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She looked peaceful.
Her left hand rested on top of the sheet, her engagement ring catching the sunbeams streaming through the blinds of her room.
The ventilator machine beeped in time with the rise of her chest.
“You shouldn’t be here.”
I didn’t turn my head at the sound of Mark’s angry voice.
This was my fault.
She wouldn’t be in the hospital on life support if it hadn’t been for me.
Me.
I was the one who’d chosen a dangerous life. I was the one who’d selfishly wanted Shelly to still be a part of it because she was my family. I’d been determined to meld it all; my old life with the new.
And now my twenty-five-year-old best friend who I loved like a sister, whose life had just been getting started, who’d been planning a wedding, was in a coma.
Mark’s anger was palpable.
I felt it in the air.
Felt it on my skin.
I wanted Colt next to me, to hold my hand during this awful moment of my life. But he was still unconscious from the drugs they’d given him. Zip and Joni sat by his bedside while I tended to this.
This.
Whateverthiswas.
So familiar. Another loss piled on the mound of losses I’d already buried.
My mother.
Grammie.
And now Shelly.
“She wouldn’t want this,” I said, my tone flat.
“You don’t get to decide what she would’ve wanted,” Mark snapped.
I heard heartbreak fighting its way through rage.
“I know what she wanted.” I finally looked at him.
White face. Pinched features. Red eyes, ready to burst with tears. But this was not the time for them. The tears could come later.
After.
“There’s still hope.” Mark looked at his fiancée and then walked to her bedside. He tenderly brushed a finger across her cheek. “There’s still hope she can wake up from this.”
Severe brain trauma resulting in permanent mental deficits.
Paralysis.
Feeding tube.
