We went upstairs, and Jay put me down. I took his hand, my small pale one engulfed by his strong tanned one, and I pulled him over to the balcony. It was where I had found him at his most vulnerable: where his face was smeared with tears and I barely knew his name, so I felt it was only fair.
"Do you mind if I carry on from where I left off last time?" I asked quietly. He nodded, not looking at me, but out towards the huge forest, the part that hadn't been hit by the storm, the part that was still full of greenery and life.
"So, dad got in the car and he pulled out. He must have been crying or not concentrating or something, but he didn't see the lorry coming. They both slammed onto the brakes but it was too late, the lorry had hit the driver's door, and my dad was lying across the dashboard. It didn't even look like him. But mum was ushering me inside, while shouting down the phone, making them get the ambulance down to our house as soon as they could. We got to ride in the ambulance, and some child part of me, who didn't believe it was real, had been excited. But it's not exciting – it's terrifying. I shut my eyes, and had my hands over my ears while I sang stupid songs just to try and cut out the noise of what the doctors were saying. When we arrived at the hospital one of them was convinced he would survive because of my singing, but even then, I knew he was wrong.
"A few hours later, mum asked me to go and check on him while she called someone. Now that I think about it, it was probably Robert, but I agreed and sat down next to my unconscious father, watching him breath so evenly he might as well have been sleeping, except he had cuts and bruises and had broken his arm – I cant remember all the injuries now, but there were a lot. And then the heart monitor stopped and I felt like it was screaming at me." I had been doing okay the whole way through the story, surprisingly. I had recited it as if it hadn't been the first time I had ever old someone what I did. But at that point I began crying, because that was the worst bit.
"Jay, I ran away. I didn't get a nurse, I didn't get my mum, and for a minute I just sat there: not sure what to do. Then I ran. I ran out of the hospital and to Liliana. Her and her mum were about to go on holiday and they said I could tag along. It wasn't until we arrived that Liliana's mum had been told what had happened. That place, was here. I spent a week on this island, no idea if my father was dead or alive. I left my mum to face it all by herself, and I ruined Liliana's holiday. It was the worst week I have ever experienced. I killed my dad. They could have saved him. I could have saved him. But I didn't, I ran." I fell into Jay and mourned my father all over again, saying it out loud felt like I was reliving the moment all over again.
"How old were you?" Jay whispered, his hand supporting my head, and clenching on to my hair, to show that he understood how I was feeling.
"Eleven." I sniffed, hiding my face further into his chest, wanting to disappear completely.
He pulled me straight back out again as he gasped at me. "Kadie, you can't blame yourself for this. You were only a child. Any kid would have done the same thing."
I shook him off completely, and stared at him through the blur of my tears. "I was old enough to know what I should have done."
"But you shouldn't have had to make that decision. You shouldn't have been in there on your own. There should have been a nurse. I promise you, this is not your fault."
"Then who do I blame? I've spent the past seven years blaming Robert and myself - I know it wasn't Robert's fault, but it was mine. If it wasn't for me, dad would still be here."
"You don't know that."
"WHY CAN'T YOU TELL ME SOMETHING I DON'T ALREADY KNOW?" I screamed at him, the pain inside of me becoming too overwhelming. "I gave advice on your kid. It's not over for you. It is for me, I can't ever see my father again, and it's my fault." I whispered, the energy inside of me, from the lack of sleep and over active emotions, starting to drain.
"You can't compare my mistake with yours. You can't compare problems. No matter what scale they're on, they're both affecting us in negative ways. You can blame yourself if you want to, but no one else is ever going to believe you, because a nurse should have been in there." His hand hovered between us, as he decided whether to try and pull me close again. He didn't, and moved his hovering limb onto the wooden balcony.
The pool table winked at me from across the room, and I slowly shuffled towards it, picking up my pace the closer I got.
The heavy balls clattered as I poured them onto the table and tried to arrange them into the triangle shape. As soon as I had put the final ball down and in place, the white sphere was spinning across the green cloth and scattering my neat triangle around the table. Jay smirked at me as he got out of position.
"What's this called again?" I asked, wiping away the final tears from my eyes, and gesturing to the pool stick.
"A cue."
YOU ARE READING
No Problem
Teen Fiction"This was the secret that I had never told anyone. I had kept it so dear to me, that I had never written it down nor uttered the dreaded words under my breath." Kadie Meadows has regrets: these problems that are constantly at the back of her mind, b...
