AUTHOR'S NOTE: Thank you so much everyone for reading and reviewing the last chapter. I hope even more of you will feel inclined to do so after this next segment. It's a hefty one, so grab your favorite energy drink and enjoy. The book selection in this chapter is from Lev Grossman's "The Magicians." It is a personal favorite of mine.

Read, review, and enjoy!

CHAPTER THREE: Go Back To Bed

Eight Hours

"The impact of the crash itself didn't cause any severe injuries apart from a few cuts and bruises. The angle of the vehicle collided with the front of the bike, so it was really the flip over the hood of the car that created the brain damage."

"Brain damage?" Jenna huffed before the doctor could continue his droning lecture.

"Well, essentially that's what a concussion is, Miss Fitch. Luckily she was wearing the helmet, but there's some severe swelling on the temporal lobe which has kept Emily under for the last several hours."

Several hours. That's how long we had waited since Emily had been moved from the intensive care unit into her room. Several hours of just staring at the bed, barely holding my body up by my pencil thin spine to stare down at Emily's frail, bruised, and cut body to the tubes fed from her arms, out of her nose and mouth. The mouth that had just kissed me only a few hours ago, promising she'd return.

"When will she wake up?" Katie's voice broke through. It caused me to jump, the timber of the cadence when she spoke was so similar to Emily's that it was doing an intense number on my nerves, as if my beautiful and still red-head were reaching out and asking the same question.

"We don't know...all we can really do right now is...try and make her comfortable..." It was preposterous. Emily was fine. She was passed out cold while we all had to wait here in agonizing time for her to...for her to...

Fight for her life.

My hand reached out to clutch hers. I hadn't sat down since the Fitches had arrived at the hospital. By the time I had gotten there they had already been contacted. Fucking twat I was, hadn't even thought to call Katie and let her know what had happened. Pretty hard to make a call when you can't find your voice at all. Or when your mouth opens to speak, all you hear are the cracks and squeaks of your muscles trying to work but can't. How could my mouth and throat and tongue all work when they have tubes down them? Because I was in that bed with her.

A sudden sense of falling filled my head as I nearly collapsed into a set of arms. "Sit down before you fall down for fuck's sake," I heard that same voice whisper. It wasn't until she looked me directly in the eyes that I realized Katie was checking me for any signs of internal trauma.

"My knees stopped working," I choked out. It must've been the first thing I'd said in hours because my throat was dry enough to make speaking actually hurt. My hand felt dreadfully cold. It wasn't holding Emily's anymore. My body lurched forward to twine my fingers back into hers. I can't not be touching her, she has to know I'm here. Every second. I nearly fell to the floor, taking Katie by surprise. But the girl isn't as frail as she appears and she easily pushed me back into my seat. "I have to touch her, I have-"

"Then move the chair up, you twat," she grumbled as she pushed the thick, plus chair forward so that I could rest my head on the white cloth sheets. Once my hand made contact with hers I accidentally clamped down on the IV. I think it must hurt, regardless of any sign or indication from Emily's still form, so I retracted and resituated our fingers so that they were laced, but my palm was resting elsewhere. I kissed the area that was all tubes and tape and whispered an apology. "What do you have to be sorry about?" Katie asked as she took a chair next to me. She didn't sound upset, she didn't sound like she'd been crying. She was completely unreadable, even to a vapid emotionless fuck like me. Not that I knew much about the other Fitch twin, mostly on her account, but I was falling apart inside. How could she be a literal genetic copy of the woman I love and appear...bored. I had to still my tongue so that I didn't tell her where to fuck off. Instead, I answered the question, after several seconds of moistening my throat to do so.

"Everything."

"Too right there," she spat, "Waited long enough to try to mend her heart, didn't you?" Fuck's sake, I don't need this. I released a sigh, and clutched Emily's fingers tighter. Every instinct inside me was barking at me to get out, to snap at Katie, to cry, to do anything and everything not at all helpful to the current situation. Leave it to me to act like a complete schitzo in this situation. "How did you get here first, anyway? I'm listed as her emergency contact." I sat up slowly and had to physically turn my head because my swollen eyes couldn't lock on anything well enough for me to focus peripherally.

