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He looks to me for answers. His face full of worry and doubt. His eyes beg me for sympathy – to take over on this revelation. It ain’t happening.
He takes a deep breath. “Last year,” he says on an exhale. “on the way to the airport to get here for you.”
She gasps as pain like I’ve never seen crosses her features. The beeping of the machines seems to speed up. I look up to see her heart rate has spiked. The blood pressure monitor shows her pressure is spiking to what I know are unsafe levels. Her breathing picks up at a rapid pace.
She’s having a panic attack. She looks to me for help. “Shhh,” I whisper to her. “It’s not your fault. It was an accident. Calm down for me, baby.”
A nurse comes running in to see what is going on. She looks at Zoey lying in the bed. Her haunted eyes and twisted face tell the nurse that she is hurting.
The nurse looks to me seeing I’m trying to comfort and calm her – which isn’t working – then to Zane. The look of guilt written across his face would be obvious to anyone.
“Miss Valen,” the nurse says in soothing tones, “I need you to calm down. Okay? Breathe. In through your nose. Out through your mouth.”
Zoey looks at the nurse and tries to do as she says. I whisper the same instructions into her ear while murmuring that I’m not going anywhere. The erratic beeping of the machines seems to slow but only marginally.
“I’m going to get you something to calm you down. Would you like that?” the nurse asks.
Zoey doesn’t response, so I nod in acceptance on her behalf.
Finally, ten minutes later, Zoey is calm and sleeping. Zane slinks out of the room and I follow him into the family seating area of the floor we’re on. Once the door is closed behind me, I turn him around and push him. Hard. “What the fuck was that?” I bellow.
He looks at me guilty. “I don’t know. When she said she was sorry, all the relief I felt morphed into anger faster than I could handle,” he says dragging a hand over his face.
“She didn’t need that right now, Zane. She is in enough pain without you laying on the guilt. Without hearing about your parents. It was never going to be a good time to tell her, but fifteen minutes after she woke up couldn’t possibly have been a worse fucking time.”
“You think I don’t know that,” he yells. “I didn’t fucking mean to, but all the resentment and anger bubbled up faster than I could push it back down. I’m sorry.”
I grind my molars. “I’m already so sick of hearing those words, ‘I’m sorry’. I’m fucking tired of the apologies. You have spent the last year trying to pretend like you’re not angry. That you’re not hurting. This shit didn’t just happen to Zoey. Or me. You have a fucking right to be pissed just like we do, but telling her now? That’s not okay?”
“I said I was fucking sorry, Jay. I can’t take it back now, so what the hell do you want me to do?”
I sit in on the arm of a navy leather sofa with my shoulders hunched forward. “I want to go back to last year and tell her to forget about her stupid dinner with Maddox and come home. But I know I can’t do that. But so help me God, stop apologizing. First, it’s not helping. Second, no one has anything to apologize for. This whole damn situation has been handled wrong from the get-go by all of us. I know it’s going to be a lot fucking easier said than done, but we need to accept what happen and move on. Especially for her because she’s carrying more guilt and pain than we can possibly imagine.”
He moves to lean again the door of the room with a sigh. “I’ve been trying to let it go and move on for a year, Jay. That didn’t work out too well a few minutes ago.”
I get it more than he knows. I don’t know how the hell I’m going to stop myself from going through the ‘what-if’ scenarios. I don’t know how I’m going to let go of my own hurt and pain, but I realized the moment she opened her eyes that I have to. I have to be strong. I have to be patient. I have to be gentle and caring. And I’ll do it. God help me I’ll do it. I’ll do it for her.
It’s always for her.
Zoey
My parents are gone. They’re not coming back. Logically, I know it’s not my fault, but my aching heart doesn’t seem to grasp the same understanding.
If nothing had happened to me, then they’d never been on their way to me. If I’d just gone home instead of trying to have dinner with Maddox. If I’d turned down the showcase this year. If I’d taken a taxi or uber to the restaurant. So many things I could’ve done differently, and this raw pain wouldn’t be here. My parents would be alive. My baby would be alive.
I just wanted the pain to go away. I’ve tried with alcohol and drugs. I tried to use sex and physical pain to make my broken, bleeding heart stop hurting. I tried to take my own life to stop the constant ache in my chest.
None of that worked.
Seeing the pain and guilt so clearly etched into Jax and Zane’s faces made me want to run again. It’s why I ran in the first place. I told myself it was because I didn’t want them to suffer with me. I didn’t want them to hurt. I convinced myself if I ran then they wouldn’t have to hurt.
It was a load of utter bullshit. After five seconds of looking into Jax’s eyes, I realized that I ran because I didn’t want to see his pain. Thinking about it now, I understand that me running wasn’t going to stop any hurt or suffering for either of them. Instead, it gave them one more thing to worry about. To hurt over.
I’ve always been selfish and self-centered. I just never realized it until now. I ran away because I didn’t know how to deal with my own pain. I ran because I couldn’t handle their pain too.
I’m afraid I still can’t handle their pain. Everything in me wants to run from the guilt of that assessment, but more I want to run from the hurt and pain in their eyes.
And how fucking selfish does that make me.
