I woke up in a hospital. I knew this for a couple of reasons.
First, the smell. It’s horrid as hell, and no matter what hospital you’re in, it’s the same. It’s a smell of death and sickness and puke, and the heavy disinfectants they use to try and cover it all up just makes it worse.
Second, I heard my mom crying. Well, I heard my mom sniffling like she was trying to hide the fact that she was crying, which was almost worse than just getting it all out. I guess she thought that the softer her cries were, the better it was for me, but honestly, the fact that she was there at all made me feel like crap.
Also? My mouth was dry and I would just about kill for an ice chip.
I lay there for a few moments, not opening my eyes, wanting those few seconds to get my thoughts straight in my head. I wish that I could say I remembered what happened. But I don’t. I don’t remember a damn thing other than a pain in my head and…and Everly.
I must have groaned or made some other pathetic noise, because the sniffling stopped and then my mom was there, hovering over me like she used to do back in the day. Back when I was somewhere in that place between life and death.
I used to hate that. Waking up and seeing her there. Knowing it was all my fault, and right now, I felt exactly the same. God, she must be sick of this, because I sure as hell was.
“Trevor?”
I tried to sit up, but her hands were on my chest and she was smoothing hair from my face. “Water?”
She knew the drill, but then I guess there’re some things you can’t forget no matter how much you try. She grabbed a cup from beside the bed, unwrapped a straw, and once I was elevated a bit, held the cup in front of me like I was a baby with no idea how to hold the stupid thing.
But I wasn’t a baby. I was a pissed-off seventeen-year-old, so I acted like one. I grabbed the cup from her and managed to spill half of the damn thing before I got it to my mouth.
“Be careful,” she said.
Once my throat was lubricated, I decided to try and speak. This was always a bit tricky, because I wasn’t so sure that what came out of my mouth would even make sense. But I had to try. I had to know.
“Where’s Everly?”
My voice sounded rough, but I got the right words out. Another win for the pathetic Trevor Lewis.
“She’s outside with her father.” My mom’s bottom lip started to tremble. “Thank God she was there when it happened.”
Yeah. Awesome that she got to see that.
“We’re in Baton Rouge, at the hospital.” She was fussing with the blankets. “Daddy and I came as soon as Everly called, and Taylor, she’s here too.”
My head still felt fuzzy, my eyes were sore, and my tongue felt like it was ten times too big for my mouth. I was pretty damn sure I looked like hell, and I found myself reaching for my hair, just to be sure, because after my initial prolonged hospital stay, I had nightmares in which some big-ass orderly shaved my head and kept all my hair.
“It’s nearly three in the morning, but the doctor says if things look good, we can take you home after he checks on you. About eight, I think. He says the seizure happened because your medication needs to be altered, so once that’s fixed, you’ll be good as new.”
I felt like laughing, because really, that was a joke. Good as new was the old Trevor. The one without a TBI. But I didn’t want to think about that, because it was just depressing as hell.
“Can Everly I see?” I asked instead.
My mom kind of pursed her lips, like she wanted to say no, but then her eyes softened a bit and she nodded. “I’ll get her, but you need to take it easy, okay?”
I nodded, and that was exhausting. God, it felt as if I’d been to football practice ten times over, and I was the douche who got tackled every single play.
Man, I hated hospitals. I thought the day I walked out of Twin Oaks Memorial, I’d never be back. Pretty naïve of me, I know, but still. A guy can only hope. What a joke to find out that all the hard work I’d done over the last year had been for nothing. I was defective, and it looked like I would always be defective. Trevor Lewis. Freak of nature.
“Hey.”
Her voice was soft, and there was a bit of tremble in there. I sat up straighter and tried to crack a smile, but I’m sure it came off as more of a lopsided grimace.
“Bet you never thought you’d see me in a dress,” I said, voice hoarse and not really sounding like me at all. Man, if I looked as bad as I sounded, she should be running away as fast and as far as she could.
But she didn’t, and I felt something like hope flare inside me.
