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“What kind of incident? Is he… you know...” I ask as she starts the ignition.
We pull out onto the road, and she puts her foot down. Her urgency scares me more.
“Freya, please tell me what you know. Tell me you’re not taking me to say goodbye because I can’t stand this.”
She’s being cagey. I can tell that there’s something she’s holding back. Why else would she be evasive?
“No, babe.” She takes a left towards the city and shakes her head. “He’s alive. Marvin said they’re taking him to Royal Hospital.”
“Why?”
“Okay. You need to remember that he is alive. Casper was stabbed, Ainsley.”
The world falls away, and I’m left cold and numb. I scramble to make her words make sense. Casper was stabbed.
“No. That’s not right. They must have the wrong person. Who would stab him?” My hands shake with adrenaline and fear. “Freya, what’s going on?”
Part of me hopes this is some elaborate prank, a cruel one, to get me to realise how much I love him. Because I do. I love him so fucking much… and I might never get to tell him that again.
Freya’s eyes are all over the road. She’s weaving in and out of the traffic in the bid to get us to the hospital in record time.
I press my hand to my chest and cry big, ugly sobs that almost turn me inside out. The weight of living in a world that Casper might no longer be part of is threatening to crush me.
“Hey, shh. It’s okay. He’s alive. Focus on that. I didn’t get many details from Marvin. He found him outside the gym. He didn’t realise Casper was there.”
It’s now 5:43 a.m. Casper was at the gym at the crack of dawn because of me.
Fuck. If I hadn’t sent him away, he wouldn’t have been at that gym at all.
“I need him to be okay,” I tell her, wringing my hands and willing the cars in front of us to get out of the fucking way. Freya overtakes as much of the early morning traffic as she can. “Who would want to hurt him?” I ask again, somewhat to myself. I run through everyone we know.
And realise that I’m the only person who has ever hated Casper.
“He’ll be fine. It’s good that Marvin found him quickly. I think he was only ten minutes behind him, according to when Marvin heard Casper’s car leave. There was no one else around, but there’s CCTV all over campus. They’ll get whoever did this.”
Ten minutes behind. Was Casper lying outside the gym before sunrise, bleeding out alone? Ten minutes must have felt like a lifetime to him while he was on the ground, probably calling for help, fighting for each breath.
The visual makes my stomach heave.
“Marvin called you,” I say after a few minutes of silence. I have to hold it together. Sitting up straighter in the seat, I ask, “Was Casper conscious? Did he ask Marvin not to contact me?”
“No, it’s nothing like that. Marvin didn’t want you driving.”
I don’t have a car, but I do have access to Imani’s and Freya’s cars. There is nothing that would have stopped me from finding a vehicle to take me to the hospital.
“Marvindidn’t want me getting a car. Casper wasn’t conscious when he was found, was he? Shit, this can’t be happening, Freya.”
I take a deep breath, focusing on trying to keep myself in a fit state to deal with whatever is about to come. Somehow, I don’t think I’ll ever be prepared to see Casper in a hospital bed with a stab wound.
“He wasn’t conscious, but that doesn’t mean anything.”
How can that be meaningless? Casper’s strong, but is he stronger than a knife? There could be damage to his organs. He could lose too much blood. Strong doesn’t mean invincible.
The city whizzes by, filled with people walking their dogs, jogging, or heading for an early day at work. I envy each and every one of them. They get to go about their day while my world is crumbling.
I hate them all for not feeling how I do right now.
“I told him to give me space,” I say, clawing at the hem of my T-shirt. “I sent him away.”
