Project Coffee

xxiii

   
      The hospital was a place I normally look forward to on Saturdays.

    Today was Wednesday.

   I couldn't sit still and had been pacing back and fourth like a mad women for the past hour, waiting for the doctor or even a nurse to step outside the room and tell me he was okay.

   I waited for the words Alexander Vineyard is okay to be heard now more then ever before.

  What he said to me still rings in my ear while I pace and every time I catch myself coated in guilt that what happened to him is my fault makes my hands to land in my hair. I probably looked liked one of those ladies with birds in there hair at the moment.  But I didn't care. 

  You're safe.

He's murmured like it was one of the biggest accomplishments ever. It didn't make any sense. I was always safe. Never on the border lines.  What did he do?  What happened?

My head was on fire. My heart was on fire. I was on fire.

I hadn't bothered to explain to anyone where I was going when the ambulance showed up and carried Alex away. I'd run out of the coffee shop immediately and drove off towards the direction on the hospital. My apron was still on and the scent of coffee and syrup still lingered in the air around me.

"Katie?" My name gets called. I whip around at the sound almost instantly and in front of me stood Dakota with a grey hoodie pulled over his head.

"Dakota, what are you doing here?"I ask taken aback at the fact that he was here. How long had he been here?

"I practically live here."He jokes adding a chuckle before going forth and taking a seat in one of the blue seats lining the wall." Why are you here?"He asks, his hands patting gently on the seat next to him as if it were his way of telling me to take a seat next to him.

I sit next to him. My legs shaking right when the pressure of my body was taken off of it. I lean forward in my seat to get a better grip on myself.

"Who's in there?"Dakota asks from next to me.  I turn to look at him but his eyes were facing the door in front of us.

"My friend," I croak out, "he's-"I stop not being able to come up with words fast enough."He did something stupid."

"Are you worried?"Dakota props his legs
up onto his chair so he was sitting in a pretzel.

"I was at work," My hands clasp themselves onto of my lap my apron showing a few coffee stains.

"And you rushed here when you found or?"He finishes my sentence for me.

"I need him to be okay." I finally let out. Obviously I need him to be okay, but not just okay okay.  I needed him to be okay okay.

"He will be."Dakotas hand comes and clasps over my thigh in a comforting manner. "Do you know him well?"

"I've known him forever"I force a laugh only now just thinking of how long I had actually known Alex.

" do you know what happened?"

"He showed up at the coffee shop all bruised and bleeding, I've seen him get hurt before but this wasn't like all the other times." I explain my mind no longer in the hospital room but instead back at the scene where it all took place.

"He gets beat up often?"

"Alex gets into stupid fights." I state, now thinking of all the thousands of times I've caught him with black eyes and bruised jaws and busted lips.