Denying Heaven (Room 103) (22 page)

I couldn’t speak as I pushed further back into the
corrugated sheeting that formulated the far wall.

“Sp.r..t?” Bulk’s voice echoed brokenly with the bad
signal in my ear and I whimpered when I dropped the phone, my hands shaking so
much it slipped from my grasp and luckily hit the sand with a soft thump, “Spirit!”

His voice was more urgent when I didn’t answer and I
picked it back up, squeezing my fingers tightly around it as I fought to place
it back at my ear, “B…Bulk.”

“Baby? Spi…t ar.. you ok..y?” The tremor in his voice
brought on fresh tears as my eyes once again fixed on Danny.

“No… No, no, no, no, no…” It was all that would come out
and I kept repeating it over and over as I desperately tried to remove my gaze
from the horror before me. “No, no, no, no…”

“Spirit! Stop it r…ht no..!” His harsh tone jolted my
brain and a distraught sob echoed around me.

Everything seemed surreal and I shivered violently as I
imagined Danny getting up off the floor and coming for me. “Bulk, please… help
me… please…”

I was sobbing now and trying to push my body through the
wall in a frantic effort to be as far away as possible from the terror I had
created.

Bulk pulled in a choked breath but his voice was calm
even if a little unsteady, “Listen to me, honey, listen…” He spoke softly, the
line suddenly clearing as I backed further into the metal wall, creating a
boost to the signal and I muttered a sort of reply through my tears as I tried
to concentrate on him. “I need you to try and answer my questions, okay?”

“Mmmm” I murmured exhaustedly as I watched Danny closely
while Bulk asked where I was.

His hand twitched and I screamed as I propelled myself
backwards, banging my head harshly on a beam of wood holding up the roof,
causing me to drop and lose the phone in the sand, “Noooo. Noooo….”

I scrambled desperately to my feet and forced myself to
move to the door, my effort seeing me stumble numerous times as I struggled to
get a grip in the sand, its fine grains under my bare feet making me slip and
slide.

River….

His voice echoed eerily around me, the unnatural tone
whipping my body hairs rigidly and I shook my head urgently as a throb began to
settle at the back of my skull. I refused to believe it as I covered my ears
and laboured to keep going as I kept my focus on the door.

I pushed against it when I reached it and a choked
strangle broke from me when it wouldn’t budge.

Rattling and pushing it in desperation my gaze dropped on
the padlock fitted across the bolt catch. “No…” I rasped as I turned and looked
at Danny’s trouser pocket, “Oh God, no.”

I was starting to hyperventilate as I looked at Danny
then back to the lock, repeating my head movements several times as though the
key would slip from Danny’s pocket and hover across the room with my gaze,
slipping into the lock and unlatching me the huge metal shutter.

My heart was pounding and I was getting anguished knowing
this couldn’t be good for the baby as I slowly and cautiously made my way
across the room towards his mangled corpse.

“He’s dead, Spirit. He can’t hurt you. He’s dead, he’s
dead… gone. He can’t hurt you, no, he can’t.” I mumbled as I slid little by
little to my knees in front of him, my eyes tightly closed as I shook
violently. “He’s dead… he’s dead…” I repeated, telling myself to be strong as I
opened my eyes and stared at Danny’s legs, refusing my eyes any higher.

My stomach contents were crawling swiftly up my throat as
I timidly reached out, my body jerking wildly when I felt the cotton of his
trousers eventually reach my fingertips.

“Come on Spirit, it’s just a key, just a key.”

I was crying hard, deep drawn breaths noisily gurgling in
my throat as they fought to bypass what was trying to hike back out. “I can’t…”

“You can!” I argued with myself as I pulled in a long
gulp of air and held it as Danny’s slight stench hit my nostrils and surged my
gut further.

I swung round and puked everywhere as I fought to breathe
with the intensity of my throws, each racking heave pulling every one of my
stomach muscles with their severity and my eyes burning with the brutality in
which I hurled.

“WHY?!” I screamed at the ceiling, “Why me? All the
fucking time. Do you hate me that much, am I that bad? Are you that cruel? I
can’t do this anymore, I can’t! Why don’t you just come and take me…” I placed
my palms together and rolled my lips, “Please. I need to go now. I can’t fight
this life anymore; I don’t
want
to fight anymore.” I finished with a
tight whimper, “Please.”

