Always For You (Books 1-3) (5 page)

I'd gone to the hospital to see Grace.
I stood outside her room, unable to open the door, unable to walk
through it. Her sister was there - she looked just like her. She
looked lost, broken, her eyes heavy and dark and red, stained by
countless tears. I didn't have the heart to go in there, to tell her
the truth.

Grace was in a coma. She had been since
the crash. I'd found out from a nurse, found out that the side of her
head caught the door as it crumpled in, cracking her skull. They said
she was stable, but didn't know when she'd wake up, if she'd wake up.
I wanted to die for the guilt, sinking every night into a sea of
alcohol to knock me out.

I continued to go and see Grace every
day. It became a habit, a form of therapy for me. She looked so
peaceful lying there, the cuts on her face gradually healing, those
pretty features of hers once again unspoilt. I never went in though,
always in fear of running into her family. I just stood there
outside, looking at her breathing for a few minutes each day. That's
all I could manage before the nurses became suspicious.

She seemed like a popular girl.
Everyday there was someone different there: young, old, men, women,
family, friends. They all talked to her, trying to get her to react,
trying to get her to wake up. I was jealous. If I was in a coma, no
one would come. No one.

At this point in time, I'd say that
would be fair.

September 26
^th
2012

Grace

I opened my eyes, the world slowly
coming into focus. It was bright in the room, the lights hurting my
eyes, the beeping sounds around me thundering through my head.

I
was in a hospital bed, doctors and nurses rushing around outside my
door. I lifted by left hand to my head and felt a bandage around it,
heavily dressed on one side.
Oh
how my head ached.

There was no one in the room but me, a
spare bed over to my right. I saw a shadowy figure through my blurry
eyes looking at me outside the window, or at least I thought it was
looking my way.

I turned away for a moment and it was
gone.

Suddenly the door opened and a nurse
rushed in. She started doing some checks, asking me some simple
questions.

“
Grace,
can you hear me?”

“
Do
you know where you are?”

“
Do
you remember what happened?”

I was having trouble remembering. The
last thing I recall was being in a car, in a car with my mom. We were
driving, and then we...

A sudden realization hit my face, my
hands shaking. I spoke for the first time in weeks, the words brittle
on my tongue, struggling to get out. “Where's my mom?”

The nurses eyes dropped, her expression
telling me all I needed to know. “WHERE'S MY MOM?!” I shouted
once more, my voice coming back, still croaky from it's slumber.

“
I
- I'll just get the doctor.” She ran off quickly outside the door,
leaving me alone again.

My eyes were stinging with tears
already, my breath short. I remembered hearing her scream, the car
crumpling around us as we rolled along the highway. I remembered her
scream suddenly strangled of its life, cut short as we tumbled and
came to a halt. Then, nothing, there was nothing else until now.

The doctor came rushing in as I cried
out in my bed, tears shooting down my face. “She's dead, isn't
she,” I wailed as he approached and took my hand. “She's dead,
isn't she,” I repeated, needing confirmation, needing to hear it.

“
I'm
so sorry Grace,” he said, his hands reaching for mine, trying to
comfort me. “There was nothing anyone could have done.”

I shook my head violently, the pain in
my head increasing. “Please try to calm down,” he said, “your
head is still badly hurt.”

I didn't care, no physical pain was
worse than this. I continued to thrash and wail, my heart cracking as
my skull had, a searing pain in the pit of my stomach. The sensation
in my head grew more intense as nurses came in to restrain me,
injecting me with something to calm me down. My body relaxed, my
mind drifting back into the blackness. Back where there was no pain.

I woke again, my eyes slowly opening,
still wet with tears. Ellen and my dad were sat on either side of me,
their faces a mixture of delight and grief.

“
Gracie,”
my dad cried as he hugged me gently and kissed me on the cheek. Ellen
followed, tears rolling down her face. “I'm so happy you're awake,”
she said. “I thought I'd never see my beautiful little sis again.”
She hugged me again, her soft cheeks pressed up against mine.

I said nothing, my words still stolen
from me, taken by my grief. All I could do was lie there, numb, my
eyes stinging with salty tears. “Just get better, Gracie,” my dad
said, “please just concentrate on getting better.”

It
was as if I had a choice.
Don't
grieve for mom, just make sure you get better first.
I lay there unspeaking, more words of comfort coming from my family.
They told me how many people had visited me, how different family and
friends had been coming everyday, how many gifts and well wishes I'd
got.

As they spoke I couldn't help but think
of mom. There were no other thoughts in my head.

“
How
did she die?” I asked suddenly. I needed to know.

Ellen leaned in, taking my hand. “It
was quick, Grace, she didn't suffer.”

“
How
did she die?” I repeated blankly.

“
She
died in the crash. Trauma to the head. She would have been knocked
out, wouldn't have felt anything,” Ellen continued, trying to keep
herself together.

I turned my head, tears once more
rolling down my cheeks. It had been three weeks since it happened,
since everyone had found out that my mom had died. For dad and Ellen,
they'd had some time to deal with it, some time to grieve. For me, it
was fresh, a raw wound.

I took a few deep breaths and leaned up
against the pillow behind me. “How did we crash?” I asked. “What
happened?”

“
No
one knows honey,” my dad came in. “There were no camera's, no
witnesses who saw anything. We thought that maybe...you could tell
us?”

I racked my brains for a moment, trying
to think back. “There was a sudden jolt behind us – on the left.
I guess it must have been a car bumping us. It – it sent us into a
spin. Mum was trying to keep the car steady – keep the car
straight...” I trailed off.

“
It's
OK darling, you don't have to talk about it now, you don't have to
think about it.”

I took a breath. “No – no it's OK.
There's nothing more to say. Someone bumped us, and we crashed.”

