Unforgivable Mistakes

| Chapter 22 |

My eyes fluttered open, squinting as they roamed around the plain white room, the smell of anesthetics and faint beeping sound of the heart monitor giving up the fact that I was in a hospital.

I pushed away the mixture of panic and confusion that settled deep into my stomach, attempting to force my mind into remembering what'd happened -- why I was there, lying on an uncomfortable bed with tubes and monitors connected to my body, eventually giving up as I came up with none, wanting to scream for my family to come to me, feeling scared in the slightly dimmed room by myself.

The feeling, however, didn't last much longer, the door to my hospital room creaking as it opened, revealing an elderly nurse, her green eyes lighting up with happiness as she took in my awakened figure. The woman hurriedly told me something that I didn't comprehend, dashing out of the room, only to return moments later, this time accompanied by a tall man with a beard -- a doctor, judging by his uniform and the clipboard clutched in his hands.

I wasn't sure of how I should have felt about the surprised look the doctor wore, but as he proceeded to explain everything that'd happened, I was certain of the fact that the only emotion I should've felt toward the look on his face was fear; my heart feeling as if it'd stopped beating altogether.

Guilt soon joined in the dozens of emotions that swirled around my body as I realized that it was my fault that my best friend was currently in a state of coma, one month after the alleged car accident where I'd almost had a miscarriage due to the impact, the feeling of utter worthlessness growing as more words escaped the doctors' mouth.

As if on instinct, my gaze drifted down to my stomach once the doctor had finished filling me in on the details about my child an its health, eyes widening as I noticed the way my bump had grown, slightly noticeable even with the baggy hospital robe thrown over my body.

I couldn't believe that so much time had actually passed, my body motionless on a hospital bed as the world around everyone I loved crashed against them, everything around me changing without me even noticing. I wanted to cry, scream; anything in order to let out the hundreds of emotions that clogged inside my body, but I chose not to.

Instead, I waited until both the doctor and the nurse left my hospital room before I quietly stood from the bed, my stiff muscles aching in protest as I stretched them for the first time in a month, padding my way down the hallway, to where the doctor had said Brianne was located in; the ICU.

I didn't know what I'd been expecting to face when I entered her cubicle. Maybe I was expecting to see a slightly scarred Brianne, remaining as gorgeous as she always looked regardless of her health, or maybe even a completely unrecognizable Brianne, bruises covering her beautiful features. However, what I wasn't expecting was for my best friend's lifeless looking body to lie in the small bed, a neck brace wrapped around her neck as she noisily breathed with the help of a machine, my brother's slumped figure sitting in front of her, his hand wrapped around hers tightly as he cried, my heart wrenching with pain at the scene before me.

The only thing that invaded my mind at that moment was the fact that I was the only one at fault for my best friend's current situation, that had it not been for the fact that I wasn't paying attention, my brother wouldn't have been falling apart right before me as he stared at his dying girlfriend. And regardless of how much I wanted to hug Vincent at that moment, I simply couldn't find it in me to face him, the wave of guilt that crashed against me drowning me to the point where it felt as if I couldn't breathe, countless amounts of tears streaming down my cheeks.

With one hand over my mouth in a failed attempt to hush my choked sobs and the other lingering against my stomach, I stumbled out of the cramped up space of Brianne's cubicle in fear of my brother over hearing me, rushing down the hospital's hallway without taking notice of where I was heading, my eyesight blurred by tears.