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Beep. Beep.
She heard incoherent rambling around her.
Beep. Beep.
She heard David begging someone. “Save her first. Please.”
Beep. Beep.
She felt sore all over, and the pain... She felt like she’d been trampled...
Beep. Beep.
She struggled to open her eyes; she felt like they were caked in eye gunk—as if she’d been sleeping for a full twenty-four hours. She almost wished she had—that this whole thing had been nothing but a nightmare. She would wake up at David’s house, wrapped in his arms with the sun slanting in through his window.
But that wasn’t the case.
As she squinted at the bright lights and slowly looked around the room she was in, it took her longer than it should have to realize that she was in the hospital. Her eyes fell on her brother who was talking quietly in the corner on his phone, but when he saw her staring, he quickly hung up and moved to her side.
“God, it’s so good to see your eyes open.”
Her thoughts were too busy to bother with responding to him. There was one person that she wanted—no needed—to see, and he wasn’t around.
“Where’s...” She coughed as she tried to talk. She swallowed a few times before trying again. “Where’s David?” Her voice was rough, but the look that swept across John’s face showed her that he had heard. When he didn’t say anything, her heartbeat began to race at the possibility that she couldn’t begin to entertain. “Where is he?”
John grabbed her hand and squeezed, but she was too far gone to feel the comfort that he had clearly wanted for her. “What do you remember?”
“There was a car accident... I heard David. He... Where is he?” Along with her heartbeat speeding up, her breathing accelerated. Why wasn’t he answering her question?
“He’s alive,” he told her unhelpfully.
“Alive?” What the hell was that supposed to mean? “What aren’t you telling me?”
“You’ve been unconscious since they recovered you from the accident. That was almost twelve hours ago... David... He hasn’t woken up.”
She saw a man in a white coat come through the door, but she didn’t spare him a glance. She kept her eyes on her brother so he could see how serious she was.
“I want to see him.”
“Carrie...” She could tell that he was torn, but before he could say anything else, the doctor interrupted them.
“Hello, Ms. Lewis. I’m Dr. Isaacs. How are you feeling?” he asked patiently as he looked over her monitors.
“I need to see David,” she told him.
“Right now, I just want to make sure that you’re holding up okay. What’s the last thing you remember?”
She remembered how just before the accident David had told her he loved her... Why was no one letting her see him?
“Please. I need to see him. Where is he?” She wasn’t meaning to be difficult, but how was she supposed to focus when she didn’t even know if he was okay? What if John was lying to her? She needed to see him with her own two eyes to know how he was.
“Carrie, sis, the doctor needs to check you over and make sure that you’re healing properly. Just let him do his job, and afterward, we’ll see if we can get you in to see David, okay?” She knew there was a slight chance that he was bluffing her, but she decided to believe him.
She hadn’t even realized she’d been crying until he reached up to wipe away a stray tear. She took a few deep breaths while looking her brother in the eye to help slow down her racing heart before turning back to the doctor.
Her voice was rough as she responded to his earlier question. “The last thing I remember is telling David I loved him and then... the truck was hit. I must’ve been in and out of consciousness because I remember hearing people talking and then David telling them to save me first. That’s all.”
“That’s good,” Dr. Isaacs said gently. “So, considering everything, your stats are looking good. We did have to take you into surgery to reset your dislocated shoulder, and you had to have four stitches to close the cut on your head. Overall, you were very lucky, considering everything.”
She closed her eyes as she remembered the feeling of David’s arm over her chest.
“He put his arm in front of me,” she said quietly.
Dr. Isaacs gave her an understanding look. “Without that, there’s no telling on what other injuries you could’ve had.”
She took another deep breath and focused back on him. “Am I clear to see him now?”
“It would be best for you to remain here and rest since your body is still recovering. The added stress could be detrimental to your health,” he tried to tell her.
But she wasn’t listening.
She turned to John, who she knew she could convince. “John, tell him. I need to see David. What would you do if it was Taylor?” She knew that it was a low blow, but he needed to know how serious she was about this.