"I found the moped in the street...smashed to fucking bits..."

"You found the bike? Just the bike?" Katie asked, her head turning toward me. She'd been looking at something, off somewhere that wasn't here. Maybe that's how she was dealing with this...

"Yes...just the bike...they'd already come for her..." The guilt floating up to my mouth made me taste bile and it was all I could do to swallow it back down. I wasn't leaving her side, even if I was going to be sick. I'd just puke in the trashcan and let a nurse clean it up later. I promised...you were alone and I'd promised...I swore...

"She's going to be ok." My eyes clenched, searing from how dry they were. "I know she is." I turned away from the healthy, spray-tanned twin and allowed my vision to be enveloped with the one that was all but clutching onto this world for all I knew. My voice broke into another bout of sobs as I stood on shaky legs and kissed the area closest to Emily's mouth that wasn't covered with a breathing mask. There were stitch marks across her cheek and brow. I kissed those as well. I needed to get as much contact with her before the inevitable-

"When did she get here?" Jenna Fitch said, finally coming back into the room from her conversation with Emily's doctor. "What is she doing here?"

"She's been here the whole time, mum, don't be a fucking cow," Katie defended, but I didn't need her to.

"I'm not leaving, Jenna," I said matter-of-factly, sitting down in the chair that I pulled even closer to Emily's bed. She rounded the other side of the bed so she could yell at me good and proper before I cast her a look to shoot the devil. It shook her so far off balance that I was certain I had hit her with actual laser eye beams. Her body nearly shook under my glare. "And you will not dare try to make me." Ice blanketed the room as I wrapped Emily and I's fingers back together. It appeared my reputational powers did hold some weight still, and it wasn't until Katie stood to take Jenna for some coffee that I relinquished my gaze on the woman who would be suicidal to keep me from Emily's side. Even if she was her mum.

In the quiet of the recovery room, the only sound was the beeping of Emily's heart monitor, and the fake lung that was doing all of her breathing for her. I wasn't stupid. I knew how bad this was. I could feel in the very pit of my heart how bad this was. And I knew exactly what the old Naomi would have done...but I left that Naomi in Freddie's shed. "I promised you I wouldn't run," I whispered, wishing desperately I could lay in that bed with her, wake her with my touch and kisses. "I promised." The words were barely out before I broke down into another crying fit, burying my face in the sheets that were wrapped around my beloved Emily.

Twenty-Four Hours

There was a clock on the wall with a black outline and thick numbers. The second hand had a little mocking smiling face that kept staring down at anyone who walked in her room. The sun came and went, although I'm pretty sure if it weren't for the clock I wouldn't've been aware. The street light just outside did a pretty good job of keeping the place well lit, even when the room was otherwise cast in darkness.

I'd watched her all night, waiting for...what I don't know. My eyes leaked of their own volition now, a steady stream because my body was too tired to physically sob anymore. I thought it wasn't possible to feel this shitty. Not after everything that had happened in the last year, surely that had been the worst, losing Emily like that. But here I was, sitting in my own worst nightmare and it was entirely possible that-

No. You won't think like that. You absolutely can't.

"I can take over here," Katie came into view, walking around the bed. She'd stayed with me most of the night, insisting it was to make sure I didn't assault any security officer that thought he could tell me visiting hours were over. I merely shifted in my seat and attempted to clear my throat. I almost gagged.

"I'm fine," I muttered finally, my voice raw from the drought. Not just from the lack of water, but from the slaking ambrosia of Emily I'd had heal my heart just yesterday. Katie sighed and picked up a nearby glass, filling it with tap water.

"Here," she muttered, and placed it next to me on the bedside table. We sat there for several minutes, not looking at each other. Finally she picked up a magazine from her purse and started to flip through it. I reached for the water and took a few sips. I couldn't deny that it did have miracle properties.

"I haven't seen Jenna since yesterday." Katie stopped turning the pages and I could see her cast me a glance from the corner of her eye.

