“Colton!” A hand jolts my shoulder and I snap out of my trance, unsure of how much time has passed, but I see them now. The medics and the flashing lights swirling on my walls through the open front door. And I know they need to take her from me to help her, but I’m so fucking scared right now I don’t want to let her go.
She needs me right now but I damn well know I need her more.
“Please, please don’t take her from me,” I croak as they lift her from my arms and I’m not sure who I’m talking to, the paramedics or God.
“How long, Sammy?” I shove up from the chair, nerves gnawing at me and my legs not able to eat up enough fucking ground to make them go the fuck away.
“Only thirty minutes. You gotta give them time.”
I know everyone in this fucking waiting room is staring at me, watching the man with blood all over his clothes pace back and forth like a fucking caged animal. I’m antsy. Restless. Fucking terrified. I need to know where she is, what’s wrong with her. I sit back down, my knee jostling like a fucking junkie needing a fix and realize that I am. I need my fix. I need my Ryles.
I thought I lost her today only to know I didn’t, and then when I think she’s fucking safe—fucking protected in my arms as we fall asleep—she’s ripped the fuck away from me. I’m so goddamn confused. So fucking angry. So … I don’t even know what I am anymore because I just want someone to come out from behind those fucking automatic doors and tell me she’s going to be okay. That all the blood looked a hundred times worse than it really fucking was.
But no one is coming. No one is giving me answers.
I want to scream, want to punch something, want to sprint ten fucking miles—anything to get rid of this fucking ache in my chest and churning in my stomach. I feel like I’m going crazy. I want time to speed the fuck up or slow the fuck down, whichever is best for her, as long as I can see her soon, hold her soon.
I get out my phone, needing to feel a connection to her. Something. Anything. I start to type her a text, express to her in the way she understands best how I feel.
I finish, hit send, and hold on to the thought that she’ll get this when she wakes up—because she has to wake up—and know exactly how I feel in this moment.
“Colton!”
It’s the voice that’s always been able to fix things for me and this time he can’t. And because of that … when I hear his voice call out to me, I fucking lose it. I don’t stand to greet him, don’t even lift my head to look at him because I’m so fucking overtaken by everything that I can’t function. I drop my head in my hands and start sobbing like a fucking baby.
I don’t care that there are people here. I don’t care that I’m a grown-ass man and that men don’t cry. I don’t care about anything but the fact that I can’t fix her right now. That my endgame superhero can’t fix her right now. My shoulders shake and my chest hurts and my eyes burn as I feel his arm slide around me and pull me into his chest as best he can and try and comfort me when I know it’s not going to do a goddamn fucking thing for her. It’s not going to erase the images of her lifeless Raggedy Ann body and pale lips that are staining my mind.
Humpty fucking Dumpty.
I’m so upset I can’t even speak. And if I could, I don’t even know if I could put words to my thoughts. And he knows me so fucking well he doesn’t even say a word. He just holds me against him as I expel everything I can’t express otherwise.
We sit in silence for some time. Even when my fucking tears are gone, he keeps his arms wrapped around my shoulders as I lean forward with my head hanging in my hands.
His only words are, “I’ve got you, son. I’ve got you.” He repeats them over and over, the only thing he can say.
I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to rid my mind of everything but it’s not working. All I can think of is that my demons have finally won. They’ve taken the purest thing I’ve ever had in my life and are stealing her fucking light.
Her spark.
What have I done?
I hear shoes squeak on the floor and stop in front of me, and I am so scared of what the person has to say that I just keep my head down and my eyes closed. I stay in my dark world, hoping I have the control to keep it from claiming her too.
“Are you the father?” I hear the soft, southern accent ask the question, and I feel my dad shift and assume he’s nodding to her, ready to listen to the news for me, bear the brunt of the burden for his son.
“Are you the father?” The voice asks again, and I move my hands off of my face and look over at my dad, needing him to do this for me, needing him to be in charge right now so I can close my eyes and be the helpless little kid I feel like. When I look over, my dad is looking straight at me—meets my eyes and holds them—and for the first time in my life I can’t read what the hell they’re saying to me.
And they don’t waver. They just look at me like when I was in little league and afraid to go up to the fucking plate because Tommy-I always-hit-the-batter-Williams was on the mound, and I was scared to get beaned with the ball. He looks at me like he did way the fuck back then—gray eyes full of encouragement telling me that I can do this—I can face my fear.
My entire body breaks out in a cold sweat as I realize what that look is trying to tell me, what she’s trying to ask me. I swallow loudly as the buzzing in my fucking head assaults me, then leaves me shaken to the core, as I angle my head up to look at the patient brown eyes of the woman in front of me.