Chapter 54
It took Bellamy nearly an hour to pull himself together. His mom insisted on taking him somewhere to get some food, somewhere outside of the hospital, and he begrudgingly went along with it. He hated being away from Clarke's side for so long, but he knew her mom and stepdad needed some time with her. Besides, when his mom said that he needed to eat something, she was right. He hadn't thought he was hungry, but he ended up eating a heaping Subway sandwich in record time and feeling like he still had room for more.
She mentioned that he might want to go home for a while and get some rest tonight, but that was too much. If Clarke woke up and he wasn't at the hospital with her, he'd feel like crap. Even more like crap than he already did. So he returned to the hospital, and his mom joined his crew of friends while he made the trek down the halls to Clarke's room.
He knocked on the door lightly, then opened it slowly, hoping he wasn't disrupting Abby and Marcus. Abby was sitting in the chair he'd sat in all night last night, holding Clarke's hand just as he had. Marcus was standing by the window, looking down at his cell phone, mumbling something.
"Hi, Bellamy," Abby said.
"Hey." He shut the door, about to ask if there had been any change, when Marcus all of a sudden grumbled, "Son of a bitch."
"What?" Abby asked him.
"Oh, one of my top critics is at it again," he explained. "That liberal writer who likes to publish all those lies about me found out Clarke was in an accident. Apparently he posted an article about it, claiming she was intoxicated, and now he's sharing it all over social media."
Abby groaned. "Honestly . . ."
"That's bullshit," Bellamy snapped. Clarke hadn't been drunk when she'd been driving. She wasn't an idiot. "Why the hell would anyone do that?"
"Because this guy doesn't like me, Bellamy, doesn't like having me as a senator." Marcus sighed heavily, shaking his head. "He'll use anything he can to try to make me look bad, even a family tragedy."
"You need to set the record straight," Abby told him firmly. "I don't want people out there thinking my daughter would be so irresponsible."
"I'll make a statement," Marcus said, making his way over to her. He bent and pressed a kissed to the top of her head, assuring her, "I'll take care of this." He clapped Bellamy on the shoulder and walked out of the room, sounding determined and sure of himself, even though his shoulders were slumped and he looked discouraged.
"God," Abby grunted. "Whatever happened to basic human decency?"
Bellamy pulled a chair around to the other side of the bed and took a seat, picking up Clarke's free hand in his own. Every time he touched her, he worried she'd feel cold. But her body temperature was normal. Her breathing was steady and she no longer had a tube up her nose. Even her swollen right eye was looking less swollen and bruised than it had last night. Now, it just looked like she'd run into a door or something. She didn't look bad, but she didn't look like herself, either, and that would never not be alarming.
Abby sniffed back tears, wiping underneath her nose with the back of her hand, and said to Bellamy, "You know, I'm a doctor. I work with patients every day, some who get better and some who don't. I'm calm and professional with them; I don't get worked up. So you'd think I would be better at this, but . . ." She shook her head. "Not when it's my own family."
Bellamy grazed his thumb over the back of Clarke's knuckles, nodding in understanding. "She's your daughter," he said. It made sense that she wouldn't be feeling calm and professional right now.
"She is," Abby said, reaching up to stroke Clarke's hair and the side of her face. "There's nothing worse than not knowing if your child's gonna be okay."
Warily, Bellamy looked at Clarke's midsection, hidden right now by a sheet and a thin blanket. "I'll bet," he said, wondering if a part of him was still in there or if it was just . . . gone.
Since he didn't look at Abby, he didn't see her looking at him. But he felt it, an intense gaze, a curious one. He averted his eyes from Clarke's stomach and just stared down at her pale hand in his darker one. He wasn't about to tell Abby that she might or might not be a grandmother within the next nine months. That conversation, whenever it happened, was one Clarke should have with her. No one else.
If she suspected anything, she didn't say anything, and for that, he was relieved. In fact, she changed the subject completely when she asked, "How was your sister's wedding?"
"Uh . . ." Eventful, he thought. But he settled for a vague, "Good," instead. It had been good. It was everything afterwards that had been a train wreck.
"I think Clarke was excited to be a bridesmaid," Abby said. "She really adores . . . everyone out there. I should really go meet them."
