Unbreak Me

by Alicia Cicoria

  Before they left they asked me to stop by the station first thing tomorrow. I agreed and shook their hands. When they disappeared into the elevator, a nurse came out. Anyone could see she was exhausted, either from a long shift or the surgery was taking its toll on her.

  "You are all here for Miss Hodge?"

  I didn't have to look to tell I wasn't the only one nodding my head.

  "She's lost a lot of blood."

  People die every day. For different reasons, at different times, in different families. You can never understand someone else's pain. Someone else's grief will never make sense to you. They may act like it's all okay before breaking down behind closed doors. Others wear their emotions on their sleeves and push through every day because they have to, not because they want to. Loosing someone close to you is unimaginable. It does more than break your heart. It breaks your soul. It breaks everything about you. You miss them like crazy and no matter how often you pray, how hard you pray, it will never bring them back. You hold onto the memories as if they are your lifeline, the lifeline that connects them to your reality. The memories come at the most random times. Memories that you have all but forgotten, memories you haven't thought about in a long time. They come pouring in, like a fountain of despair. They make you laugh, they make you cry, they make you angry, they make a sadness appear that you have never experienced in your entire life. You question it more than you have ever questioned anything. You become empty, waiting for the good in life to fill you back up, though it'll never make you whole again. You move on, somehow. Loosing someone to death is never fair. It's never right. It's never easy. But, somehow you manage to fight for your own life because it's not your time and it's not over.

  I thought it was over the second the nurse said she had lost a great deal of blood. I felt nothing good could be followed by her statement. That was before she explained that the doctors had stabilized her and were working on inserting a defibrillator. She gave us a time frame of thirty minutes to one hour. I waited, impatiently. I couldn't wait to have her in my arms again. I was lucky. Not many people are but I was. She was going to wake up from surgery and we were going to be able to visit her. God may not have been the responsible one, but I thanked him anyway. I wasn't going to lose her. Not today.

  The nurses waited until Amberly woke up from the sedative to allow us into her room. They wanted to do a quick assessment of her mental and physical health and wanted to make sure we weren't going to overload her with stimuli. The second I walked into the room she smiled a weak but heartfelt smile. Tears fell from my eyes and I didn't care. I'd cry every day for the rest of my life if it meant she would be there to see it.

  "Baby." I rushed to her side and lifted her hand up to kiss it. "I love you so much." I whispered, bending down to plant a kiss against her head.

  Cricket drug a chair across the floor until it was against my knees and I sat, running my fingers through her hair, not wanting to take a single moment for granted. I didn't want to miss a single blink, a single breath, or a single moment of her.

  "What happened?" Her voice was tiny and weak. “One minute I was talking to Cricket, the next I was...” Her words trailed off, trying to remember.

  I shook my head at her. “You don’t need to worry about anything but getting better. We’ll talk about whatever you want to talk about when you get discharged from the hospital.” I promised. I didn’t want her worrying about anything.

  Cricket sniffled behind me, no doubt she felt as relieved as I did about Amberly making it through the surgery. "I'm sorry but we had to tell him." Cricket blurted the words. "We told him about your surgery."

  Amberly nodded, not at all angered by the confession. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner, I didn't want you to worry about me. Please don't be mad."

  I chuckled, marveling at the brightness in her eyes. "I could never be mad at you. Not truly." I admitted.

  "I'm so sorry, Amber." I had almost forgotten Adam was in the room with us. "It's my fault."

  Amberly adjusted herself to see Adam. "What's your fault?"

  I turned around to see the crushed look on Adam's face. "I didn't tell the nurses, Amber. I didn't tell them about your medical history. It's my fault you almost died."

  Amberly waved a hand in the air and huffed. "It's not your fault, Adam. So many things were going on at once, I wouldn't have even remembered to tell them if I had been conscious when I came in."

  I could tell Adam had that weighing on him during the time she was on the operating table. It made me feel horrible I hadn't talked to him about it, but the only thing I could think about was Amberly coming back to me.

  CHAPTER 34

  Lost In This Moment

  Amberly

  I don’t know how long it was from the time I had fallen asleep to when I had woken up again. When I came to, Bryant wasn’t there. I felt a heavy presence to my right and found Cricket’s head resting on her two arms that were folded over the bed. I shifted and she lifted her head.

  Rubbing her eyes, she winced against the bright sun that assaulted us through the huge glass windows of my room. She stood up and walked to the windows. “You okay if I close the curtains?”

  I nodded.

  She shut them until there was a small amount of natural light coming through them. “How are you feeling?” She sat down in the chair, pushing it away from the bed a bit.

  I shrugged, feeling the tightness in my chest. A steady pain, almost like a bruise that had force against it, was prevalent right below my collar bones. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be though. “I’m okay. Where’s Bryant?” My first thought wasn’t how long I’d been out. It was where my boyfriend was.

  Cricket smiled. “Not feeling too bad if you’re more worried about him than how long you’ve been out of it.”

