Beep. Beep. Beep.
God, I hated that noise. I wanted it to stop. All I really wanted to do was keep sleeping. I wanted to sleep for a very long time.
I didn't know where I was or what was going on. My body felt sore and achy, like I was just one huge, throbbing bruise.
Where ever I was, I was lying on a bed. I could tell that much.
Okay, Hadley, I told myself. Work it out little by little.
It took several moments for my mind to sluggishly work out what was going on.
I'd been in a car accident. That was about as much as my brain would come up with. That, and there was this dumb beeping noise.
"...think she's going to be okay?"
I strained to listen to the voice that was speaking. I didn't recognize it, but it seemed oddly familiar.
"I don't know." The next voice sounded tired and a little saddened. "She got pretty beat up in that accident. Her diaphragm spasmed when she hit the ground, which was what caused her death in the fist place. How she managed to survive that, I'm not even sure. And then she has three cracked ribs, a broken arm, a ruptured appendix, and a massive concussion. The odds aren't in her favor."
Okay, so I definitely had been hit by a car. So that meant I was in a hospital. That explained the beeping noise.
But who were the people in the room with me?
"Will she wake up any time soon?"
"It's hard to say. She might. She might not. It's up to her now, really."
I heard a sniffle and a quiet sob as the other person spoke and realized immediately who that was.
"I'll leave you both alone with her now," the other person said. "Don't hesitate to call for anything."
The sound of a door opening, the muttering of conversation, and then the door shutting was all that I heard for several moments.
I struggled to make some sort of noise, to let them know I was perfectly fine and that I could wake up, but this was easier said than done.
My tongue felt like it was covered in sandpaper and glued to the top of my mouth.
When I finally did manage it, a half hour must have passed.
"M-M-Mom..."
Somebody was immediately at my bedside. "Hadley? Can you hear me, sweetie?"
"Momma..."
I fought to open my eyes, feeling like there were bricks on top of my eyelids, and when I finally did, everything was blurry and shifting in and out of focus.
My mother's worry stricken face swam into view and sweet relief flooded through me. At least I could still see.
"Oh, thank God." Mom sighed, her eyes welling with tears. "We thought you weren't ever going to wake up."
"Ha, ha..." I forced out weakly.
"How do you feel?" Mom asked, sounding frantic. "Do I need to call a nurse? Do you need any pain killers? Do you - "
"Michaela, give her room to breathe."
Dad stood up from a chair beside the door and joined Mom beside the bed.
"Hi, daddy," I said, forcing a smile.
I immediately winced at the stinging pain that caused. My face must have gotten cut up.
"Hi, sweetie," Dad said, smiling slightly.
Mom and Dad both looked worse for wear. Mom's eyes were bloodshot, her face was pale, and she looked like she hadn't slept in days. Dad just looked downright sick.
"How long was I out?" I asked warily.
My eyes were starting to feel droopy, like I was about to drop off to sleep again.
"Three days," Dad answered, running a hand across his face. "Three very long days."
Three days. I was out for three days?
I quickly did the math in my head - well, as fast as I was capable of - and felt a sense of dread washing over me.
I'd been hit Saturday, hadn't I? That meant today was Tuesday.
Tuesday.
I did my best to look at my heavily bandaged arm, but it was so covered in gauze I couldn't see my wrist at all.
God. This couldn't be good.
"Archer," I managed to get out. "Where is Archer?"
Mom and Dad exchanged looks and neither of them appeared to be too happy.
"Mom! Dad! Where is Archer?"
My voice was too feeble and raspy, but there was no way they could ignore me.
When Mom and Dad didn't answer, I started to panic.
What if Archer had killed himself? What if he'd really done it yesterday? If he had, then it would be entirely my fault.
"Hadley, calm down," Mom said soothingly, reaching out to stroke my hair. "You don't want to over exert yourself. You've only just woken up. You don't really want to see that boy, do you?"
"Yes!" My voice pitched up at least two octaves. "I need to see him!"
The heart monitor I was hooked up to started beeping wildly.
"Okay, Hadley, I'll go get him," Dad said quickly, looking worried.
He left the room without another word, shooting me a furtive glance over his shoulder as he went.
I closed my eyes with a shaky sigh. I tried to stop my lips from trembling and to keep back the tears that were threatening to fall. I wasn't having much luck.
I needed to see Archer. I had to know he was okay. It was one thing to hear somebody talking about Archer now, but it was another thing entirely to actually see him for myself.
"Hadley, sweetie...are you okay?" Mom asked, looking down at me anxiously.
I ignored her. Obviously I wasn't okay.
Where the hell was Dad? If Archer was already here, then it couldn't take very long to find him, right?
I tried to distract myself by looking around the hospital room. There wasn't much to it. It was painted a plain white. The blinds were shut out against the city. I was hooked up to a plethora of machines that were all beeping at random.
Just as the door to the room opened, I noticed the small stuffed penguin sitting on the nightstand beside the bed.
Penguin?
Dad stepped cautiously into the room, closely followed by the one person I'd literally been dying to see.
