I can't believe what I just did back there. Yet I can't stress enough what emotions ran through my body. When I walked in and saw Damian touching Maddie's back and trying to talk to her I wanted to walk over there and punch him. I guess you could say that I was jealous. The sound of Maddie stressing her anger towards me made me want to cry. Never have I been so protective of someone, especially Maddie, like that. My hands and face go numb when I reach for the steering wheel as a sensation of fear tingles through my body. She's right. The words slide through my mind. I should have been there for her. I should have been happy that she is alive, not walk out on her like a jerk. A tear falls from my eye as I think of her face. Her pale pink lips trembling with anger and hurt. How her emerald green eyes were full of disgust.
"I thought you would be glad that I was alive."
I am glad that she is alive. Actually, glad is not the right word for it. The word ecstatic would suffice. There are no words that can describe how rapturous and blissful I was when I heard her voice again. The thing that amazes me is how she didn't sound frail at all when she called me from the hospital. In fact, there was determination in her voice. Determination to find out the truth about her life. You can't blame her. Her whole life was full of wrongs that no one bothered to right.
"Did you even think about me at all?"
I did. I did think about her for a great deal amount of time. Ever since Ray told me she left my heart found a pit to lie in and it fell asleep for a while under a black blanket. I lost her once, and now I have just lost her again. And for the same reason- I wasn't there for her.
I look up and I see how the night is beautiful with it's bright white stars against a clear navy blue sky and the moon making the black of night just a little brighter. I'm the only one on the road but I feel like there are cars surrounding me. Whooshing sounds of wheels and the wind blowing against my face. It's a soothing feeling that just slowly gathers you in an embrace. My eyes lower so I can be attentive to the road.
When I look up once more, a blinding flash of lights take over my vision. I can't see anything. Nothing at all. As I am trying to move away from the car, it's almost mocking me as the light follows me with every move. Then, my vision goes away as I feel my eyes shut, and the black of the night erases the yellow light.
~
Everything is sore. Everything has a stinging sensation like it's on fire. White walls surrounding me with blue spots here and there. Am I in the hospital? Voices around me are muffled, as if they don't want me to hear. Should I say something?
If you want to get out of here, then you might as well talk. It might get you somewhere.
"Where am I?" I groan. The words choked as my lips moved like they struggled to get out of my mouth.
"You are in the hospital. Last night you got in a car accident." One of the nurses returns.
"Who was the other driver? Did they get hurt?"
Not one single human being in the hospital room said a word. The only audible sound was the beeping of the machines connected to tubes going off in one of the patients roooms across the hallway.
Anger and frustration begin to progress from a small dribble into a waterfall through me as we continued to sit in awkward silence.
"Who was the other driver and did they get hurt?" I asked again with an agitated tone.
"The other driver was Damian Jones. When we got the both of you here, we doubted that you two would wake up. Damian is in a coma, and he might not wake up."
"Oh my god," I whisper.
"Do you know Damian?" One of the nurses asks.
"Yes, yes in fact I do know him. I can't believe that the driver was him." I pause a moment. Maddie. She will kill me, even though it was an accident. Why can't anything in my life go smoothly for once? "Is there anything at all that I can do that would help him?" I ask anxiously.
One of the nurses sighs, as if she's tired of answering my questions. All I can think about is how much of a selfish bastard I was to Damian. And it was all because I was jealous of him. What am I going to do? Jealousy has some serious repercussions that I might never be able to undo.
"The only thing you can do is pray to God so he can make a miracle happen. I'm sorry but there is nothing else you can do."
"How big of a chance does he have on living? Will anything happen to him if he does wake up?"
"He has a forty percent chance of making it, and considering how bad the damage was, that's a decent chance. There will be no damage if he wakes up, it might take him a while for him to get back on his feet, but that will be it. You should consider him lucky. Not many people are fortunate enough to have that great of a chance."
"Wait, what do you mean 'how bad the damage was'? What was the bad damage?"
"Well, he had to get stitches in his head and he pinched a few nerves in the process causing half of his body to go numb, and there was some head trauma but we took care of that."