"Yeah, they . . . they adore her, too," he told her. "Octavia asked her to be the baby's godmother, actually."
"Really?" Abby smiled first at him, then at Clarke. "That's amazing," she said. "And you'll be the godfather, I assume?"
He nodded. "Yep." Octavia and Lincoln had wanted them to do that together. But even prior to the accident, he'd screwed that idea up.
"That's a big responsibility," Abby noted. "But I'm sure you two are perfect for the job."
He gulped as all the guilt crept back in. Had it ever really left? Probably not.
"It's serious, isn't it?" Abby said. "You and her."
Screw friends with benefits, he thought, knowing it hadn't been just that for a long, long time. It was serious in every sense of the word. "Yeah," he replied.
"You love her, right?" Abby asked, a hopeful look on her face.
God, did he ever. More than she knew. "Yes," he said.
"And she loves you," Abby told him. "She's crazy about you. I've never seen her so happy before."
He looked down again, ashamed. That may have been true, but Abby had probably also never seen her so sad, so devastated before. And he'd been responsible for that, too.
"When she wakes up," Abby said shakily, "do you think you might . . . marry her?"
His head snapped up, and he probably looked more alarmed than he'd intended to. If there was ever any doubt that Clarke hadn't told her mom about what had gone down between them on Saturday, this conversation pretty much squashed it. Abby was completely clueless to the fact that he'd broken her daughter's heart.
"You've been together for a while," she went on. "I don't mean to sound pushy, but . . . do you think you might?"
She wasn't being pushy. Just hopeful. She had hope that her daughter would wake up from this, hope that she'd have a happy, perfect life ahead of her when she did. He didn't want to crush those hopes by any means, but . . . he didn't want to lie to her, either. "I don't know," he mumbled in response.
"You don't know?" She pouted a bit disappointedly, but then she quickly added, "That's okay. You're both young. You don't have to rush anything."
"Abby . . ." Shit, he felt horrible for having to do this, but letting her sit there believing that he and Clarke were still together was practically the same thing as lying to her. "Clarke and I broke up," he confessed quietly without making eye contact.
At first, Abby didn't say anything. But after a few seconds came this shocked, "What?" She huffed incredulously and asked, "When? I just talked to her before the accident, and she didn't say anything."
"It was Saturday," he told her. "After the wedding."
"Saturday?" she echoed. "But . . . why? What happened?"
Too much to go into, he thought, so he just shrugged.
"What happened, Bellamy?" she demanded, her voice rising in volume as she rose from her chair in anger. "You were supposed to take care of her. You promised me you'd take care of her. I trusted you with my daughter."
"I know." It wasn't fun feeling like he'd let her down.
"Then why would you-"
"Look," he cut in, shooting to his feet. He didn't want to argue with her with an unconscious Clarke lying in between them, so he lowered his voice, willing himself to remain calm. "There's a lot of stuff that I can't explain. But I do love your daughter. I wanna take care of her."
She glared at him, shaking her head. "But you didn't."
Yeah. He knew that.
Any of Abby's efforts to remain calm fell by the wayside when she launched in on him, almost accusatorily. "Who knows?" she said. "Maybe if you'd been with her, this whole accident never would have happened. Maybe she'd be awake and okay right now if you just hadn't-"
"I'm sorry," he cut in, tearful again. Her mind was spinning, he was sure, and she was reeling from this revelation for the first time. But he'd had plenty of time to think about it. He'd had plenty of time to dwell on the fact that, if he and Clarke were still together, she likely would have never gotten in that car and driven over to see him. She probably would have been safe and sound at home, waiting for him to get back from work so she could tell him then. So she could tell him about the baby. A baby Abby still didn't even know existed. A baby he wasn't even sure existed anymore.
"Sorry isn't good enough," Abby growled, rubbing her forehead, shaking her head in what was either utter contempt or utter disappointment. Right now, he couldn't tell the difference. "Just leave," she told him. "Please."
He felt his heart sink. Not that he'd expected a good reaction, but this was the same woman who, twelve hours ago, had begged him not to leave her daughter's side. And now she didn't want him anywhere near her.
God, he'd screwed things up so much.
