Descent (Dysmorphia Series #2)

Realisation

Florence had stayed up the whole night reading the diary, but she didn't feel like she had been alone, she felt like Cole had been right beside her, like she had been living someone else's life.

But she had been on borrowed time, she had been able to immerse herself in someone else's world and now she had to return to her own, the feelings portrayed on a simple piece of paper floored her, she felt like she had been in that cell watching everything she loved falling apart before her very eyes.

But the most surprising emotion she felt was anger, directed at the person she would never have dreamed of being angry at, Chase.

The way he had treated his twin brother was cruel, and the fact that he thought he had a right to twist her mind, to make her pity Cole instead of allowing her to get on with her life, she didn't need a project or some kind of excuse to stop herself going off the rails, his death had been the end, or so she had thought months ago but what she had begun to realise was that the world had alot to offer.

And it had been Cole who had been there, right at the very start when the torture had begun, that oblivious day when she had walked to school not knowing the ordeal that she would be faced with, that had been her one shining moment, and now she was forced to quite literally evaluate history.

She didn't even feel tired, that was strange, she should have keeled over with exhaustion but instead she felt more awake than ever, like Cole's story had injected some adrenaline into her, she needed more, but the pages after the scrawled pages were empty, she flicked through them desperate for more, the person who had penned his thoughts was unable to tell her anything but she felt robbed, like someone was taunting her with only so much information.

Why hadn't he written an entry recently?

She needed to know more.

Florence arrived at the hospital ward at three in the morning dressed in her donkey onesie with her hair in a would be bun, and immediately saw Charlie.

She hadn't even spared a thought for Charlie, what she'd read in Cole's diary had made her feel less than warm towards the girl, she'd ditched her best friend for his brother for god's sake! 

There were some things you just didn't do.

"Flo" Charlie practically collapsed into her with relief.

"I've been wanting to get a coffee for hours but I didn't want to leave him in case.. in case anything changed"

Nope, Charlie didn't have a right to make her feel guilty right now, Cole's whole life, Chase's whole life could have gone in another direction if it wasn't for Charlie's selfish, selfish actions.

But that had been a long time ago, and whilst Florence had been uselessly weeping into Cole's diary, Charlie had been watching over Cole.

"I'll take over, you go get your coffee"

Florence knew she had around fifty missed calls, most of them from her furious agent but she didn't care about book promotion right now, she didn't care where Dysmorphia was on the charts or what the latest tabloid had to say about her, the one thing she did care about was her readers. 

But she wasn't in the right state of mind to be replying to any of them at the moment, she'd got Natalie to hire an assistant named Jenna, Jenna was going to all her meetings, dealing with press and promotion until she was in a 'fit state of mind to work'. Florence doubted that she'd be in a fit state of mind to work for a very, very long time.

"Hey Cole, you holding up there?"

That was such a stupid think to say, the guy was in a coma for crying out loud, she doubted he was having the time of his life.

But what had the doctors said?

Patients in coma's who made full recoveries sometimes remembered hearing voices of people near them, she needed to tell Cole so much.

She wished this was a movie, one of those movies where the heroine could spill her heart out, clasp the patients hand and then there would be a dramatic gasp and all would be well again and a happily ever after would be what followed.

But the darkly-lit room looked nothing like a movie set.

That wasn't going to stop her from trying.

"Cole... I did something your probably going to be really angry about when you wake up, and I'm sorry, I couldn't help it, okay maybe I could help it. I read your diary, I wanted to know more about everything about your past, you've read Dysmorphia you pretty much know everything there is to know about me"

Deep breaths.

"But I don't actually know a whole lot about you, at least I didn't before I read your diary, I had no idea that we met first, of how bad things really were for you, but I realise now that I had Chase on such a pedestal, I thought he couldn't possibly have committed a bad act, he was the perfect embodiment of a fixer when I knew him... but after reading your thoughts everything seems so much clearer now, there's no black and white image, there isn't one good twin and one bad, you were both a mix"

Tears were so useless to spill right now.

"But I think Chase knew what he was doing, he was looking out for the both of us, he might have brought us together in a twisted way but that doesn't mean our whole friendship has to be tarnished, I miss you, I miss our arguments, the flat is the loneliest place in the world to be right now, I don't want to talk to my parents, or Charlie, or Cooper for that matter, I just want you to open your eyes and say something, in fact you don't even have to say anything! Just open them"

Five seconds went by, then ten.

And nothing happened, why had she expected the impossible to happen?

She had to leave this room, the walls were closing in before her very eyes.

The chair made a horrible scraping noise as she left the room, and bumped right into somebody.

"I'm so..." and then she began to cry even harder, massive gulps and shudders, because she had bumped into Alex holding a bouquet of sunflowers looking so sweetly concerned for her.

"Flo, are you okay?"

And then she did something so stupid she'd probably regret it for the rest of her life.

In Florence's defence she was extremely emotionally unstable and on the verge of a breakdown.

She kissed Alex there and then with the machines keeping Cole alive bleeping in the background.