Forgetting You

by Casey, L. A.

  Elliot’s father. I bent over as pain erupted in my stomach. My heart beat wildly within my chest and my head started to kill me. I felt a pulsing in my left temple, but I didn’t have a second to focus on it because through the haze of physical pain and fear I felt, I heard my name being called.

  “Noah?”

  I turned as Elliot’s parents, Mr and Mrs McKenna, got out of a car. Both were staring at me with wide eyes. It felt as if everything had slowed down. I stared at them and shook my head.

  “It’s not true,” I said, raising my voice. “Tell me it’s not true.”

  Mrs McKenna promptly burst into tears, and my chest tightened to the point where I rubbed it hopefully to relieve the ache. It didn’t help.

  “No!” I shouted. “Where is she? Where is Bailey?”

  Mr McKenna approached me slowly.

  “Noah, darlin’, look at me.”

  I groaned as my head exploded with pain. My mind was racing a mile a minute as I tried to make sense of what was happening.

  “She’s in Australia,” I said, my hand on my temple. “She’s in Australia with her boyfriend. This is another Bailey McKenna.”

  A range of emotions passed over Mr McKenna’s face and I quickly identified one of them as pity. I had been given that look enough times in the hospital when I couldn’t do something for myself. People couldn’t stop that look from forming in their eyes when they felt pity for a person, no matter how much they tried to contain it.

  “Ye shouldn’t be here, kid,” he answered me. “Ye should be at home, Elliot will worry if he knows you’re out here all alone. Ye know how much he worries over ye. Come on, let’s go and give him a visit at the station. I spoke to him earlier, he should be there if there hasn’t been a call.”

  He was talking to me like I was a crazy person, and it was making me panic.

  “Tell me she’s in Australia.”

  Mrs McKenna came to her ex-husband’s side, and I watched as she slid her fingers between his and gripped his hand so tightly that her knuckles turned white. I looked from their hands to their faces, and my gut twisted.

  “Please,” I pleaded, my voice cracking. “Please tell me that she’s in Australia.”

  Mr McKenna shook his head. “I can’t do that, honey.”

  With shaking hands, I dug my phone from my bag and dialled Bailey’s old number. It went straight to voicemail, and logically I knew it was because it was a dead number. Elliot had said she didn’t use the number any more, but I was in a panic and needed to speak to her.

  “Hey,” Bailey’s voice chirped. “This is Bailey, I’m busy right now, obviously . . . or maybe I’m just starin’ at me phone and waitin’ for ye to hang up so I can text ye and see what ye want. Hint hint.”

  When I heard the beep, I began talking.

  “Bailey, it’s Noah. I want you to ring me as soon as you get this message, okay? I really need to speak to you, baby. I love you. Ring me straight away. I’m not joking, Bails. Call me. Please, please, please, call me.”

  Mrs McKenna was crying so hard that a few people had stopped to stare. I couldn’t move, I could only look between the pair of them. My mind refused to let me process what they were saying, so the only thing I could do was fight their words with my own.

  “She’s fine,” I snapped. “She’s okay.”

  “No, honey.” Mr McKenna swallowed. “She’s . . . she’s gone, Noah.”

  I stumbled back and managed to catch myself with my crutch before I took a tumble on to my backside. My breathing was irregular, and loud to my own ears.

  “Where is she?” I screamed over the pain in my head. “Where the fuck is she?”

  “West Norwood Cemetery,” Mrs McKenna blurted out on a choked sob. “Row twenty-three, ninth plot from the left in the lawn cemetery.”

  I felt like all the blood had drained from my face.

  “Liar!” I snapped. “You’re . . . you’re lying!”

  Both of Elliot’s parents shook their heads, and I suddenly felt helpless as pure panic flooded me. The old man’s words echoed in my head. He’d said the brother was a firefighter who was on duty and had pulled a woman from the car that had crashed, but before he could save his sister the car had been engulfed in flames and she’d died. Who was that woman he saved?

  You, a voice whispered in my head. It was you.

  “This is wrong!” I screamed. “This . . . this . . . this wasn’t the accident I was in. It wasn’t.”

