A/N: just three chapters left to go... *sniff sniff* Not to worry, though. I started Say Anything this morning ;)
Chapter 27
Every Time You Go I Feel It In My Soul
Wednesday came with a vengeance that Aria didn't want to face, and because of that fact, she spent most of the day sleeping. There was a common knowledge among people that the first three days after any type of accident were usually the worst, and though most of her injuries were cuts and scrapes from glass, she was also covered in plenty of bruises.
One floor up, Ezra was slowly starting to surface into consciousness. It was an internal struggle between the physical exhaustion his body was feeling, combined with the pain medication he was being given every couple of hours, to actually come out of consciousness for more than a few seconds. The closer he came to consciousness though, the more he became irritated by the tube running down into his throat.
Adriana sat down in a chair next to Ezra's bed, holding a cup of starbucks coffee. She'd reluctantly left the hospital for a few hours to attend some of her classes, though she hadn't actually focused on them. Much like Hardy, Serena, Ella, and Byron, her head was stuck in that hospital room, thinking of nothing much besides her brother and whether or not he was going to be okay. She was grateful that Aria was going to be okay, but Ezra was her best friend, and she was terrified of what things would be like if he didn't wake up the same way he had been when he and Aria had left Hollis two days earlier.
Serena walked into the room a few moments later and looked up at her daughter. "I thought you had a class at two." "It got cancelled," Adriana said. She was lying, but she couldn't imagine having spent another minute in that building. She looked back down at Ezra. "Has he woken up yet?" Serena shook her head. "Not yet. He's certainly fighting to wake up though. The doctor is trying to figure out if she can take that tube out of his mouth." "What about the one in his chest?" Adriana asked.
Serena was about to say something, when Dr. Logan walked in. She stepped around the chair Serena was seated in and picked Ezra's chart up off the bed before walking over to the machines monitoring his blood pressure and heartbeat. She checked his IV bag and then scribbled something onto his chart and settled it on the end of the bed. She clasped her hands together in front of her and then looked to Serena and then to Adriana.
"I've reviewed the tests we did this morning, and I see no reason why we can't pull the tube. I'd like to wait until he's awake, and then switch him to a nasal cannula. We're still watching his lungs and his brain very closely, but with any luck, the chest tube should be able to be pulled tomorrow or Friday."
"Thank god," Serena murmured. Adriana just smiled and reached over to grip Ezra's left hand gently.
"You need to wake up, Ezra."
Ezra groaned suddenly and Adriana jumped. Her eyes grew wide and Serena couldn't help but chuckle at her daughter's reaction.
"Not expecting that, were you dear?"
Adriana let out a chuckle of surprise as she placed her hand against her chest. "No, no, that was the last thing I was expecting."
Ezra groaned again, and his brow furrowed into an expression of pain. A moment later, his eyes fluttered and slowly began to open. He coughed and then his eyes grew wide as he began to choke.
Serena and Adriana both shot up out of their seats, looks of worry spreading across their faces as they looked down at him. "What's happening?" Dr. Logan walked around the bed and shook her head at them. She pulled a pair of gloves from a box resting in a holder on the heart monitor and pulled them on quickly. "It's alright. He's choking because he can breath on his own. Ezra, I'm gonna need to breathe out on the count of three. Squeeze my hand if you understand." She placed two fingers inside his palm and he gripped them tightly. Dr. Logan moved her hands up to the tube and began to count. On three, Ezra exhaled, and she successfully pulled the tube from his mouth. She turned off the machine supplying oxygen to it and then walked over to the hazardous waste bin and tossed it out before walking back over to the bed and retrieving the nasal cannula from beside the bed and wrapping it around his face and turning it on.
Ezra blinked several times, furrowing his brow as he looked around himself. The white walls were a dead giveaway that he was in the hospital, but he had no recollection of how he'd gotten there, or how much time had passed. The last thing he remembered was leaving Hollis with Aria for her appointment with her lawyer.
He cleared his throat and looked up at Adriana and then Serena. "Mom?"
She settled back in her chair next to him as Dr. Logan walked over to the trash and tossed away her gloves. She walked back over to the bed and tucked her hands into her pockets, smiling down at Ezra.
"Ezra, I'm Dr. Logan. Do you know where you are?" "Hospital," he said raspily. "Can't remember what happened, though." He furrowed his brow again and winced.
"Does something hurt?" Dr. Logan asked.
"My head. Feels like someone's tried to split it with a brick."
Dr. Logan nodded.
Serena gently squeezed his broken hand. "Sweetie, you were in a car accident. Do you remember that?"
