My One Regret

by Krissy V

  Mum told me that lots of my friends had been in checking on me and that they can’t wait for me to go back to school. It made me happy that there are concerned about me, it means so much to me.

  The doctors and nurses keep coming in and out doing my observations, then the psychiatrist comes in a couple of times explaining that it would be better for me to open up and tell them why I felt the way I did.

  I am fed up of them all talking, prodding and checking everything and it is Friday by the time they let me go home. They have given me a prescription for some medication and told me to rest. I am so ready to go home, but also know that going home will make this all real and it will mean that I have to tell other people about David.

  “You need to take it easy over the weekend, Cassie” Dad says.

  “Before School on Monday we have a meeting with Mrs. Walker,” Mum says.

  I totally forgot about having to go back to school and seeing everyone and lots of people asking questions.

  “Oh god Mum, I can’t talk to her. She is going to ask lots of questions and make me relive everything.” I hang my head in my hands and keep shaking it.

  I close my eyes and say “everyone is going to be asking so many questions. I don’t know if I can handle it.”

  “We are here for you,” Dad says. “We have always been here for you.” He stands up and pulls me into a hug. I get emotional because Dad never hugs me, so this makes it extra special.

  Bonnie comes over and sits with me, we talk about the party and David. “You know everyone has been so worried about you this week. I sat in the hospital all weekend, Mum and Dad tried to make me leave but I didn’t want to. I needed to know you were ok. Your Dad rang the school to give me a message when you woke up. We all cried.”

  “I’m so sorry Bonnie. I didn’t think about it – it just happened. I just wanted the hurt to stop. When I saw David at the party something inside me just flipped. I didn’t want him to have control over me anymore.”

  “I know, but you know we’re all here for you. You are so special to us all. You always were. You are the glue that holds our group together, we need you here.”

  We both cry for a long time then lay on my bed watching funny movies.

  On Monday morning, Mum and I go to the school to meet Mrs. Walker.

  “Cassie, we are so happy you are feeling better. We are here for you and if you feel under any pressure then you need to come and tell me, or any of your teachers, and we can deal with things there and then. Please don’t let things build up again.”

  “I’m sorry Mrs. Walker. I didn’t think about how this would affect anyone else. It was a spur of the moment thing, it wasn’t planned. Honest!”

  “I know Cassie, I had a deep conversation with Bonnie and Jezza to try and find out why you did what you did. Jezza doesn’t know why and he was extremely upset. He saved your life you know.”

  I nod because Bonnie and my parents had told me the story of how Jezza had started CPR on me to try and bring me round while Steve ran to the nearest phone box to ring for an ambulance. I need to thank him when I see him; he saved me in more ways than one.

  “I know he did and I will be forever grateful to him.”

  She smiles at me and after further discussion about how I am feeling she agrees that as long as I talk to my friends or to her if I get any overwhelming feelings, then she was happy for me to come back to school straight away.

  I say goodbye to Mum and Bonnie is waiting for me outside Mrs. Walker’s office. She hugs me and says “Come on everyone is waiting for you.”

  I feel nervous, but take her hand as we walk down the corridor to our tutorial class. When I open the door everyone starts clapping and I see they have some posters up on the walls to welcome me back into the class. I well up and the tears overflow, I didn’t realise that this many people were my friends. The fact that they all participated in this makes me feel so happy.

  “Thanks guys, this is a surprise. I’m sorry for what happened and Jezza, thank you so much for saving me.” I walk over to him and he gives me a hug.

  He squeezes me tight as he says “you mean a lot to us Cassie. The place wouldn’t be the same without you to bring sunshine and happiness into it. Glad you are back.” He kisses me on my cheek and pulls away. I see the glance he has for Bonnie and the smile that he gives her.

  Everyone crowds around me until Mr. Smyth says “now give Cassie some space to breathe and let’s finish tutorial, then you can all go to your classes. You can catch up with her later on.” He smiles at me and I smile back to say thank you.