  “It was, honey.” Mrs McKenna was trembling. “You and our Bailey . . . ye were both in that same accident. Elliot saved you, Noah. Bailey . . . she was beyond help. He made up the Australia story because he was terrified the news might kill ye.”

  I felt like I was being shaken from the inside. I wanted to run, to get as far away from the flowers, the McKennas and this conversation as possible. I spotted a car driving down the road that made my heart jump.

  “Taxi!” I shouted, and waved it down. “Taxi!”

  The car pulled up right next to me, and I clumsily climbed inside, pulling my crutches with me. Mr McKenna was trying to keep me from closing the door as I was talking to the driver, telling him where I wanted to go.

  “West Norwood Cemetery,” I demanded. “As fast as you can.”

  “Noah, honey, don’t do this alone. Please, sweetheart.”

  I felt like I couldn’t breathe.

  “Elliot!” I heard Mrs McKenna cry as she fumbled putting her phone to her ear. “Oh, Elliot. Noah knows . . . she knows about Bailey! Please, come! Oh, Elliot. Please.”

  I pulled the door shut and locked it as the car pulled away from the kerb. The driver didn’t say anything to me, but I saw him glance back repeatedly in the rear-view mirror. I didn’t realise I was breathing heavily until then. My hands were shaking, and I felt like I was going to be sick.

  Row twenty-three, ninth plot from the left.

  I could barely form a coherent thought. All I knew was that I had to get to the cemetery and prove to myself that this was all wrong. Bailey was okay, she was. I physically couldn’t believe she wasn’t – my body, and mind, refused to do so. My head throbbed and it was a fight to keep my eyes open, but I somehow managed it. Quicker than I expected, we came to a stop.

  “West Norwood Cemetery,” the driver said with a heavy accent as my phone rang. “That’ll be six pounds and seven pence . . . Miss, are you okay?”

  Without answering, I pushed a twenty-pound note blindly at the driver and all but fell out of the car. He didn’t call after me; he barely waited more than a couple of seconds before he drove off. I didn’t look at him go; I was too busy glancing around. The cemetery was huge – there were over forty thousand graves in the place. I thought of what Mrs McKenna had said – she’d mentioned the lawn cemetery, and I knew that was the modern section away from the historic sections and the catacombs.

  I followed the signs, and numbly made my way to where I needed to go.

  As fast as I could, I hobbled through the cemetery and ignored the pain in my leg. Mrs McKenna’s directions were forgotten in my panic and I lost count of the rows. I looked from left to right, looked for graves that had freshly upturned dirt, indicating recent burial. I saw three, and the first two I checked were for men I had never heard of. As I approached the third, I spotted a bunch of pink lilies sitting prettily in front of one of the small wooden crosses that every grave had until a tombstone was made and installed.

  “No,” I said out loud.

  I dug out my phone again, rejecting Elliot’s call, and tried to ring Bailey again. It went straight to her voicemail once more, and I felt myself choking on air.

  “Phone me back, Bailey!” I demanded angrily. “Right when you get this message, you call me straight away. No messing around! Baby, please. Please, phone me back.”

  I tried to put my phone back in my pocket, but I fumbled with it and it fell to the ground. I didn’t look at it or attempt to pick it up. I couldn’t take my eyes off of the pink lilies. They were Bailey’s
favourite flowers. I was too scared to walk forward so I could read the name on the golden plaque on the cross, in case it was her name printed on it.

  “Please be okay, Bails,” I said, finally shuffling forward one step at a time. “Please, please, please.”

  I kept my eyes on the lilies for ages, so long that I heard my name being shouted from a distance. The touch of a cool breeze startled me into reacting. I looked up in that moment and the second I read the name and date of birth on the plaque, I dropped to the ground and screamed.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  NOAH

  “Noah!”

  I could barely hear his voice over my cries.

  “No!” I fought against the arms that suddenly surrounded me. “No! Let me go! Let me go!”

  The arms around me tightened as I screamed in emotional pain. My heart felt like it had been ripped out of my chest and torn apart in front of my very eyes.

  “Not Bailey,” I sobbed, my fingers digging into the dirt. “Please, not my Bailey.”