He sighed before turning to Dr. Isaacs and motioning for him to talk out in the hall. Carrie could see them talking through the window, but couldn’t hear what they were saying. John seemed very animated with his hands gesturing like crazy as Dr. Isaacs listened carefully. After a few minutes of convincing, Dr. Isaacs finally gave a small nod before they came back in.
“I have two conditions if you are set on going to see Mr. Clarke: you have to stay in a wheelchair, and you need to take some pain meds before.” Carrie quickly nodded; she would’ve done just about anything to see David. “The nurse will be in here in just a few moments to administer the meds,” he told her before giving her a small smile and then leaving her and John alone.
“How bad is he?” she croaked out. Tears filled her eyes at the endless possibilities of what David’s injuries could look like.
He sighed before answering her. “His left leg and his right arm are broken. He had some internal bleeding, but the last I heard from his mom, they got that fixed with surgery. He had to have some stitches on his head just like you. He also had a collapsed lung that they fixed.”
The tears that she’d been fighting fell down her cheeks again. There was so much...
“And he’s not awake?” She hoped that she’d just heard him wrong, but he just shook his head sadly. There was just a hint of hope in his eyes that made her feel better.
“The doctors are hopeful that he’ll regain consciousness. The best thing to look at is that he is breathing on his own. He’s going to be fine, Carrie.” He reached down to embrace her. She raised her one good arm (the other one was in a sling) and wrapped it around his shoulders.
“He’s going to be fine,” she repeated to herself. She didn’t know if she fully believed it, but she needed to say it. If only to feel a little bit of hope.
~~~
THE NURSE HELPED MANEUVER her into her wheelchair not even ten minutes later. She felt like her heart was going to beat right out of her chest as John pushed her down the long hallway. They took a few twists and turns before they paused in front of a door that looked like every other one... but this one was different.
It held something precious inside.
“Are you sure that you want to do this?” John asked her again.
“Yes.” She had to see him.
John slowly pushed the door open before wheeling her slowly over the threshold. David’s mom quickly stood up from her seat next to his bed.
“Oh, Carrie, honey. How are you doing?” Her arms fluttered around her side as if she wasn’t sure where she was allowed to touch her.
Carrie kept her eyes on David as she asked her, “How is he?”
She swallowed. “He’s going to be fine.” It sounded like she was trying to convince herself as much as Carrie.
John pushed her until she was right next to David’s bedside. She reached over with her good hand and grabbed onto his. Her heart hurt as she examined all of his injuries, each one looking more painful than the last.
Her voice broke as she said, “He saved me.”
“That sounds like him,” Liz whispered as she sat down on the other side.
She leaned forward until she was sitting on the edge of the wheelchair so she could get closer to him.
“Baby, I’m right here.” She squeezed his hand. “I love you so much.” She licked her lips as she felt even more tears gathering in her eyes. In the last thirty minutes, she’d cried more than she had in the last year alone. “I need you to wake up for me, baby. I need to look into those beautiful brown eyes and feel your arms around me again. Please, wake up,” she whispered. She bent forward and gave him a soft kiss on his lips. When he didn’t respond, she felt another chunk of her heart break off.
That’s when she knew for sure... if David didn’t wake up, then she might as well not have woken up either.
~~~
JOHN GAVE HER ABOUT half an hour before asking if she was ready to leave. She hadn’t moved a muscle except to lay her head against her and David’s clasped hands. She was examining his features like it was the first time all over again.
“Carrie, the best thing for you right now is to lay down and rest.” When she didn’t respond to her brother, he brought in the big guns. “What would David tell you to do right now?”
She closed her eyes as she heard David’s voice in her head. It was as if he was actually speaking the words.
“What are you doing? Go lay down, sweetheart, and stop worrying about me. I’ll be fine.”
She closed her eyes in defeat. “That’s not fair,” she whispered.
“Honey,” Liz said quietly as she leaned forward. “The moment anything changes, I’ll let you know.”
As she looked between the two of them, she could see that she was outnumbered. Her shoulders drooped as she accepted the reality that she wouldn’t be able to stay at David’s side any longer. She leaned forward and dropped one last kiss against his unmoving lips.
