by Maya Cross
The pedestrian light turned green, so I began to cross as I replied. I got less than halfway before it happened.
If I'd been looking up, perhaps I'd have seen the car coming. If my ears had been free, perhaps I'd have heard it. As it was, though, the only warning I had was a brief moment of terror as the roar of the engine finally penetrated my music. I had just long enough to realize that the sound was far too loud and far too close to be an idling car, and then something slammed into me and the world went black.
Chapter Twenty One
Logan
I didn't remember the ride to the hospital. There was a phone call, and then everything just went dark. All I have from that period is an overpowering sense of terror. I've never felt something so all-encompassing before, like I was submerged in it a hundred feet down. I wanted to keep sinking, to go so deep that the darkness swallowed me, drowned me. Anything was better than what I was feeling at that moment. But, of course, it wasn't that easy.
Somehow, I got there without incident. The doctors couldn't tell me much. They used words like "critical condition" and "surgery," and a hundred others that all just blurred together to tell me that everything was fucked. "All we can do is wait," they said.
And so that's what I did.
Everything about the hospital was too bright, too vivid, like some horrible lucid nightmare. The sickly white of the walls seemed to leer at me, sucking the life from my muscles. Antiseptic stung my nostrils. I hate those places. I hate how haunted they feel, like there's an army of ghosts cursing and wailing in every shadow. Nowhere is closer to death.
Charlie was there with me. Joy too. I think maybe they took me there, although I couldn't be sure. They talked and tried to calm me, but they were dim and blurry and unimportant. Only one person existed for me at that moment, and she was fighting for her life somewhere in a room full of strangers. They wouldn't let me see her. I wasn't sure I could handle it if they did.
My stomach churned. I had an overpowering urge to do something, like I could talk or think or fight my way through this. I wanted to force my way into the operating theater and command the doctors to save her. I wanted to find the guy who'd hit her and beat him to a bloody pulp. But none of that would make any difference. This was out of my hands. It made me feel so impotent, so helpless.
Everything was coming full circle. I'd spent years drowning in death and blood and loss, more than any man should have to tolerate. And when it was all over, I promised myself I was done with that. I couldn't handle any more. People died. It was a fact of life. But I didn't have to be close to them. I didn't have to care.
And then she'd come along, and suddenly that wasn't true anymore.
I tried to fight it, God knows I did, but it was like wrestling gravity, a pointless battle. I think I was lost the moment I met her.
Part of me had been expecting this from day one. Nothing ever lasts, I knew that. The most painful thing wasn't that this happened. It was that I let myself believe that maybe it wouldn't.
"This isn't fair," I said, to no one in particular. The words didn't feel adequate. It was well beyond unfair. If there was anything resembling karma in the universe, it surely owed me better than this. I'd paid my fucking dues a thousand times over.
Charlie let out a weary sigh. Right now, he looked every bit of his fifty five years. "No, it's not."
"A fucking car." I shook my head. "It doesn't make any sense." This wasn't supposed to happen here. There were no bullets, no IEDs. This was the real world, where people were supposed to be able to walk down the street without thinking twice. It was meant to be safe here. Except now I saw that for the bullshit it was. Death lurked around every corner. Maybe it wouldn't come today, or tomorrow, but it would come. I'd lose her eventually. That was a guarantee.
"She's strong. She'll get through this," said Joy, although I'm not sure if it was for my benefit or hers. I wanted to believe her, but I'd been in this situation too many times before. Hope is a dangerous thing. When the pain came — and it would — it made things so much worse.
What felt like a lifetime later, someone coughed from the doorway. My eyes darted up.
"She's out of theater," the doctor said. He was new, maybe one of the ones who'd actually been in surgery with her. He looked like I felt; skin pale, eyes sunken, fingers trembling. A wreck of a man.
I couldn't even ask the question. My lips wouldn't form the words. I just stared.
Charlie took the reins. "How is she?"