Even though he'd been the one there with Clarke virtually this whole time, he didn't feel like he could argue with her mother. So he lowered his head and sulked out of the room, resigned to not being there if—when—Clarke woke up now. If she ever did open her eyes, she'd see her mom and her stepdad and maybe Raven or somebody else there. But not him. He didn't deserve to be the person who pulled her out of this.
He felt . . . completely lost when he walked out of that room. If he couldn't sit in there with Clarke, then what was he supposed to do? Just sit out with his friends and his sister and his mom, pretending like this wasn't the most terrified he'd ever been in his entire life? He hated feeling so fucking useless.
He saw Dr. Tsing's long dark hair retreating down the hall, so he called out to her. "Dr. Tsing!"
She turned around as he raced to catch up with her. "Yes?"
"Are you still optimistic?" he asked her.
"About . . . about Clarke?" she stuttered unsurely.
"Yes." He needed an honest answer. "Because it's been a day now, and she still hasn't woken up, so are you still optimistic she will?"
Dr. Tsing stared at him sympathetically for a moment, and he braced himself to hear something horrible, like maybe she wasn't as optimistic as she had been last night, or maybe something just didn't seem right. But instead, she affirmed, "I am."
His mouth trembled as he tried to find that same kind of optimism for himself. He wasn't giving up on Clarke, but . . . he was just so used to dealing with tragedy that it almost made it hard to be hopeful.
"I know you're worried," she said, "and would I like for her to wake up right now? Yes, of course I would. But Bellamy, it's not uncommon for patients to be unconscious for several days after trauma. I know you want her to open her eyes, and I really think she will. We just have to give her time."
How much time? he wanted to know. It would have been helpful to have an exact number of days. Right now, everything was so vague, so wait-and-see, and it had every single one of his nerves fried.
Dr. Tsing turned to walk away again, but she stopped abruptly when he asked, "What about the baby? Are you optimistic about that, too?"
Slowly, she turned back around, and she wasn't so quickly to assure him this time. "I have all the hope in the world," she said.
Hope was different than optimism, though, more desperate. Even his tired mind could register the deliberateness of that word choice.
"I'm not gonna lie to you, Bellamy," she said. "Is there a risk? Yes, a significant one. The human body has ways of protecting a child, but the risk of infant mortality is always highest early on in the pregnancy."
And this was definitely early. Of that much, Bellamy was certain. Clarke wouldn't have withheld something like this from him for long. Plus, she didn't even look pregnant.
And maybe she wasn't anymore.
"I wish I could give you a definitive answer," she said, "but I can't."
He nodded, reluctantly accepting that fact. He was just going to have to live with not knowing. For a little while longer, at least. The most important thing right now was getting Clarke back. Beyond that . . . he could only hope.
...
Bellamy fell asleep that night. It must have been pure exhaustion, because his intention had been to stay awake. He woke up in the morning to a nudge on his shoulder from his sister. "Hey, I have to go home for a while," she said softly. "Mom and Lincoln are gonna take me."
"You okay?" he asked her.
"Yeah. Just . . . cramped up and uncomfortable," she said, holding her back. "I'll come back later, though."
He nodded, appreciative of how much she'd been there for him. This couldn't be easy on her. At eight months pregnant, she should have been spending all her time at home, relaxing, taking it easy. Yet here she was. "Just go take care of yourself," he told her. That was the most important thing.
After Octavia left, his other friends gradually began to do the same. Each one promised they'd be back, but . . . he understood. There was only so much waiting a person could do. Emori had to go explain to her boss, in person, why she might not be coming in to work this week. Harper had to go to work or she'd be fired. Jackson actually went to work right there in that hospital, and everyone else . . . it seemed like everyone else just needed a change of scenery for a couple hours, whether it was going home and taking a shower, taking a nap, or getting some actual food that hadn't come from a vending machine or a hospital cafeteria.
They'd be back tonight, Bellamy was sure. And as each one of them left, they offered to take him with them. But he declined and told them he was fine there.
The waiting room felt strangely empty as he sat there alone for a couple of hours. He found things to do, like emailing his professor to explain why he wasn't in class and why he was probably going to miss the quiz on Friday. He texted his clients and explained to them why he hadn't shown up to work on all the things they'd hired him to work on. Everyone was really understanding, and anyone who knew Clarke or who had even just seen her around the neighborhood wished her a speedy recovery.