I pulled in a heavy determined breath and screamed as
loud as I could, my lungs going into shock with the pressure of it as I
snatched my hand into Danny’s pocket and grabbed the key, scurrying backwards
as soon as it touched my fingers and dropping it in the sand.

“GOD FUCKING DAMN!!” I shouted in anger as I raked my
hands through the grains wildly, my eyes hunting frenziedly as my fingers
scraped and gathered it out of the way in my desperate attempt to find it.

I couldn’t do this and I dropped heavily onto the ground,
curling within myself as I started to rock wildly, “Please help me, somebody
please…”

Nobody knew where I was and I wasn’t even sure how long I
had actually been here. I was going to die here, slowly and tortuously, my body
bit by bit giving up and leaving me to die next to Danny.

I finally peered up at him, a calmness settling over me
as I reached up and took his hand in mine, curling my fingers around his as I
clung to him. “I am so sorry, Danny. I… I did love you, so much.” I shuffled
further towards him, my imagination clinging onto an old image of him in my
head and evading how he really looked. “We were good, weren’t we? So good, it
was perfect…”

I lifted a hand and placed it on the side of his head,
smiling widely through my tears at him as I stroked his ear delicately. “We’ll
be with Amy now; we can be with our beautiful daughter, baby. Finally…”

I curled against his body, desperate for any sensation I
could get from him, wrapping my arms around his waist as I pulled him closer
and buried my head against his strong chest, my breathing finally slowing and
my heart beat dropping as my body prepared to close down and an ultimate peace
settled over me.

You won’t die alone, River. I’m here baby, I’m always
here.

I felt something shift inside me, almost like something
aligning and slotting together deep down within me as tranquillity and serenity
flowed through my veins, warming me inside as I closed my eyes and relished the
freedom, the supreme liberation, as my soul hovered around me, its light
shimmering beautifully as I placed a kiss on Danny’s chest and joined him.

Finally.

Ultimately.

And so very ready.

I fell out of the car and stumbled clumsily towards the
tin shack. It was eerily silent and I wondered why Spirit wasn’t banging the
walls down. She should be going crazy, rattling the walls and screaming the place
down… but she wasn’t, it was just so quiet.

“SPIRIT!” I shouted as I pulled at the door, eagerness
slicing my hands through the sheet metal as I heaved at the damn thing. “Why
won’t it open?” I shouted as one of Sal’s men appeared beside me and tilted his
chin at me to move out of the way.

I stepped back, my legs twitching impatiently as he
slotted a crowbar into the gap.

Something happened, I’m not sure what it was and I
couldn’t relay it you even now, but I felt it, within me, like two plates
moving and shifting until it slotted together and I looked upwards as a ray of
light broke through the clouds.

My heart exploded as my soul battled with my spirit to
free itself, the power of it made me tremble violently as it desperately
struggled to rip itself from me.

“Noooo” I screamed as I felt it slip away, fighting
urgently to get to its mate and I knew, I knew she had gone, she had gone, she
had gone…

I shoved the guy out of the way as I ripped the door
sideways, my demand to get to her feeding my strength and giving me force to
shift it out of the way.

“Noooo, Noooo, Spirit!” I yelled at her as I saw her
clung to Danny, her body still and lifeless.

Jesus Christ, what the hell had happened?

I skidded to a stop beside her, sand flying everywhere as
my feet dug into the piles of it around her.

The guy’s shouted different commands but I didn’t hear
them as a high pitched buzzing sliced through my head and rendered me deaf. I
slammed her body backwards, wincing as I caught sight of Danny, and pressed my
ear to her mouth. “Please, baby, please… come on, come on. Damn you!!”

“Move!” Romeo barked at me as Jax grabbed my arms and
pulled me off her. I bucked against him, shoving him backwards as Boss came in
and helped to hold me down and I watched in in a broken horror as Romeo thumped
her hard in the chest as one of Sal’s men pinched her nose and filled her lungs
with second hand oxygen.

My legs gave way and Jax lowered me to the floor, his
arms still around me as I died right there with her.

“Noooo, not again. Please not again.”

It was like déjà vu as Boss appeared before me on his
knees. My heart and soul were slammed back seven years as I broke all over
again and I stared at him, my head whipping back and forth as his eyes filled
with tears.

“Ssshhh” he whispered as he grabbed my hand and I turned
to him. My hands clawed desperately at him, pulling his skin within my grasp to
feel something, anything but this high pitched hum in my head.

“Ethan?”

