Trials and Tribulations (Camren)

Chapter 9 ✔️

Lauren started up the car as Ally pulled her phone out of her pocket. She backed out of the parking space and moments later the three of them were on their way to the hospital they'd overheard Miss Lovato say in the message she'd left for Camila's mom.

"Your quiet back there," Lauren commented, glancing in her rear view mirror at Dinah who was watching the world go by out of the car window. "Want to talk about it?"

Dinah met Lauren's eyes in the mirror and smiled gratefully.

"Not really," Dinah replied honestly.

Lauren smiled sadly in response to Dinah's words and turned her attention back to the road.

"No you know what?" Dinah said her voice rising angrily. "This sucks. It's just one thing after another and it isn't fair."

Ally turned around in her chair and placed a comforting hand on Dinah's knee.

"She'll be alright," Ally said optimistically. "You'll see."

"Yeah but for how long?" Dinah asked, not really expecting nor wanting an answer. "This week it's the seizure, last week it was the low mood. She takes one step forward just to take two steps back again."

She paused for a moment and pounded the window beside her with her fist in frustration.
"It's just not fair."

Lauren glanced at Dinah again in the mirror as the other girl continued.

"Somewhere out there, probably living in the same neighbourhood as Camila, as us, is the asshole that hit her," Dinah vented furiously. "They're probably going on with their life right now like nothing happened, not even caring about the fact that they left someone alone on the road to die."

Dinah glanced out of the window again, crossing her arms in front of her.

"In an instant they changed Camila's whole life," she said her voice low and dejected, the anger dissipating almost as soon as it had come. "They don't know what they put her through, what they put her family and her friends through because, for them, nothing has changed. Nothing."

"They'll find the driver eventually," Ally offered. "They always do."

"Yeah," Dinah said with disdain. "Probably after he's run down and killed some other unsuspecting victim."

Dinah uncrossed her arms long enough to run her fingers through her hair before returning them to their previous position.

"I hope that when the police finally do catch them, that they throw the driver in jail for the rest of their life," Dinah voiced after a moment's pause. "Then maybe they'll finally understand what it's like to have your life stolen away from you, to take everything you knew and flip it upside down so that you have to start all over again."

"That makes two of us," Lauren agreed, meeting Dinah's gaze once more in the rear view mirror as she turned right at a junction.

"Three of us," Ally concurred as Lauren turned left into the hospital car park and pulled up into an empty space.

They exited the car and Lauren locked it, turning to look up at the tall white building across the large expanse of tarmac. Together the three of them made their way to the hospital entrance, passing people being escorted from one place to another in wheelchairs, an assortment of bandages and dressing covering various parts of their bodies.

"I don't think I can do this," Dinah said, stopping in her tracks, her eyes studying a man who was sat in his wheelchair just outside the electronic doors.

One side of his head was obscured with large white, soiled dressings, his right leg elevated on a footrest, the entirety of it covered in plaster, from his thigh to his knee. Lauren turned to take Dinah's hand in her own and squeezed it reassuringly.