  Jezza’s POV

  I am sitting around the fire at the beach party when someone says “Look, isn’t that Cassie? What is she doing?” I look around to see her walking into the sea. I know she has been drinking a bit tonight and I have been watching her carefully. I stand up to go and talk to her to see if she is ok, when I see Rob and Steve running into the sea after her. She has walked really far out to sea and then she disappears very quickly.

  The girls start screaming and the boys are shouting and all running to see if there is anything they can do. Steve dives under the water and we all hold our breath. He comes up for air and dives under again. Rob joins him and I start to run in after them. Steve comes back up and he has her, Rob joins him in pulling her up to the shore.

  When they have laid her down, I start CPR on her. The two guys are bent over trying to catch their breath.

  I push on her chest and then stop and breathe air into her mouth. “Come on Cassie, come on.” I repeat my movements. I have tears running down my face, dropping onto hers. “Please Cassie, we all love you. Come on.”

  Someone must have rang for an ambulance because a few minutes later I feel someone touch my shoulder “come on move over, let us help her now. We can help her.” I look up and see the ambulance man, I stop what I am doing and move back. We are still on the beach and I sit back and wrap my arms around my legs. Watching. Waiting.

  It feels like forever before she starts spluttering and they roll her over so that she can throw up the water she swallowed. I can’t stop crying.

  “Cassie, oh my god. You’re going to be ok, I promise you’ll be ok. I’ll always protect you – you don’t need to feel like this. We need you, we all love you.”

  “Miss, miss, are you ok?” Cassie has been rolled back down, but she doesn’t speak. Her eyes are closed and they try to wake her. They can’t. They put her on the stretcher and carry her back to the ambulance. We all follow to make sure she is ok.

  “Can someone ring her parents please? We need to get her to hospital fast – she isn’t waking up, her body is in shock.”

  “I’ve already rung them,” Danni says, crying.

  “Good.” The ambulance man turns to me “do you want to come with us?”

  I nod my head and jump up into the back of the ambulance and just see everyone’s worried faces when they close the back doors.

  “Here” he says, handing me a blanket to wrap around me. I didn’t feel cold, but now that the adrenaline is wearing off I am starting to shiver.

  “Thank you. Is ... is she going to be ok?” I am still crying, the tears just won’t stop flowing. She can’t die.

  “At the moment we just need to get her to the hospital and they will try and warm her up and see what they can give her to keep her stable.”

  Everything happens so quickly, the ambulance whizzes to the hospital with the lights and the sirens on. If I wasn’t so scared I would be so excited because I have always wanted to work as a paramedic. When we get to the hospital I follow them in and it is only a few minutes later that Mr. and Mrs. Thomas arrive.

  Mrs. Thomas hugs me and says “thank you for helping her and being with him. I would hate to think she was on her own in the back of the ambulance. I’ll never be able to thank you enough Jezza. Thank you.” They are both whisked off before I get chance to answer.

  About ten minutes later my parents arrive at the A&E. “Oh my god Jezza are you ok? We
got a call to come and get you from the hospital.”

  I run into her arms and sob. “Mum it was awful. I had to do something to help her, I couldn’t let her die. Now it seems that she is going to die anyway.”

  Mum holds me and I hear Dad say “I’m going to go and see what I can find out Jezza, she will be ok.”

  Once we find out that she is holding her own in a coma, we say goodbye to Mr. and Mrs. Thomas and promise to come back the next day to see her.

  I go back every day along with Bonnie and we sit and talk to Cassie, telling her how much we love her and want her to come back so that we can listen to her cheesy music one more time. I hold Bonnie while she sobs and we go down to Pebbles to have a hot chocolate and talk about Cassie.

  I really like Bonnie but I don’t want to lose her as a friend and we have become so close these last few days. She is such a lovely, genuine person and she loves Cassie so much. I know that I have to be here for her as much as she needs to be here for me.

