Elijah slowly lifted his head, the hard angles of his face making his grief look even worse. His eyes were full of unshed tears which he refused to let out. Paul watched with concern as an expression crossed his friend’s face that he couldn’t work out.
“Elijah?” Paul spoke, but Elijah barely acknowledged him as he pushed away from the table. “Where are you going?”
Elijah walked towards the door, his hand resting on the cool metal handle. “I’m going to Arizona,” he said, pressing on the handle and pulling the door open.
“Elijah, you can’t go near her!” Paul shouted. “There’s a restraining order against you going anywhere near her. Stay here and let me deal with it.”
Elijah heard Paul yell after him, but he didn’t care what Michael Stanton said. He didn’t care what anyone said. Right now, he only cared about seeing Delores. The law, his job, everything could fall away for all he cared. None of it was important.
Only her.
Only Delores was important.
Her whole life she’d been pushed around by people. She’d felt alone and mistreated by everyone until now, until Elijah, and he wasn’t going to let her die without her knowing that she had been loved deeply by him.
That he would miss her.
That he didn’t understand why she would do such a thing, but that he didn’t care.
He still loved her, and still wanted to be there for her.
Right until the bitter end, if it came to it.
He said a silent prayer, hoping with everything he had that it wouldn’t come to that.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Delores
They say that there is a moment, between life and death, where you can be in two places.
A moment, when your soul that is floating above and can look down on your body and make a choice of whether to live or die. Delores didn’t feel that, or any other thing, as the drugs slipped into her body, and slowly began to poison her. She felt nothing but numbness as her body choked on its own vomit. And blackness was all she saw as she flew high above herself, welcome arms reaching for her and pulling her to where she belonged.
Now, as she lay in her hospital bed, she still felt nothing, and she still saw only blackness, but she heard the soft yet equally shrillbeep beep beepof something. Her eyelids fluttered but remained closed. Her tongue moved around a tube in her mouth, but not enough to try and speak. Her fingers flexed, but not enough to draw attention, and then she slipped back into the arms that welcomed her home.
In the background was the hollow sound of her children playing. The soft slap of a skipping rope on concrete and the roar of a pretend dinosaur. Their echoing laughter was painful to her ears.
Michael would be disappointed in her.
She was disappointed in her.
Everyone would be.
She felt rather than saw the movements around her. The shift in the air, a cold chill, a hot breath. An arm being moved, skin being poked. The sharp prod of a needle. Voices surrounded her, but the words made no sense. Just soft murmurs, the highs and the lows of letters. Tones really.
Delores wondered, for a brief moment, if this were hell. It was right and just that she go to hell; she knew that yet she never gave up hope. Her mother had always called her a dreamer when she was a child, she remembered that. Delores the dreamer, that’s what her mother had said. She always held out hope, even in the worst situations, but then again young Delores didn’t know what the grown-up Delores would do.
Young Delores had no idea about the atrocities that the old Delores would commit.
A soft sob crawled up her throat. It bubbled past the tube stuck deep down it and came out as merely a gurgle of sadness.
The room went silent.
No more voices.
No more breath.
No more touches.