The doctor ran a hand over his face. "We did what we could, relieved the pressure in her head. Her internal injuries were severe, a lot of bleeding, a punctured lung, several broken bones. For now, she's stable. When her body recovers a little, we'll take her back in for more surgery. In the meantime, all we can do is wait."
Hearing that phrase again made something snap inside me. "I've been waiting for hours!" I yelled, shooting to my feet. "Is that really the best you can do? You're doctors, you're meant to have more to offer than that!"
I knew I sounded like an asshole, but it didn't matter. All the emotion bubbling away inside me needed an outlet or it was going to destroy me.
The doctor took my attack with well-practiced tolerance. "I know this is hard, and I'm sorry I don't have better news. Unfortunately, it's a slow process. We can only do so much before we start doing more harm than good. She's young and healthy, and that helps. Now she needs time to heal. Try to stay positive."
I wanted to say more. I wanted to scream and yell and tear him limb from limb, but a solid hand fell on my shoulder and squeezed, and I felt something loosen in my chest.
"We appreciate everything you've done," said Charlie from behind me.
It wasn't this man's fault. He was just trying to help.
I closed my eyes and sucked in a deep breath. "Can we see her?" I asked.
He nodded. "She's not conscious, but I can take you to her room."
The walk felt impossibly tiring. We were led through a maze of sterile corridors and murmuring voices, until the doctor eventually stopped outside a closed door. "This is it. I should warn you, she's been through a lot. She isn't going to look like herself."
I nodded, words failing me again.
"I have other patients to check in on, but you can call a nurse if you need anything."
I stood by the door for what felt like a lifetime. I didn't want to see this. It made the whole nightmare so real.
Charlie sensed my hesitation. "Maybe we should come back—"
"No." I couldn't break. Grace needed me.
I reached for the handle.
The doctor was right. The girl in the bed barely resembled the Grace I knew. Her body was a terrifying network of gauze, tape and tubes. I stepped closer, struggling to breathe as my eyes tracked across bruised skin, a sickening collage of cuts and purple swelling. She seemed impossibly small. I wanted to scoop her up and pull her against me, but she looked like she might fall apart at the slightest breeze. It was a horrifying sight, but not an unfamiliar one.
I swallowed hard as my mind traveled involuntarily back to Ace. He'd looked like Grace did now: a broken, unnatural shadow of who he used to be. That room could have been a twin of the one I stood in now. Stale light, sparse furniture, a wall of machines whirring and beeping while they fought to keep death at bay. I sat in that room with him for twenty four hours, praying and begging anyone that would listen to save him. But it did no good. He slipped away. They always slip away.
I realized I was shaking. Not just a tremble, but an uncontrollable, body-wracking convulsion. This was a mistake. I couldn't be here. I couldn't do this again. I'd promised myself I wouldn't have to. If it were anyone else, I think maybe I'd have been okay. I could have summoned that comfortable numbness and let it all just wash over me. But I couldn't watch Grace die. Not her. I wouldn't survive that.
In a heartbeat I was through the door and then out onto the street. Joy was yelling something behind me, but it was just noise in the background. Everything inside
me was at war. Guilt surged in my stomach. Leaving was a betrayal. It was the worst thing I'd ever done. I tried to will my legs to stop, but they wouldn't.
I wasn't strong enough to be there for her, just like I hadn't been strong enough to reject her, and now we were both going to pay the price.
Chapter Twenty Two
Grace
Everything hurt. For a while, that was all I was aware of. I drifted in and out of consciousness, catching snippets of the world along the way. Concerned voices, crying, people poking and prodding. I knew I should be able to put all of that together into a picture of what was happening, but my brain wasn't working properly. I felt like I were floating, and any time I tried to grasp a concrete thought it just drifted away on the wind. I wasn't even sure I was awake at all. It felt like a dream.
