With these words, I slid out of her grasp and strode back the way I’d come, waving at Mr. Christopherson who was just on his way to the stairs.
I didn’t turn to comfort Mae as a sob sounded from the music room, or offer any explanation to her husband as he asked if I was already done with my lesson. Instead, I mustered a brave face and walked out the door, knowing that now, Carly’s biggest regret weighed less heavily and she could find peace at last.
Chapter Forty-Two
Jo nibbled the rest of her popcorn on her way out of the theater a couple of hours later.
“Are you even allowed to eat that?” I asked, pointing at the salty pieces between her fingers.
“If I don’t glut myself with anything else as salty as this and drink enough fluids,” she answered, mouth full and chewing noisily.
It was easy to hang out with Jo. Even now that her life was full of restrictions, full of careful planning and medications. In some ways, her life was so similar to mine.
“Now, at least, I know what to say when Rakesh suggests we watch this movie together.” She chuckled and blushed.
“Now you’ll know that you won’t miss anything substantial if you spend the entire film glued to his face.”
We both laughed, and it was wonderful to see Jo happy.
“Honestly, Jo”—I hooked my arm into hers—“I’m glad the two of you are dating.”
Jo nodded in agreement, her cheeks still tinted pink.
We were just arriving at the car when my phone vibrated in my pocket. I pulled it out in time to see Leon’s call end. He had left several messages, asking if I was all right. They were popping through just now that the connectivity was back after we’d left the theater.
“Should I drive while you call him back?” Jo offered, dreading my concerned expression. “We can always switch later. For example at a diner … there was that small place at the edge of town that looked like somewhere we could pick up something for our parents to appease them for leaving them alone all Sunday,” she suggested with a conspirator smile.
I just reached into my bag and extracted the keys, tossing them to her with a “Thanks”, and dialed Leon’s number as I climbed into the passenger seat.
Jo steered the car into the light afternoon traffic, the music tootling idly in the background, when Leon answered, relief in his instant “Hello” as if he’d been waiting by the phone.
“I was worried,” he admitted, an uneasy tone threading his voice, the concern in it so familiar.
“Like a—” I paused and glanced at Jo, who was focused at the traffic light ahead, fingers drumming in beat with the music on the steering wheel. “Like a … you know…”
“Like a real boyfriend,” he finished my sentence, his tone informing me he knew very well that wasn’t what I’d meant but said it, all the same, just to say it—for the first time.
“Exactly,” I retorted, wondering if my ears were the shade of tomatoes.
I recapped the film for him in a three-minute version, already eager to see his face again, to feel his laugh on my cheek as he kissed me in-between moments of conversation.
“When will you be back?” he finally asked after he’d given me a brief summary of his day—doing nothing. “Your mom really had a speech prepared this morning,” he added. “I think I need to reconsider sleeping in your bed.” A laugh followed that told me that he intended just the opposite.
“Sorry I didn’t warn you.” I chuckled to myself as I imagined Leon flushed pink before my mom while she asked him the same question she had asked me this morning. “I know you can handle yourself around her. It’s not as if you haven’t been coming and going for the past years.”
He laughed again at that. “True. Only, now, it’s different.” His laugh abruptly stopped. “Now I’ve something to lose.”
“I’ll call you when I’m home,” I reassured him, glancing at the clock behind the wheel. “Definitely before six.”
“Love you,” he said instead of goodbye.
“Later,” I responded, feeling a heat flood me that was a bit similar to panic. Speaking the words, despite the attraction between us, despite the trust, the feelings … it would be like stripping naked in the middle of the highway. I wasn’t ready. Gran’s words of caution might have something to do with it, but mainly, I knew I wasn’t ready.
I flipped the phone back into my bag and fell into my own thoughts, grateful that Jo had taken on the task of driving. Every inch of my body was so … tired … including my mind. Last night—the fact that Cas had saved me from a huge mistake, not filling in Leon about what had happened, and sneaking around with Carly’s letter—had taken its toll. Maybe it had been the past months that had taken their toll, but I was too tired to ponder even that. I just wanted to close my eyes for a moment.
The screeching tires of the black van tore through the air before my lids could fall shut, followed by the sensation of being catapulted into space as Jo hit the brakes, causing the car to twist to the side before it skidded to a halt. I tried to focus, to orient myself, to see something—
What caught me was a familiar shape standing by the crossing, dark and lean, hands in his pockets, hair dancing in the wind.
The outline of the Shadowbringer was the last thing I saw. Then, that van hit my car.
And everything went black.
Fragments of words rather than words, let alone full sentences, filtered through the darkness.
“…leave …… not now…” a voice older than time, younger than tomorrow, whispered in my ear. “…chance…”
During the pauses, I mainly heard my own heart pounding in my skull, too fast like the frantic wings of a butterfly with lead attached to its fragile legs.
“…need more time …… not planned …… hopeless…”
There was no way I could react to the words. I couldn’t even react to my own wish of opening my eyes—did I wish to open them?
Something slid under my neck, making an explosion of pain erupt along my spine, in my chest, where one shallow breath was chasing the next. I could feel my body—that was good, I supposed. Even if it meant that all my limbs felt as if they were on fire.
