Page 6 of Dove
I tamped down my fear clogging my throat and shook my head.
“I’ve been sitting for hours,” I rasped, regretting that I hadn’t had anything to drink in just as long. “I’m sorry—how are they? How’s my mom? Are they okay?”
The questions spilled from me like an overflowing cup, and I knew I should let him talk, give him the floor, but tears welled up in my eyes, and—I just really needed my mom to be okay.
The doctor’s eyes matched everyone else’s in here: tired, sad, resigned.
Somehow, it solidified what I already knew, but I wanted him to say it. Ineededhim to say it.
“Your parents were hit by a tractor trailer that veered off the highway,” he began, his voice professional but soft. “The impact put them in very severe, precarious conditions?—”
My mind went blank as he explained the surgery he’d conducted for the internal bleeding, broken bones, and ruptured organs. The hemorrhaging, he explained gently, was what he and his team had been attempting to stop for the past several hours, attributed to my mother’s weakened state and to the trauma my stepfather had endured from taking the brunt of the impact.
Tears welled in my eyes at his tone, at how careful he was being with what he was saying, how careful he was being with what he wasn’t.
Finally, he uttered the words I’d been dreading to hear.
“I’m sorry.”
As if my strength was a fragile string and his words a sharp scissor, I collapsed. Tears stung my eyes as I sobbed, the achein my chest growing worryingly painful and sharp. The burn of agony in my chest was the least of my worries, not when I’d never see my mother’s bright smile again, the one I’d thought had been dimmed forever, never hear her infectious laugh or feel her loving touch again. These past few years hadn’t been easy, but they’d been better than they’d ever been since losing my father.
Now nothing would get better, I realized, as I was the only one left of my family, alone and lost in a world I’d barely begun to explore.
I curled into myself as the doctor attempted to console me, but his words meant nothing. I’d lost my father, now my mother. I wouldn’t even have Gareth, who had never aimed to replace my dad, but had created his own space in my heart nonetheless. To know I’d never hear him talking to the chickens as he feed them early in the morning, or feel him ruffle my hair as he walked by me again…
Anguish enveloped me, and I was lost to it, so consumed by my grief that I didn’t hear the commotion coming through the sliding glass doors.
Didn’t hear the frantic squeak of shoes as they beat against the linoleum floor.
Didn’t hear the shout of someone calling my name.
The only thing I registered was the embrace of strong arms wrapping around me, and the press of a solid chest as I was cradled against it. A familiar woodsy scent cut through the medicinal smell that had clogged my nose for hours.
“Dove,” breathed a deep, comforting voice tinged with sorrow.
I whimpered.
Josh.
The possibility of me hallucinating from heartache was high, but it didn’t stop me from turning, curling my arms around himas he pulled me into his lap, right there on the hospital floor. Even if this wasn’t real—ifhewasn’t real—I hardly cared. Maybe my mind knew I needed the comfort in the midst of my misery. The only thing that had been on my mind other than our parent’s wellbeing had been Josh. Real or not, I tightened my grip on him, curling my fingers into his shirt and letting my tears soak the fabric as I shut the rest of the world out until it was just him and me. Like it used to be.
He was the only person I had left now.
2
DOVE
The curl of strong fingers around my shoulder steadied me.
Josh had practically been my shadow, standing sentry at my back since the beginning of this dark, gloomy day.
The day of our parents’ funeral was a perfect match to the day they died. Rain clouds opened just before we left the funeral home, torrentially downpouring without a stop, grey skies spanning for miles, as if the sky, too, was mourning their loss. The cemetery was moderately packed with locals who had come out to pay their respects. Afterward, they gave their heartfelt condolences swiftly, grabbing at our hands, offering up the same well-intentioned platitudes before tucking under their umbrellas and breaking for their cars, soaked and miserable.
A nasty part of me was thankful for it. I wanted everyone to match my mood the way the weather did, but another part of me was grateful because I didn’t want their well-wishes. Today wasn’t a day to be filled with promises of hope and recalling memories of laughter and smiles; I didn’t want to reminisce about my mother. I wanted herhere, alive, by my side. Not six feet deep in the soggy ground, surrounded by dirt and sympathy flowers.
The rain did a great job of hiding my tears, which seemed to come and go as they pleased. These past few days I’d carried on numb, going about as if I’d forgotten what feeling like a normal human felt like, until something inside my chest would crack and the tears would flow. It was exhausting, and I welcomed the numbness when it came, because at least it gave me a reprieve from the overwhelming sorrow embedded within me.
Although I was no stranger to this cycle of emotions, they were familiar to me because I’d lived through them before. Losing my father had been devastatingly hard. Far harder than anything a child should ever have to go through, but losing my mother broke something in me, leaving me reeling. A gaping hole formed where my heart use to be, and I constantly felt lost and lonely, despite the large, looming presence of my stepbrother.
