Sarah stabled herself on the crutches. She opened her mouth to shriek, yet somewhere in her throat the noise evaporated. Her brain ground to a standstill and only a trickle of thoughts rose to the surface of her empty mind. Was it her imagination?
Jumping back, she shut the door and slowly took a few steps back into the kitchen. There was no one to pinch her now to make sure she wasn’t imagining it. Stumbling towards the cupboard, she grabbed hold of the bottle and put it to her mouth. As the strong liquid flowed down her throat, it burned her insides, reaching out to the far corners of her body. She looked at the bottle, Absolute vodka. That should clear her head.
Staggering back through the hall, she stopped at the door, and collected all her thoughts. She would open the door, and no one would be there. Yes, that’s what’s going to happen.
Taking in a deep breath, she undid the lock and opened the door again.
He was still there.
The image of him became imprinted in her brain as she toppled backwards into darkness.
********************************
Chris had awoken two days ago. No one was in the room with him at the time, but outside hospital life was as busy as usual. It wasn’t a spectacular awakening either. No event from the past week had fully registered in his mind, and all he felt was the drowsiness of a single night’s sleep. However there was still no doubt he was a tremendous amount of pain. When he had attempted to prop himself up on the pillows, a shuddering flash of agony spread across the surface of his body. He was in no fit state to begin moving.
For hours, he sat staring at the ceiling in an attempt to piece together the jigsaw his memory had now become. His motorbike….
It had been the prized possession of his many valuables and it had taken an extreme amount of will power to even let himself take it out of the garage. One scratch and half of its value would disappear. Turning his brain back as far as possible, he put himself back in the position he was in on the day of the crash. It was hot that day. He had been adamant about putting on all the specialised clothes, but he wasn’t stupid. He would be dead now if he hadn’t reconsidered wearing them.
Outside the road was quiet. It was four in the afternoon and he had expected it to be little busier, but anything that meant he wouldn’t be snapped up by the paparazzi, the better. His mind drew a mental blank thinking back this far in time. There was a black hole in his memory of what had happened after that. There was the women….shielding her eyes from the sun….she couldn’t have seen the motorbike heading her way….there was nothing in the way of a full-on collision.
Now here he was. Clad in hospital clothes and unable to walk. Surely it couldn’t have got worse than this. But it had. He had endangered two lives. Two were safe…and now another was lost. Another was lost and it was entirely his fault. He needed to cry, anything to let go of the swirling hurricane of emotions running through his body. But letting go was the one thing he couldn’t do. When you experience something dramatic, the impact hangs above, before releasing its heavy pendulum, set to swing forever, never fully leaving you for the rest of life. At this point in time, all Chris could conjure up was angry tearless sighs.
His new train of thoughts were interrupted by the appearance of a trainee nurse. For the past week, she had been in and out of his room, checking up and taking care of any irregularities with equipment. Today was no exception; she didn’t take a second look at Chris’ bed, she was so sure that nothing of importance had taken place. Chris opened his mouth to call over, but shut it again when he realised the impact of an action like that. If the calendar beside him was right, and he had been unconscious for a week, revealing he was awake by giving the young girl currently staking sheets in the corner cupboard a fright was probably no the best way to do it.
Then again he couldn’t leave the matter forever. For several minutes he waited as she finished up the job and headed towards the door. It was now or never. Preparing his throat for his first word in a while, he swallowed and coughed quietly. It was enough, the trainee nurse spun on her heels and jumped into the doorframe. “Jesus Christ!”
She stood for a second or two, staring into his dark eyes unable to bring herself to say anything even though informing someone immediately should have her top priority. “I’m…I’m jus-”
The nurse never finished her sentence as she fled from the room. Chris became overwhelmed at t he series of events that soon fell into place over the next few days. Visits from his mother, doctors, surgeons, the guys, nurse’s, his sister’s, friends…the list was endless. No matter who many the receptionist attempted to keep at bay, they just kept on coming.
Chris knew how bad this was on his health. Now he was awake, rest, the one thing he was not granted should have been top of his list. But he stayed. All the time, expecting to see the girl come through the door. Sarah, as he had found out her name, had been sent away early after the quick recovery from the operation. And now there was possibly a chance he would never get to talk with her. It wasn’t just the fact that he didn’t have her current address, but the fact he couldn’t visit anyone at all, just in case media got hold of it. So far, no one had found out about the accident, and he didn’t want the news to get out either. If they found out Sarah had been involved as well, it would be hellish for her and probably people close to her. He was sure this was the last thing she needed so soon after her loss.
So now, two days on, he was sitting inside Sarah’s apartment, with her unconscious head on his lap.
*****************************
Some one was cooking. Sarah hadn’t fully come round yet, but half of her senses were in working order and one of these was her smell. She sniffed and found herself inhaling smoke. Coughing loudly, she slowly lifted her right lid and was met with the familiar surroundings of her apartment. For a moment, she had a nightmarish inkling she was back in the hospital, until she recognised the colour scheme on the back wall. She was safely back in her own apartment.
Lifting her head, she saw the familiar frame of Beverly in front of the cooker, steam billowing out from wither side of her. It was only now that Sarah began to question what had just happened. Had Chris just visited her apartment? Maybe it had all been a kind of dream sequence. Maybe Beverly had just come around for her daily visit, Sarah had fallen asleep on the couch, and now Beverly was making lunch. It seemed plausible enough. But something was wrong. It didn’t seem like she was lying on her sofa. She lifted her head another few degrees and turned round slowly.
Sarah shrieked at the site of who she was leaning on. She scrambled to the opposite side of the sofa and drew her knees to her chin in an almost defensive mode. She frantically looked over to Beverly who had now turned around at the noise, and then she looked back at the shocked figure occupying the other end of the couch. She definitely wasn’t imagining things now.
Sarah sat, wary of the fact her mouth was gaping open. Beverly turned the cooker off and made her over to where Sarah was huddled up. The silence grew into an intense awkwardness. Chris sat unmoved, his eyes dead set on the figure of Sarah. It was Beverly who eventually took over the situation.
“Sarah, I-” Beverly paused and considered what she was going to say. To be honest, she wasn’t really sure.
“This is tricky, I…I don’t really know what to say. What do you want to hear?”
Sarah gulped. There was a million and one things she wanted to know. She turned slowly to Chris whose eyes were fixated on hers. “How….long has it been.”
Chris knew precisely what she meant. She was anxious about the whole situation. How long he had been awake for. He looked at her fragile state properly. She was still clutching her stomach as a natural reflex.
He didn’t know why he did what he did next, but something inside him was eating away at his senses. Something that would never leave no matter how much effort he put into fixing it. He moved over to Sarah’s figure but stopped in the centre of the sofa. He was about to wrap his arms around her, tell her everything that had happened, explain exactly what he was feeling. But he couldn’t do it. No matter how much he wanted too, he was still a complete stranger to her.
He dropped his head to his hands and waited for the tears. He only had to wait a few seconds before they began to flow. The time had come for the impact to strike. This was his chance to let go.
A/N; Okay, now over to the Epilogue...
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