I know this last episode has been really tough for Nashies everywhere. It's impossible to even think about how the show is going to go on, but writing through it has really helped me. Although it hurts just writing some of this, it's helping prepare me for what might be coming up on the show. Hopefully, this story will keep growing as the show goes on and while it might start out dark, I promise the healing and light are going to come in soon as well as some flashback chapters. Comment thoughts about the story or even just something you want to share about what's been going on on the show.
He didn't know what he was supposed to do. He barely remembers how he even got home, how he left….God…..how he left her. He had his arms wrapped around the girls, sobbing as they laid on the hospital bed.
He can't get the sounds out of his head. It's a sadistic soundtrack playing over and over. The broken singing, her shallowing breathing, the beep of the flatline.
They stayed like that for awhile. He didn't know how he was supposed to get up and leave her. Leave the love of his life. Leave Rayna. Forever.
"Mommy, come back. Come back. Please stay. Don't go, we need you. We need you, mommy."
Daphne's helpless pleas echoed through his mind over and over again.
He wanted to stop it all. To silence his mind and stop feeling it all. He wasn't numb, that would've been too easy. Instead, he was feeling every single edge of the whole that was gaping through his heart.
Scarlett had come in and finally coaxed the girls away, just barely. But he couldn't move. He held her in his arms and rocked her again him, grief ripping through him and out of his throat in the form of broken sobs.
They'd offered him a sedative, to help him sleep a little, but he didn't want to leave the girls. He didn't even want to close his eyes. Because if he slept, then he might be given relief from this pain. He might forget while drifting off into nothingness. But then he'd have to wake up…and remember. And he couldn't handle having to go through the pain of remembering pain. It'd be too much.
Eventually, someone had pulled him off, practically kicking and screaming.
"That's my wife, No! I can't leave her! Don't you touch her!"
At some point Scarlett had taken him and the girls in his truck and drove them home. The girls had both collapsed onto Maddie's bed, Maddie curling her body around Daphne's. He'd sat there with them awhile until their shaking had stopped and they'd both been given the sweet relief of sleep.
He'd gotten up and wandered through the house. He didn't know where he was supposed to go. He sure as hell couldn't go up to their room, not without her. He couldn't go in there where everything was evidence of her. Where her perfume scented the pillowcases and her Opry t-shirt that she wore to bed was tossed onto the chair by her vanity. Where next to the bedside table there was a notepad with hastily scribbled lyrics and melodies waiting to finished, but now were never going to.
Scarlett had offered to stay night, no, she'd practically insisted that she was. But he'd somehow convinced her that he was just going to sleep and that she could come back in the morning.
"Stay strong." "Call me if you need." "We're here for you."
These were the phrases people were willing to say, the ones that they were allowed to. Often delivered with determined looks and pleading eyes. This was what everyone was saying, but they were all thinking the same thing.
"Don't go drinking your sorrows away."
He laughed at the thought. Not because it was funny, it certainly wasn't. Not because he had proven himself to be the poster boy for recovering alcoholics especially when things got tough. But because they had thought that he'd drink to feel better. As if, all the Jack Daniels in this world would possibly take away this pain. Of course he wouldn't because of the girls and his dying promise to Ray, but even if he was weak enough, it wouldn't ease any of this in the slightest.