With brown wolfish eyes Parker watched me. I looked everywhere else. The taupe walls. The beeping machines. The television suspended in the corner. The clean, uncluttered surfaces where cards and flowers were meant to be displayed. It wasn’t that no one had sent him stuff, I knew people who had. But the cheer they were meant to offer was nowhere to be seen. I knew why too. He didn’t think he deserved it.

As he pushed down on the heels of his palms to position himself more upright in the bed, he looked to be in great pain. I watched closely for any motion from the bend of his hips to the soles of his feet—there wasn’t any.

“Hey, Doc, mind grabbing me a Coke or Sprite from the vending machine?”

“Sounds good. Serena, you want one too?”

I shook my head. Doc waved off Parker’s attempt to pay before heading down the hall.

Relief that we were alone spread over Parker’s face, but I didn’t understand why. It’s not like we were friends.

“I think my mom’s your nurse,” I muttered when the silence stretched a little too thin.

“She’s the best one.” I wasn’t expecting that, but I never doubted her professional abilities. “I was hoping you’d stop by. This morning when we were talking about you, she mentioned you might.”

Mom had talked to him about me? I couldn’t believe my yappy mother had been babbling to him. God, what else had she said? Had she talked to him about Kori? Told him, just like she had with Lexi and Cole, that I still hadn’t talked to anybody about her death? Realizing what a bad idea it was to come here, I turned to leave. I’d figure out some excuse to tell Doc.

Parker called out, “Hey, wait. Stop.” And I did, in the doorway. The empty hall waited patiently in front of me.

“Don’t be upset with your mom. She wasn’t, like, telling me a bunch of stuff about you or anything.”

“I’m sure,” I muttered.

“Kori talked about you, though. A lot.”

Through my teeth, I asked, “When you were getting high with her?”

“Yeah, when we would get high together.”

“Right. Whatever.” Then, because I was there already and I wanted to know, I asked, “What were you doing that night? Where did you take her after the kegger?”

“You shouldn’t be worried about that.”

I realized that it might be his meds making him so annoying, but my patience wasn’t going to hold out much longer. “Well, I am. It’s important,” I said as I walked back toward his bed.

“You’ve always been worried about her, she was always worried about you.”