  Sometimes, I wondered if she could hear my thoughts. She leaned forward and closed a hand around my wrist. “He’s been in and out of the police station for the last two days. You’ve been in and out of it but probably don’t remember that. The doctor’s said that’s perfectly normal, a side effect of the pain medication. He will be here around two, that was the last update Adam gave me.”

  I searched for a clock, finding one hanging on the wall. The time now was right after noon. “Why is he at the police station?”

  She gasped. “That’s right, you were awake for a few brief moments after surgery so you don’t know.”

  Panic set in. “Know what?”

  Cricket stood up and brushed my hair away from my face. “Don’t freak out. He’s fine. The night you were rushed into surgery, he was at the police station with Lucas. After hours. He was trying to prove he was being framed on the night of your crash. I want to tell you more, Amberly, but Bryant made me promise not to. He doesn’t want to worry you while you’re in the hospital.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Like you and Adam promised that you would let me tell Bryant about my condition?” I was half-joking with her. I couldn’t sit here for even another hour, waiting on him to come back and not worry. I would worry more if I didn’t know.

  She sighed and stood up straight. “You’re right. Circumstances though.” She tilted her head to the side, as if that would make me drop the issue altogether.

  I didn’t. “Cricket, that’s my boyfriend. I need to know if he’s in trouble.”

  She crossed her arms and looked away from me. I knew her well enough that she’d already surrendered and needed a few more moments before she spilled everything. “Fine.” She dropped her arms with exaggerated force and paced the room. “This is what I know, from the beginning. The car in Bryant’s possession was the car involved in the wreck responsible for Haylie’s death. Bryant’s ex-wife was behind the wheel that night. Intoxicated. It wasn’t a brake malfunction, but you already knew that. Ian Platt, one of Bryant’s best friends, helped his ex-wife cover up the fact she’d been drinking. Since the wreck resulted in death, she’d have a vehicular manslaughter charge to face. It started as him just keeping her
out of trouble. From my understanding, Ian has been following Bryant for weeks. He found out about the two of you getting together and decided to go further with the cover up. He wanted you to think Bryant was responsible for it all. He had his buddy access the case files again and forge Bryant’s signature. I’m sure you already know he wasn’t on duty that night. The kicker is, in between this fuck face stalking Bryant, he’d also helped Bryant’s ex-wife acquire the money to hire some chick named Sadie Wilcox, not even her true name, plant drugs in Bryant’s patrol car.” She took a deep breath and turned around to look at me, making sure I was following her. I motioned for her to continue. “His ex-wife was entitled to his retirement, but only after he retired. She couldn’t touch it until then. Unless,” she pointed a finger in the air, “he quit. She knew Bryant well enough to know that he would do whatever was asked of him and would quit rather than get fired from the police station. She began the process of getting access to his retirement. So, this was an end goal of ruining everything about Bryant’s life.”

  My mind raced. I couldn’t comprehend the why of the whole situation. Why would anyone go to such great lengths? “Why?” I didn’t have it in me to make that one word into a complete sentence. I didn’t know how at that point.

  “I’m not sure what Bryant has or hasn’t told you, sweetie. He blames himself for everything. He blames himself for the wreck. For the fact Haylie didn’t get justice. For the fact he has lost almost everything he’s worked so hard for. I don’t know that it’s my place to tell you if you don’t already know.”

  “Tell me what? If this is about the affair he had on his ex-wife, he told me that.”

  Cricket’s eyes went everywhere but on me at that point. Was there something else he hadn’t told me?

  “She’s not talking about that.” Bryant’s voice startled both of us when it came out of nowhere.

  Cricket started shaking her head. “I’m so sorry, Bryant. I know you wanted to wait to tell her everything when she got out of the hospital but she’s my best friend and…”

  Bryant stopped her by lifting his hand. “It’s okay. She deserves to know everything. Can you give us a minute?”

  Cricket stumbled forward, giving me a brief hug before heading to the door. “Of course. Take all the time you need.”

  Bryant kept his distance, walking first to the window, drawing back one of the curtains. I kept the silence though I fought hard to do so. I had so many questions now. So many doubts that I didn’t want to have erupted like a volcano that had been sitting inactive for years, yearning to explode at the inability to keep everything in. I steadied my breathing, knowing I needed to stay calm until he explained himself.

  “I’m an asshole.” He stated as if the confession was something he should have told me all along. I said nothing, wanting to agree with him but hoping I didn’t have to. Hoping that what he was about to tell me, wouldn’t have me regretting letting him in as much as I had. He let the curtain drop, turning around to me but not allowing me eye contact with him. He stared at the floor. I’d never seen someone look so defeated. “I wasn’t trying to hide anything from you. I didn’t even think about it until Ian brought it to my attention. It all made sense when he reminded me. It wasn’t that I forgot about it, I just didn’t think it was something that would make a difference if you knew or didn’t know. I’m an asshole for thinking that way. I’m an asshole for not being transparent with you, the way you’ve been with me.” His eyes lifted to find mine. The pain in them was the first thing I noticed. I knew what that looked like because I had seen it in my own for so long.