The scent of oil and gasoline and blood marked the progress of time as it floated into my noses.
“Don’t …… only could tell…” the voice echoed almost like it was inside my mind—or fighting the angry, defiant pulse in my ears. “…do anything … anything.” I tried to hear all of the words, but they eluded me as if they were fragments of shattered glass that rained down; patched together, it made up a whole, but it could never be put back in that original state of completeness. “Hold on,” finally, right by my ear, a whisper that was the sound of clear summer nights and cloudy, stormy skies, all at once, said, “For me.”
Then, the voice faded, making way for the shouted orders of what had to be firemen or paramedics or police, I couldn’t make out the meaning of their noises, only that they were coming closer and the voice that had whispered in my ear was gone.
I struggled to open my eyes, fought, with every shred of willpower—
But they remained heavy and unwilling and utterly useless, cutting me off from the world.
“Can you hear me?” one of the shouters asked so close to my ear that I felt I should be cringing away, only, the response my body gave was another fiery rain of pain, right from the top of my head all the way down to my toes, and not the movement I’d been hoping to make.
“Jo—” It all came back to me. The crossing, the van … Cas on the sidewalk like the illusion of a dream.
“This one is awake,” the voice by my ear reported, one careful hand probing along my arm as his attention returned to me. “My name is Malroy,” he informed me at a normal volume. “I am going to be here with you the entire time while they cut you out of the car.”
His words made some sense as I noticed the pressure on my legs and on my chest as if I had been folded into steel wrapping.
“Jo—“ I repeated, and my
eyes fluttered open for a brief moment, just long enough to take in the young face of the man crouching by the window of my car, tilting his head to the side so he could see my face. He was upside down … no, he wasn’t… The car had turned over and landed on its roof. I was upside down. Suddenly, the angry pounding in my head made sense.
I pulled together all of the strength I could find in the aching ends of my body and said to Malroy, “Get Jo out first.” The words came out as a cough. I tasted blood. “It’s okay if I die.”
Malroy was about to object.
“It is,” I cut him off with a voice so weak I wondered if I was speaking at all. “I’ll go to heaven.”
The next time I woke, the world was a fluffy cloud in which I was floating without a care. A metronomic beeping noise greeted me alongside darkness. A brace held my head in place, and I could only imagine that my legs must be in a cast. I didn’t feel them any more than that they were there and that when I wriggled my toes, they actually moved.
With a whispered prayer of gratitude that I wasn’t paralyzed, I let my eyes slide shut again. However, I didn’t get to slip back into the dreamless state of before where pain didn’t exist, probably due to very expensive pain medication. The door opened, and hasty footsteps rushed to my side, accompanied by a discussion that seemed to have something to do with the timing of my waking.
“…should have been sleeping at least until tomorrow morning,” one of them, a woman, noted. She was the first to arrive at my side. “Can you hear me?” She turned to me, a switched-off lamp in her hand, which she used to direct the other arrivals to their designated places.
I blinked at her, and inched my chin down as much as the brace allowed.
“Good,” the doctor noted and dropped the lamp into the pocket of her white coat. “Do you know your name?”
I had to think for a moment, but it came to me quickly enough. “Laney,” I answered, my mouth dry as sandpaper. “Laney Dawson.”
The doctor and the nurses, who were checking what seemed to be an IV and the monitor beside my bed, all appeared to relax a bit at my coherent response.
“You have a broken leg and a couple of cracked ribs. Some really bad bruises. No internal bleeding, though. Organs are okay.” She took a deep breath as if listing every injury had used up all of her lung volume. “You’re lucky to be alive.”
“You must have a special angel who watches over you,” one of the nurses said from the foot of my bed.
An angel.
Lucky to be alive.
But I wasn’t the only one who had been involved in the accident.
Jo and the driver of the van—
Jo—
“Can I“—I stopped mid-sentence and tried to clear my throat, but the hoarseness didn’t disappear. So I continued, ignoring the fact that I sounded like someone was throwing pebbles into a paper box—“see Jo?”
The beeping from the monitor sped up as I waited for the answer. God, don’t let her be dead. It was the second prayer within a minute.
“Your friend is still in surgery,” the doctor informed me in a tone that was equally professional as it was sympathetic. “It may take another couple hours until she gets out.”
One of the nurses checked the needle in my arm and gave me a compassionate half-smile while I did my best not to start screaming Jo’s name.
“But she will get out, right?” I willed my words to be true.
The doctor only placed a hand on my forearm. “We are doing all we can to save your friend.”
“I’ll call your mother, honey, and tell her that you woke up,” another nurse offered. “She left maybe fifteen minutes ago to take a shower and pick up some fresh clothes. She didn’t leave your side from the moment they rolled you out of surgery.”
I tried to speak again and failed, my throat too dry to produce a sound.
With a smile, the nurse held a cup with a straw to my lips. “Drink up, honey.”
The liquid felt like the glacial lakes I had seen in geography classes or in fancy documentaries about the history of the world.
“Thank you,” I said to the kind nurse, who shoved her seventies glasses up her nose and nodded at me with pink painted lips, which made a fruity contrast to her chocolaty skin.