"Mum's busy at work," she whispered, the response weighted and filled with disappointment. I wasn't surprised...but I knew it was best just to leave it.

Thirty-Six Hours

Every part of my body was screaming at me to move, but I couldn't. I'd done nothing but sit in this chair and hold Emily's hand since I entered this room and, apart from some inevitable bathroom breaks, I refused to do anything else. I was terrified that her eyes were going to flicker open and I wouldn't be the very first thing she saw when that happened. I had to be the first thing. For my own sanity. Still, my neck was pinched, my back was contorted, and I was pretty sure everything from below the hip has fallen asleep. That's fine. Emily's not there to touch any of it. As the thought hit me, I squeezed Emily's hand tighter, the whiteness in my knuckles willing her to feel me. She's here. She's right here.

The crinkle of paper on Emily's nightstand shifted my focus. A small hand with slightly puffed fingers set down a package of museli and a Garibaldi's. "It's all I had in my purse," Katie muttered with a hint of impatience. "Eat something will you?" I eyed the packages with a pang of nausea. I didn't think I could stomach anything if I wanted to. The door closed behind me and I knew she'd left to attend to things back home. Leaning forward, I rested my head atop the gauze and surgical tape wrapped around Emily's head. My home is here.

As I rested my weary body back into the cushioned chair, my head started to swim and I began to see stars. Releasing a sigh, I reluctantly let go of Emily's hand for a few moments and tore into the biscuit wrapper, munching a bite. The crunches were languid and slow, but after thirty minutes I'd consumed everything on the table. Physically, I felt better. But not by much.

Fourty-Eight Hours

Jenna stopped by and we did the whole fake smiles and acknowledgement. "You're still wearing the same clothes," she snipped in that ridiculous Scottish accent of hers. I did my best to stifle back one of my apparently notorious eye-rolls, although for the life of me I had no idea why.

"Someone had to stay here," I bit in her direction. The woman cast me a warning to rival my own, and then a sinking feeling hit the bottom of my stomach, and I looked at Emily in the bed, knowing that deep down, no matter her relationship with her mother, she wanted her here. Every little girl does. "There hasn't been any change."

"Katie mentioned," she muttered, turning her gaze back to her daughter. She leaned over the bedside, opposite where I sat, and ran her hand over Emily's forehead. "Would you prefer to go home for a while, Naomi? Maybe take a shower?"

"I meant what I told you the other day, Jenna, I'm not leaving this bedside until she wakes up." Her mouth tightened as our eyes met again.

"I'm her mother, Naomi, and-"

"And I'm her everything." A toad doesn't frown that hard.

"That wasn't the last I heard."

"A lot has changed from the last you heard," I corrected. I knew a lot of my venom was misdirected, but I wasn't going to be pushed. Not when it came to this. Eventually the brunette woman conceded and chose to sit at the far end of the room, flipping through something on her phone as if she were waiting for a taxi. Sighing, I rested my forehead against the sheets that the nurse had changed this morning. My body screamed at me to just sleep, but my mind was still reeling and that's when the tears came back.

I buttoned my lips so that she wouldn't hear me, forcing my shoulders still so they wouldn't shake. It wasn't until I felt a hand just below my neck that my tear-stained nose inhaled a sob. "I brought you something to sleep on," Katie said. Raising my head, I saw her point to a cot that was now resting in the corner.

"I'm not tired," I lied, placing my head back onto the bed.

"Whatever, tosser," Katie grumbled as she handed her mother a water bottle. As if it were the only part of the conversation she had picked up on, Jenna sputtered,

"She's been sleeping in that chair?"

"No mum, she hasn't. That's why she should." I smirked in spite of myself. Turning my head toward Emily, I peered up at her color-drained face.

"Wake up will you, and save me from your family," I whispered with the tiniest bit of laughter in the timber of my voice. My thumb stroked her wrist, pressing tenderly against the skin.

