It had been a while since I'd checked my phone and when I finally did, I noticed it was out of battery. I knew exactly where I'd find an iPhone charger in the house, but I wasn't quite yet ready to tackle the door at the end of the landing.
After searching the downstairs for an inhumane amount of time, I finally located a charger in the dish by the front door and took it into the living room with me. I mulled over the idea of scrolling through TikToks, trying to determine if the activity would bring back too many bittersweet memories.
The Apple logo flashed on the screen, then my background appeared. After a second my phone was buzzing off the hook. To any normal, socially active individual, that wouldn't have been quite so alarming, but alarmed I certainly was.
Swiping to unlock the screen, I opened the Notification Centre and my heart stopped. Seventeen missed calls from Clara and an innumerable amount of text messages, all saying basically the same thing:
Dad got in an accident! Get to the hospital!
I was shouting Bruno's name before I'd even read the full message.
A door creaked open upstairs and he peeked his head over the bannister. "What?"
"Can you drive?" I demanded.
He looked confused, almost like I'd woken him from a nap. "Yes, why?"
"My dad got in an accident and I have to get to the hospital."
His shoes were already on his feet and he'd dragged me down to the car before I even had chance to blink. "Put your seatbelt on," he ordered. "Dépêche-toi!"
I did as I was told. "Are you even insured to drive this?" I asked. He was proving that his driving was not the smoothest and I worried about Olivier's pristine Mercedes.
"That would require even having a license, so that would be a no."
"You don't have a license?!" The words came out a shriek. I grabbed at the handhold on the roof and hung on for dear life.
Bruno shielded the ear closest to me but bellowed a laugh. "Dude, relax. British people are so uptight. You asked if I could drive, not if I was allowed to."
A noise of frustration bristled its way up my throat. "I don't understand how someone whose-" I realised what I'd been about to say and how it would sound. Looking at him worriedly, I clamped my mouth shut, horrified at myself.
"Someone whose, what?" he asked. His voice had turned hostile and I can't say I blamed him. "Go on. Say it. Someone whose parents died in a car accident. You seriously can't understand how someone whose parents died in a car accident doesn't have a license, is that what you meant to say?"
"No, I-"
He reached over and turned up the radio, signalling the end of the conversation and we drove in silence the rest of the way.
***
Bruno dropped me off outside the hospital and left without saying a word, which was fine with me. I'd think about the raging guilt later, first I had to focus on my family.
I ran past the ambulance bays and up the ramp to A&E, passing several police officers on my way in. Even more of them were littered throughout the waiting room, seemingly taking statements, and my heart screamed in my chest. How bad had this accident been?
On my way to the front desk, Clara called my name and my head whipped round at the sound. I pushed through the small crowd towards her.
Her face looked red and swollen with tears and I pulled her into a tight embrace. "What happened, Clara? How bad is it?"
"How much more can we take?" she sobbed into my hair, making no attempt to hug me back. "The universe hates us, Jane. I can't do this, I can't!"
"I know," I soothed. How I even made any attempt to sooth when my chest was on fire, I will never know. I pushed for information again. "What happened?"
"Follow me, I'll take you to him," was all she said.
That was good, it meant he was alive. Right?
She led me through double doors and into an emergency ward, scanned through with the help of a male nurse that was obviously madly in love with her.
Not the ICU, that's definitely good.
I could hear my mum's no nonsense tone before I saw her. Clara pushed back the curtain closest to us and the scene that greeted me took my brain a second to calculate.
My father was handcuffed to a bed between two officers. A nurse and my mother were to the left of the bed, clearly in the midst of a heated argument. At least, my mother was arguing, the nurse looked bored, like she'd seen this whole scenario a thousand times. I didn't doubt she had.
"He doesn't even drink," my mother said acidly.
"His blood alcohol level is off the charts, Mrs Wilson. We have him on a banana bag to get his electrolytes back up. He's lucky we didn't have to pump his stomach; his body seems almost used to this level of inebriation." Her tone was dry and equally as no-nonsense as Mum's and it was clear what she was implying. Good. It was about time someone gave it to her as good as she dished it out.
"This is outrageous," Mum snarled. "You will be hearing from our solicitors. All of you! You can kiss your cereal box medical licence goodbye!"
Eavesdropping on their conversation had cleared things up a little better than my sister had — my dad had been in some kind of drunken accident. He looked fine, sleeping soundly, with no visible cuts or bruises.