Around noon, his stomach started to rumble, and as if on cue, somebody showed up with a burger and fries from the local burger joint in hand. But it wasn't the somebody he expected. It was Lincoln.
"Thanks," Bellamy said when Lincoln dropped the lunch on his lap. "Where's O?"
"She's resting," Lincoln replied. "Your mom's still with her. But she wanted me to come back and check on you. She doesn't want you to be alone."
"Oh." So she'd sent him? The only guy in that waiting room who he wasn't super close to? Well . . . it was something, he supposed. And honestly, Lincoln was his brother-in-law now, so . . . maybe they'd get close somehow or another.
"You should eat," Lincoln suggested. "I made myself sick when I was here with my mom, because I didn't eat anything, didn't get enough sleep."
Bellamy started to reach into the sack, then paused. "Your mom?" he echoed.
"Yeah." Lincoln looked down at his lap sadly, then over at Bellamy. "She died when I was seventeen."
Bellamy frowned, feeling like an idiot for not knowing that. "Sorry," he said. Octavia had probably mentioned it at some point, but he'd always been too busy getting pissed at Lincoln to get to know him at all.
"It was a long time ago," Lincoln said.
"What happened?"
Even though it was a long time ago, the memories were clearly still fresh, because Lincoln's eyes glazed over for a second. "Car accident," he finally replied.
Just like Roma, Bellamy thought morosely. Just like Clarke.
"So you waited for her to wake up?" Bellamy asked him. That's how he'd made it sound.
"For a few days," Lincoln said. "We knew it wasn't . . ." He shuddered, looking down at his lap. "We knew it wasn't gonna end well," he said. "The doctors told us there was nothing they could do. She held on a lot longer than we thought she would. And we got to say goodbye, at least."
At least, Bellamy thought. What was the last thing he'd ever said to Clarke? He couldn't even remember. Just like he couldn't remember the last thing he'd said to Roma or to Gina.
"I wasn't close with her," Lincoln went on. "Not like you and Octavia are with your mom."
"But still . . ." Bellamy said. "She was your mother."
"Yeah." Lincoln smiled sadly, but at least he could look back on his memories of her without becoming an emotional mess. If the worst happened and Clarke never recovered from this, Bellamy didn't think he'd ever recover, either. He remembered depression well, remembered having to deal with it in therapy following Roma's death. But he'd managed to overcome it then. Unfortunately, he didn't feel like he was strong enough to do that anymore.
"Clarke's mom kicked me out of the room," he revealed shamefully, setting the food Lincoln had brought him aside. "That's why I'm not in there. I told her we broke up and . . . now she doesn't want me there, I guess."
Lincoln frowned, shaking his head. "No," he said, "That's exactly where you need to be."
"You think?" Bellamy asked him.
"Yes." Lincoln sighed heavily before telling Bellamy, "Look, I don't know if Clarke can hear anything any of us has said to her. And I'm sure her mother just feels protective and wants to be there for her when she wakes up. But Bellamy . . . if there's one voice in the world she'll hear above all the others, it's yours. Without a doubt."
Is it? Bellamy wondered. Even after everything he'd said to her, even after he'd hurt her so bad . . . was that still true? Dr. Tsing seemed to think so. His friends thought so. Lincoln wasn't a man of many words, but he meant what he said, so . . . he definitely thought so.
That didn't mean it was true, though.
Bellamy ate all the food Lincoln had brought him, then went wandering. He just needed to stretch out his legs and arms and try to clear his muddled head. So he walked all over that hospital, getting turned around on more than one occasion. It wasn't his plan to walk over to the hospital nursery, but somehow, he just ended up there. He peeked in at half a dozen newborn babies, three boys and three girls exactly. There were two sets of parents standing outside the window, looking in at them with big, adoring smiles on their faces.
Octavia and Lincoln would have a baby boy in here soon. A baby boy with the middle name of Bellamy.
If everything went perfectly, he and Clarke would have one, too. Maybe a boy, in which case, Jake was really the only name coming to mind. After her father, of course. And if it was a girl . . . well, if it was a girl, he had a few names in mind.
"Which one's yours?" the man standing next to him asked.