Three Days

Of all the things I had spent glancing over, my eyes always seemed to re-land on my fingers cradling hers. There was going to undoubtably be a long scar on the underside of her right arm where I was told she had landed. I couldn't imagine the layers of gravel and dirt that had been dug out of her tender, precious flesh with piercing surgical equipment. The excess of the bandages only left me her fingers, and they were what I concentrated on. I hadn't looked at it, really looked at it, in what seemed to be ages. The hazy fog that had settled over my mind caused me to relive the memory, with a smiling, enchanting woman that didn't match the broken one in the hospital bed.

"The hands represent friendship, the crown represents loyalty, and the heart well, I'm guessing you can imagine what that means," she smiled up at me as we sat on the swing set out on the playground. There was a slight nip in the air, so the wind was pushing against Emily's face as she smiled cheekily over the metal chains.

"I can take a guess," I quipped, handing the silver ring back to Emily. "Going to put it on me then?" She practically blanched at the request before her hand shakily reached out for the object. We had to move our swings closer as I presented my right hand to her. She paused for a moment, clasping the object amongst her tiny fingers.

"There's...another part..." she whispered, suddenly unable to make eye contact. I peered down at her, wondering if she were contemplating on retracting the gift entirely with the way she was clutching the metal object. Before the moment passed into a zone of much more worry she continued, "...if you wear the heart pointing away from you, then it means you're available but...if you wear the ring with the heart pointed toward you..." Emily's eyes met mine and I wasn't mistaken at the tears that were beginning to form in them. I could tell she hadn't intended on getting so nervous over this idea because she let out a huff and wiped at her eyes with her long sweater sleeve. "Fucking hell," she sputtered out through a shaky laugh, glancing away and sniffling.

My mouth was dry and I realized a second later that it had been opened as a chill settled on my tongue. Instead of trying to find words, I reached out and took the hand that held Emily's gift. Removing it from her fingers, I held it just above my right ring finger...the heart pointing toward me. "Put it on will you," I half asked, half commanded, my voice dropping into a register I knew drove Emily mad with wanting. Her eyes shot back down to my hands, waiting for her to take over the task. I heard her voice choke back another tear as my eyes began to water. The ring slid on as a perfect fit. Grabbing a hold of my swing, Emily pulled us into a deep, satisfying kiss.

"I love you," she whispered against my lips. I nodded, pulling back just a little bit to look down at the ring on my finger. I'd never had one that meant anything, and now here it was. A promise to the woman that in spite of my best efforts, I couldn't help but fall deeper and deeper for every day.

"I love you, too," I echoed. Her hands ran through my increasingly growing blonde hair. I really needed to buy another bottle of peroxide soon.

"I'm going to miss you growing this out," she said with a bit of a sad smile. We'd agreed we weren't going to talk about her family vacation that was happening in only two more days. It made the timing of the gift all the more potent.

I'd slept with Sophia three weeks later. Funny. That was one the one day I had forgotten to wear her ring.

The memory clamped down on me now and it felt as though my fingers were swollen in spite of the chill that had settled in Emily's room. I pressed the call button and waited only a few minutes for a nurse. "It's a bit cold in here, she's cold," I replied. Words were still difficult to come by.

"The thermostat is just over there," the nurse huffed, undoubtedly annoyed that she had been taken away from an actual patient with actual problems. But she turned the dial up anyway. Sizing me up she asked, "When was the last time you ate?" I didn't say anything. "Slept?" My cracked lips opened and closed several times to try and respond to her but nothing came out of them. "Come on then, in you go." I groaned and moaned like a little five year old as I was escorted to the already made up cot. If I had had the energy, I probably would've bit and pulled her hair. But the minute my head hit the pillow my brain had an entirely different set of ideas.

One Week

"Page Doctor Miller! Now!" a harsh voice was barking as I opened my eyes. I'd fallen asleep on the cot again, and the sun was pouring into my eyes so it was taking me a few minutes for me to adjust to the scene folding out in front of me. There were two nurses on either side of Emily's bed, adjusting her bed flat from its reclined position. Tossing the covers violently aside, I flew to the end of Emily's bed, and that's when I heard it.

The heart monitor. It was ringing a flat tone. There wasn't any beeping.

