A/N:
Hey all! Here's a new story called "Gone". Some of you may recognize a little bit from Lauren Olivers' "Vanishing Girls", but it moves on into it's own story, don't worry :)
Hope you enjoy! Please let me know if you liked it by leaving a review, so I can decide for sure to continue this or not :)
G.
June 20th, Sunday, 10:45 AM
Robin
Before
"Regina, I'm telling you, I didn't sleep with Zelena. That baby can't be mine."
They're fighting again. It's Sunday morning, they were at breakfast, and then she had to bring up how pregnant Zelena is and that the school isn't allowing her to walk during graduation. Automatically, that conversation always turns into a fight. She accuses me of lying to her all the time, but she knows better than that. She knows that I wouldn't ever do that to her, she just won't let herself believe it this time for some stupid reason. She's just afraid, I guess, that this would be the one time I'd lie about something because it's a huge deal. But I didn't get Zelena pregnant.
"Tink told me she saw you guys at the party the other night, together. You know, the one I couldn't go to because I was sick?" She says to him, and it makes him more and more angry.
I'm driving a little too fast, but I ignore that and shake my head. "Would you just stop accusing me of this?" I ask, weaving around a car that was going too slow. They were probably, actually going the speed limit. "I am so tired of feeling like a liar even though I'm not lying. I know for a fact that I didn't sleep with her. I only had two drinks at that bar party, and then I walked Zelena out to her car, yes, and that's what Tink saw. After Zelena went to her car, I went back inside the bar and drank a little more, but then I was missing you because everyone else was dancing on the floor with their significant, so I came home. I took a cab, even, and came home." I explain, feeling all of it rush out of me like a freight train.
She's so damn stubborn. Why can't she just believe me? I'd never do something like that to hurt her. We've been dating over four years now. We started the summer before freshman year, when she finally realized that her best friend's squeaky voice was going away, that I was growing facial hair, and that she was attracted to that. All of it. Even my personality, somehow.
"How do I believe you, Robin?" She asks me, shaking her head. I'm not looking at her but I can see her silhouette in the corner of my eye. "I mean, you lie all the time. Maybe not to me but your parents." She says, throwing that in my face for the hundredth time. "We go out to underage bars that aren't even legal, because we're too young to drink, and then we go lie to our parents about it." She says.
I turn the corner, the one that has a view of the beach and the water. At one time in our relationship, I would've slowed down – maybe even stopped, just so we could look at the waves together until a car comes up behind us. But today, I'm going seventy around the corner that the speed is twenty.
"Robin, slow down." She says, her voice is becoming smaller now. I can tell. "You're going to wreck us..." She says.
"I'm not going to wreck us." It makes me more angry, and I just push the pedal down harder. "Can we just please drop this?"
"Pull over." Regina says, "Pull over and we'll drop it."
"What's the point of pulling over?" I ask, rolling my eyes. "I'm fine."
She looks down at my gear shift in the console, then grabs her fingers onto it, "I'm going to shift it into neutral if you don't slow the hell down, Robin." She snaps at me, and I roll my eyes. I look down and I'm going 80.
I reach down to her hand and shoosh it off of the stick, but she just puts it back on. I shoosh it off again, and I look up to see headlights, and they were coming at me at a fierce speed.
June 20th, Sunday, 6:15 PM
Regina
After
I'm sore. So fucking sore. I'm trying to will my body to move, but all I can do is make little groaning sounds when I try. I open my eyes, finding a white ceiling staring back at me. I hear beeps, and I will myself to look down at my hands to see little cords going into my hands that are filled with liquid, being pumped through me like drugs. They are drugs, I tell myself.
"Robin..." I mumble, realizing slowly that he's not here. I look over ever-so-slowly to not hurt myself, seeing a nurse who was working around me.
She looks over at me, and I'm trying to speak but my voice just comes out sloshy and slow, like syrup trickling out of the bottle onto your pancakes. "Ah, you're awake." She says, saying it like they've been waiting on this for a while.
My head falls back to its last position, my face straight-forward, looking at the television. The evening news is on, showing a car that was horribly beaten up, leaning against a rock wall as police searched around it. "...the passenger is in the hospital, and our last report told us that she was stable with no major injuries. The paramedics just confirmed she was wearing her seat belt..."
I move my head a little, feeling how sore the right side of my neck was, the left side of my chest, and down my sternum. Was I in a wreck? Was this my wreck? "Nurse..." I say weakly, so weakly that I don't even recognize my own voice. "Is that-"
The nurse looks up and real quickly, she grabs the remote and changes the channel. "Oh, nothing to worry about." She says, and even in my state of drugged mind, I could tell she was being too frantic if it was nothing.