  When we find out that Cassie is awake and that she is going to be ok I am so excited I hug Bonnie and I kiss her. It is the most amazing feeling in the world, but then we both pull back. She looks at me, “I think we just got carried away there Jezza. Come on let’s go and see Cassie.”

  “Yeah, it was just excitement.” I wish I can tell her how I feel, but this is not the right time. We walk in silence into the room to see Cassie.

  Cassie comes back to school a few days later and I am so excited to see her. We didn’t get to spend any time alone with her at the hospital because her parents were always there. We have made some posters and put them up in the classroom to welcome her back.

  When I see the door open and she walks in, I am speechless. She is so beautiful, so healthy and so alive that it makes me feel so protective over her. I love her and feel that I need to shelter her from any other pain and I vow that I will do that.

  When she hugs me I say “you mean a lot to us Cassie. The place wouldn’t be the same without you to bring sunshine and happiness into it. Glad you are back.” I kiss her on the cheek and then look over to Bonnie, she is looking at us with tears in her eyes. I smile at her and wink. She blushes, I love that I have that effect on her.

  Back to Cassie

  When we walk to our first lesson, Bonnie heads off to her French Class and I go to Business Studies. I sit at the back of the class and Jezza comes and sits next to me. “Can I sit with you?” he asks.

  “Of course you can. You can give me the notes from last week so that I can catch up as well.”

  He smiles at me and hands me a folder with his photocopied notes. “Already ahead of you babe.”

  I laugh and it feels so good to laugh. I will tell him later how very grateful I am.

  Business Studies is boring and I can feel myself drifting off, I think I miss most of the class because I am thinking about what happened and about how my class reacted to me coming back. I didn’t really expect that kind of reaction and I smile. I really do have good friends.

  As the weeks go on I notice that everyone is really protective of me, especially Jezza. We have formed a bond that I hope will last all through my life. I don’t think I can ever imagine not being his friend; it would kill me.

  STOP!

  Now you know what happened and why Bonnie and Jezza are so protective of me! Now let me continue my original story.

  “Learning to Live Again!”

  1990, again!

  I shake my head and it brings me back to sitting on the grass outside class, Bonnie is telling me that I don’t need guys staring at me like HE is. “Seriously, Cassie I’m quite happy to go over and tell him to stop staring. I can even get Jezza to do it you know.”

  She turns to look at me and see’s that I am blushing. I look at her and blush even more. “Cassie?”

  “I’m sorry Bonnie, I don’t want you to go over to him. I kind of like him staring at me.”

  She shakes her head. “If you’re sure.”

  “I have never been so sure of anything in my life, Bonnie.” I never once take my eyes off him. I just can’t pull them away, it’s like he is a magnet and I am being pulled to him.

  He is so good looking. Breathtakingly good looking. He has dark hair, which is slightly longer on top and flops over his beautiful face. He is very tanned, like he has been on top of a surfboard all summer.

  We sit in the grass enjoying the lovely weather and I can’t help but watch him playing football with his friends. He is obviously in the year below me because I recognise some of them, but I can’t believe I hadn’t noticed him before. Then again, I was in an all girl’s school until last year!

  We have three schools on our campus; the girls school, the boys school and Sixth year – which is mixed. We were never able to mix with the guys, even though we were on the same campus, we were very well segregated.

  Basically, we were fenced into our school and warned to stay away from the guys. It’s no wonder some of my friends moved away to go to college instead.

  I need to know who he is! I don’t know why, but I just feel that I need to know.

  “Hey, earth to Cassie, are you ok?” Bonnie says waving her hand in front of me trying to get my attention.

  “Yeah sorry, I’m fine Bonnie, let’s go to German class and ogle over the new teacher” I say laughing.

  The German teacher, Mr Jones, is really old and ugly, so Bonnie knows I’m only joking. “Yeah come on,” she says laughing back at me.