  “Sit down.”

  He looked away again and it broke my heart that it was causing him so much pain to even look at me. Whatever it was, he was beating himself up more than I could. He sat down, tears beginning to form in the corners. He wiped them away as if it wasn’t okay for him to cry.

  “I don’t want to bring her up. Trust me, you don’t have to believe any other words that come out of my mouth as long as you believe that. But, I have to. I know you know what it’s like to be with someone who doesn’t care about you as much as you care about them. From what you’ve told me about Eric, it’s not hard to see that you understand. Mac was my first real relationship. In the beginning, things were great. It didn’t take long for her to show her true colors, but since I didn’t have any other relationship to compare it to, I didn’t know what to do. It was a learning experience. She ignored me more than she payed attention to me. You know about the affair. I never physically touched that woman, but thinking about it, I might have well been doing it. I didn’t comprehend how much that could hurt someone else. You know what our relationship was like after I’d done that. You know about the women Mac brought to our house. One of those women was Jessica Platt, Ian’s wife.”

  Without meaning to, I gasped. It was twisted. The whole scenario. Everything. A bad R-rated soap opera was the one thing that popped into my head that I could relate it to.

  “Shit. Amberly, I wish I told you. I should have. When I told you about the affair, I should have told you about Jessica.” He couldn’t prevent the tears then. “I am so incredibly sorry.” His shoulders shook as he let the emotions pass over him, consuming him and somehow consuming me at the same time. I felt tears of my own accumulate in the corners of my eyes. “Jessica became Mac’s best friend but also someone she cheated on me with. I know some would say it wasn’t cheating because she did it in front of me. I never gave her any inclination it was okay though. Not once. One night, she brought Jessica home. She started paying attention to me that night. I was weak. I thought she wanted me again. I thought she was getting it out of her system and she was coming back to me. She flirted with me, something she hadn’t done in I don’t even know how long. I liked it. She began making out with me and Jessica. The details don’t matter, but one thing led to another, and I ended up with both of them. I know what it sounds like, I never slept with Jessica but I might as well have. Ian thinks I did.” His lip trembled, proof that this secret had been killing him from the moment it happened. “I woke up the next day feeling like a huge douchebag. Jessica made me promise not to tell Ian. I didn’t. I kept the secret under the agreement she would tell him. He says that she told him that we slept together. Truthfully, I think he’s lost his mind and doesn’t know reality from fiction. I’m thinking Mac told him what happened but spun it so the story came out the we both slept with Jessica.” He slapped his thigh with a hand, his other hand covering his face to conceal all the hurt he was remembering. “It was stupid. I thought if I did what Mac wanted, she and I would become close again. I should have walked out on her that night. Everything I did caused all of this.” His voice raised, shaky on certain words. “I did this. That one choice brought pain to everyone around me. Even you.” Both of his hands came to his face this time.

  “Bryant.” My voice was so small against the words he had just released into the room around us. You could almost see them, in bright, bold letters spinning and twisting through the air, becoming a gigantic ball of nonsense until they evened out, spelling out what he was trying to tell me without him realizing it. “You didn’t cause Haylie’s death. You are not to blame for that. You aren’t even to blame for Ian’s crazy. That was his choice and his choice alone. Everyone screws up without intention.”

  His head swayed from side to side. “No, no, no. I wasn’t thinking about anyone but myself. I messed around with Jessica for my own gain. I did it thinking it would fix everything between Mac and I, not giving two shits about what it would do to Jessica’s marriage or my best friend.”

  I knew Bryant’s pain. It was so damn loud. I was breathing it. I was feeling it. I was hearing it. When you can hear someone else’s pain, it is as excruciating as feeling it for yourself. You take it in without a way to push it out. “Bryant,” I tried to reach for him but he was too far away, “you are only human. You did what any man would do. Out of desperation you made a horrible choice. A choice you’ve paid for again and aga
in. It is not Ian’s job to continue reminding you of that. You regret it, that’s more than most people can say for themselves. You didn’t even sleep with her, you can’t control what Ian wants to believe.”

  “I didn’t tell you though. That kills me that I didn’t.”

  My heart hurt. Not from the surgery I had endured days earlier. It hurt from seeing the man I loved, with everything in me, go through what he had. He didn’t tell me and while that stung, he hadn’t withheld it because he had ulterior motives. “I love you.”

  His body went still, frozen like a sculpture that had been created in a moment’s notice. When he looked at me, his eyes were red, his face revealed that he was in shock from my three simple words. “What?”

  I cleared my throat. “I love you. I wish you would have told me, maybe I could have helped you figure everything out sooner. It would make sense why someone would be after you if I had known that, then again you didn’t know that Ian thought you slept with his wife.” She rolled her eyes. “I can’t say I don’t care that you didn’t tell me, I do. That doesn’t change how I feel about you. You aren’t perfect. I’m not perfect either. We can’t change the past but we can make the path for a better future by not repeating mistakes. All you have to do is promise to be honest with me from now until forever.”