I close my eyes, spinning around and pressing my forehead against the wall.
My breaths are uneven and my lungs burn.
The others’ soft chatter muffles around me and I squeeze my eyes tighter.
A flash of her smile appears, an echo of her laughter following.
She reaches for me, but just when I’m close enough to touch her, she fades to black, and then there’s nothing.
I’m empty.
Alone.
My knuckles sting and then a hand is on mine.
I’m slumped against the wall, Brady, Cameron, and Chase kneeling down in front of me, and Mason comes around the corner.
His eyes widen and he looks to his friends, but as he realizes the blood running down my arm is my own, I follow his line of sight, to a hole in the wall. I must have put it there.
His jaw flexes, and he walks across the room, tearing the framed photo from the wall, taking the nail out with it.
He grabs a book off the table and uses it to bang the thing in, covering the damage completely.
With crestfallen eyes, he reaches out. “Come on, man.”
My chin falls to my chest, but I slap my palm into his.
He hauls me up, and then he hugs me. For real hugs me, apologizing as if he owes it to me when he doesn’t.
When he pulls back, his eyes are red, and he nods.
He turns to Chase next, who stands unsure, but Mason pulls him in just the same.
I stumble from the room, ignoring their calls as I navigate this stupid fucking hospital like the pro I am. I cut left at the end and exit where the nurses take their breaks. I curve around the water fountain and slip between the building, until I reach the one tucked away on the left.
I push inside, skipping the sign-in sheet and blindly walk down the hall.
She’s awake when I get there, and the worry that slips over her has my heart shattering.
Everything shatters.
“Oh, honey.” Her hand lifts. “Come here.”
I drop onto my mom’s hospital bed, and I lose it.
The only two people I love in this world are both here, their lives in the hands of someone else, and there isn’t a damn thing I can do about it.
I’ve never felt so helpless in my life.
Tri-City Medical, once again, becomes my home.
All of our homes, really, as none of us leaves for more than a few hours here and there, be it to catch a shower or maybe a few minutes of sleep in an actual bed.
Mason still hasn’t gotten in touch with his parents, the end of their trip being their time off the grid, backpacking through Europe and cut off from communication for thirty days, so they have no idea their daughter was hit by a car, let alone that she’s been in a coma.
It was the day before Christmas Eve when the doctor came in with the news we’d been waiting for. After six long, torturous days, the risk of swelling was finally gone, the pain expected to have subsided, and they were ready to allow her to wake up.
Something in me stirred, a second wind and an anxiousness I’ve never known woke me up.
Soon, I’d get to look into her eyes.
I’d get to tell her how sorry I am for walking away, for questioning her feelings for me.
I’d promise to never do it again and trust I was enough for her, when I know, deep down, she’s more than any man could ever deserve, especially a simple man like me.
I don’t have a large family to love and adore her. I don’t have a home full of memories to take her to or a path to follow to make our own. I didn’t have what she did growing up, so I’m already at a disadvantage, but I do have the love of a mother who showed me what it meant to be a man. To work hard and to appreciate the things I have.
To love with all you are, and I do.
I love her with all I am, all I’m not, and all I’ll be.
I should have been able to look into her beautiful eyes to tell her all of this on Christmas Day, but I wasn’t, because Ari didn’t wake.
They said we could expect her to after the first forty-eight hours.
It’s been four days and the only change is the slight fading of her bruises.
The deep purple has faded into a soft yellow, and the swell of her lips has disappeared, the perfect pout now a familiar one, a new, tiny scar just below her bottom one.
I reach out, guiding my thumb along the end of her hair, wishing I could run my fingers through it like I have so many times before.
With the help of a nurse, they allowed Cameron to do what she could to hand wash Ari’s hair, and then she braided it to one side, just like Ari had done to it the first day we hung out. And every six hours, like clockwork, Cam covered her lips with Chapstick, one less thing she has to recover from, Cam had said.