  The German lesson seems to drag as Mr. Jones wants us all to talk German the whole way through each lesson. We’re not used to speaking German for a whole hour and a half, so it’s hard work. My brain is fried and all I can think about is Mr. Cutie. He is all I’ve been thinking about since I first saw him this morning. Was it only this morning? I’m not usually like this. I keep away from guys because they can hurt me and I don’t need any more hurt in my life right now.

  After German, I link arms with Bonnie and we start to head home when Jezza shouts over to us “wait up girls.” He jogs over to us.

  “You ok Jezza?” Bonnie asks him.

  “Yeah I just want to invite you both to my house tomorrow night. I’m having a pool party and would really love you two to be there.” He looks at Bonnie when he is saying it and I smile to myself. Then he turns to me and says “you can even choose some of the music, Cassie.”

  I laugh, because I do love my cheesy music and everyone groans when I put it on, but they all dance to it and have lots of fun too.

  “Who’s going to be there Jezza? Anyone we know?” Bonnie asks with a big smile. She’s always fancied Jezza and can’t keep the grin off her face.

  “The whole gang and some new faces too,” he says looking at me purposefully, what does that mean? “Don’t worry Cassie we’ll make sure you’re ok!”

  “What do you mean?” I ask aggressively. I feel like he’s trying to tell me something. I know this is the first party I’ve been to since ‘The Incident’ but I hope he’s not trying to tell me that David is going to be there. No one knows what happened except Bonnie and I know she won’t say anything.

  “We just want you to be at the party, Cassie. We missed you this summer and we like your company. It’s not the same without you,” he says smiling, trying not to laugh.

  “Oh right, thanks Jezza. I appreciate it and yes we will both be going on Friday night. Thanks for asking us. You don’t need to watch me all night though, I won’t drink so don’t worry,” I say laughing.

  He turns and walks the other way. We start walking home chatting about the party and what we are going to wear. “So,” I say to her “are you going to wear something special for Jezza?” I waggle one of my eyebrows and she falls about laughing and then pushes me away.

  “Ha ha very funny. Then again, I know he likes girls who wear belly tops so you never know” she says seriously.

  We both look at each other and start giggling.

  The next few days follow the same pattern:- going to lessons; sitt
ing on the grass at lunchtime staring at Mr. Cutie and pretending not to; more lessons and then walking home.

  Friday comes around very quickly because we are looking forward to the party. Everyone is talking about it, loads of our friends are going, so I know it will be good fun. If we don’t hold beach parties then we have pool parties! I have just the new swimsuit to wear.

  After school Bonnie comes over to my house as it’s closer to Jezza’s place. She is staying the night with me so that I won’t be left on my own to find my way home. That is the only restriction Mum and Dad have put on me; that they know where I am, how I am getting home and that I have the money for a taxi should I need one. I don’t argue with them because I know they only worry about me and I’ve caused them enough heartbreak!

  “If I Could”

  After we change into our swimsuits and put our little summery dresses over the top, we go out to talk to Mum and Dad.

  “Hey Mrs. Thomas.” Bonnies says smiling at my Mum. “I’ll make sure to take care of Cassie and keep an eye on her,” she says, as if I’m not even in the room. I know I should be annoyed, but I let her look after me because that’s what Mum and Dad need.

  “Thanks Bonnie, we know you will. Now both of you go off and enjoy the party, just make sure you come home together,” Mum says looking at me and smiling, “there’s no curfew tonight.”

  I go over and hug Mum and when I hug Dad he slips a fiver into my pocket. “That’s for the taxi home,” he says in my ear so that only I can hear him.

  “Thanks Dad” I whisper back.

  On our way to the party we meet Danni and Tony. I start to get sweaty and my heart starts to race when I see them. I always have this reaction when I see Danni, particularly when she is with Tony. I am constantly looking around to see if David is with them. When I see he isn’t then I start to relax. I know Bonnie notices my behaviour because she takes my hand and squeezes it. They cross the road to join us and we walk the rest of the way to the party together.