My hands gripped onto the railing and I shook it, violently. "Emily!" I cried, nearly leaping onto the bed myself, but I couldn't feel my legs again. Firm arms wrapped around me and shoved me out of the room as the nurse tore open Emily's gown and began chest compressions. I called her name over and over again. A machine wheeled passed me as I crossed the door's threshold.

"You have to stay out here, do you understand?" the nurse commanded, but I sloughed myself out of his arms. I went for the door, but was immediately pulled back. "You're going to make it worse by being in there!" A young man in blue scrubs and a white jacket came reeling around the corner, and pointed at me. Apparently he knew who I was and he jabbed his finger in my direction.

"Keep her outta there!" he ordered as he shut the door, and I heard the lock finalize the decision. Letting me go this time, I slammed against the door, twisting and turning the knob in every direction, letting out disgruntled cries every time the lock didn't bend to my will. I banged on the door, but it didn't do me any good.

I can't see her.

Relenting on the abuse to the thick wood, I navigated to the glass window, pressing my forehead against it. Tears cascaded. I repeatedly whispered Emily's name as the doctors struggled to make the monitor pick up on a trace of something. Anything. The muffled seconds ticked away in the span of seasons and years. "I love you," I cried out in blubbering agony, drenching the glass with my tears, my fingers smudging into fists.

I don't want to see this. I can't watch this happen. This isn't happening.

My legs ached to bolt, but the ring on my finger pressed tightly into my locked grasp. It commanded me to stay.

"I've never not wanted you. I'm not running anymore, ever again."

"Is that a promise?"

"I swear," I whispered aloud as the scene from last night replayed for a moment in my head, and I kept myself watching, pushing my body as close to the glass as I could get it.

I tried to catch a glimpse of her, my Emily, but the doctors had her completely surrounded. I could hear the siren cry of the booster once the crash cart was switched on, and in another moment I heard a muffled, "Clear!" and Emily's body spasmed upward from the electric shock that ran through her body. I covered my mouth in a shrieking gasp at the unholy scene. There was another screech and another "Clear!" and it was like the worst case of deja vous I'd ever experienced. Her lithe body hurtled forward one more time and this time...it took. The heart monitor started beeping again and the entire team let out a sigh of relief.

I collapsed like a puddle onto the hospital floor. I was sobbing so hard that it was like I'd found the goggles in the alley all over again. "She's alive," I heard myself say. The door clicked and I was on my feet ready to go in and clasp my body down onto hers, but they were pulling her gurney out as I was barely scrambling to stand. "Wait! Where are you going? Where are you taking her?!" I reached toward her through the body of someone stopping me from following down the hall. "Emily!"

"They need to take her in for some tests. That was a pretty nasty episode she just had." The same nurse who had awoken me this morning was giving me a rather stern glare that it was the final word on the matter.

"What happened?" I heard her voice say behind me. A shiver flew down my spine at the apparitional sound. I turned to Katie whose doe eyes matched the ones of the woman who nearly...

...on shaky legs I walked over to Katie, attempting and failing to sit her down in a nearby chair, to explain where Emily was.

"She died," Katie breathed. The words were like gunshots in my ears, and I had to fight back the truth in them.

"Her heart stopped. She didn't die," I corrected forcefully. "They're taking her in to have some kind of examination. I don't know. They don't talk to me much." The emotional trauma had taken its toll and I was back to being insurmountably exhausted. I made my way back into Emily's room and sat down in the same chair that I had previously refused to leave. Nothing had happened before I left this chair, and I vowed to never leave it again.

Ten Days

People talked to me. Rather they attempted to talk atme. "Naomi, if you can't keep staring at her like she's going to evaporate. If you don't actually move or blink or fuck, do something then they're going to cart you off." The bitterness that dripped from her lips made my stomach turn but I couldn't do anything else. I just sat there. Sat on that cot and stared at Emily ever since they had brought her back from intensive care yesterday morning. They had attempted to uproot me. Twice. Saying that she would probably be moved to another room, but I had refused to budge. Eventually, for whatever reason, my logic won out and she was carted back to room 403. Where I was waiting. And so I waited. And waited. I didn't eat. I didn't sleep. I just...stared.

