All This Time(7)

Flash.

An elderly woman getting oxygen.

Flash.

A girl reading a book. She looks up just as we round a corner.

Flash.

Then Dr. Benefield, her white jacket whipping ahead of me, blurring and expanding into a glow that consumes the entire hallway, until there’s nothing left but the blinding white light.





3


“Kyle.”

Images swim before me.

A shattered disco ball.

Sheets of rain.

Kim’s blond hair, matted and bloody.

Then pain. It radiates across my head, through my whole body. I grip the sheets until it recedes enough for me to make out a voice calling my name again, clearer now.

“Kyle?”

Mom.

I try to open my eyes, to focus on her face in front of me. I see her nose, her mouth, but her image is too bright. Blurry. Distorted. Like an overexposed photograph.

“Mom,” I croak out, my throat as dry as sandpaper.

She takes my hand, squeezes.

I feel tired. So tired.

The doctor moves into my field of view. She shines a bright light into my eyes, asking me what I can and can’t feel, then to follow her finger.

I can’t—I don’t feel that. Am I supposed to feel that?

And that’s when the panic rushes back. The bloody, matted hair. The gurney. Kimberly.

“What happened—Kim—is she…?”

She doesn’t say anything, just focuses on something in her hands. A clipboard. A pen clicking. A note on her chart.

“Kyle, do you remember me? I’m Dr. Benefield. You’ve suffered a serious brain—” Her voice is cut off by the blare of a horn, the noise so loud I squeeze my eyes shut, desperate for it to stop.

When I try to open them, there is nothing but pain. Searing pain trying to swallow me whole. So I let it.



* * *




When I wake up again, I have no idea how long it’s been, but everything is clearer. The white tile of the ceiling, the teal hospital walls, a TV in the corner, the flat-screen black.

There’s an ache in my head, and I remember Dr. Benefield’s words. I reach up to feel a bandage on my forehead, and the motion brings the unexpected tug of an IV on my arm. My eyes swing to the jumble of machines next to me and then down to the figure sitting at the edge of my bed.

“Sam,” I manage to get out, and his head whips over to me. His eyes are red and bloodshot, his cheeks wet.

Instantly, dread bubbles through me.

Our entire lives, I’ve only seen Sam cry twice. Once when we were ten and he broke his arm falling off his bike, and then when his family’s golden retriever, Otto, died three summers ago. But this doesn’t feel like either of those times.

It feels worse.

“Sam?”

I can’t ask the question and he doesn’t answer. He just turns his bloodshot eyes out the window, and I see the tears falling faster now.

“Sam,” I say again, desperately struggling to sit up with a body too weak to comply, until my arms give out and I fall back onto the bed. “Sam?”

But still he doesn’t reply.

Kim’s smiling face dances in front of my eyes, and I struggle to breathe, horror and guilt wrapping tightly around my lungs as a bolt of pain ricochets across my head.

She can’t be…

I relive it all. Starting with Berkeley, the fight, and ending with her wide, panicked eyes in the glow of the headlights.

And as the truck makes impact, I feel my entire world shatter, the pain from my head building and building until my entire body explodes into a million pieces, pieces that won’t ever be put back together.





4


I rest my bandaged head against the cool glass of the car window and watch as the droplets of rain catch the shining red of the brake lights in front of us as Mom drives. It’s been two whole weeks and I still can’t believe it.

I thought that losing her in the breakup was the worst pain I could ever feel, but this… I can’t fix this. I can’t take out a charm bracelet and make things right.

She’s really gone. Buried at the local cemetery five days ago in a ceremony I was too busted up to attend.

When we get to the house, I stand there in the rain, clutching the cardboard box from the hospital to my chest. Inside are my dress shoes, the tattered remains of my suit, and the charm bracelet hidden somewhere in the mess, those unclaimed links that will never be filled.

The rain stops abruptly. I look up to see a black umbrella looming over me. My mom reaches to touch the rain-logged bandage around my head, but I gently brush her hand away. I don’t want to be comforted or taken care of. It won’t work anyway.

“I just need you to be okay,” she whispers to me, her mouth barely moving.

Okay.

Like I could ever find a way back to okay. She gives me a concerned look, her eyes boring into mine as she takes the box from me and tucks it under her arm.

I need to be alone.

I steady myself with the crutches before I hobble toward the house and up onto the porch, my head foggy as I try not to put weight on my shattered femur, currently held together by a metal rod. She helps me through the front door, and I make the world’s slowest beeline for the basement, wishing for a dose of whatever they gave me in the hospital to let me fade away to nothingness. My crutches thump noisily on the floor as I go, loud and steady, like a heartbeat.