Bad Luck with Love

Chapter 36: News

I never realized just how long a day really was. Twenty four hours. A thousand four hundred and forty minutes. Eighty six thousand four hundred seconds.

Sure when you’re busy time seems to fly. When you sleep almost half your day has already disappeared. When you have no cares in the world the days pass by in the blink of an eye.

But when you’re stuck, waiting in a hospital all night, too scared to even sleep, with nothing to do to keep yourself occupied…each second crawled past.

I’d been sitting at this damn hospital, on the floor in the hallway, since last night. Since that disastrous evening at the pizzeria.

Maybe I should stop going there. So many bad things always happened there. Or maybe I should just stop caring; people I loved tended to get hurt a lot.

I hadn’t slept, not even when they announced a few hours ago that Jake was out of surgery but still in intensive care. How could I rest when I knew that Jake was lying there because of me? That he still wasn’t out of the woods yet? That any damage done to him was my fault? That Chad was still out there somewhere, probably feeling utterly victorious at the thought of having ruined us once again?

No. I couldn’t sleep.

I wasn’t the only one. His parents were here, sitting in the waiting room further down on chairs. Tyler and Leena were on either side of me while Jo sat across the hall from us, Nick and Sabrina by her side. It was Saturday night and we were all waiting for news. Even though they said things probably wouldn’t change for a few days, we had decided to stay around for as long as we possibly could until we knew he was alright.

None of us really talked much. It was like an unspoken agreement not to talk until we heard news, or until something happened.

And by the next day something did happen. We were all still sitting there, quiet as graves until a tall girl with long black hair and bright green eyes came down the hall in front of us. She took a look at me and let out a gasp.

“Ivy!” she exclaimed, falling to the ground in front of me before she took me in her arms and hugged me tightly.

“Sandra?” I asked after a long moment, completely stunned. Sandra was Jake’s older sister. She had moved away a long time ago after she got married to her college boyfriend. No one had seen her since then, mainly since it was far too expensive for her to come visit often, and she couldn’t take time off work anyways.

Not to mention, her parents hadn’t really approved of getting married at such a young age, especially to Sam.

“What happened?” she pulled away, holding me at arm’s length while I studied her. She looked different. She was older now, in her later twenties. Last I saw her she was only nineteen and full of life, she looked young. Now she seemed…older. More serious.

“Ivy?” she asked again, waiting for an answer, and I struggled to pull my eyes away from her red rimmed ones.

I hadn’t told anyone the full story of what had happened, that Chad was involved and that he kissed me, that I was the reason Jake took off and got into an accident. But I couldn’t keep it from Sandra. She used to be like the big sister I always wanted but never got. The four of us, Tyler, Jake, Sandra and myself, had all been like a big family. We were so close until Sandra started going to college, then it became the three of us.

I stood up and took her hand, helping her to her feet before I led her down the hall to talk in quiet. Sandra had always been the one I could talk to about things. I knew I could trust her.

As soon as we were far enough I explained everything. Right from the start of this whole mess, not just the restaurant trick but from the very first time we started dating.