Page 74 of Between Brothers

Chapter 31

Blue

I stood in the hall at Doc’s hospital, numb. They’d brought Cell here they said. Dragon had gotten the call because it was club doctrine that we all put him as our emergency contact of the emergency feature of our cellphones… because of this… precisely because of this.

The rest of the club waited in the ER waiting room behind me as I paced up and down the hall. When the doctor came out, pulling that fucking scrub cap off his head like every bad fucking movies rendition of this scenario played out… I knew… I just fucking knew and it broke me.

“I’m so sorry,” he said addressing the lot of us. I didn’t really hear anything he had to say after that. I was too busy staring at the ceiling while my eyes fucking watered, trying to remember what it was to breathe and I couldn’t.

The automatic doors wooshed open behind me, and I turned around. Hayley and Mel came through the doors and Hayley stopped, mid-step at the look on my face.

I stared at her, committing every line and curve, the deep well of her brown eyes glassy with tears and didn’t want to be the one. The one to break it to her, to crush every dream she had of the three of us while every single one I had burned inside me to the motherfucking ground.

But this was us… and as us, it had to be me.

I shook my head, once left, once right and I watched her fall. I watched her crumble right in front of my eyes. Her legs going out from under her, the tears spilling down her cheeks as she screamed, the most painful sound I’d ever heard. The echo of what it sounded like as my own heart cracked in two.

Melody tried to stabilize my little one. Going to her knees beside her, and I knew I should go. That I should be the one… but I couldn’t. I couldn’t hold her up while I was in spiraling out of control all my own. Spinning in a fucking freefall, about to crash and erupt into flames myself.

I turned so I didn’t have to look and started walking. I had to get away. I needed to regroup. I needed to figure my shit out. I needed to find Duracell and ask him what to do but I couldn’t. I wouldn’t ever be able to, ever again.

I don’t remember what I did after that. It was impossible to know… All I knew was that I felt sick. Terribly, terribly ill. I shook with it, I rolled off the bed onto my hands and knees so thirsty…

I turned my head and my vision swam and things vaguely came back to me. The awful look on Hayley’s face. Leaving the hospital. The bar. The bitch I fucked in the back of Sugar’s and the coke I did off her tits… the alcohol.

A bender from hell… that’s what this is. You’re coming off a bender from hell…

Still, Cell was gone and he wasn’t coming back. My being in his room didn’t change that. Not a goddamned thing was different. Cell was gone and he wasn’t coming back because there ain’t no coming back… once you’re dead, there ain’t no coming back…

I screamed my rage and pain to the empty room wordlessly and punched the carpet. It felt good, so I did it again. Knuckles bruising, the rug burning them, I punched the floor again and again and again the pain making me feel alive…

But Cell wasn’t because he was dead, and there ain’t no coming back… not from that.

The door opened and Dani stood in it, a glass of water in one hand. She looked down on me, pity clouding her bright blue eyes, dulling their sparkle, and I looked away. I put a bleeding hand out to her in a bid to ward her off and keep her away, but she ignored me.

She stepped into the room and shut the door behind her. She knelt next to me and pushed the cool glass against my palm. I suddenly remembered how thirsty I was and sat up, shoving the water into my face, drinking greedily, some of it dripping onto my shirt, but I didn’t care. I threw the glass against the wall and it shattered. Dani jumped and sat back on her heels and I felt bad about that. I felt horrible about that, actually.

Dani didn’t deserve to be scared. Not of me.

I put a hand on her shoulder and she wrapped both of her slim hands around my forearm like a hug. I needed a hug… I needed… I needed…

I keeled over onto my side, my head in her lap and pulled my knees to my chest. I was lost… Cell’s little boy Blue only without Cell there to watch my ass and protect me. I didn’t know what to do. I missed him. I loved him… I didn’t know what to do.

Dani petted my head and whispered, “Shh, I know… I know… You don’t have to.”

“I don’t know what to do…” I repeated and only then realized that I kept repeating it like some kind of a mantra.

“I don’t know what to do… I don’t know what to do… I don’t know what to do…”

---