A pair of strong arms lifted me from under my arms. "You fucking stink, you're taking a shower." I moaned, but could do little else in protest. Katie drug me into the patient shower that was adjacent to Emily's room, and started taking my clothes off. Normally I would've punched her for even attempting something so personal, but I just stood there. Let her undress me. Let her push me under the first freezing and then lukewarm water. She pulled the curtain closed and I waited for the door to click. "I'm not leaving in case you try to drown yourself." Some part of my brain smiled at the quip, and I heard her sit atop the loo.

The water cascaded down in pelts, harder than the shower I had at home. The home I had invited Emily back into...to share with me...to be ours again. Katie said I wasn't dealing. The last thing I said three days ago was, "There's nothing to deal with," before my entire body and mind shut down.

My eyes shut under the spray and all I could see was her. Just like every other time. That's why it didn't do any good to talk, or eat, or sleep, or even go outside and have a fag despite my body practically screaming at me for one, because every part of my body had been invaded by Emily Fitch. And she was dying. She wasn't getting any better.

I hadn't let myself even think it. But she was. She is.

She's dying.

Slumping down in the shower I let the tears come back that had abandoned me just a few days ago. I was glad when Katie didn't try to comfort me. She just let me cry.

After about an hour, when I was sure I'd frozen my tits off, I stepped out of the shower. Katie had attempted to dry me off but I took the towel from her. "I brought a few things. Just...keep them." She stepped out of the washroom and left me to it. It felt strange wearing Katie's clothes, even if they were just a t-shirt and jeans. I didn't know the girl had such low key taste anywhere in her wardrobe. The floor in Emily's room was bitterly cold, so I opted for the chair instead of the cot so I could pull my legs up off the floor. I went back to staring. Katie was on her phone.

"How can you be so blasé about this whole thing?" I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.

"Fuck you," she spat without looking up at her phone. "I'm going through it too, you know."

"Sure as shit aren't acting like it." Katie exhaled through her nose loud enough to blow the tip of a tissue not far away.

"She's going to wake up," she said with such finality that it was the first time I truly saw anyone other than Emily as my head turned in her direction. She still hadn't looked up from her phone.

"How do you-?"

"Same reason you do. She's a part of me."

We left it at that.

Two Weeks

She shoved a book under my nose, and I unceremoniously read the title. "They say people in a coma can hear everything going on around them. Katie said you're not talking." She waved the book in front of me, apparently asking me to take it. Sighing, Effy took a seat opposite me and opened the book.

"Quentin did a magic trick. Nobody noticed. They picked their way along the cold, uneven sidewalk together: James, Julia, and Quentin. James and Julia held hands-"

"What're you doing here, Effy?" The only blue eyes in all of Bristol, and possibly the entire British Isles, more mysterious than mine bore into me. She opened her mouth, and I assumed she was going to answer my question, but instead her focus returned to the page.

"-that's how things were now." Her eyes cocked back up to mine. She licked her lips and turned her eyes downward for a second time. "The sidewalk wasn't quite wide enough, so Quentin trailed after them, like a sulky child. He would rather have been alone with Julia, or just alone period, but you can't have everything." I snatched the book from her lap and turned her chair toward me, forcing her eyes back into mine. Effy Stonem never scared me.

"Why are you here?" I demanded. She wasn't Emily's friend. She was barely mine.

"Why not." Her reply was simple, and she shot me one of those trademark Stonem smiles that she seemed to think could silence any bird of prey. But I wasn't falling victim.

"You're never where you don't mean to be." The stoic mystery of my own statement took me aback as I answered my own question. Relenting my hold on her chair, I fell back into mine and turned back to Emily. She'd gotten thinner.

"Or at least the available evidence pointed overwhelmingly to that conclusion," Effy continued.

I had no idea where she got the book, but I let her read for about an hour before my hands did something I had not at all commanded them to. I took the book. And I read to Emily.