  I heard Elliot’s choked intake of breath as he pressed his face against the back of my head. I cried until my throat went raw with pain and until no more tears fell from my eyes. I had stopped struggling against Elliot, because I could no longer move. I felt numb to everything except the pain in my heart.

  “No! Please!” I pleaded. “This isn’t real! It’s not! It’s not!”

  “I’m sorry,” he said against my ear. “I’m so sorry.”

  I didn’t know what he was apologising for. I couldn’t think.

  “I can’t breathe.”

  Elliot pulled me to my feet and looked at me. His eyes were glazed over with tears, but none fell. I stared up at him as my body trembled with fear, pain and heartache.

  “Focus on me,” he said, placing his hands on either side of my face. “Just look at me, green eyes. Okay?”

  “She’s gone,” I whispered, not being able to accept it. “How can she be gone?”

  “She just is.” Elliot swallowed. “It doesn’t make sense, Noah. None of it does; nothin’ will ever make sense to me. She shouldn’t be buried here but she is, and there’s nothin’ we can do about it, honey.”

  I lifted my hands to Elliot’s wrists, and held him tightly to keep from falling over. My leg was hurting me, and my body thrummed with pain from my head all the way down to my injured foot.

  “Australia,” I blurted. “You said she was in Australia and . . . you . . . you lied to me.”

  “I’m so sorry.” He exhaled. “Ye were so vulnerable, I was terrified ye’d up and die on me too if you knew. I had to lie to protect ye . . . I’m so sorry.”

  He was sorry, I could see it in his eyes. He was sincere and he was hurting, likely more than I was. Bailey was his little sister; she was a massive piece of his heart.

  “I should have known.” I was shaking. “I should have known that you were lying . . . How could I believe that she wouldn’t call me when I almost died? How could—”

  “Sweetheart, don’t,” Elliot interrupted. “Ye had no reason not to believe me. Ye have no memory of the last five years, and ye were strugglin’ enough with the changes in your own life that ye didn’t need Bailey’s death on top of that.”

  I could feel each beat my heart took, and it made me feel sick knowing mine was working and Bailey’s was not. It killed me that I was so close to her, but so far away. I’d never be able to cuddle her or laugh with her ever again.

  “What happened?” I asked as I squeezed his hands. “And don’t tell me you can’t say or make an excuse . . . I want to know what happened.”

  Elliot’s gaze bored into mine, and when he breathed out, I knew he was going to answer my question.

  “The night of the crash, there was a London-wide blackout because of a storm. It was uncommonly cold for March – it was below freezing and the roads were a danger because of ice. You and Bailey . . . she was drivin’, she lost control, and the car flipped a few times before it hit the side of a building in Tulse Hill.”

  I tried to remember what he was telling me, but there was nothing in my head, only darkness.

  “I was on watch, and when we got there . . . she was already gone. The coroner’s report said she died on impact, the driver’s side hit the wall of the buildin’ first and she wasn’t wearin’ her seat belt. I didn’t care about anythin’ other than gettin’ both of you out of the car. Ye were conscious, but barely. There was blood all over ye, and you were in so much pain, honey. I thought ye were gonna die in me arms.”

  Tears slid down my cheeks, and he leaned in and kissed them away.

  “I got ye out of the car, ran with you away from the flames so the paramedics on scene could take care of ye. I went back for Bailey but it was too late, the car was engulfed by fire and any chance I had of gettin’ her out of the car died with her.”

  My legs went from under me, and Elliot quickly enveloped me in his arms and held me against him as the weight of his words descended on me.

  “Elliot?”

  I didn’t turn or react to his mother’s voice, but he did.

  “She’s . . . she’s okay. Just lemme talk to her.”

  I wasn’t okay. I felt like I would never be okay again.

  “You said I pushed you all away after we broke up and I got with Anderson.”

  Elliot’s arms tensed around me. “Ye did.”

  “Did I push Bailey away?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then why was I in her car with her?” I asked, not understanding. “Why?”

  “I . . . I don’t know,” he said, sounding as lost as I felt. “None of us know. Ye rang me from Bailey’s phone, ye left me a voicemail as you were in the car with her, but it’s only left me with more questions than answers.”