Archer didn't look well at all. But as much as he seemed to be completely exhausted, I was so ecstatic to see him I really did start crying.
"Archer!"
"Hadley," Archer said softly, his voice quiet. "Hi."
"Let's give them a moment, Michaela," Dad muttered, reaching out to grip Mom's shoulder. "Hadley will still be here."
Mom gave me an anxious look and stayed rooted to the spot. "Will you be okay?"
"Mom." I sighed, still managing an eye roll. "I'll be fine. Please."
She leaned over and kissed my forehead and then Dad had to practically drag her out of the room. It really was rather shocking. That was about as much affection my mother had ever shown me since I was seven or so.
The atompshere in the room was tense as the door swung shut, leaving Archer and I alone.
Archer stared at me for a moment as if he couldn't believe I was actually awake and then took a few tentative steps forward.
He opened his mouth to speak, but before he could get any words out, I stopped him.
"If you're going to say what I think you are, I don't need to hear it," I said. "There's no need."
Archer let out a shaky breath and gave me an exasperated look. "I wasn't going to apologize, if that's what you're getting at."
I raised an eyebrow. "Oh, you weren't?"
He shook his head, walking closer to the bed. "No. I was going to tell you that if you ever do that to me again, I'm going to kill you myself."
Oh. That was reassuring.
"Was it that bad?" I asked nervously.
"You have no idea." Archer stumbled into the chair beside the bed and ran a hand through his hair. "It just so happened that you were placed in the room next to my grandma's in the ER. I saw them rushing you in and...and I heard them say that you were dead."
I took a deep breath and swallowed back my tears. I f I started crying, I probably wouldn't be able to stop.
"How is Victoria?" I asked carefully.
Archer ignored my question.
"I pretty much started jumping for joy when they started shouting that you'd come back," he admitted.
"Even if I'd stayed dead, you would have been okay," I said, telling him the truth. "You would've been fine without me."
Archer looked stunned as he stared at me. He got to his feet and stepped closer, leaning down to brush his fingers across my cheek. His voice was low as he spoke. "No. I wouldn't have been."
It was a struggle to keep my eyes from crossing at how close he was. I really wanted to kiss him, but I wouldn't be able to lean up to do it myself.
"You don't know what it was like, seeing you look like that. It was..." He was having trouble finding the right word. "Painful. I just kept thinking that it was my fault because I hadn't been there with you, that I could have pushed you out of the way of that car and I realized that I just wanted a little more..."
"A little more what?" I whispered when he didn't speak.
He was starting to blush and he looked just the slightest bit embarrased. But he took a deep breath and kept going.
"Time. I wanted more time with you," he said, his voice cracking. "Time to tell you that...thatIhaveanew appreciationforpenguins."
I started laughing, which ended up being a huge mistake on my part. My ribs clenched even worse than before that had me doubled up in pain.
"What the - ? Penguins?"
I was laughing and crying at the same, but I didn't exactly care. I never thought I'd hear something like that coming out of Archer's mouth.
I'd gotten what he meant immediately.
That explained the little stuffed penguin sitting on the nightstand. That explained why he was so red in the face and why he was so embarrassed.
That night I'd dragged him to Central Park Zoo, to the penguin house, I knew he'd been serious when he said that love was something beyond understanding by humans.
He clearly had such a horrible outlook on that word and it wasn't surprising. The fact that annoying little me had changed that was beyond comprehension.
Hearing that was enough to make how awful I felt completely irrelevant.
Death was right. Maybe these 27 days had just as much affect on Archer as it had on me.
"Holy shit, Hadley, stop laughing!" Archer exclaimed, looking horrified. "You're going to hurt yourself even more!"
"I'm fine! I'm fine," I wheezed out, trying to clear my throat. "That was just...funny."
"Here I am, all but bearing my soul to you, and you have the audacity to be laughing at me!" he muttered, rolling his eyes, very put out now. "This is a big thing for me, Jamison!"
Trust that Archer and I would be fighting already, even if I had been in a near fatal accident.
"I know! I know. It's just that...I don't know, I just...I mean, you..."
I gave up trying to explain myself and instead beckoned him closer, close enough to were I could kiss him. It was awkward and frankly a little weird, but I hardly cared. I didn't think Archer cared, either.
"Looks like we're in it for the long run, aren't we?" Archer asked breathlessly when he pulled away.
"Maybe," I said. "Maybe not. It kind of feels like we're star-crossed lovers. I mean, I did technically die coming after you."
He got the reference right away.
"No," he said, shaking his head. "We're not Romeo and Juliet. No way in hell are we star-crossed lovers. We make our own destiny."
Thinking about everything that had happened, I realized he was right. Archer should have never lived and I wasn't supposed to go back to save him. But now look where we were.
"You're right," I agreed. "I think we do make our own destiny...penguin."
"You're going to use that against me now, aren't you?"
"Of course I am."
"Shit."
Because if we really did make our own destiny, then I was going to make sure that what Death had shown me was going to happen. A future where Archer and I were married and had a baby girl seemed pretty nice after everything that had happened to the two of us.
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