"Afterward, Quentin couldn't remember much of the rest of that night, except that he spent it there at the school. He was exhausted, and weak, like he'd been drugged. His chest felt hollowed out and empty. He wasn't even hungry anymore, just desperate to sleep. It was embarrassing, but nobody seemed to mind."

One Month

It was only the third time I had seen Jenna in Emily's room and this time she was speaking in hushed voices with a doctor. A nurse who was affectionately rubbed her back. I definitely didn't like waking up to the sight of it. Yet it wasn't my voice that challenged the morose tone they were setting in the room.

"What's going on, then?" Katie insisted, walking into the room with a bottle of water and package of biscuits in her hand. She shoved them in my direction, dropping them in my lap. "Here," she grumbled discontentedly. Jenna looked like she was trying to speak but was stumbling. "Out with it, mum!"

"The doctor was just explaining to me that...there could be...at this stage...irreversible brain damage."

"The doctor says a lot of things," Katie spat, eyeing him down with the force of a lioness.

"It's different this time, Katie," the man with the balding head and white coat muttered, sighing as if he cared. I knew he was just tired. "After Emily's crash...the second one...the vitals haven't changed or improved. There's a possibility that Emily won't-"

"She will!" I insisted, finally finding my voice amongst the sea of doubt that flooded the room. I would stand but I knew I'd immediately collapse from the cramps that were settling in my knees from having fallen asleep in the chair yet again. "Emily is going to wake up!"

"So? So what if it isn't any time soon? Why are you looking at her like that?" Katie had closed the distance between her and her mother considerably.

"We shouldn't discuss this while she's in the room," Jenna muttered, casting Katie a look that threatened not to be pushed. Throwing the food onto the table, I stood. I had to hold myself up, but I was fucking up.

"No, you're going to discuss what you need to right here, right now, in my very presence." The venom in my voice insisted that whatever spell Jenna was trying to cast down at her daughter's wavering eyes would not be met with the same surrender in mine. If it concerned Emily, it concerned me. That was the bottom line. She hadn't been the one here holding Emily's hand, stroking her face, kissing her cheek, weeping into her bed sheets. Where the fuck had Emily's mother been? Where?!

"The doctor thinks at this stage we should discuss..." The words looked like they were going to suffocate her. She eyed down my trembling, half-starved, half-exhausted form, and the steel resolve reserved for one Naomi Campbell, lesbian bitch who stole and turned her daughter, overtook whatever human emotion she was nearly exhibiting. As her mouth opened, Katie's voice broke through instead.

"Fuck you!" she squealed at the top of her lungs. "No! No, you're not pulling her plug!" My hands gripped the sheets beneath my fingertips and Emily's hand slid toward mine. I was so furious I didn't know where to begin but Katie was handling it fine for me. She whirled on the doctor and barked, pointing a finger near his glasses, "If you don't get the fuck out of here right the fuck now I'm going to have your fucking ass thrown in the clink!" The doctor appeared to have more sense than to try to instate his views to the twin, so he made his way out of the recovery room. Katie followed behind him and slammed the door at his exit, causing her mother to jump. "She's in there! She's fighting for her very fucking life and you just want to what? Give up on her?!"

"Katie, sweetheart-"

"Don't you sweetheart me, you fucking cow!" Katie rounded on me. "Don't you have anything to say?"

"She doesn't have a right of anything to say," Jenna spat in both of our directions. "The two of you will not gang up on me! I'm Emily's mother! I will decide-"

"You abandoned her, Jenna," I pressed, "I abandoned her. Katie abandoned her. And at least on my part...I'm never doing that again. If I age right here in this room, I'm going to be by Emily's side when she wakes up and she is going to wake up." I heard the crack in Katie's voice signal the tears that were being forced back into her throat.

"She's a part of me, mum. Don't you get it? You don't get to decide, because I know. I know Emily wants to come back to us. I can feel it every fucking second of every fucking day even when I don't want to anymore, even when it's too much. You don't get to decide, because she already has."

Jenna and I both stood there, both of us at a loss. For completely different reasons. There was no more talk on the matter. Katie Fucking Fitch had spoken.