Time passed. I couldn't say how long. Gradually, I began to become more lucid. I opened my eyes to find myself lying on a bed in a drab white room. There was a TV bolted to the wall in one corner and a bag of clear fluid hanging near my right arm. A hospital. I felt an inordinate amount of happiness that I managed to find that word.
As the fog faded from my mind, questions began to replace it. What the hell had happened to me? Despite the giddy euphoria that wrapped my mind like a warm blanket, I could tell something was seriously wrong. There was an undercurrent of pain lapping just below the surface, held at bay but not vanquished. A quick glance down at my torso confirmed my fears. At first, I felt like I were looking at someone else. My body was all bandages and bones. I almost laughed at how ridiculous it was, to think it might belong to me. I couldn't possibly be this thin, this damaged.
I tried to drag myself into a sitting position, but even that slight movement sent a lance of agony through my chest. I groaned, and then coughed. My throat felt like someone had used it to sand back a chair. Perhaps it really was my body.
A few moments later, a nurse appeared in the doorway. "Easy now," she said, striding over to check my wounds. "You've been through a lot. You need to move slowly." She was a kind looking woman of about forty, and she wore one of those genuinely compassionate smiles that seems like it would take a hurricane to remove.
"What happened?" I rasped, sounding like a lifetime smoker on her deathbed. Panic was rising in my stomach now. All I'd done was shift my body a few inches and it felt like I'd torn myself in half.
She studied me for several seconds, as if assessing how much truth I could take. "You were in an accident, but you're going to be fine. The doctor will be very happy to see you awake and talking."
That didn't ring any bells at all. The last thing I remembered was leaving my shift at The Apollo.
"How long?" I asked, feeling my eyes growing heavy. She was right. I needed to take it easy. Even the simple act of talking was exhausting.
The nurse licked her lips. "Three weeks."
Three weeks. God. That was terrifying. An entire chunk of my life effectively gone without a trace.
I sucked in a long breath and summoned what energy I had left, but everything was already dimming at the edges. "Logan?"
"I'll call your friends. In the meantime, you need to rest." She didn't sound entirely comfortable anymore but, before I could ask why, the darkness took me again.
*****
When I woke for the second time, it was to Joy's face. She sat on one of the chairs next to the bed, gazing out the window with a worried expression.
"Hey," I said.
She jumped, then her lips curled into a huge smile. "Oh my god, you're awake!" she squealed. "I mean, they told me you were, but still, oh my god!" She seemed to realize that half the hospital could hear her and took a moment to compose herself. "That is to say, hey."
I laughed, and instantly regretted it. It felt like an army of tiny men were trying to chisel their way out of my chest. "Take a memo: no laughing," I said, when I could talk again.
"I'll have to keep my razor-sharp wit in check then," replied Joy.
I tried the safer option of a smile, with no ill-effects. "Indeed you will."
"How do you feel?"
"Honestly? Awful."
She grimaced. "That sounds about right. Do you remember anything?"
"Nope. Nada. What happened? All the nurse told me was 'accident.'"
"You were hit by a car. The driver ran a red. They think maybe he was drunk, but they haven't actually caught him, yet. Three witnesses and nobody got a license plate."
I should probably have been angry, but the whole situation was so unreal. With no memory of the event, I felt strangely detached from it, like it had happened to somebody else. "I find it so weird that I can just forget something that important. It creeps me out. One minute I was walking along the street, the next minute it's three weeks later and I'm here." I glanced down at my broken chest. "But then a part of me doesn't want to remember, since I imagine it hurt like hell."
"I imagine so. On the plus side, they must have you on some wicked drugs."
"Damn straight. I feel like I'm on a cloud, right now."
In the silence that followed, I felt that little spark of good cheer evaporate. I appreciated that Joy had come, and I was super happy to see her, but I wasn't so intoxicated that I missed the absence in the room. She seemed to sense it too, because her expression fell.
