While I Was Away(84)

“No.”

“Tell me you love me.”

“No – you have to stay awake if you want to hear it.”

“I didn't believe it. After you fainted in the hospital, and you said I loved you,” he chuckled, sounding a bit delirious. “You said it with such conviction. You believed it. And I was so stupid back then, because I refused to.”

“You were never stupid,” she whispered. There was shouting all around them now, and she prayed it was the paramedics.

“And you were right. I loved you then. And I love you now. And I'll still love you while I'm away.”

It was hard to even hear his voice anymore, and he'd closed his eyes, hiding those emerald whirlpools once again.

“Please, Jones, don't go, I didn't get to say it,” she choked on a sob. “I love -”

“You okay in there!?”

Some guy was standing outside the passenger door and banging on it.

“In here!” Adele screamed. “In here, and he's hurt, hurry! Get us out!”

The car rocked as what sounded like several men took turns yanking at the damaged door. She cradled Jones' head as delicately as she could, hoping she wasn't injuring him any further. Finally, the door was ripped open and it promptly fell off its broken hinges.

“Ambulances are on their way!” a young man shouted as he crouched in the open doorway.

“He needs help,” Adele cried. “He hurt his head, we can't move him.”

“Alright. What about you?”

“My foot is stuck, but I'm fine,” she said. “It's just him. We have to help him.”

“Don't worry, we'll get you out.”

Two guys leaned in the doorway and used a crow bar to free her foot. It hurt like a bitch, but she could wiggle her toes, so she pushed the pain to the back of her mind.

“Alright, now come open the driver's side door so we can -”

“Ma'am, we need to get you out, there's a lot of broken glass everywhere, you're cutting yourself.”

She almost laughed. If they thought she was just going to leave Jones hanging there, they'd have to drag her kicking and screaming from the car.

Which is exactly what they did.

“No!” she shrieked, clawing at the roof of the car when they latched onto her ankles and began pulling. “I can't leave him! He needs me!”

“Ma'am, you're bleeding, you need help! We'll make sure someone stays with him,” the men were yelling at her. She ignored them and latched onto the steering wheel.

“He needs me,” she insisted. “Please, just go around to the other side and help him! Why aren't you listening to me?”

Amidst all the yelling and shouting and fighting, she suddenly heard something. She stopped struggling and looked back up at Jones, and was shocked to find his eyes not only open, but looking lucid and clear again.

“Thank god,” she moaned. “You're gonna be okay.”

“You have to let go, Adele,” he told her.

“I will, after they get you out, first.”

“You have to let go,” he repeated himself. She frowned.

“I will after I know you're -”

“If you let go, we might find each other again.”

She was so shocked at his choice of words that she did let go. She forgot she was even holding onto anything and time seemed to freeze. She could remember the first time he'd said those words to her, it seemed like forever ago. On the cliffs of her subconscious, between the waking world and her dreams.

We'll might find each other again.

Time resumed its normal torturous pace and Adele was abruptly yanked from the vehicle. Her last glimpse of Jones was of him limp and unconscious, no sign that he'd just been awake and speaking to her.

“Does it hurt anywhere!?”

A strange man was yelling into her face while another struggled with her flailing limbs.

“No! Let me go, I have to be with him!” she shouted back, swatting and hitting at their hands.

“Ma'am, you're bleeding. Do you hear me? You're bleeding.”

He was right, of course – she'd cut her hands on the broken windshield glass that was everywhere. But she didn't care. She shoved and pushed and managed to roll away, then gripped onto another car to pull herself upright.

“I don't give a shit,” she snarled. “If he's leaving, I have to be with him when he goes!”

When Adele stepped towards her overturned vehicle, though, her injured foot protested loudly. She let out a cry and crumpled to the ground, grinding glass into her knees.

“You can't help him,” the young man was back again, kneeling at her side and speaking softly to her. “Not like this. You said he was hurt – the paramedics will take care of him.”

“You don't understand,” she sobbed, and she realized she was gripping onto his jacket with both hands. “I just found him. I just found him. This isn't fair.”

“I know, I know,” he murmured, and his arms came around her as they rocked back and forth. “It's not fair. But you hear that? Those are sirens. They're almost here, and they'll help him, you'll see. So just let them help him.”

Adele didn't know this man. He was wearing a Bruins sweater, and if she had to guess, he was maybe twenty years old at most. A complete stranger, barely more than a teenager, was holding her and comforting her on the side of the road.