I look over where there was a chair, one for someone to sit in. I realize something, I realize that Robin would be here if something weren't wrong with him. "Robin..." I murmur again, and she looks at me and swallows hard.
"Who?" She asks, and I want to roll my eyes but I feel like I could be sick if I do.
"Robin." I say, more sternly than the last few words I'd said. "Wh-where is Robin?"
She turns away from me. This bitch is turning away from me, I kept thinking. "Okay, lets try to get you feeling better so you can get off of that IV. One step closer to going home." She says, blatantly changing the subject.
I'm ignoring her. I'm too busy giving myself a pep-talk, mumbling under my breath that I need to sit up, that I've got to find my phone and text Robin. I have to know where the hell he is.
My arms are by my side still – I haven't moved them an inch yet. I slowly slide my hands beside my hips, laying my palms flat on the white, hard bedding underneath me. I think of that car, and I push up and finally get my upper body to sit up. I know the bed moves, I know I could've let it sit me up myself, but I needed to show this stupid nurse that I needed to know where Robin was, and that I am extremely serious about finding out. I need to know if that was his car, because it never set in quick enough for me to look to see what kind of car was crushed against those rocks. I have a million questions, and this nurse is going to answer at least one of them if it kills me.
"Where. The hell. Is Robin?" I say, practically growling at her now. Something inside of me lit up. I've only felt this once before, and it was when my mother was threatening to- not important. That's not important now. No sense in getting riled up about that, I need to know what's happened, and why I'm in this hospital. Maybe that's a better question to ask, what happened to her. "Why am I in the hospital?" I finally ask.
The nurse sighs at me when she sees me sitting up, "You were in a wreck." She says. She should've lied, because now it's driving me crazy to know.
"Was that the car I was in? The one on the TV? Is that why I'm so sore?" I ask. I feel my mind buzzing, I feel sick, and I feel excited all at the same time. I had too many emotions running through my brain.
"Listen," The nurse says softly, shaking her head. "I have to ask you to lay back down. Being too excited like this causes too much stress to your body, and in result can make you lose the baby." She says.
"What?!" I exclaim, "I'm not...I don't have a baby." I state. Do I? I don't remember much of anything before waking up in the hospital, really. The last thing I remember clearly is the first snow of March, but looking out the window earlier I know that it's summer time. The accident must've made me forget this stuff. "I'm only just eighteen. I can't be pregnant." I say, shaking my head.
The nurse looks like she's said way too much, and in my mind she most certainly has. She just looks mortified and upset, and then walks out of her room, leaving me all alone with just the beeping machines, my IV, and...apparently, my baby.
I lean back on my bed and look down, pulling the blanket down off of my stomach and revealing a small swell. I guess she was really right, she was being truthful. Why would she have a reason not to be truthful, though? She's just doing her job, and she let something slip that she thought I already knew. Based off of the size of my small belly, I'm guessing that I'm about three months pregnant.
March 26, Sunday, 1:04 AM
Regina
Before
I'm wrapped in his arms. Gosh, I love his arms. I feel so free yet so secure there, but maybe the free part is just because I've had lots of alcohol.
Earlier tonight, we were at a party. It was great at first, but it was one of those parties that got boring after about two hours, because the people that got drunk there were the kind of people who aren't fun drunks. Robin and I are fun drunks, though, and we were ready to find another party. He lead me out of the front door, my hand in is, and by then I was already pretty drunk. We didn't make it far, just to the little cabin down the road in the woods.
And then, sex. Lots of it. Gosh, the sex. He has an amazing dick, and I can still feel it pressed against my leg, even though now it's soft and spent – kind of how I feel now – soft and spent. "Babe?" I ask, looking up at him from my pillow. "I love you...I love you a lot."
Robin smiles back at me, "I love you too, my little lady..." He coos, and it makes my heart melt again. I fall into the pillow a little more, and before I know it, I'm asleep.
June 20th, Sunday, 7:00 PM
Robin
After
Shit. I'm in so much pain, pain that I'd never even felt before. I don't know where I am, I have no idea. I'm moving – well, my body isn't, but I'm moving. It's loud in here, and I can't tell if it's because I'm on a boat or a plane or train. It's too loud to be a car, even a truck.
I sit up just enough to hurt myself even more. My body quickly lets me know that I have something dangerously wrong with my leg, and I look down to see it crooked and sticking out in places it didn't before...before what? What happened? I couldn't remember anything...nothing made sense. It seemed like just yesterday Regina and I were at a party, walking out in the winter snow to go find that cabin where we stayed one night. But judging on the sweat that's pouring from my forehead, I doubt it's winter. Unless I'm in a furnace. (I quickly rule that out inside my head).