Ezra closed his eyes, trying to recall the things that his mother was talking about, but all he could remember was leaving Hollis. He had no clue how there had been an accident. That quickly slipped out of his thoughts though, as Aria came to mind. Had she been with him? Was she hurt? Was she okay?
"Aria," he said quickly. He tried to sit up, but only succeeded in making himself extremely dizzy. Comparing this concussion to the last one he'd had wasn't even worth it. This one kicked the one he'd had a few weeks earlier in the ass and left it to die in the street.
"She's okay," Adriana said. "I mean she's hurt, but she's okay. She's sleeping right now."
"I don't…I can't remember anything after leaving Hollis," he said.
Dr. Logan nodded. "That's completely normal. Some people are never able to recall events like that after a trauma."
"How much time has passed?" He asked fearfully. He'd seen enough movies with Aria to know about things where people got into accidents and woke up months or even years later, having missed all that time while all the people in their lives continued to function as if nothing seemed to have happened.
"It's Wednesday," Serena said. "You've been in and out of consciousness since Monday night." Ezra closed his eyes again for a moment. His head seemed to hurt less that way. He recalled what he had thought to be a dream; Aria sitting next to him holding his hand. He'd tried to reach up and touch her, but then everything had gone black again.
"That wasn't a dream?" He murmured.
"What wasn't a dream, sweetie?" Serena asked.
Ezra looked up at her. "Aria was in here? In a wheelchair?"
"Yeah," Adriana said. "Yesterday."
Dr. Logan reached up to the check the IV bag. "I'm going to order a fresh bag of fluids. Can you tell me where your pain is on a scale of one to ten?"
"Eight," Ezra murmured.
Dr. Logan nodded. "Alright. I'll be back."
Ezra pulled his hand from Adriana's and reached up to rub his eyes. Touching his face hurt like hell, but he managed. Afterwards, he grabbed the remote on the bed and adjusted it so that it wasn't resting so flatly.
"So one of you want to tell me what happened?" He asked a few minutes later.
Adriana and Serena both exchanged looks.
"We were kind of hoping you'd be able to tell us," Serena said. "We don't really know, sweetie."
"Does Aria remember?" He asked.
Adriana shrugged as she lifted her cup of coffee to her lips. "She was only up here for a little while last night, and she didn't say much. Her mom said she's got one hell of a concussion, and she didn't wake up in a very good mood today, so she's been sleeping. I told her to text me if she wanted me to keep her company."
Ezra nodded. He looked up at Adriana. "Will you go see if she's awake?"
Adriana nodded and pushed up out of her seat.
-
It's hard to love again, when the only way it's been,
When the only love you've known, just walked away
-
One floor below, Aria was sitting up in her bed, staring at the text message on her phone. Her bad mood had been well-earned. When she'd woken up that morning, she'd been alone, and had gone on a search for her phone, which her mother had told her she would leave for her while she went home for a few hours. Aria had been half asleep and hadn't heard where her mother had put it. Even so, she'd eventually found it in the drawer of the table next to the hospital bed, resting on top of a legal pad. She had pulled it out, intending to call Adriana or one of her friends, when a text message had greeted her instead.
How's this for a tragedy?
-A
Her stomach had coiled at the sight of it. She knew vaguely from what her mother had told her the night before that Jackie had been somehow involved, but now she was worried that someone else from school was also involved, which terrified her. How was it that with every bad thing that seemed to happen in her life, A was always involved?
She had been in too much pain and far too frustrated by the message to stay awake and face the day, and so she had instead decided to shut the day away, and she had crawled back into bed and curled down into the blanket after texting Hanna, Spencer, and Emily and asking them to come after they had finished their first round of finals.
As it was, Spencer awoke her at just after 11:30 in the afternoon when she showed up. Aria was less than surprised that she was the first one to arrive. She was sure Spencer had probably raced through every single one of her finals with pin-point precision and still passed them with flying colors. Even so, she welcomed the gentle hug that came from her best friend when she showed up.
"How are you," Spencer asked warily. "Are you alright? Is anything seriously injured?"
Aria laid back down under the blankets, shaking her head slowly. "Just a really bad concussion." She slipped an arm up behind her head. "Do you know what happened?"
Spencer shrugged. "All I know is that Hanna, Emily and I got text messages on Monday afternoon from A about you." "Can I see?" Aria asked.
Spencer nodded. She pulled her phone from her pocket and scrolled through her text messages until she found the one she was referring to. She handed it over to Aria a moment later.
When you screw with me, I screw with you.
Aria wanted tragic. How's dead work for you?
