pulled into the hospital parking lot. “I looked over at her, and she just seemed so…still. And she was so pale, she was almost white. I didn’t think too much of it, because she said she thought she might be getting sick, but then…”

I could see she was going to have a hard time getting the rest of the story out, so I unbuckled my seat belt and opened the door. “C’mon, let’s get inside. I’m sure the doctors are going to need any information you can give them.” She nodded, and stepped out of the car. We walked through the emergency room doors, into an unexpected quietness. I guess it wasn’t really a busy time of night for them, but I had kind of expected a great hustle and bustle. There must have been, behind the double doors at the far end of the reception room, but we couldn’t see any of it.

Erin walked up to the nurse on duty, who looked up, face slack with boredom and the lateness of the hour. “Yes, can I help you?”

"Yes, please, my roommate was just brought in, from the college. Do you have any information on her?”

“Her name?”

“Hannah. Hannah Billing. She’s only seventeen, the ambulance only left the college about five minutes ago, she must have just come in.”

“Oh, ok, that one. I’m afraid there’s no information at the moment, the doctors are doing all they can. If you’ll wait here, they’ll tell you when there’s any news. Also, I imagine that the police will want a statement later.” She turned back to her paperwork.

“Here, Erin, let’s go sit on that couch over there, ok?” I took her arm and guided her over to the couch; she looked like she was about to collapse. As we sat down, I said, “Ok, Erin, I know you just want to curl up and cry, but I need to know what happened. You said you came home and found her in bed. What happened then? Why did you call the ambulance?”

“I…she…” Erin paused, hand over her mouth to collect her thoughts, then continued. “I just thought she was really deeply asleep. But then I noticed…Her bedspread is this really lovely quilted blanket that she made when she was in high school. I think it helped her get through her parents’ divorce. It’s a rich cream color, with little pink rosettes all over it. I noticed that there was a stain on the edge of it. I thought that was odd, because she was so careful about that blanket, so I leaned over to get a better look at it. It..Jason, it was blood.”

“Blood…?”

“Yes…I yanked the cover back, and she was almost swimming in it..” She seemed to be fighting down an urge to vomit, but looked up at the ceiling for a moment, closed her eyes, and continued. “She had a bottle in one hand, and a razor in the other. She’d taken an old prescription of her father’s, blood thinners, and had finished off the bottle. I don’t know how many were in there. Then, she’d waited for them to take effect, laid down on the bed, covered herself, and cut her wrists. I guess she wanted to make sure she would be dead before anyone found her.”

“She….she did it to herself…?” My mind seemed to be made of rock, I couldn’t seem to make any of this real. “But….why? I thought she was…”

“Happy. I know. We all did. I mean, I know things were tough, and she was tired from working part-time and going to school, but…Yeah. She seemed ok…”

We lapsed into silence; what was there to say? I glanced up at the clock: twenty after three. Oh God. Simultaneous pauses seem to happen on the hour, twenty after, and forty after. I barked out a dry laugh, then laid my head down on the sterile green couch and wept.

At three forty-eight, a doctor came through the double doors, and headed over to us. I wondered numbly how he’d known who was waiting for news on Hannah, then dimly realized that there were no other college-age people in the waiting room.

“You came in with Hannah Billings, right?” We both nodded.

“Is she going to be ok, doctor? Did you get her wrists stitched up?”

He sighed, and sat down on the far end of the couch. “I wish there was an easier way to say this, but there isn’t. Hannah died at three twenty this morning.”

No. Oh dear God, no. This isn’t the way it’s supposed to work. Suicides are supposed to be teenagers who go around wearing black, writing crap poetry about the tragedy that is life. It’s not supposed to happen to girls working their way through college, with soft brown hair, and a hand-made quilt, who look beautiful in pink sundresses.

“We did everything we could to save her, but she’d simply lost too much blood, and her heart wouldn’t start. Even if it had, there probably would have been extensive brain damage. The blood thinners alone might have been enough to kill her, but we’re still not sure how many she took.” He sighed and rubbed his hands rapidly across his face. “There’s not really anything else to say. I don’t know how many of these teen suicides I’ve had to deal with, but I still never know what to say. Do you have any way of notifying her parents, or guardians?”

“Oh god, no…I don’t even know her mom’s name…I guess we should tell the RD…maybe she’ll know what to do…” Erin seemed as distant and disconnected as I felt.

“Ok, well, just a moment, then you can go home. Nurse Phillps?” The nurse on duty looked up, expectant. “Can I have two information forms?” “Of course, doctor, here you go.”

“Now, you two just fill these out so we can contact you. Tell your RD to call the hospital in the morning, and ask for Dr. Reksin.”

Somehow, Erin and I managed to write down our contact information and turn it in to the nurse. Since I was in slightly less shock than Erin, I drove us back to the school. I parked her car near her dorm, then walked back to my room and fell into bed.