  I leaned back and stared up at him with wide eyes.

  “A voicemail?” I repeated. “I left you a voicemail. D’you still have it? Let me hear it!”

  Elliot hesitated for only a moment before he removed one arm from around my body so he could take out his phone. He looked from the phone to me, then back to the phone as he tapped on the screen. He put it on loudspeaker, and we listened.

  “Elliot? Elliot? Shit, shit, shit! It’s his voicemail!”

  I jolted the second my voice sounded.

  “Help us,” I sobbed, clearly terrified. “Oh God. Please, I don’t know what to do! Bailey, what’re we gonna do? It’s so dark, put the high beams on.”

  I stared at the phone, a feeling of helplessness filling me. It was my voice I was hearing, mine . . . and I had no memory of ever speaking these words that I was saying with such fear.

  “Oh God, oh God!” my voice continued to sob. “Bailey, you’re going too fast!”

  The line began to break up somewhat, and it made me tense.

  “Tulse Hill,” I said on the call. “Elliot, we’re on – Bailey, slow down!”

  “I’m tryin’!” Bailey’s sweet but scared voice screamed. “I can’t stop, it’s black ice! We’re slidin’!”

  “Elliot!” my voice blared as the line began to break up. “Elliot, help us. Tulse Hill . . . Please, please . . . going to kill . . . Bailey! Look out!”

  A scream from Bailey made my blood run cold. The call ended and I looked up at Elliot.

  “Was that when we crashed?” I asked, hearing the worry in my own voice. “Was that . . . was that the moment we crashed and Bailey di-died?”

  Elliot was shaking now too as he nodded.

  “Elliot,” I whimpered, “what the fuck happened? Why did we sound so scared? I said the words ‘going to kill’ . . . what the hell does that mean?”

  “I don’t know,” he answered, his voice filled with frustration and devastation. “I don’t know what any of it means. I don’t, Noah.”

  Shame filled me, and so did self-loathing. This was my fault. I had pushed Bailey away along with everyone else in my life, and the one time I got back in touch with her, she died. I broke out of Elliot’s hold and stumbled away from him. I took a
few steps back so I could see them. All three of them. Elliot’s parents were staring at me, and so was Elliot. Pity. Each of them looked at me with pity.

  “How can you look at me?” I screamed at him, at his parents. “How can any of you look at me? I killed her. If she wasn’t with me, she’d be here and not down there! It’s my fault. I killed Bailey!”

  “No!” Elliot bellowed. “It’s not. None of this is your fault.”

  “How do you know?” I cried. “You can’t answer because you don’t know, Elliot.”

  “I know here.” He smacked his hand on his chest. “Me heart tells me it’s not your fault.”

  I lifted a shaking hand to my throbbing head as I began to break everything down.

  “This is why Doctor Abara never told me about the accident, why he said it wasn’t his place . . . he knew Bailey was . . . he knew she was . . .”

  I couldn’t even say the word.

  “Yes,” Elliot answered, taking a small step towards me. “Doctor Abara had been monitoring ye for a while. How ye reacted to things ye couldn’t remember was so dangerous, Noah. He feared ye’d have an aneurysm and die. He decided it was best to keep ye in the dark as much as possible . . . we all agreed with him.”

  “Ye should’ve told me,” I said, looking back at Bailey’s cross. “I should’ve known so I could . . . so I could . . .”

  “Ye were so vulnerable when ye woke up, honey,” Mrs McKenna said. “It’s why we never visited – we both knew we couldn’t look at you, or talk to ye, without breakin’ down. Elliot is stronger than us . . . he never left your side.”

  I looked back at them, and Elliot must have seen something in my face, or in my eyes, because he was in my space in seconds.

  “No,” he said gruffly. “You’re not leaving me.”

  I banged my fists against his broad chest.

  “I’ve been angry with her for not calling me! I’ve been angry with her and she’s been dead!”

  Elliot allowed my assault on his chest to continue uninterrupted.

  “My Bailey,” I choked. “She died next to me and I didn’t even know!”