-A
The text message came with an attachment, and Aria looked up at Spencer cagily for a brief moment before she pressed the play button on the phone. She gasped as she watched one car collide into another, and then watched as the silver car she knew to be Ezra's sedan roll three hundred and sixty degrees before landing on all four wheels and proceeding to spin into a tree. It ended a few seconds later, and Aria handed the phone back to Spencer as tears burned in her eyes.
"This is all my fault," Aria said after a few moments.
Spencer shook her head at her. "No, Aria. No one could've known that this would happen."
Aria whimpered, shaking her head at Spencer. "Ezra almost died because of me. Because of A and because of Alison. He didn't do anything wrong, Spence! He was with me because my car wouldn't start Monday morning! Because I have issues with my parents! He never should've been involved in that accident." "But Jackie-"
Aria cut Spencer off. "Jackie wants me out of the way, Spencer. She caused that accident to get rid of me, just like A did. And I ended up being fine. He's the one who's in the ICU. He's the one who's hurt really bad."
Aria sucked in several deep breaths, trying to keep herself from going off the deep end as her throat tightened from the guilt weighing on her shoulders. The more that it did, the worse her head hurt, and the more it made her sick to her stomach.
"I can't handle this," she cried.
Spencer shook her head, tucking her phone into her pocket. She moved up onto the bed and hugged Aria. "Don't worry about it. Hanna, Emily and I will take care of it. We'll go to the cops." "You can't," Aria insisted. "We all know what A is like. A will come after you guys too if you do that."
Spencer shook her head. "If A was really involved in this like he, she, it is taking credit for, then they had to be working with Jackie. Which means Jackie has probably already told the police that. If we go to the cops, this will prove it, and then Jackie won't be the only one caught in the act."
"I don't know, Spence," Aria murmured as she wiped the tears from her eyes.
"You don't have to know," Spencer told her. "Just let us deal with it. You focus on getting better. Get some more sleep."
"Spence-"
Spencer shook her head at Aria again. "Seriously, Aria, just go to sleep. It'll all be taken care of."
Aria stared at Spencer nervously for a few moments before she finally caved. There wasn't much she could do from a hospital bed as it was.
Spencer waited until Aria had fallen back to sleep before she got up and walked out of the room. She was headed towards the elevators when she bumped right into Adriana.
"Sorry!" Adriana said. "I wasn't watching where I was going." She paused, realizing she knew the girl standing in front of her. "Wait, you're Aria's friend right? Spencer?"
Spencer nodded, tucking her phone into her pocket. "I just came from her room. She's sleeping again." Adriana nodded. She brushed her arms up and down her body. "Ezra's awake. He's asking questions, and he was hoping Aria was awake." Spencer looked back down the hall behind her, contemplating going back to Aria's room. On one hand, she knew that Aria would really want to see Ezra if she knew he was awake, but on the opposite hand, she knew that Aria was also pretty upset about the accident and blaming herself for it. She knew that it probably wasn't the best environment for Aria to go into, when both Adriana and Serena were going to be there.
"She's really not having the best day," Spencer said finally. "Everything that's happened is eating at her, and she feels like the accident is her fault because of Jackie. Don't tell Ezra that, though." Adriana shook her head, running a hand through her hair. "The only person whose fault it is, is Jackie's. I can't believe my brother ever dated that psycho."
Spencer laughed. "Hey, just be glad he didn't actually marry or breed with her."
Adriana's eyes grew wide and she shuddered at the thought. She feigned vomit noises and chuckled.
"I think if he'd done that, I would've disowned him." Adriana laughed.
-
Its now a quarter past
Too late, nothing new
-
Aria awoke after the sun had gone down to find her room empty. She wasn't feeling much better physically or emotionally, but the last thing she wanted was to be alone. She grabbed her phone from the over-bed table and tapped the screen. Three new text messages popped up. Two were from Hanna and Emily asking her to text them when she was up for company. The other was from her parents letting her know that they'd been by while she was asleep, and that Ella would be by in the morning.
She pushed herself up off the bed and walked over to the table across the room and dug through the bag of clothes. She pulled out a fresh pair of grey sweatpants and a grey t-shirt with a silver peace sign on it. She walked over to the bathroom connected to the room and used the facilities, and changed while she was in there.
She walked back out a few minutes later and tossed the dirty clothes onto the table. She was more than grateful that she wasn't attached to an IV pole. She grabbed Ezra's Hollis sweater from where it was hanging on one of the chairs from the day before and pulled it on before she walked over to the bed and grabbed her phone. She tucked it into the pocket of the sweater and then walked over to the door and walked out of her room.
She moved slowly as she headed towards the elevators. Her head was still sore as hell, but she knew enough about concussions to know that if she didn't move too fast and didn't stress her brain, that it helped at least mildly.