“Someone called for you,” she said only to me, leaning in a bit so that it made at least the appearance the others couldn’t hear. “A boy.”
“Leon,” I whispered, and the nurse lifted her eyebrows, making the lines on her forehead deepen.
“He asked me to let him know when you woke up,” she told me, and for some reason—I couldn’t exactly say why—it felt like a question.
“Sure,” I responded, wondering if my answer made any sense.
Then, my mind circled back to Jo and the last moments in the cars and that she already had enough on her plate; the last thing she needed was … this.
My eyes searched for the doctor, who was reading the chart at the foot of my bed, her middle-aged face reminding me of that of my mother when she was wearing her lawyer-face.
“She has kidney disease,” I said to the woman who looked up, her hand lowering the chart. “Jo,” I clarified. “Jo has kidney disease.”
At that, the doctor glanced to the side at the nurse closest to the door, who flitted out, without a word.
“Why don’t you try to sleep a little more,” the doctor suggested.
Beside my head, the kind nurse placed the cup back on the nightstand. “It will be a while before your friend gets out of surgery.”
“This will help you sleep,” the doctor walked up to stand by my side and took a syringe from the kind nurse’s hand. “Your body needs rest so it can heal.”
I nodded. The dreamless sleep from before was better than the anxiety that rose in my chest when I thought about Jo—and the guilt that followed. It had been my car. I had asked her on that adventure. I had let her drive—
The sedative worked fast as the doctor administered it through the IV, and I was taken under by a pain-free heaviness that immediately let my eyelids droop.
The next time I woke, it was from a painful tug in my chest.
Chapter Forty-Three
My body was a weight, unable to move as I intended to get out of bed, my leg, trapped in a cast, my neck, useless in the brace, my arms attached to those tubes and needles, getting God-knew-what delivered directly into my veins. Pain killers, for sure. However, the dosage wasn’t high enough to mute the pain that came with a calling soul.
Leon would go take care of the soul. It was a comforting feeling that even if I wasn’t capable of moving, that soul wouldn’t go unaccounted for by the side of the Lightbringers.
With a groan, I shifted just as much as necessary to glimpse at the window where a starless night greeted me. Leon, I called him in my mind, hoping that he would answer even though that wasn’t the sort of connection we had. I wasn’t sure if anyone had that sort of connection. I knew that, had Leon been in the hospital building, he would probably have heard me. But he didn’t. The pain wasn’t fading, and so I had to entertain the thought to at least try on my own.
I closed my eyes and attempted to shift into my ethereal form, but it didn’t come as easily as I was used to. It took me several mind-wracking times to feel myself slither into the weightless version of myself where I wasn’t bound to the principles of physics the way my corporeal body was.
With clenched teeth, I braced my palms and forearms against the bed and lifted my head then shoulders … then I sat up, torso obeying effortlessly. I slid my good leg off the bed first. Then, when nothing in my body protested, I gingerly lifted the cast-wrapped leg—
Nothing. Not even a hint of pain. Only the tug in my chest that was getting more pronounced by the second. This was urgent. The soul was almost ready.
I could do this. I could. I had to.
With a deep breath, I stumbled to my legs and was surprised to find them holding my non-corporeal weight.
Gritting my teeth, I extracted the need
les from my arm and applied pressure on the puncture hole for a minute just to make sure I wouldn’t bleed—not that I knew if ethereal bodies could bleed. Then I took a deep, mind-clearing breath and took off, letting the essence of the angel guide me, letting it take me wherever the soul needed my assistance with transitioning into the afterlife—or an advocate against hell if Cas was there to claim whoever it was.
The journey was short. A blink of an eye rather than a minute like I was used to. And when I arrived, I found myself looking at a hospital room similar to mine. Only it was brightly lit and busy with doctors and nurses, and loud with orders and curses and loudest of all … the sound of a flat line from the monitor attached to Jo’s lifeless body.
“Jo!” The scream came out of me as I took a clumsy step with the cast. I didn’t feel pain, I didn’t feel a soul either, their alignment with heaven or hell, where on the scale between good and evil they stood. I didn’t—
“She’s gone,” said one of the doctors, face grave as he set down the paddle of the defibrillator. The rest of the room mimicking him, dropping what they had been holding onto, lowering previously busy hands which now had no use. “Time of death, four-forty-three in the morning,” the doctor pronounced the final words that sealed Jo’s fate.
No. Nooo.
It couldn’t be true. We had been laughing in the car only yesterday. We had been watching zombies on the big screen and nibbled popcorn. We had—
A sob hitched in my throat.
“Jo.” I staggered closer, waiting for Jo’s soul to hatch from her broken body, for my friend to embark on her journey so if there was nothing else I could do, at least I could take her to heaven where she wouldn’t suffer, where I would someday—if Leon was right—see her again.
It was then that I saw him hovering by the side of the bed, a faint smile on his lips as he studied Jo’s bruised face, hands which were reaching past the doctor who slowly retreated from the bed, braced on the edge of the mattress.
Torn: A young adult paranormal romance (Breath of Fate Book 1) Page 24