“
OK
honey, you get some rest. We'll be here.”

“
No
dad, Ellen, it's OK you can go home. You don't have to stay, you must
have been here a lot recently. Please, I need time to think anyway. I
want to be alone.”

“
If
you're sure darling.” He learned in to kiss me on the cheek again.
“We'll be back first thing in the morning.”

It was an hour after they'd left when I
lay there in bed, painkillers numbing me, my eyes drifting off to
sleep. Before I did, I could see the shadow of a figure again,
standing beyond the window, looking at me. It just stood there,
unmoving, a ghost. “Mom?” I called out quietly as a tear fell
from my eye. “I miss you.”

October
10
^th
2012

Cain

A woman lay on top of me, panting. Her
naked body was intertwined with mine, breathing heavily past my ear,
the smell of smoke pouring from her lungs. She rolled over and onto
the other side of the bed before getting up and walking away to the
bathroom.

I lay there, satisfied, my thoughts
elsewhere. Yet another girl, yet another one night stand. It wasn't
going to go further, it never did. Not with these girls anyway.

She walked back in and starting putting
her clothes on. At least this one didn't want to stay over. I liked
that, she wasn't clingy. “I had a great time baby,” she spoke to
me in her lazy drawl. “I may let you do it again some time.” I
liked her confidence too.

She pulled a piece of paper from her
purse and tore off a sheet, scribbling down her name and number and
passing it to me. I liked it when they wrote their name, often I
didn't remember.

Krista.
Typical
name for a girl like that.

She walked away leaving me there in
bed, the smell of her perfume still lingering on my skin. As the door
shut I felt a pinch at my chest, a gnawing feeling that hadn't left
me since the crash, a feeling only briefly subdued by women and
alcohol.

I'd
seen Grace wake up only a couple of weeks ago. I'd been there at the
hospital when she did. There was a weird poetry to it: that I was the
one who pulled her out, and I was there to see her wake.
Yeah,
but you caused the fucking accident too.

I'd rushed off to grab a nurse,
watching Grace scream and shriek in grief from behind the window. It
was painful to see her come round, realize her mom was dead. I
couldn't handle it, so I left. I returned later that night though,
saw her when she was calm, dozing off. That was the last time. I
couldn't face going there now that she was awake.

I''d
tried to forget about it all, tried to get it out of my head. But it
wasn't like having a fight with someone: those I could forget easily.
It was my fault, my fault that Grace's mom died, my fault she was in
a coma.
How
can I ever forget that? She'll probably barely remember me if I talk
to her, if I try to explain. I guess I'll have to learn to live with
it.

December/January 2012/13

Grace

The last two months had been the worst
of my life. My mom's funeral was held in early October. They didn't
know when I'd wake up, whether I'd wake up, but had waited. They were
going to have the funeral without me, but then I came round. They
gave me more time to recover, another week in the hospital before we
buried her. It was the hardest day of my life.

I'd learned about the entire crash,
more than what Ellen had told me. She'd said she had died without
pain, but I'd seen the video, I'd seen the car become engulfed in
flames. How does anyone know she hadn't woken up? That she wasn't
alive when that happened? That she wasn't roasted in the wreckage?

There were no medics there, no firemen.
There was no one. No one to tell that she was already dead, that she
wouldn't wake up when the flames started eating at her clothes. No
one except that man, the man on the bike. I'd seen that man, riding
alongside the car, peering in through my window. It had happened when
he dropped back – the bump, the knock that sent up spiralling off
down the road.

I don't know whether he had anything to
do with it, but I was grateful for what he did. The way he threw
himself into the wreckage, no thought of his own safety, was amazing.
I wanted to talk to him, thank him, tell him how grateful I was for
saving me, for trying to save my mom. But he had disappeared, without
anyone seeing his face, the license plates on his bike.

I'd been taking painkillers for my
injury, for the pain. They numbed me, helping me through. But they
never quenched the suffering I felt at my mom's death. I had no
remedy for that, nothing but time.

It
was December before I went out again. I had recovered from my injury
by then, so my friends took me out for the night. We went to our
favorite
restaurant in town, a simple steak place where they sold beer and
cocktails by the bucketload on Thursday nights. Two for one it was,
something most of the young people in the area would take advantage
of.

Tom was there. He'd been there by my
side the whole time: at my hospital bed, coming round to the house
everyday. This was what he was great at – taking care of me – so
he was really in his element. I hated it all though, stuck in the
house, my dad and Tom and Ellen pandering to me. I just wanted things
to get back to normal.

Of course, that was going to take time.
I'd had to drop out of college for the year because of personal
reasons, taking a sabbatical to grieve and recover. It was the worst
thing that could have happened. I suddenly had nothing to cling onto,
nothing to focus my attentions on, nothing but my grief, a numbing
grief that ate away at me every single day.

I looked for a job, finding work in a
bar in town.

“
Grace,
you can't work in a bar. You're not properly recovered yet,” my dad
had said.

“
I
need something dad. I need something to do. I'm not going back to
college until September now. I can't just sit around here all day and
night.”

“
Yes,
Grace, I understand that, but why a bar? Can't you work in a clothes
shop or something?”

The truth was that I didn't want to
work in a clothes shop, or a cafe, or a clerical office, or anywhere
else. I wanted to work in a bar: somewhere busy, somewhere exciting,
somewhere where my mind would be taken off everything.

“
Dad,
I couldn't find anything else. This is the best there is, and anyway,
I need to study in the day.” I fobbed him off, and there was
nothing he could say or do.

Tom wasn't much different. The idea of
me working in a bar, surrounding by guys hitting on me all night was
hard for him to take. “Grace, how about I get my dad to let you
work in our restaurant. You can work with me?”