Once she reached them, she was fortunate to catch one that someone was just stepping out of. She slid between the doors and then punched the button for the next floor up and leaned against the wall as she waited for it to move. A few moments later, the floor shifted beneath her as the elevator moved in the shaft, and then parked after a few seconds in front of a set of doors in the ICU.
Aria stood up straight and stepped out of the elevator once the doors opened. She crossed her arms loosely across her body as she walked through the halls and passed by the nurses station, heading towards Ezra's room. His room was one hall down and a turn to the left. As she approached the door, she was slightly surprised to not hear any chatter.
She walked up to the door and turned the handle gingerly; she had stitches in both her palms and on the backs of her hands. She pushed the door open and peered her head into the room. Except for Ezra, the room appeared to be empty.
She exhaled a soft sigh and then walked across the room and sat down in the chair next to him. There was a TV mounted up on one of the walls that was playing one of the late shows on one of the public broadcast channels. She looked from it back down to Ezra and rested her right hand over his, gently curling her fingers around the thick bandaging of the temporary cast and brushed her thumb against his.
Ezra groaned and his eyes fluttered as he slowly lifted his head up off his shoulder. It took a moment for his vision to settle. "Thought you were…" His brow furrowed as he realized it was Aria and not Adriana. "Aria."
Before she could stop herself, tears filled her eyes and she squeezed his hand in hers. "You're awake," she cried.
"I'm awake," he repeated back to her. He looked down at her hand curled in his hand and saw the bandaging. He looked back up her, and surveyed the series of cuts and bruises covering her face and neck that he could see. It was like when she had been beat up at school, but ten times worse. He looked up into her eyes and saw the tears on her face. "Come up here."
"I don't want to hurt you," she murmured.
"You're not going to hurt me," he said gruffly. His voice was raw and barely above a whisper.
Aria was tentative to move, but Ezra kept his eyes on her, insisting. After a few moments, she pushed up from her seat and sat down on the edge of the bed. Ezra gently pulled her down against him, running his fingers up and down against Aria's bicep. It took a few seconds, but she eventually settled into the space next to him and buried her face in his shoulder as she finally let her emotions go. It made her head hurt like hell, but it also felt good to let everything out that she'd kept bottled up for two days.
Ezra tilted his head to the side and kissed her forehead, murmuring over and over to her that it was alright.
After a while, when the throbbing in her head outweighed the weight in her chest, Aria calmed and simply rested next to Ezra, though she kept a tight grip on the t-shirt he'd been allowed to put on. The chest tube down and out of his shirt and connected to one of the many poles off to the left side of the bed.
"Do you remember what happened?" Ezra asked when he was sure Aria was calm enough. "The car accident, I mean."
"Bits and pieces," Aria replied. "My mom told me the rest." She tilted her head up to look at him. "Why. You don't?"
Ezra shook his head. "I can't remember anything after leaving Hollis. I don't really remember much out of the last two days either. Everything felt like one big dream. Can you tell me what you remember?"
"The breaks wouldn't work," she said as she stared down at the end of the bed. "You ran a red light, and someone hit us. The car rolled and then spun and hit a tree or something."
Ezra nodded. "What else?" "I couldn't get my seatbelt," Aria said. "I thought it was stuck or something, because it wouldn't pull out. You took yours off to try and get it. That's when we ran the light. You tried to pin me back against my seat to protect me, and that's how your wrist got broken."
Ezra listened to what she said with his eyes closed, trying to desperately to recall anything. The best he got were flashes of memory. A flash of slamming into Aria as the car rolled. Of being thrown up against the steering wheel and thrown back in his seat. Of tasting blood in his mouth.
"If I had known that this was going to happen-" Ezra shook his head before Aria could even finish her sentence. "Don't go there. You are not to blame for this. Adriana said Jackie was arrested for stripping the breaks. And that doesn't make this your fault. It's pretty clear that this would've happened, regardless of why I was with, if it wasn't her. You can't let that be a reason you blame yourself."
"But if I had-" "No," Ezra insisted. "Nothing you could've done could have prevented this. Nothing you did caused this. Jackie decided to make the choices she made, and it's her fault that these things happened. You are not at all to blame for this accident, alright?"
Aria was reluctant to agree, but she knew Ezra wouldn't drop the subject unless she said yes, and so she did. Even so, she didn't entirely believe in it. As much as she hated Jackie and believed that the accident was at least partially her fault, Aria also knew that it could've been avoided if she had done what Jackie had told her to do when she had told Jackie to leave town after find out about her plagiarizing her paper. If she had done that, none of what had happened in the last six weeks would've happened at all. She'd still be living at home. Ezra would still be living in his old apartment. She wouldn't have such a screwed up relationship with her parents.