Everly’s eyes were huge and her skin was pale and her dress, that hot little dress she’d worn to dinner, was covered in mud. She crossed the room and sat on the bed beside me, a smile on her face that didn’t quite reach her eyes. She looked tired and sad and so damn beautiful that it made me crazy. I wanted to grab her up and hold her. I wanted to touch her hair and smell that spot at the base of her neck. I wanted to kiss her until she made that sexy little sound at the back of her throat.
I wanted to do it all, and yet I did nothing.
“You kind of rock a dress,” she said. “Especially a pink one.”
I glanced down. Wow. The shame just wouldn’t go away.
“Good to know,” I managed to say. “I’ll make sure and wear one the next time…we are, uh…together.” What the hell was I doing? Where was I going with this? What girl in her right mind would want to hang out with a dude whose brain wasn’t quite right and who’d had two seizures in the space of a few weeks?
She reached for my hand and brought it up to her face. “I just might hold you to that, Trevor Lewis.”
I shook my head. She was so soft and warm and perfect. “Why are you still here? I don’t get it.”
“You don’t have to get it, because it doesn’t really matter now, does it? I’m here because I want to be. I’m here because I care about you.” She leaned close and kissed the corner of my mouth. “Trevor, I’m here because you’re here. Where else would I be?”
I rested my forehead against hers, mostly because I was wiped out, but damn, the girl felt good.
“Oh, man. Even here you’re sucking face? Jesus, Trevor, is that all you think about?”
I glanced around Everly and spied my sister Taylor standing at the end of my bed. She must have been crying, because she looked like a raccoon with her Goth eyes and smudged liner. But her attitude, it was all there, and I was kind of glad to hear it. That was normal. She was normal.
“What else is there to think about?” I joked.
Everly fake-punched me.
“Hey,” I said. “Next time you do that, I’ll have to think up some form of punishment.”
“That is, like, the lamest line ever.” Taylor was now sitting on the other side of the bed, inches from me and Everly.
And Everly was smiling. “Yeah, but it just might work.”
“Not surprised,” Taylor said slowly. And then she pinned me with a look that wasn’t easy or light. It was all Taylor and all 115 pounds of attitude. “If you ever do that again, I will hunt you down and kick your effing ass.”
“Language, Taylor.”
“Whatever, butthead.”
Taylor got up. “Your dad says that you have to go, Everly.”
Everly’s eyes were on me when she whispered, “Okay. Can I have one more minute with him?”
When the door closed behind Taylor, Everly collapsed on the bed, curling up against me. It felt amazing to have her there, even though I was tired as hell and hating everything about where I was.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“He was there,” she said softly. “In Baton Rouge. I called him when you fell. When the paramedics came. I was just so scared, like I was frozen or something, and it was automatic, you know? I just…wanted my dad.”
A heartbeat passed.
“But now…”
I hugged her. She was delicate and small, and I hated that sad girl was back. Hated that I couldn’t make things okay for her.
“Now I have to go home with him, and I don’t want to, because after all this time, there’s no more hiding, and I know it’s crazy, but I’m not ready. I thought I was, but I’m not.” She blew out a ragged breath. “He knows that I know. He wants to talk.”
“But isn’t that what you want? No more lies?”
“I thought so, but right now, I’m more scared of the truth than I am of being angry at his lies, and I wish…I wish that I never called him. All I wanted was the truth, for him to stop lying to all of us, but now…now I don’t know what I want. I’m afraid of the truth. How screwed up is that?”
“It’s not screwed up. It’s just real. It’s how you feel.”
“I have to go, Trevor,” she whispered.
“I know.”
“Call me when you get home tomorrow?”
I nodded. “First list on my thing.”
She bent over and pressed one last kiss on my mouth. “Okay,” she breathed against me.
And then she was gone.
It took all of two seconds before my words went around my brain again. I thought about how her eyes got all shiny and how she’d smiled at me in a way I recognized. Because it was the same way my mom smiled at me when she didn’t know what else to do or say.
The thing is the part of my brain that controls anger got damaged in the accident, and right now, I needed some kind of control, but that wasn’t happening. I could feel this wall of emotion sliding over me like a hot, wet cloth, running from the top of my head all the way down my body. I clenched my hands into fists and slammed my head back onto the pillow, because I knew it was going to be bad. And then I pretty much lost it.