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I pull back, confused by his request. “What?”
“I can see you disappearing,” he admits quietly. “Please don’t leave us. I know it doesn’t seem like it now, but everything is going to be okay. You aren’t alone.”
“It’s all my fault,” I rasp. “He’s gone because of me.”
“It’s not because of you. None of this is because of you. Zach wasn’t right in the head,” he utters. “It wasn’t long ago that you sat in the living room telling Mum it wasn’t her fault that your birth mum did those things. But here you are, blaming yourself for the actions of another person.”
I can’t see through the tears pooling in my eyes. “I don’t think I’ll ever be okay again. I just got him. I planned to spend the rest of my life with him. Nothing will ever make that better.”
“It seems like that now,” he agrees. “But one day you will be okay.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do. Grief is like love. It can be comforting, because it means that the person will never be truly gone or forgotten. You only grieve those who mean the most to you. And little by little, you forget about the grief and remember the person.”
“Okay, what did you do to my brother?” I ask. I’ve never heard him speak like this, much less have him comfort me.
“I’m just doing what you did for me,” he replies.
“What?”
“Remember when Grandma died?”
“Yeah,” I whisper.
Although we had time to prepare and say our goodbyes, it still hit us hard. She always seemed youthful and filled with life. Josh found it harder. He had only been little and didn’t truly understand what it meant. Mum and Dad couldn’t console him, so I climbed into bed with him…
“I told you it would be okay, that we had each other, and you were never alone.”
“I’m doing what you did for me,” he rasps.
“I love him so much,” I breathe. “Why did this happen? His mum and siblings have lost someone they love again. I did that to them. They’ll hate me.”
The door slams open and I jerk away from Josh to see Mum storm into the room. “Sweetie, he’s here. He’s alive, but critical.”
I sit up, the room spinning. If it wasn’t for Josh helping me, I would have collapsed back down. “What?”
I must be hearing things.
This must be a cruel joke.
Hope said he was unresponsive.
“Ben, he is here. He’s breathing, but needs surgery. They got his rhythm back in the helicopter,” she tells me.
I grip her hands, feeling my chest constrict as sweat beads on my forehead. “Ben is here? He’s alive?”
She gently cups my cheeks in her hand. Streaks of tears run down her cheeks, washing her makeup away. “He is, baby. He is. Your dad is waiting to get an update. Ben is still critical, but there’s hope.”
Hope.
Hope is a funny thing. It can keep you dangling by a piece of thread, making you believe in the better, but can snap at any moment, taking everything away. Hope is beautiful yet terrifying. And I want to hope. I want to believe Ben will be okay.
Black spots blur my vision, and as I feel hands place pressure on my back, I fall into darkness.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Imogen
