4
JASON
I can’t look at her without feeling my chest constrict. I can’t think of her without feeling guilty about what happened.
I am once again so close that I’m messing with her emotional balance and sense of control. So much so that I’m putting her life in danger.
We were just kids, it’s true, but even then I was nurturing something for her that went beyond friendship, more than affection.
Somethingbeyondthat.
I have hated myself for what I’ve done. A kiss, a simple stupid kiss could take her life away and I, idiot that I am, was about to do some irreparable damage.
In a few seconds her whole world changed and with it, mine too. A few seconds that should never have happened, that for me, meant everything.
I was just starting to taste her lips for the first time when she broke away from me and brought her hands to her heart, a moment before collapsing in my arms. I laid her down, trying to keep her awake, but unsuccessfully.
I didn’t know what to do, we were alone in the house and so I called an ambulance. They stayed on the line with me the whole time I was waiting, telling me what to do, how to try and stimulate her and I went into a total panic.
She seemed like she was dead.
I had lost another person.
I held her in my arms, I caressed her hair while my tears fell relentlessly, wetting her pale, stony face.
Then the paramedics showed up and immediately understood the situation. They put her in the ambulance as they tried to revive her.
I couldn’t hear anything but their voices in the distance and the sound of the defibrillator. I was sitting in a corner of the ambulance with my head in my hands, as I rocked myself back and forth, crying, completely taken over by my grief.
I thought I had lost her forever.
In the hospital they asked me a thousand questions that I wasn’t able to answer. I was confused, scared and in shock. I was just able to provide her parents’ phone number and they arrived a few minutes after the call. They found me sitting on the floor in the waiting room.
I was still rocking back and forth.
Her father made me stand up. He hugged me tightly and thanked me for saving his daughter, but I knew that he couldn’t have known she was in that condition because of what I had done.
When they allowed her parents to go into intensive therapy I wasn’t able to stay there. I couldn’t take the sight of another person I loved in a cold sterile bed with that damnedbipgoing off in my ears, that was eating away at my heart.
I couldn’t face it all again.
Selfish, angry, desperate.
I went to the first pub I found on my way out. I drank until I threw up everything inside me, including my soul, in the bathroom of that shithole of a dive.
I was not steady on my feet. I hit up against something thick and massive, which turned out to be some guy, and after telling him to go fuck himself I went back to the bar for another round, but it didn’t go down well with him. He grabbed me by the shirt, he spun me around, and lifted me off the ground, yelling something in my face that I was not able to hear as I was completely drunk. I just remember repeating my advice through clenched teeth, telling him that he should go fuck himself, before his fist hit my nose.
I collapsed on the bar counter and grabbed my neighbor’s bottle of beer, turned on a dime and wacked him over the head with it. I don’t remember much after that except for the fact that I woke up in a prison cell, even more pissed off than before.
Aaron got me out of trouble that night, he cleaned me up and gave me a place to stay. He gave me a family, together with Rain. We all helped each other and took care of one another.
They are the only family I have.
I broke that idiot’s head, but luckily someone in the pub saw all of what happened prior to that ugly scene. There was a hearing to determine who was at fault. I was able to avoid jail time but was sentenced to six months of community service. Aaron took care of the expenses. I never could have asked my father to do it. I’ll owe Aaron for as long as I live.
Three days later, sober and partially back to being myself, I went to the hospital.
I had to see her, to know how she was doing and to try and understand what had happened.