Five Weeks

They took her off the tracheal tube and ventilator three days ago. It was the first time since the accident that I was able to see her face. Even under the pale fluorescent lights, and in spite of the sallow tint that her skin had adopted, and the slight brown hue her roots that were emerging beneath her fiery red hair...she was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. I hadn't spoken to her directly in days...not since I'd finished the book that Effy had brought by. Emily's crash had taken it out of me, even with Katie and Effy stopping by on occasion the place was starting to congeal my blood. A hospital was the most depressing place on earth.

I figured I'd all but given up smoking, considering I hadn't seen actual sunlight since we were both whisked in here. My body still shook with the cravings occasionally, but I'd remained firm, merely biting the inside of my cheek or wringing my hands soaking wet. I wasn't leaving this bedside.

From my usual seat I clasped Emily's hand, trying to think of something grandiose or witty to say. "I love looking at you," I began. "I know how creepy that sounds but...if I didn't know any better...I'd say you and I were back at ours...curled up in our bed...and I'd be thinking of stealing a few moments of your slumber from you just so that I could be the one to wake you up." I extended my free hand up toward her brow and gently traced the outline of her forehead to her brow and down to her cheeks. It felt good to fully stroke her face after the disappearance of the medical tape. She honestly looked like she had just fallen off a ladder, or tripped and fell, or maybe partied into an overzealous crowd. It was nothing that a little peroxide and attending to couldn't sort. "Please wake up, Emily," I heard myself beg for the thousandth time. "I'm here...I'm waiting for you...I love you..."

Standing, I pressed my lips against Emily's forehead. And nearly had a heart attack. She flinched. I felt Emily flinch beneath my kiss. I tore my eyes down to meet eyelashes that were beginning to flutter. I was having a heart attack because the muscle was pounding so loudly in my chest that I could feel and hear it everywhere else. "Emily..." I whispered, feeling both light and heavy all within the same moment. And then I saw them. With agonizing lag, I was met with brown irises that slowly began to take in everything around her. "Emily..." I whispered yet again, on the verge of tears, but unable to shed any as her eyes flickered toward me. Her dried lips cracked a small smile and I was certain that I'd drop dead from happiness. "Katie!" I called out over my shoulder. "Katie she's awake!"

The clambering inside the nearby bathroom was met with a crash as Katie stumbled out of the loo. "Emsy!" she cried, practically ripping her jeans up around her waist as she flew to Emily's side. Those brown eyes smiled down and reached for her sister, her lips saying her name despite no voice being added. A pang of jealousy crept into my heart that she hadn't reached for me, but I chocked it up to shock, meds, whatever else was coursing through her awakening mind. Tears were streaming down her twin's face as she took Emily's hand and began kissing it. She began babbling at her in their twin language I had heard them use a handful of times, and Emiy must've understood because she smiled right back at her through laden eyes, her head lulling up and down in a nod. I wanted to reach out and kiss and touch every part of her like I had been doing every second of the day for the last thirty plus days. But I was immobile, too overcome with...what I couldn't pinpoint.

She opened and closed her mouth several times, her throat contracting as she tried to swallow. "The doctor said she wouldn't be able to talk when she woke up. The muscles aren't functioning yet," Katie informed me, handing Emily a pad of paper and a marker. "Can you write Emsy?" She looked like it was taking her a moment to focus but eventually, Emily gripped the marker well enough to tell us what she wanted. I watched her draw the lines.

'Who?'

What happened next...I couldn't try to relay the panic in my veins if I tried. But Emily Fitch pointed to the word...and then pointed right back at me.

"Emily..." I whispered, already denying what was happening.

"Who am I, Emily?" Katie asked. It looked like it took a lot of effort, but Emily slowly wrote out. 'K-A-T-I-E.'

I was going to faint. Any second now, my legs were finally going to say 'fuck it all!' and completely give way and I'd be in another bed down the hall. Again, Emily pointed to the word just above Katie's name, and then pointed...right back at me.

After just thirty-seven days, I broke my promise. I turned out of the door. And I ran.