My Best Friends Brother

Chapter 151

"Jayce!" Josh grasps and scratches to try and pull Heather's body from her fathers hold but he can't let her go, rocking back and forth, cradling her falling head like he did when she was a tiny new-born. "Jayce! Please, we need to keep her blood pumping around her body until the ambulance gets here."

Jayce please...

Josh grabs hold of Jayce's face and tries to get him to see reason but there's no reasoning with him right now, he just watched the light of his life slip away in his arms.

Dad's crying. Dad never cries.

"Jayce!"

He needs to give her to Josh.

"Jayce!"

Josh can fix it.

"Jayce!"

Josh always fixes it.


He needs to let her go.

I crawl my way across the bedroom floor, my hands and knees becoming coated in a layer of vomit and powdered drugs before I manage to get a grip on Jayce's arm. I'm so sorry brother, we have to do this.

Josh pulls at the same time I do, forcing Jayce let go of Heather's body as she rolls from his grip and almost hits the floor before Josh manages to get a hold on her.

"Heather!" Jayce tries to cling to the empty air where Heather once sat, not comprehending that she's not there anymore as Josh takes her.

He lays her flat on the carpet at my side, moving her limbs like he knows exactly what he needs to do and placing his hands over her little heart whilst pushing up and down on her chest. He's pushing so hard... No Josh... She's too small for that...

Jayce turns, ready to tear Josh away from his daughter, the haze of unknowing blocking all rational thought as he screams as him to stop. His mind is in the worst possible place right now and far beyond reason. I just need to stop him.

Josh will fix it Jayce.

Throwing myself against his body, I hold onto him with every ounce of strength I can muster; ignoring all his pleads to let him go, ignoring the pain that is leaving a hollow hole in my chest as he begs me to bring his daughter back into his arms and ignoring all the cries from the people around the room as they continue to unleash every ounce of tortured woe into the ether.

"Jayce," I manage to get his attention as I grab hold of his face with both hands and press my forehead down against his, trying to get him back to some semblance of reality. Listen to me Jayce. "Breathe, please. He knows what he's doing, he knows what he's doing Jayce. Trust him."

Jayce's pain is unbearable, I can feel it seeping out through his skin as our tears congregate on his cheeks. "Trust him." The tension in his body lays itself down, allowing him to glance over to Josh. He watches and begins to sob as Josh forces Heather's vital fluids to keep circulating her body with each push of his palms.

He's fixing it... He's...

The sound of sirens fill the atmosphere, Steve's deep broken voice echoing from downstairs and instructing them on where to go as Josh starts to breathe air back into Heather's lungs. How the fuck is he so calm? How is he doing this?

Dad jumps to his feet, abandoning his hold on May and pulling Lee into his arms from Brie's lap so he can remove them from the doorway and let the paramedics through. She doesn't fight, she doesn't even know where she is anymore as her body cripples under the weight of so much anguish.

My head is pounding, my arms aching from the grip I have on Jayce to keep him away from Heather in this moment. He's her dad, her protector, her first love. He always thinks he can save everybody, he's always guarded every single one of us. He doesn't understand how to be anything else. He doesn't know how to watch someone else do what he feels he was born to do.

Right now, he needs to let someone else save her.

The same man who saved me.

A blur of colours come through the room, I can't make out the faces of the medics or the words that Josh is speaking to them, my head is too fucking overloaded. One of the men slips onto the floor next to Heather, waiting for Josh's hands to separate from her chest before he begins the same rhythm of compressions himself.

"May! May, where the fuck are you going?!" Brie screech pierces it's way through the static as she wails at her sister but she still continues walking away, May doesn't even look like she knows she's doing it, just placing one foot in front of the other until she disappears from view.

I can't get to her, not this time.

All my thoughts are lost as a loud buzzing of a machine becoming activated takes over, a sound that is quickly drowned out as Jayce stops trying to fight me and just crumbles against me instead, unleashing every sob he has left and drowning my shirt in his tears, circling his arms around me to fins strength as I force myself to glance over his shoulder whilst bearing the weight of his body.

He doesn't feel like my big brother right now, he feels like the little boy I used to see crying on the floor of his bedroom when he just couldn't take another fucking beating. Broken. Completely broken.

"Clear!" A loud sharp shot of vibrations recoil through the floor from beneath Heather's body, her chest leaping up from the surface of the carpet before it goes crashing back down again as they attempt to do everything to restart her tiny heart.

Come on princess... Come on...

