29
Evan
Most of what happened next is hard to remember.
I stayed next to Scarlett when they took her uncle's body into the ambulance. I sat by her next to the stretcher as she held onto his hand, whispering prayers, and begging him to stay with her. I stayed with her when we waited outside the operating room. She paced the hallway and ignored me when I asked her to sit down. I think halfway through she realised that he wasn’t coming out of the operating room alive. I stayed with her when the doctors came out and told us they were sorry for our loss.
She didn’t cry. She didn’t run into the room like I expected, demanding they do more. She just stood there, staring at the doctor until I clasped my hand around her elbow and led her to a seat. When the doctors changed our clothes, giving us scrubs that weren’t covered in blood, a nurse had to dress her because she didn’t want to move. Even when her mom and brothers came, she sat there, staring at the blank wall, the smell of chlorine and chemicals invading our senses. They didn’t know what to do or say, so they left me with her, and I promised them I’d get her home safe.
I sat with her for hours. I brought food to her, but she didn’t eat. She didn’t speak. She didn’t even look at me. I tried to comfort her. I never left her side. I couldn’t. And I didn’t want to. I need to be close to her, at all times and even with her in a state of grief, I still want to be with her.
Now, I’m driving her back home in her car and she’s still silent. It’s stopped raining, but her body temperature keeps fluctuating. At the moment, her face looks pale, but she feels warm. I can tell she’s going to fall asleep. She’s still in shock and her head keeps lolling forward. I slow down the car so I can use my right hand to lift her head up. Her head is so hot it almost scalds me.
“Hey, Scar?” I ask, tilting her head to lift back on the headrest. I glance at her, trying my best to keep my eyes on the road at the same time. Her dark hair is covering most of her face.
“Hm?” she mumbles. It’s the most I’ve heard her speak in the last six hours, so I hold onto the moment and urge her not to fall asleep.
“Stay with me, okay?” I let go of my hand for a second, seeing if she’ll keep her head up, but she can’t do it on her own. Maybe we shouldn’t have left the hospital. “I’ve got you.”
“I’m literally fine,” she groans. Of course, she has the energy to give me sass right now.
“You’re not,” I say, still holding her head up. She turns her head into my hand, gently nuzzling her cheek into my palm like a kitten. I lower my hand, so it rests in my lap, and she sets her head in it. I continue driving with one hand, stroking her hair out of her face with the other.
“I’m trying,” she groans, and it sounds like she’s crying again. Her voice sounds so filled with pain that it tears my heart in two. “I’m just so tired…so tired of everything. Everything hurts so badly.”
“What hurts, Angel?” I ask, moving my hand from her face down her spine, running my fingers up and down. She relaxes into me for a second and I can tell she’s forcing herself to breathe calmly. I don’t want her to sleep yet. Not when she hasn’t eaten all day.
“Everything hurts,” she says again. “My head. My back. My heart. My chest. My hands. I feel like I can’t breathe anymore, Ev.”
“I’ve got you, Scar. What do you need?”
“I don’t know,” she groans, pressing her hand to her temples.
“Can I take you back to the hospital?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “No. No hospitals.”
“Okay, then what can I do for you, Scarlett? I need to help you,” I say quietly, still running my finger up and down her back.
“Just take me home. Please,” she whispers. She turns in my lap so she’s looking up at me. Her face is paler than usual, but her cheeks are a little red. She grabs my hand, pressing it to her heart. “I feel like my chest is on fire.”
“I know, sweetheart, I know,” I whisper back to her, massaging the top of her chest gently and she lets me. She lets me be there for her.
Scarlett
Have you ever had that feeling after you’ve felt things so intensely, where you feel it right to your core, it sits in your stomach, it stays there and then it’s just…gone?
I get that feeling after being so high on energy at a concert and I have to go back home, where I have to pretend, I didn’t have the best time of my life. I got that feeling after I finished high school. Everyone was sad about leaving their friends and moving away, but what stuck with me was that I was leaving a place and it felt like losing a person. It felt like losing a part of myself since it was somewhere I spent so many years creating memories with my best friends.
That’s what it felt like when the doctors told me my uncle had died. I already knew from the moment in the alley that he wouldn’t make it, but the doctors made it official.
He was justgone. There was nothing left of him. That’s the hardest part about someone dying is knowing that it's just…it. Their memories cease to exist. Their thoughts, their feelings, everything that made themthemdoesn’t even mean anything anymore. You don’t get to ever speak to them again. You won’t ever know what they would have thought about something new happening. You’d never know if their voice would change with age or if it would stay the same. Their mind, their soul, their body…everything is just gone.
I’m still trying to process it when Evan takes me back to my apartment. The girls’ cars aren’t in the driveway, and I don’t know when or if I’ll tell them. I’m not planning on talking to anyone right now. I don’t want to wallow and sit in silence, but I don’t want to talk either. I just want to stop feeling. To stop the noise in my head that keeps replaying the same thoughts over and over.
He’s gone.
He’s gone.