“Jesus, Chase. I…” he shook his head and I knew. I knew.
I could feel it; my heart had stopped beating, my spirit was screaming in pain
and my soul had died.

“No, No….”

Tears flowed rapidly down his face and I attempted to get
to my feet but he placed his hands on my cheeks. “Look at me, Chase. Look at
me.”

My wide eyes locked onto his haunted ones. “You do not go
over there. She’s up here, Chase, her beautiful smile and beautiful eyes need
to stay up here” he stammered as he tapped my head.

I shook my head as realisation and acceptance hit me. A
fierce raging fire propelled from my lungs, burning them to a crisp en-route as
it incinerated my heart on the way. The ashes erupted from my throat in a
scream so primal and visceral that it burst a blood vessel in my eye and tore
my throat, surging blood from my mouth with it.

“Spirit.”

I turned my head towards the soft voice as I squinted
through the darkness to seek out the woman calling my name.

“Where are you?” I called, frustration biting through me
when I struggled to see and the blackness refused to melt away.

“I’m here.”

I turned again and blinked when a tall woman with long
blond hair and the bluest, brightest eyes I had ever seen smiled gently at me.

I recognised her from somewhere and I squinted as I raked
through my memories trying to determine where from.

“Fight, Spirit. Fight for you and fight for him.”

I frowned as confusion tilted my head and I stared at her
then looked around, “Where are we?”

I turned back round when she didn’t answer but she just
smiled fondly, “You love him.”

“Yes.” It was simple and didn’t need any thought.

“Then you must tell him. Fight your fear; battle your
terror to show him.”

“What? What does that even mean?”

She reached out and tucked my hair behind my ear, “Teach
him to let go, Spirit. Teach yourself to let go and hold on, hold on tight.”

What the hell was this woman mumbling on about?

“You really, really like him” she continued as she placed
her hand over my heart and tapped it twice.

My breath stilled and my jaw dropped as my body erupted
in goose bumps, tingles working their way through my veins as realisation shot
into me when she recited mine and Bulk’s words, “Oh my God, Shona.”

She smiled and cupped my face softly with a tender touch,
“You don’t
really, really
like
him, Spirit. You must tell him.
You must say it, voice it. Remember face your terror and show him. Tell him his
past doesn’t rule his future. Face your terror, Spirit, learn to live again
with him.”

She closed her eyes slowly and I felt mine sinking with
her as I followed her to wherever, her hand slipping through mine as she guided
me and showed me.

And delivered me.

I watched the rain fall and hit the window as the wind
drove it relentlessly, its fury matching my own as I concentrated on each
rivulet trickle down and puddle on the windowsill.

Jen came and sat beside me, her slightly wide backside
squeezing tightly next to mine. “Believe, Bulk.” She whispered as the others
slept, slumped in various chairs around the waiting room and I frowned at her
in exhaustion as I rolled my head around my neck to ease the stiffness.

“How can I believe, Jen? What gives me reason enough to
believe any more?”

She smiled and took my hand, grasping it tightly between
her tiny fingers, “Because if you don’t then all that is left is doubt.”

I snorted and sighed heavily, screwing up my face with
her cryptic words but she placed a finger against my lips, “You doubt yourself?
Then you doubt Shona.”

I reared back and glared at her, her words slapping me
hard and causing a tremble in my gut but she carried on, “When Ethan… when he
was beaten and he pushed me away, I refused to give up, demanded myself to
believe that one day he would come back to me. And you know what? He did,
because I believed in him.”

I watched her eyes pool with both love and tears as she
swallowed heavily, her painful memories of how Boss had pushed her away time
and time again heavy on her. “But you know the most important part?”

She locked me down, her eyes fixed on me hard and stern.
“I never doubted Ethan, ever and I have never doubted him. I believe in him,
even now and I will always continue to believe in him because he believes in
me.”

Her face darkened with a slight anger, her eyes firing
her fury with me, showing a side to her I had never seen.

Jen had been there throughout the last two years. Her
arms were there to hold me; her soft words of sympathy whispered in my ear and
her heart had reached out to mine to drag it out of the pit it had fallen in. But
this time, there were no arms holding me, no sympathy whispered in my ear and
she was far from dragging me out of hell.

“If you doubt yourself Bulk, then you doubt the one woman
that always believed in you, the one woman that would ache with your doubt
because right now, you doubt everything Shona was. She believed in you and I
know she believed that when she left this world that one day you would be happy
because she loved you that much and she never,
ever
doubted
you
.”