I put my head in my hands and shut my eyes. "I'm such an ass whole," I whisper.
A nurse comes over and sits next to me. She looks sympathetic, but to tell if it was towards Damian or how I feel isn't exactly clear. Her pale and scrawny hand reaches over to shelter mine. I look at her and and she holds eye contact with me.
"You're not an ass whole. These things happen. You couldn't have known it was him. We will do everything we can to get him up and running again."
"Thank you." I reply. She nods and leaves the room with the other nurses trailing behind her. As I watch them leave, my eager to go into Damian's room grows like a plant. He might not be able to hear me, or see me, but I need to apologize.
"What have I done?" I say out loud. Five minutes go by and nothing has changed. My guilt remains inside of me and the silence of the room continues to get thicker and thicker with time. The white walls still white, the annoying beeping from across the hall, everything is the same.
"Liam?" A faint distinctive voice asks. Removing my hands from my face reveals a girl with blonde hair and pale skin standing in the doorway of the room.
"Yes?"
"It's Maddie. Can I come in?"
"Of course you can come in. Here." I pat the end of the bed cuing her to sit down.
"You look..great." Her 'compliment' makes me laugh. "Thanks. I'm so sorry. I was a total jerk back there and I shouldn't have been so rude. Can-"
"Liam, it's okay. People fight, it happens."
"Have you seen him?" I ask.
"Yeah. He's on life support and everything."
"What have I done?" I say once more, as if that's all I can manage.
Maddie scooches closer towards me on the bed and gives me a light and gentle hug. She has always been so forgiving, and I don't know how she does it. We've always been polar opposites. I'm stubborn and she's compliant. If you were to make me choose between sweets and fruit, I would choose sweets and she would grab a whole pint of strawberries and devour them within five minutes or so. Like I said, we've always been polar opposites. Her strategy is to think before making any hasty decisions. Me? I face it head on. I'm determined and strong willed. Just like I'm determined to solve the mystery of Maddie's death, and to get Damian out of that hospital bed.
"I'm so sorry Maddie, I didn't know the driver was him. I'll do anything to get him up and running again."
"Liam, like I said before, it's okay. I just hope he makes it."
"Me too. Sorry that I'm going off topic now, but I want to talk to you about what you told me at the house."
"What do you mean?"
"What you told me about you being able to see ghosts. I can try to help but I might not be of much use."
"Oh, that. Well, what usually happens is I get a screaming headache, worse than a migraine. At least, I think it's worse than one because I've never had one. Anyway, what I see are obviously transparent figures- people. But, they don't look at me or anything. That's what I was confused about. I'm not sure if it's because I was trying to get to you in the first place or what, but there was no contact. Then, after about two minutes of the headache and figures, I black out. I know that it's a lot to take in, but that's what happens."
"Well, I can tell you that since the ghosts aren't making any contact, it's normal. Do you feel like you have a connection with the ghosts?"
"No, I don't. I feel like they're just there to A. annoy me or B. to just be there."
I laugh at her sarcasm. "Well, like I said, I might not be of much use to you and I don't know what else to tell you."
"It's okay. It's just kind of annoying." She pauses, and whips her head around and looks back at me. Her face expression goes from neutral to confused. "Did you just see those nurses run to a room?"
"Yeah. You want to go check it out?"
"Sure."
We follow one of the nurses that is sprinting to the room. Once we get there, we see that it's Damian. Nurses are crowding him, making only his face visible.
"We're losing him! He's going into cardiac arrest."
Beeeeeeeeeeep.
He's gone. Damian is gone.
Maddie falls down to the floor with her hand over her mouth in shock. I pick her up and she rests her head against my chest. Soft sobs are muffled from my shirt as she stands there, watching the nurses trying to revive him. This is all your fault. If you hadn't gotten into that car accident, Damian wouldn't be dead and none of this would be happening, I think to myself. A part of me wants to believe that it was just an accident, that I couldn't have known it was him. The other part of me wants to go back in time and erase everything that led up to this moment, so everything could be okay.
This is all my fault. Even Jealousy has repercussions.