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I lowered my head, and brushed my fingers through my hair. Staci, my roommate, pushed a plate full of pancakes in front of me but I couldn’t stand the thought of eating. The last two weeks had been hell, and I felt like I was living on autopilot. Maybe because I had been.

“You need to eat, Vaughan,” admonished Staci. I ignored the hint of concern in her voice, and grumbled an incoherent response. When I looked up, Staci’s worried stare greeted me. Her green eyes were somewhat pleading, but I ignored that too. We’d been living together for just over a year, and when she showed up on my doorstep all those months ago I never thought I’d come to think of her as a friend. Her blonde hair was trimmed into a pixie cut with the ends dyed light blue. With long, tanned legs she looked like she’d stepped off a runway, but after the first week of living with her I realized she was anything but “prissy”. She was the lead singer in a local band, and had a wicked talent for playing a base guitar, but beneath that ‘rock chic’ exterior was a heart of gold. A big one.

“I’m not hungry.” I rubbed my hands down my face. I needed to shave but mustering up enough energy to do much of anything lately was a challenge. It was getting on Staci’s nerves, she’d been making comments here and there, but she couldn’t even begin to understand what I’d been through. She didn’t don’t know about the dreams, the way my mind was constantly replaying the events of that night over and over and over again until it made me physically ill. I hadn’t stepped foot in the rink in two weeks and missed a few off season training sessions, but I doubted Coach Davis even cared. He was dealing with just as much as I was, except it was difficult to imagine that he is was eaten up by guilt as I was. Jackson tried calling me, but I declined every call, unable to bring myself to speak to him. He had every right to lash out at me, and I would have welcomed it if I thought anything he had to say would be worse than what I’d been calling myself for the last ten days.

Ten days.

That’s how long it had been, and yet it felt like no time had passed at all. It still felt like I was at the hospital, waiting to hear from the doctors, or anyone really, who could tell me about Kenzi, about whether or not she was —

I shook my head. No. I didn’t want to think about that. I couldn’t.

“Too bad,” said Staci. “You’ve barely eaten, and God knows when the last time was you saw the inside of a shower. I’m staging an intervention. As your friend I won’t sit by and watch you do this to yourself.”

She nudged the plate closer, and then set a freshly brewed cup of coffee next to my elbow. “Please, Vaughan. Do you think Kenzi would want you to be punishing yourself this way?”

I straightened on my bar stool, and glared at her. “You don’t know what Kenzi would want, and there’s no way for her to fucking tell you is there?”

Staci folded her tatted up arms across her chest, and fixed me with a hard stare — a stare that has made grown men buckle. Still, it didn’t scare me. “I’ve been around the two of you long enough to know how much she adores you, and I can say with absolute certainty that if she were here right now she would kick your ass for not taking better care of yourself. Since we’re still waiting for her to wake up, I’m going to kick your ass on her behalf until she can do it herself. Now eat those fucking pancakes, and take a shower.”

My shoulders slumped forward. “You don’t know that she’s going to wake up, Stac.”

She relaxed, and came forward, leaning her forearms on the kitchen counter in front of me. “She’s going to wake up, Vaughan. Her coma is medically induced. The doctors are optimistic about her condition —”

“How do you know?” I barked, feeling my brows draw into a frown.

Staci bit her lip, and muttered, “shit” under her breath.

“How do you know that?” I pressed.

“I spoke to Jackson. You weren’t taking his calls, so I called him. He’s worried about you, and said you haven’t been to the hospital at all.”

That was a lie, but I was too annoyed about the fact that she’d been speaking to Jackson behind my back to correct her. I’d been at the hospital a few times, but made sure to go when there was no chance of bumping into Kenzi’s family. After the accident, her oldest brother Connor – a neurologist at Blackburn Community Hospital -decided to put Kenzi in a medically induced coma to help with the swelling on her brain, and he’d told us she was lucky to be alive. The impact from the other vehicle should have been enough to kill her, and Connor, along with a few other doctors, were surprised that Kenzi only suffered a head trauma when almost anyone else would have died. I didn’t care how she survived it, I simply cared that she had.

Now if she would just wake up.

“I don’t think her family would want me there,” I replied with a shrug. “Figured they blame me for what happened.”

Staci shook her head, and looked at me as if I’d gone crazy. “They don’t blame you. It’s not like you forced Kenzi to get into your truck knowing some drunk asshole was going to skip a red light.”

I sighed. She was right of course, but it didn’t negate the sense of responsibility that had been consuming me.

“Doesn’t change the fact that she’s in a coma, and might never wake up.”

Staci threw her hands up, and huffed in exasperation. “Enough! You’re done beating yourself up, and feeling sorry for yourself. Eat, take a shower, and go to the rink. Time to pull your head out of your ass, Vaughan.”

I scowled. “I’m not feeling sorry for myself, I’m just -”

“You’re just what? Sitting here waiting for better days?”

My jaw tightened, and I looked away, afraid that I would say something out of anger that I’ll end up regretting. Staci simply didn’t understand, and I didn’t expect her to, but having her speak to me like what I was going through was as simple as a ‘bad break up’ rubbed me the wrong way.

“I care about you,” she continued, “and I know you’re hurting, but it’s been almost two weeks, and it’s time you got back to your life. Kenzi will wake up, but until then you can’t put your life on hold. It doesn’t work that way.”

Instead of coming up with an excuse, because she was right again, I pulled the plate closer to me and stuck a forkful of pancakes into my mouth. The moan that escaped couldn’t be contained, because I was starving and it had been days since I’d eaten a decent meal. Staci watched, sipping her own coffee, and did little to hide her smug grin. Despite the fact that we got on each other’s nerves more often than not, she was a good friend, and I needed one of those.

I polished the pancakes in record time, and already felt a little more like myself. I looked at Staci when she removed my empty plate, and gripped her wrist before she could turn away.

“Thanks Stac. I mean it.”