I look out into the hallway but see that the only person still standing there now is Brie, Lee's cries to be with her daughter audibly clear from the bottom of the corridor, along with Elizabeth's soothing tone as everyone encourages her to try and calm her body for the sake of the little life still growing inside of her.

She's going to lose the baby...

Brie just looks lost, more lost than I've ever seen her. Overwhelming disbelief the only emotion on her face as she watches Josh lower his head down onto Heather's and starts whispering to her. The two EMTs continue to work on bringing her entity back to her body but their concern can't be missed.

They don't think they can do it.

"Clear!" Another shocking hit convulses her petite frame, her vomit soaked hair being forced from her face as Josh continues to comfort her like she's still in there.

She is still in there Milo.

She has to be...

...This can't happen to us.

Please. Not to her.

Anyone but her.

Heaven can't make her an angel yet... 

Just let us keep this one, you took so many already please! Please... Just let us keep this one... Please... I'm begging you.

"Clear!" Brie finally cracks, falling to her knees at Heather's feet and cascading to the floor as the flat line on the machine continues to ring out throughout the room like a deathly homing tone calling for the attendance of all wayward souls to partake in their trip to the afterlife.

"Clear!"

Heather.

"Clear!"

Heather you need to come back now princess.

"Clear!"

Heather...

The two men look at each other, the one facing me shaking his head at the other... until he slowly lowers the electric pads back to the machine.

No.

No, please don't stop.

"I'm so sorry, she's-"

"No!" Brie howls, forcing herself up from the ground to face the paramedic, every ounce of determination I've ever seen in that woman clawing out through her body as she stares at him. "Do it again! She's fucking in there! You do it again!"

The man shakes his head, looking at everyone around the room with sympathy none of us want. Jayce's head is still buried so far into my chest I don't think he realises yet what's happening.

He doesn't know that... Fuck...

She's gone.

My heart feels like it's being torn from my chest, no longer inside my body as it follows Heather through from this life, being held in her embrace and gently sucking away my soul as I collapse completely into my brother.

I can't fucking do this...

The man attempts to plead with Brie again that there's nothing else they can do but Josh grabs hold of his shirt, pulling him roughly up onto his knees and practically tearing his head from his shoulder as he yanks him against his body.

"She said do it again!"

Josh.. Don't...

He's been the calm in this room, though all of this he's been the one person to keep it together but I can see he's terrified now... Maybe he always was...

We can't make her come back... he knows that.

The man tries to argue with Josh but his colleague just reaches across Heather's body, pulling the machine towards him and activating it again as Brie pleads with him gratefully and crumbles back to the floor.

Brie went to church when Granny made her, but most of the time she's the furthest thing from a religious woman. Reaching into her pocket, she pulls out a diamond necklace in the shape of a cross, the chain battered and worn as she clutches it between both her hands and whispers a prayer at the moment the paddles hit Heather's chest again.

I feel it, we all feel it. The pulse of electricity running through every cell in her body in an attempt to reinitiate the bond between her mind and her soul.

Please...

Jayce lifts his head from my chest, my arms still tightly wrapped around his body as we stare at the flat line radiating across the screen.

It never moves. It never blinks. It never stutters.

There's nothing. There's nothing in there anymore...

They took her.

Josh shatters, every semblance of togetherness that he had evaporating as his shaking lips come down to meet Heather's little cheek, his tears streaming straight off his jaw onto her delicate face. My stars losing all his light in a single lack of breath.

The necklace falls from Brie's hand, hitting the floor at the instant she screams with so much pain that it shoots like a bullet through the heart of every person in Westbrooke.

The pain... It's killing them all...

I watch Jayce's soul shreds itself in half, his chest torn open and barely beating heart exposed like an unconcealed wound as the clarity of the irreversible scene destroys him completely.

There's nothing in me. I have no tears, I have no pain. Emptiness is all that makes up my being, a hollow infinite abyss that only widens it's hold on me, being fed by the never ending buzz of the eternal flat line burning into my consciousness as it flurries across the screen in front of me.

She's gone.

Oh God... she's gone...

My heart falls deeper into my chest until I can no longer feel it beating at all, being sucked away into that same black hole within my body as I realise one of us is going to have to leave this room and tell Lee that her daughter is... That Heather is...

Josh's head snaps to the machine, Brie's scream cut short and Jayce's arms falling away from my body as my heart skyrockets back up to slam itself into rhythmic existence against my rib cage.

A blip.

A tiny blip.

A heartbeat.