“I love you, baby,” she whispered.
She sat back and allowed John to wheel her out of the room, leaving her heart on the bed next to David.
Once she got to her room, a nurse helped situate her onto the bed while John stared on with a worried expression on his face.
“Where’s Taylor?” she asked him in light of anything else.
“She’s staying at home with Christopher.”
“What did you tell him?”
He took his regular seat next to her. “He knows that you were in an accident, but he hasn’t seen you yet. We didn’t want him to be too freaked out by all of the tubes and wires.”
She nodded her head in understanding. “Have you told Lex and Asher yet?” She felt a small amount of shame that she hadn’t thought of the two of them before this moment. Her brain had just been too preoccupied with everything else that was going on.
“I called Lex and explained what was going on. She wanted to come see you, but I wanted to wait until you were ready for visitors. I didn’t want you to wake up surrounded by everyone,” he explained.
She gave him a ghost of a smile as she thought of her best friend’s reaction. “I bet she wasn’t too happy with you.”
He chuckled lightly. “No, but she finally agreed when I told her that I would text her updates every hour. Now that you’re awake, though, I don’t think I’ll be able to hold her off.”
“It’s fine,” she told him.
They were silent for a few minutes before he approached the elephant in the room. “How are you holding up after seeing him?” His voice was so quiet that she almost had to strain her ears just to hear him.
She let out a long breath. “It’s hard. So hard. I know that he fought the EMTs to save me, and I—I’m just so angry that he would do that. He doesn’t seem to understand that without him I—I just...” Her voice broke as even more tears filled her eyes. “I love him, John. What if he doesn’t...” She couldn’t bring herself to say the words that were hiding in the dark corners of her mind, but she implored her brother to understand what she couldn’t say.
He placed a gentle hand on top of hers. “Don’t think like that. He’s going to wake up, and everything is going to be alright again.”
“Do you promise?” She just needed to hear it even though they would be nothing but empty words.
“What I can promise you is that as long as he is fighting, there is a chance because that man has never let anything stand in the way of what he wanted. And the way he looked at you over Christmas just showed how much he loved you. There is nothing in this world that he wants more than to be with you.” He gave her a reassuring smile as he went on. “That man is going to fight to stay here with you. You just need to have faith in him.”
She closed her eyes as she let a few tears slide down her cheeks. She knew that her brother was right. With everything that David had told her and everything he had made her feel in the time they’d been together, she knew that as long as he was fighting, there was a chance.
~~~
SHE FELL ASLEEP NOT long after her conversation with John. She suspected that without all of the drugs in her body, she would’ve had nightmares about David, but thankfully, she was able to have a completely dreamless sleep.
Instead, she woke up to her living nightmare.
“Carrie.” John was nudging her. “Carrie, you need to wake up. It’s about David.”
That got her attention. Her eyes flew open, and she looked all around her like she thought David was going to be standing next to her, but the only person she saw was her brother.
“What’s going on?” Her voice was shaky as her thoughts immediately went to dark places.
“They had to take him to surgery.” Her heart stopped at hearing those words. “He had something called compartment syndrome. They had to take him in to relieve the pressure that was on his leg.”
She didn’t understand a thing after surgery. “Is he going to be okay?”
“They seemed to think so. It’s a relatively quick surgery, and he should be back in his room in no time,” he told her.
“I want to be there after.” She was proud that her voice didn’t shake as she spoke.
“I thought you’d say that.” He looked towards the corner of the room, and when she followed his eyes, she saw that he was looking at the wheelchair. “Mrs. Clarke will text me when the doctors tell her that the surgery is over, and I’ll bring you there. Does that sound like a plan?”
She nodded her head and spent the next thirty minutes going over everything that could go wrong in her head. Since she wasn’t too familiar with the complexities of surgery—all that she knew came from shows like Grey’s Anatomy—her thoughts kept straying towards the horrible things that could go wrong. She wouldn’t be able to breathe properly until she could see with her own eyes that he was okay.
