Piece by Piece

Eight

~~ EIGHT 

I'd never been to a hospital before that night. I'd never broken anything that needed to be fixed—well, could have been fixed, anyway. Nothing could mend my tattered heart.

Even when Dad died, Mam didn't go. It's as though she thought that if she ignored what had happened, it wouldn't be true: Dad wouldn't be gone, and she wouldn't be left behind with a daughter who was but a constant reminder of what she once had.

Everyone always said I looked more like Dad than I her.

It hurt that she thought that way about me; added yet another hole to my heart that I couldn't seem to fill, no matter how hard I tried. It was just there and wouldn't go away; only became bigger every time I saw her but said nothing to try and make things okay again.

It had been so long since it had been like that between us. So long since I'd last heard Dad's laughter or seen the smile of the blue-eyed boy who'd once made me feel like things could be that way again – a notion that felt so selfish to be thinking as I sat there in the waiting room wondering where he was, how he was. Why he'd never told me. Why he'd spent all these years going through it all alone and would continue to do so because no matter how many times or people I asked, the answer was always the same: I wasn't family, so I wasn't allowed to see him.

The first thing that came to mind was to lie – to pretend I was his sister or cousin or anyone I had to be so long as I could see him; but one important detail stopped me in my tracks: I didn't know his second name.

At that moment, I realised there was so much that I didn't know about this boy – so many things I feared I'd never get the chance to know – but there was one thing I was sure of: all this time, he'd been hurting, too — and there was nothing I could've done to help him.

That was all I could think about as I sat in the waiting room, minutes feeling like hours, hours feeling like days ... I was left to wait, both dreading and hoping for news of Nick every time someone would walk through those double doors, but no one told me anything. 

No one told anyone anything. 

Because none of Nick's family ever turned up.

I couldn't understand that, how they could leave him on his own to suffer without ever coming to comfort him. The image of the little boy with the bruise on his cheek came to mind and I felt so angry, unadulterated rage washing through me until I was shaking, cursing people I didn't know and wouldn't ever get to.

And it was during that moment that I was told the words that almost cost me my sanity.

He's alive.

I stared at the nurse after she said that, waiting for something to follow. There had to be more — something else, anything else, because those words told me nothing. But as she walked on back through those double doors, I knew that was it; that was all I was getting.

It wasn't until the door swung shut behind her that I lost it.

Instead of stopping and trying to tell myself to find some comfort in those words, I jumped off my seat, running from the white-walled room that was so thick with grief that I wanted to scream to break its hold.

I was out the front door before anyone could stop me.

But there wasn't anyone to stop me: no one I cared about was left. Dad was gone; Mam may as well have been ... I couldn't lose Nick, too. My heart couldn't handle it.

I just wanted things to go back to how they'd once been – wanted my playground where Dad would always keep me safe from all the bad things in the world; wanted to be on my swing in the park with the blue-eyed boy beside me, Dad pushing me high without ever letting me fall.

But Dad wasn't there; neither of them was. They were either gone or going, leaving me sitting on a swing on the grounds of the hospital, not laughing or smiling or moving. Just nothing.

I didn't realise I was crying until I was swinging. I was crying because I was swinging; swinging because I was crying. It wasn't my swing or park or set or place — all of it was wrong, nothing right or happy or how I wished for it to be.

I was tired. I was just tired and hurt, and I didn't want to take it anymore. I hated the swing – hated that it wasn't mine and that Nick wasn't beside me and, most of all, that I was alone.

Because even after everything, I was still alone.

Only, I wasn't: a little girl was on a swing, too, smiling and talking and swinging high in the air as a man pushed her from the side — but not too high. I just knew he'd never want her to fall. She was on a swing on the grounds of a hospital: she'd known too much pain already.

But despite all that, she looked happy. She was laughing – a light-hearted and carefree sound that filled the air as she kicked her feet at the man who was looking at her like she was the apple of his eye. It was a look she didn't get to see as she was facing away from him, but I knew she knew: the look was mirrored on her own face as they talked and laughed — maybe he sang her a song, I don't know. I couldn't hear anything over the wracking of my tears as I let it all out.

Everything in me just burst, and there was nothing I could've done to stop it. I just cried — cried for my dad because I'd never stop wishing from him to come back. I cried for my mother because she was hurting and lost and would never let me in.

I cried for the boy who should've been beside me, whose blue eyes had lost their spark so long ago.

I cried to the sky and the grass and everything around me, wishing something else would take the pain because I didn't want to bear it anymore.

I just cried and cried without wanting to stop because I knew that, piece by piece, I was losing the only one I had left.