I stared at her, my heart in my mouth with her cruel
words, each of them curling into my head, clawing at my mind and piercing stabs
of hurt into me. “What the fuck would you know about Shona, Jen? You didn’t
know her; you wouldn’t know what she would want.”

She scoffed and her lips twitched into a smile as her
eyes glinted perceptively, “I know, Bulk,” she leaned forward and palmed my
head, tilting my face down to hers. “I know because she loved you with the same
fierce passion I love Ethan with and I would want him to be happy. I wouldn’t
dare leave this shitty fucking planet without believing that one day he would
find happiness again. I would fight angels and the fucking devil to stay here
with him if I once doubted that he wouldn’t be happy again without me. Shona
trusted you Bulk, she believed in you when she went and you doubt that belief.
You doubt her memory!”

She stood and left, slamming the door behind her as I just
stared quietly after her for a long while, until the door re-opened and a
doctor stepped through.

His eyes scanned the room and settled on Janey, “Miss
Franks?”

Janey paled and tried to climb off the rickety couch but
the doctor smiled and placed a hand on her arm as he came to settle beside her,
“Miss Brannigan has sustained a severe bleed to the rear of her skull.”

Janey swallowed but nodded firmly. “We have managed to
control the bleed and she’s currently in ICU.”

“Okay” Janey said quietly as her eyes pleaded with him to
let her hear what she wanted to hear.

“She’s very poorly, Miss Franks but I’m hopeful.” He
added with a small smile as he patted her hand.

“The baby?” I choked out. My heart was beating wildly and
causing my ribcage to vibrate as he turned to study me.

“And you are, sir?”

I ran my tongue across my lips, desperately trying to
moisten them and heal the dehydrated cracks due to the dry air in the room,
“Chase Donnelly, the… uhh, the father... of the baby.”

He nodded and smiled, “Your baby is fine. Strong
heartbeat and we’ll do everything we can to keep it that way, Mr Donnelly.”

I blew out a breath as my knees buckled and my arse hit
the windowsill with a thud. “Can I, can I see her?” I asked hesitantly, unsure
if I did actually want to see her.

Guilt overwhelmed me as the awareness that Spirit had
lived when Shona hadn’t made me retch but I pulled it back, knowing Spirit
would need me now. She was carrying my baby, she had been attacked and god
knows what by her ex and she had died twice, once in the shack and another time
in the ambulance.

“If you would like to follow me Mr Donnelly, I’ll take
you to her.” I nodded briskly, forcing the emotions back as I shadowed and
followed him down the corridor.

“Just…” I held up a finger and dived into the gent’s
toilets where I clung to a sink and attempted to control the friction in my
stomach and sweat pouring from my head.

Why? Why? Why?

I squeezed my eyes shut as I tried to clear my thoughts
but they wouldn’t leave me. Shona, Spirit, Shona, Spirit!!!

“Jesus fucking Christ!”

I was going mad. My thoughts were switching and flicking
rapidly with each different reaction to each different outcome.

Shona had died.

Spirit had nearly died.

I missed Shona with a fierce pining.

I missed Spirit with a fierce ache.

Shona had died.

Spirit had survived.

Why couldn’t Shona have survived?

The relief that Spirit had survived was incredible.

Why couldn’t Shona have survived?

I loved Shona intensely.

I loved…

I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t go in that room and watch
her chest rise and fall as she sucked life into her when Shona’s had been so
still and empty.

I couldn’t take her hand in mine when I hadn’t taken Shona’s.

I couldn’t fight the ache in my chest.

But at the same time, I wanted to battle it. I wanted to
set the hatred free and relish… Spirit.

I wanted to hold her so tight that I absorbed her, feel
her tiny soft body mould around mine until we were a single being. I wanted to
wrap my hands in her long stunning hair and never let go. I wanted to gaze at
her beautiful face for eternity, forever hold her gorgeous green eyes with mine
and taste the softness of her lips on mine endlessly.

A whimper left my throat when I tried to picture Shona
smiling at me but all I saw was Spirit’s wide smile, the perfection of beauty
right there in front of my mind as her eyes twinkled with naughtiness and her
nose scrunched slightly with her grin as her head tipped back and her amazing
laugh fluttered my stomach.

“No! No! It should be Shona! Always Shona.”

My fist perforated a cubicle door as my foot destroyed
the rest of it before I walked back out to the Doc, shook my head and left.