A little past noon, the phone in John’s hand pinged. When he read the message, she could see his whole body sag with relief.
“She says that everything went great and he’s on his way now.”
Thank God, she thought. “Let’s go,” she told him. She swung her legs over the bed with some difficulty and was going to walk towards the wheelchair herself, but John put his hands out to help her.
She showed up to David’s room just a minute before they pushed his bed into the small space. He looked relatively the same as the last time she’d seen him. Her breathing finally returned to normal as her eyes quickly examined him for any new injuries.
For the next forty minutes, she sat by his side, praying to whoever was listening not to take David from her. They’d barely gotten any time together; they needed more time. She was supposed to have a future with him. It wasn’t supposed to end like this.
~~~
AFTER RETURNING TO her room, it wasn’t a few seconds before she was bombarded in the best way by her best friends. Lex and Asher ran into the room and crowded around her, talking over each other as they tried to ask her questions.
“How are you feeling?” Lex asked.
“What happened?” Asher interrupted.
“Where’s David?”
Her brother cut off their rambling. “One at a time, and please, don’t overwhelm her.” He gave them stern looks before bending down and giving her a brief kiss on the top of her head. “I’ll give you guys some privacy, okay?”
She gave him a grateful look before turning back to her friends and trying to answer their questions.
“The painkillers are helping with the pain, but overall I’m fine. David saved me from being hurt any worse.” The words still killed her to say, but she pushed them out anyway. “Someone ran into us. I don’t remember much from the scene besides David telling the EMTs to take care of me first, and right now he’s in his room recovering after his surgery.”
Lex sighed, squeezing Carrie’s hand. “I’m just so glad you’re doing better.” She wiped her eyes as tears attempted to slip out of the corners.
Asher shook his head. “You’re not allowed to go anywhere, okay? I’ll come after you and bring you right back to us.”
Her smile widened. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
They sat down on either side of Carrie and began blathering about nothing important, just what was going on at the school and their own personal lives. They were filling the empty silence, and for that, Carrie couldn’t be more grateful. It didn’t take her mind off of David—nothing could—but it helped her see that lives were continuing outside of this hospital. It gave her a strange sense of hope, and that was something that she desperately needed.
~~~
IZZY CAME THROUGH HER door not long after Asher and Lex had left.
“Is it okay that I’m here?” she asked hesitantly. Carrie nodded her head; she hadn’t heard from Izzy in a while, so it was nice that she’d come to visit. “Jace told me what was going on,” she explained.
“Well, I’m glad you’re here. I need all the distractions I can get to avoid worrying about David too much.”
“I’m happy to be of assistance,” Izzy said with a grin. She took the seat to Carrie’s right that Lex had vacated a few minutes prior. “I’m sure you’re tired of people asking you, but how are you feeling?”
Carrie sighed. “A little sore, but it could’ve been a lot worse.”
Izzy nodded. “That’s what I heard.”
“But enough about me. What’s going on with you? Has Richard left you alone?”
“I haven’t heard from him since he stopped showing up at my dorm and texting me nonstop. In the one class we share, he just ignores me. I can’t wait until the end of the year when he graduates and leaves the campus for good.”
Carrie agreed wholeheartedly. “How’s everything else? How’s the roommate situation going?”
Izzy shrugged. “Not better, but at least it’s not worse. I decided not to ask for a new roomie next year. At least with Ryan, I know what to expect. I don’t think I can go through this again, but at least I have Luca. He helps me when I need to escape my dorm.”
Carrie’s eyebrows rose. “And this Luca? Is he still just your friend? Or...” Her tone trailed off suggestively.
Izzy laughed and tried to wave her words away, but Carrie was sure that she saw something in her eyes—something that had lived inside her when she admired David from afar, thinking that he could never be hers.
Looked like Izzy felt something for her best friend after all.
“We’re just friends, best friends. Nothing more.”
Carrie wasn’t sure if Izzy was lying to her or to herself, but she decided not to push her anymore. If and when she wanted to talk, she would be right there for her.