While I Was Away(10)

After all that, she sometimes felt more like a daughter to him.

Adele was the complete opposite of her brothers. They were all big guys. Rough and rowdy, prone to bar brawls and curse words and semi-legal adventures. Adele was soft in comparison. Delicate. She'd always been beautiful, even as a baby. He'd never been one of those boys who'd been icked out at the idea of having a little sister. He'd loved her from the first moment she'd been placed in his arms.

Seeing her tiny form wrapped up in a blankie, he'd realized his purpose in life. Taking care of her – taking care of people. Until the day he'd moved away from home, he'd watched over her.

So it killed Ocean to see her in a hospital bed. He kept waiting for her to sit up, to laugh at the worry lines on his face, as she always did. Then they'd go to a bar together and indulge in his secret guilty pleasure – girly cocktails. They'd laugh over Cosmos and talk about their siblings; August with a talent so big, even he seemed shocked by it. River, too serious for his own good.

Please come back to us, Adele.

Though really, Ocean hadn't seen his baby sister in a long time. He was kicking himself over that fact. Getting time off wasn't easy for a police detective, and it was a long trip from Philadelphia to Los Angeles. An expensive trip.

In her four years at UCLA, he'd only visited Adele once. She came home every Christmas, which had made the distance somewhat bearable, and he'd been able to visit again after she'd moved in with Charlie, maybe two years before the accident. At the time, it had seemed like enough. Phone calls and emails and social media, it was all enough.

Now, staring at his baby sister, at his best friend, laying unconscious in a hospital bed, it didn't feel like enough at all. Ocean felt like he had wasted so much time, and he wanted to take back all those years, all those missed moments. He wanted to go back to the beginning and move to L.A. with her, or force her to stay in Philadelphia. Something. Anything.

Ocean really would do anything for Adele. Scale mountains, slay dragons, even die.

But he couldn't do anything about a coma.

The only thing Ocean had left was simply being there for her, and so he stayed. He was at the hospital the minute visiting hours started, and he stayed until the nurses chased him out. It was almost an obsession, he had to be nearby when Adele woke up, he had to be ready. He had to be the first person she saw. She had to know how sorry he was, how much he regretted losing all those years together.

She had to know how much her big brother loved her.

“Do you hear me, Adele Diana Reins? You need to come back. I need you,” he breathed, grabbing a hold of her hand. “You come back here, right now.”





5




I wish ... I wish I was home.

Adele had no way of knowing when the tunnel would end. Her eyes were closed, after all. What did ... what was his name? Johannes. What did he expect her to do, hold her breath until she passed out? She finally gasped out her lungful of air.

“Are we clear?” she asked, opening her eyes.

She wasn't on a train. There was no ridiculously handsome man holding onto her. She blinked her eyes a couple times, then sat up. She was in a bed. She felt around in the dark and her hand bumped into a lamp, almost knocking it over. She gripped onto it, then pulled on the light chord.

She recognized the comforter on the bed instantly. She whipped her head around, taking in the room around her, and she started laughing. She fell onto her back and clapped her hands, then started cheering with joy.

“I knew it! I knew it, it must have been a hallucination,” she sighed as she slowly sat up again.

She was in her bedroom. Not at her home in Los Angeles, but the room in her parents' house, in Philadelphia. The one she'd grown up in. She swung her legs over the mattress and jumped to her feet. Laughed again as she came upon her favorite Penn State sweater that she'd left in the room during her last visit.

It was all a dream ...

What she was doing in Philadelphia, Adele didn't know. She'd had a trip scheduled for later in the summer. She must have bumped the trip up, then gone out to party with the guys, and someone had slipped her some acid or something. She'd gotten so messed up, she couldn't remember anything.

The thought was pretty disturbing, but not half as disturbing as thinking she was dead and in some sort of warped heaven, so she accepted it gladly. She pulled on the sweater, moaning a little when she smelled the laundry detergent her mother always used. Then she smiled big and hurried to her door, yanking it open.

“Mom! Mom, what time is it?” she called out.

“Good job! Most people can't hold their breath that long,” a voice said from behind her.

Adele just about jumped out of her skin. She screamed and whirled around, tripping over her own feet as she spun. She fell down hard on her hip, then immediately started crawling backwards, all while still shrieking.

“No! No! This can't be happening! What is going on? God, I'm dead, I'm dead, I'm dead,” she started sobbing. The man from the train, the one who'd helped her out of the poppy field, followed her out into the hall.

“You're not dead, Adele. Now please, stop shouting. Nothing ever gets accomplished when people shout,” Johannes informed her.

She sniffled and followed his instructions. Wiped at her nose and blinked up at him. He looked so real. Was he a ghost? Was she a ghost? He'd said she wasn't dead ... did she believe him?