"Oh, uh . . ." He must have looked like a dazed idiot, and the man next to him gave him a confused look when he didn't answer right away. "None of them," he finally said. All the babies' cribs had nametags, so he saw a Landon down there and a Grant and an Andrew. For the girls, there was an Avery and an Emily and . . . who the hell had named their kid Cleobella? As someone with an unusual name himself, he sympathized.
But there wasn't one little person down there who was a part of him and Clarke. That little person—or at least the beginning of that person—wasn't something he could see yet. But if it still existed, it existed within Clarke. And the person sitting by her bedside right now didn't know that.
Maybe Lincoln was right and Clarke was more likely to hear his voice than anyone else's. But even if he wasn't . . . maybe their child somehow could. If it was still in there, then maybe . . .
He marched back down the hall in what he thought was the right direction, but he'd walked around that hospital so much that it took him a good five minutes to find his way back to Clarke's room. He didn't hesitate to open the door and walk back inside. Abby looked surprised to see him again, but Marcus just smiled, like he'd known he would be back.
"Alright, I don't mean to offend you," Bellamy started in, locking eyes with hers, "because I know you're dealin' with a lot of stress just like I am. But before you got here, I was the one sitting with Clarke all night. I'm the guy they called as her emergency contact, not you. You know why? Because there's no one else in the world who knows Clarke the way I do, who's as close to her as I am. So if she's gonna hear somebody's voice, it's gonna be mine. It doesn't matter whether we're together now or not. I love her more than anyone in the world, more than I've ever loved anybody before." He surprised himself with those words, but he kept going, because he could see Abby's expression changing into one that wasn't so upset with him anymore. "Please," he begged from the bottom of his heart. "I have to be with her."
Abby and Marcus exchanged a look, and Marcus didn't hesitate to get up from his chair. He walked past Bellamy, gave him a pat on the back, and told him he was a good man. It took Abby a bit longer, but eventually, she let go of her daughter's hand, got up, and motioned for Bellamy to take her seat. He did, hesitantly because . . . it wasn't like he was trying to take her place or something. It wasn't like she couldn't be in there, too. He just knew that he and Clarke . . . they needed to be together right now. They just needed to be together.
Abby didn't say anything, but she did bend down and give him a kiss on the cheek, much in the same way his own mother sometimes did. He felt the shift in her demeanor, a drastic one. She didn't resent him for storming back into that room and standing up to her; she respected him for it.
When she left and the door was firmly shut and it was just him and Clarke again, he pulled down the blankets to get a closer look at her flat stomach. He pressed his palm against it, with only the thin material of her hospital gown in the way, and even though he knew better than to expect to feel any kicks . . . he still imagined what it would be like. Someday.
"Hey, you," he said, bending down close, letting himself hope beyond the telling of it that he and this little baby could somehow . . . make a connection. "I'm your dad," he said, the enormity of the words finally sinking in. Whether that baby survived all of this or not . . . he was a dad. Again.
...
"Bellamy?"
Clarke? he thought overzealously. But it wasn't Clarke's voice waking him up; it was Octavia's.
Blinking his eyes open, he mentally swore at himself for falling asleep again. One of his hands was still resting on Clarke's stomach, so he quickly removed it and covered her back up with the blankets.
"Can I sit with you?" Octavia asked.
"Sure," he said, about to give her his chair when she pulled one up next to his.
"I see you reclaimed your spot," she noted.
"Yeah." It looked like the hospital staff had pulled a cot into the room, too, so clearly they knew he was staying there again tonight.
"Did you get some rest at home?" he asked her.
"I did," she said. "And Mom cleaned my kitchen."
"Hmm." Yeah, that sounded like their mom.
"She's gonna stay here tonight," Octavia told him, "but she has to go back to work tomorrow, so . . ."
He nodded, figuring as much. That was fine. He didn't expect everyone else's life to stop just because his had.
"But I'll still be here," she quickly assured him. "Everyone else came back, too. We all just wanna be here when Clarke . . . you know, when she wakes up."
"If she wakes up," he mumbled, feeling defeated by the whole thing again.
"Bellamy."
"I just . . ." He dragged his hand through his hair, wishing he could be as unwaveringly optimistic as Dr. Tsing was. "I go back and forth. One second, I'm full of hope she's gonna wake up, and the next, I'm so worried she won't."
"She will."