"Ma'am," one of the officers said, his tone obviously warning. He'd had enough too — the satisfaction I felt knowing it wasn't just me? Chef's kiss. "It's not only about the alcohol. Drunk driving is bad enough, but a child is fighting for her life because of his actions."
My knees gave out and I had to catch myself on the end of the bed. "No," I breathed.
A child. He'd hit a child. He lay there peacefully sleeping and unscathed after he'd hit a child. My sister's voice echoed through my head, shrouded in buzzing white noise.
How much more can we take?
I would take so much more if it meant that that little girl could live another day.
I don't remember turning, but suddenly I was walking away.
My mother's voice stopped me in my tracks. "Where you do you think you're going?"
It almost felt like after I'd let the anger out once, I couldn't contain it anymore. I was seething. For once it was my face growing red, my words filled with venom, my movements poisoned.
Rounding on her, not even caring we were in public, I finally let loose after all these years. "This is just as much your fault as his. We warned you, we finally got the courage to tell you he had a problem and you ignored it. You are just as much to blame for that little girl as he is." Jabbing a finger at the man in the bed, I paused for a second, overcome with emotion. My voice came out a choked whisper. "You are just as much to blame."
Facing the officers, I had to clear my throat twice before I could speak. "He's an alcoholic. He doesn't even have a driving licence. If it goes to trial, I will testify to that effect if needs be. Lock him up and throw away the key."
Hands tried to grab at me as I made my way towards the exit again, but I shrugged them off and kept walking. In that moment, I made a vow to never cry for that man again. He didn't deserve any more of my tears. What had happened to an innocent child was so much worse than whatever it was he was putting himself through.
As I made my way out the doors and across the waiting room, I heard a wail. A mother was screaming. Truly screaming. A heart-breaking, earth-shattering, grief-filled kind of scream. It was a sound that only mothers could make when they lost everything they held dear.
I heard that wail and I knew.
***
I walked aimlessly for hours, the weather changing several times. It had rained on and off, but never stopped long enough for me to dry off. By the time I got back to Remy's house I was drenched, soaked through to the bone with a chill that I couldn't shake.
It was pitch black outside and I was surprised I'd managed to get back to the house without incident, since anything that could go wrong lately, did go wrong. Maybe it had, maybe someone had tried to start something and I'd ignored them. I wished I could ignore everything and everyone from then on.
The thought of going into his room made it hard to breathe. I stood on the landing with my hand poised ready to grab the door handle for several moments, testing out different ways to breathe, trying to find ways that didn't send waves of hurt into every corner of my chest. Sucking air through my clenched teeth like I was avoiding a bad smell was all I could manage.
I'd been stood there for quite some time before a hand touched my shoulder gently. I jumped and realised I'd been so in my head I hadn't noticed Olivier had appeared. It surprised me he was still there at all.
He laid a towel around my shoulders, my hair still dripping onto my sodden clothes. When he spoke, it was like he uttered the words from down the hall, a screen of cotton wool separating us. "Jane, do you need me to do it?"
He was offering to open the door for me, to help me in. If I hadn't already cried away my whole lifetime's supply of my tears, I'm sure I would have cried some more at that.
I shook my head to clear it and Olivier mistook that for an answering no, but it saved me from having to speak when I didn't think I could.
"As you wish," came his voice, his kind eyes crinkling with unspoken emotion. "I'll be just downstairs if you need me, ma petite." His hand slipped from my shoulder and rubbed my arm. He looked as if he wanted to say more, but he just smiled and disappeared.
Steeling myself with another shake of my head, I twisted the doorknob and pushed. The door swung open with a creak before hitting the wall behind it. Nothing bad had happened yet and that gave me a bit more confidence. I took a step inside and shut the door, leaning against it.
The room was exactly as we'd left it that night. I hadn't had the guts to go back in there yet and the police had left no signs that anything had been disturbed. Spying the mess of the covers on the bed caused the air to catch in my throat. Images flicked through my mind like a... like a view-master. I smiled tearfully at the comparison.
A kaleidoscope of overwhelming colours and sensations stole my breath away entirely. His hands were on me, laboured breathing, sounds of pleasure, stolen kisses. The weight of the memory was so heavy, my knees gave out and I collapsed onto the bed, the smell of the sheets and the sounds of powerful winds outside making it all the more potent.
My breath came so hard now that I knew was having a panic attack but I couldn't stop it and it wasn't long before I was sucked into unconsciousness.