"Where's Logan?" I asked. I almost didn't want an answer. The fact that he wasn't here told me something was seriously wrong. Had he been involved in the accident too? Was he in a bed in the next room, trussed in bandages just like me? Or worse...I couldn't even finish the thought.
The fact that Joy took her time choosing her words only made my anxiety worse. "He was here," she said eventually, "when it first happened. But when he came in and saw you like this, he kind of flipped out."
"Flipped out?"
She winced. She looked like she'd rather be doing anything else in the world than having this conversation. "He tore out of here like he was being chased by a demon. I tried to stop him, but it was like I didn't exist. He hasn't been back since. I'm so sorry, Grace."
I felt like the ground had opened up beneath me. Logan was fine. He wasn't here by choice.
"Maybe if he knows I'm awake..."
The sadness on her face said more than her words. "I think he already knows."
Those words hit me like a punch to the stomach. Tears stung my eyes. I understood what had happened. I'd seen Logan run like that before, that night at the theater. Something had snapped inside him. But it had been three weeks, and he hadn't returned. That didn't make any sense, not after the things we'd shared and the words we'd said. If the situation had been reversed, nothing would have kept me from his bedside for as long as it took for him to wake, but he'd left me alone, not even sure if I was going to live or die. I'd never felt so abandoned before. Not when my parents cut me off, not when Tom died. Nothing compared to this.
"Can you just try calling him? I could speak to him."
She gave a helpless shake of her head. "I don't even know how to reach him. He's not talking to anyone. He hasn't been back at the bar. He hasn't even been at the gym. Charlie can contact him, but nobody else has heard so much as a word."
I wanted to close my eyes and drift off to sleep again, so I could wake up and have this all be some horrible nightmare. That's what it felt like, some impossible reality that could only be conjured by all the fears swirling in the back of my head. And then it got worse.
"There's something else you should know," said Joy. "You've got some other visitors waiting for you outside." Guilt flashed across her face. "Your parents. I know you probably don't want to see them, but after the accident, we didn't know if...well you know. Anyway, we decided we had to track them down. I'm sorry."
I shook my head slowly. At that moment, there was nobody on the planet I wanted to see less than those two people but, a few seconds later, as if reacting to some invisible cue, they came bustling into the room.
"Oh my god," cried my mother when she saw me, raising her hands to her chee
ks dramatically like a daytime soap star. It had been a long time, but she looked exactly as I remembered; slim, vulpine and blond as a Playboy bunny. She wore her fifty years well — with the help of a bevy of creams, dyes and toners — and even now, in her daughter's hospital room, she was dressed as though she expected a surprise charity ball to spring up around her at any moment.
My father followed a moment later. "Oh, Grace," he said, shaking his head. Somehow the gesture conveyed more disappointment than concern, as though he were saying "you didn't listen to us and now look at you." He was older than my mother, but still looked sharp and sturdy and, like her, he was dressed to impress in a finely tailored charcoal suit. Impressions were important to my parents, even in a place like this. Perhaps especially in a place like this.
I didn't know where to even begin talking to them. They knew nothing of what I'd been through, nothing about who I was now. Their intentions for showing up here were probably good, in the most warped way possible, but that didn't mean anything good would come of it.
I felt that tingle at the back of my throat, that yearning for something to blot the world out. Obviously a drink wasn't possible though, so my body reacted the only way it knew how. The tears that had been ebbing from my eyes became a torrent. Of course my mother took this as a sign of incredible happiness, and soon I was embroiled in the most awkward, physically painful family hug in history.
"Look what they've done to you," my mother said, after I'd begged them to back off.
Seeing them was unnerving, almost surreal. I'd spent a lot of time since our falling out thinking of all the things I wanted to say to them, but now that the moment had arrived, I was lost for words. There was so much more going on inside me at that moment. The hurt they'd caused was a matchstick next to the bonfire left by Logan's flight.
All I could muster was a tiny nod.