I remember, suddenly, saying that burning would be the worst way to die. Regina always argued with me and said drowning would be, but I wasn't ever sure. I guess when they say opposites attract, they're completely correct. If Regina and I are anything, we're opposites. Maybe that's why we always fight so much, but damn it I love that woman. Nothing is ever going to tear us apart...except maybe this. Simply because I don't know where I am, who I'm with, or where they're taking me.
Fear rushes over me like a dark cloud that's about to drop ten inches of rain. Everything felt darker, suddenly, even though it's pitch black and I can barely see the crookedness of my leg. I decided now would be a good time to assess the rest of my body, see what else is wrong – hopefully nothing. But when I look down at my shirt, it's covered in blood drips. I reach up slowly for my face, even though that pains me, too, and feel dried blood all over it. Scratches, cuts, bruises...they're covering my face. It's no wonder I'm in such a stupor – the amount of blood I lost onto my shirt is enough to fill another body.
I look around at something to give me a clue of where I am, but nothing. I have no idea, still, and I don't know if I'll ever get an idea. I feel sick, maybe from the pain, maybe from the fear. I'm sick, too, because I don't know if Regina is okay. I don't even know what happened. Does she know where I am? Was she with me when...whatever happened, happened? I'd rather die than let something happen to her.
Thinking about her, I quickly realize, makes me feel calmer, safer somehow. She's not even here and she can still bring a smile to my beaten face.
I think back to the time in first grade when she'd come down the stairs at school, all covered in tears. She was my best friend, even then, and I immediately went and beat up the boy that called her ponytail ugly. I got timeout, detention, and I wasn't allowed in recess for the rest of the week. But for Regina, it was worth it.
Then, another time in sixth grade, this girl was pushing her around. She was being downright horrible to her, and I wasn't about to put up with it. I couldn't beat her up like I did to the kid in first grade, because...well, she was a girl. But I pulled a horrible, nasty prank on her and signed it with "R". She didn't know if it was me, or if it was Regina, but she knew she couldn't get me in trouble here.
I was the principal's son.
No one messed with me, which meant no one messed with Regina, either, all through middle school. By the eighth grade, she'd grown enough of a backbone from dealing with her mother that she didn't have to depend on me to fight her fights anymore. And I guess that's the best thing that ever was going to happen to me, really, because it was then that she stopped seeing me as her best friend – but someone who she had a crush on, and someone who had always had a major crush on her.
I'm pulled from my memories, now, when whatever I'm in hits a bump. More bumps, more bumps, and I then figure out we're in a boat – it's getting choppy, wherever they're taking me.
The motor slows down, and I can feel my body becoming more tired as the boat slows, like I was running off of the same momentum that this watercraft was. I wrap my hurting arms around my bloody body, lean back into the corner of the room, and close my eyes. Maybe if I squeeze my eyes closed hard enough, I'll wake up. It's just a dream, isn't it?
June 20th, Sunday, 10:30 PM
Regina
After
"As a patient of this hospital, I am demanding I be released. I am eighteen years old, and I don't have to wait for my mother to sign papers to release me." I tell the human resources lady, who is standing beside my bed in a stuffy, dark navy suit. "Now let me out now or I'll sue."
The HR woman says a few things to the doctor, and he shakes his head but she shrugs in a counteractive way. She turns back to me and shrugs, "There's nothing we can do to legally stop you from leaving this hospital, Miss Mills." She says, finally defeated.
I immediately feel a smile painted onto my face. How could I not? I'll be out. I'll be finding Robin. I'll be okay. We'll be okay. All three of us, I guess. It'll all go back to being normal. Right?
Right.
As soon as they let me, I get out of the bed. I ignore the pain I'm in, pushing through it and swallowing back my tears. I can't let them see how much it hurts me just to move my head, otherwise they will lecture me again about leaving. I had to get out of here. I don't have broken bones. I'm fine, perfectly fine. Me and...my baby, we're okay. I think.
I hold onto the bed for a moment while the doctor and nurse are both turned away from me, widening my eyes from the stiff, sore pain. When they turn back, I straighten up and let go of the bed rail. "Alright, Miss Mills, we just need you to sign a few papers saying that you released yourself." The nurse says, handing me about ten papers, marked with two X's on each page, indicating where I needed to sign. When I get to the last two, she explains further, "Those are stating that you know you're pregnant, and that you're leaving even though we suggest it wouldn't be healthy for you or the baby."
I look down, my throat tightens up quickly and my breath feels caught in my lungs. Could I risk this? Of course I can. I don't have to think too long about it. I love Robin way more than some accidental baby...
Right?
Right.
I sign the papers, nodding so that she knows I listened to what she said. My name was there on all of the lines, beside all of the X's, and then I hand them all over to the nurse. She just stares at me like I'm making the worst decision ever, and maybe I am.
But I have to find Robin.