All This Time(75)

“Do I need to sedate you again?” she asks.

“Where is she?” I ask, frantically spinning around to look at all of them, my eyes meeting theirs one by one. “Where is she? Where…?”

This can’t be happening again.

I’m steered into a chair and Kimberly kneels in front of me, grabbing ahold of my hand.

“Stop.”

I stare at her earnest expression, angry. Why is everyone telling me to wait? Why are they here with me when we should all be with her?

“I need you to listen to me.”

I fight the impulse to run, zeroing in on her blue eyes, trying to collect myself. I nod impatiently for her to continue.

“She saved the kid. She saved him and she’s alive, but…”

“We don’t know for how long,” a voice says from the door. I whip my head around to see Dr. Benefield, her face serious, a scrub cap in one of her hands. Our eyes meet, and she nods toward the hallway. “Come with me.”

I follow after her, everything a blur. The bright lights, the white tile, and the pale walls all morphing together. I hear Kim’s and Sam’s and my mom’s footsteps trailing closely behind us.

She stops short at a door, looking back at me before she reaches out and slowly opens it.

I step inside, afraid to look. Afraid to see Marley hurt. Dying.

Her mom sits at her bedside, her eyes fixed to the heart rate monitor, like she’s personally keeping it going with pure willpower. The steady beep, beep, beep is the only sound in the entire room.

I swallow, forcing myself to look from Catherine to the bed, my legs feeling like they’re going to give out. She looks so small. Battered. I clench my jaw as my eyes trace every bruise and scrape on her body, working their way up to the bandage wrapped around her head, her eyes tightly shut.

“I’m sorry,” I manage to get out, her mom turning her head to look at me. Georgia. “It was my fault—”

Catherine shakes her head, grabbing my hand. “No. None of that. That’s how we got here,” she says, giving my fingers a tight squeeze. “Don’t do that to yourself.”

Her gaze slides from my face to the monitor, focusing on the steady thumping in Marley’s chest.

“She’s going to wake up, right?” I ask, taking a step toward the bed, afraid to hear the answer.

“It’s up to her,” Dr. Benefield says from behind me. “She should already be awake.”

What? Then why isn’t she?

I look over at her, confusion painted on my face.

“She hit her head, but the bleed was light and the scans don’t show any sign of massive trauma,” Dr. Benefield says, pushing her glasses up onto her head, her eyes sad. “She should be waking up, but it seems she doesn’t want to.”

Catherine begins to sob next to me, her hand pulling away from mine to cover her face.

“Sometimes the choice to live or die is up to us,” Dr. Benefield says, looking from me to the bed. “Marley’s not fighting.”

The choice to live or die. I see the dark shadows under her eyes, her words ringing loudly in my head.

She died because of me.

I don’t get to be happy.

Laura.

But I also hear the other voices. The things I heard while I was asleep that made me keep fighting, that pulled me through.

Don’t let go.

Always forward. Never back.

I take a step toward her, knowing I sure as hell won’t let Marley go this easily. This is not how her story ends. It can’t be.

I take her hand. Her fingers feel cool in mine, limp, like she’s already gone.

“I won’t let you leave me,” I whisper. “I told you no more sad stories. That goes both ways, you know.” I try to joke, but my laugh comes out as a garbled choking sound. I squeeze my hand tighter around hers, trying to warm those cold fingers.

How did she do this? What did she…? Ah. Yes. I hear her words that first day at the cemetery.

I lean close, my lips against her ear.

“Once upon a time there was a girl who was sad and alone.”

An electric jolt zings through me. Maybe, just maybe, I can do this. Maybe I can make her hear me. Believe me.

“She told stories. Happy stories,” I say as I imagine that worn yellow notebook full of her writing, not knowing where the fairy tales ended and our memories began. It doesn’t matter, though. It was all real to me, every page a part of my life with her.

I won’t give up until I get it back, get her back, and I know that starts here.

“But for herself she only told the same sad story, over and over again.”

Marley hasn’t moved. No flutter of lids, no twitch of fingers, nothing. Instead, I take my cue from the steady beeping of the monitor, urging me to continue.

“Until she met a boy. They found each other when they thought their stories were at an end. But they started writing a new one, and for the first time in a long time, the girl allowed her story to be a happy one. Her story with him. And he promised her… he would never let her go.”

Another tingle of electricity skitters along my forehead, right down the length of my scar. Her fingers give the barest twitch in mine—or is that wishful thinking?

I think of the man in the moon, the wishes the girl made for her love. So I close my eyes and let the story carry me to her, to the girl I know is waiting for me, lost somewhere in a story that is ours and ours alone.