"What's going to happen with your court date," Ezra asked after a while.
Aria shrugged, tracing small circles on his chest. "My mom spoke to my lawyer and told him what happened. I guess she told him that if I still wanted to pursue emancipation after I'm released that I'd call him."
"Is that something you want to do?"
Aria was surprised by Ezra's question. Even though her mother had been around in the last few days, she hadn't actually seen or spoken to her father yet, and she was very aware that being on speaking terms and living together were two completely different things. She didn't want to get ahead of herself by making rash decisions.
"I don't really know how to answer that," she said finally.
Ezra tilted his head back so that he could see her, and Aria looked up at him. He rested his fingers on the top of her head, gently brushing his fingers down the back of her hair in a repeated motion.
"I understand that you were pretty sure of what you were going to do on Monday, but you can't tell me that this doesn't change things at least a little," Ezra said. "Your parents have been here actually showing that they care." "So?" Aria said.
"So if my father showed up here and had changed how he used to be and was acting like he cared, I can't promise that I wouldn't want to explore that."
"So you think I should give my parents a chance?" Aria asked
"I'm not sure what I'm saying," Ezra said. "But what I know is that my mom and my sister are the two most important people in my life besides you, and if it were me in your position, I'd hope that you would be here trying to convince me to at least think about everything before I made that jump."
Aria sighed and started to push up off the bed. Ezra reached his hand up to her shoulder and wrapped his fingers as tightly as he could around her shoulder. Given that his wrist was broken, he grip was barely that of a baby's.
"Hey," he murmured.
"No," Aria argued, brushing his hand off her shoulder. "I can't take this constant back and forth anymore. I'm sick of never knowing what's coming next, and things constantly going up and down. I just want things to be final for once."
"Alright," Ezra said, surrendering. "I just…" He sighed and shook his head. "Do you want to walk away from your parents knowing that there might have been a chance for you to try and fix things? Can you walk away with that 'what if' hanging on your conscience?"
Aria looked back at him for a moment and then down at the blanket covering them.
"Look, I'm not pushing you out of the apartment or telling you that you're wrong for wanting to go forward with everything. If anything, it makes you more independent, but I don't want to see you regret making a choice that might be able to be fixed with time. After all you've been put through by your parents, maybe this is the right thing."
Aria kept her vision on the blanket as she picked at the dirt under her nails. There were a lot of questions he left her with, but she was too afraid to ask most of them.
"And," Ezra added, moving his hand back up to her shoulder. "I'm still going to be here when you make that choice. I'm not going anywhere."
Aria looked back at him. "Promise?"
Ezra nodded. "Now would you come back down here?"
She exhaled loudly and shifted back down on the bed and rested her head on Ezra's shoulder. She wrapped her left arm under Ezra's shoulder and curled her fingers around it, and rested her other arm across his stomach.
"How'd we get here?" Aria murmured.
"How do you mean?"
"I mean, how did we go from being so sure that telling my parents was the right thing to do and wanting to be honest about everything, to laying in a hospital bed because people don't want us together? Why does it have to matter so much who I'm in love with if it's hurting anyone?"
Ezra pressed his lips to her forehead. "I honestly don't know."
Aria shifted slightly, turning closer into Ezra. She rested her hand over his where it was lying on her hip and closed her eyes. She hated how every time she felt like she was close to a decision, someone or something decided it wasn't good enough and decided to throw a curve ball in to screw things up. It made her ache that she couldn't remember the last time things had just felt simple with Ezra. That she couldn't remember the last time they weren't running away from something just to get a little peace. Sure, she had some really great and amazing memories from the last few weeks that she never wanted to lose, but they had also been the hardest weeks of her life. She'd been bullied, beaten up, and nearly killed all because people didn't like the choices she was making.
"Things are going to get better right?" She knew it was a stupid question, but she honestly needed to know the answer, and whatever it was, if he really believed it.
"Yes." He was firm in his answer, and felt no need to sugar coat it. He moved his left hand over her hand resting on his stomach and laced his fingers between hers. "Just close your eyes and try to sleep. It'll be better in the morning."
Aria laughed, or at least she tried to. The laugh turned into a sob halfway through, and she struggled to keep from falling apart again. "Unless we're going to wake up in our bed tomorrow and you're going to tell me the last few days have been a dream, I highly doubt that."
"Maybe if you close your eyes and wish real hard," Ezra said. He laughed and then groaned, wincing at the wave of pain that rushed through his body.
"I just don't ever want to lose you," Aria admitted.
"You're not going to."