"But what if she doesn't?" No one seemed willing to talk to him about that, not even the doctors. It was like everyone thought he couldn't handle it or something, that it'd break him. And they were right. It probably would.
"Bellamy, I know what you're thinking, but this is not like before," Octavia said.
"Yes, it is," he insisted. "It's the exact same type of car accident that killed Roma."
"But Clarke's alive!" she pointed out emphatically. "She's not dead. You haven't lost her, Bellamy."
"Yeah, but if she doesn't wake up . . ." If Clarke never opened her eyes, it was virtually the same thing as being gone forever.
"You need to stop fearing the worst and start hoping for the best," Octavia advised. "Clarke is gonna wake up, and you're gonna tell her how much you love her, and the two of you are gonna live happily ever after."
The two of us? Bellamy thought, contemplating if it was completely far-fetched to hope that there might still be three. "She's pregnant," he blurted suddenly, wincing as he said the words.
"She's . . ." Octavia trailed off abruptly, her mouth slowly dropping open in shock as she looked at Clarke, glanced down at her stomach the way everyone would when they found out the big news.
For a second, Bellamy felt relieved that he'd finally managed to tell someone. And of course it had been Octavia. She deserved to know that, if miracles happened and all this worked out, she'd be an aunt. Her son would have a cousin.
"Oh my god," she gasped, smiling shakily at him. "Bellamy . . ."
"I didn't know," he admitted. "Not until I got here."
"Is it—is it okay then?" she sputtered nervously.
"I don't know." He looked down at his lap, wondering if any son or daughter of theirs would have blonde hair like her or dark hair like him. Or maybe some combination. Would it have her blue eyes or his brown ones? Her fair skin tone or his olive one?
What if he never got the chance to find out?
"Well, now I know for sure you're not gonna lose her," Octavia said confidently. "She's pregnant."
"So was Gina," he muttered, barely loud enough for her to hear him.
"Gina?" Octavia echoed. "Gina wasn't . . ." She let her sentence fade again as the harsh realization finally dawned on her. She clasped one hand over her agape mouth and gazed at him in utter disbelief. He could barely even look her in the eye, because he almost felt guilty for keeping it a secret for so long.
This wasn't exactly how he'd wanted to tell her about . . . that. But finally, he'd done it. Told his sister. Revealed the truth to someone besides Clarke Griffin. He'd just dropped two huge bombshells of information on her within the span of minutes, so he figured he'd leave out the part about it being all his fault that Clarke was in this hospital bed right now. Since she'd been coming over to see him, to tell him the news. If Clarke didn't recover, he'd confide that in her later. Maybe.
"Oh, Bellamy," she gasped in astonishment. "I didn't know."
"I never told anybody," he confessed. "Except Clarke."
"Oh . . ." Octavia bent forward, holding her head in her hands. "God."
"Gina wasn't very far along," he informed her. "Neither is Clarke, so . . ." He trailed off. Another unfortunate parallel between his past and his present. There was no need to enlighten Octavia about the risks of miscarriage in the first trimester. As an expectant mother, she knew. And even though he hadn't gotten online and looked anything up about pregnant women in car crashes, he knew, too, that even the pressure from a seatbelt could be deadly to a developing baby. Not to mention the airbags or the fact that Clarke had literally undergone a splenectomy.
There were so many variables working against that baby. And he knew it.
"Oh god, Bellamy, come here," Octavia said, leaning over to hug him. He wrapped his arms around her, glad he'd told her, because now at least he had someone to talk to. But he couldn't handle everyone knowing. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
"Don't tell anyone, okay?" he requested.
"I won't," she promised.
"Just don't tell 'em." If the worst happened, then there was no need for the people he cared about to mourn the loss of two lives. He could shoulder that burden for them. He'd done it before.
...
Octavia . . . was kind of a wreck after Bellamy told her everything. She and Gina had been close, practically like sisters, and finding out that she'd died while carrying a baby was kind of a lot for her to handle. Bellamy called Lincoln into the room, and when he saw his wife crying, he got worried. Octavia assured him that she was okay, but clearly she wasn't, so Bellamy told her she could tell him everything. Lincoln was her husband now. They shouldn't have secrets.
Bellamy swapped out with Raven and Niylah for a few minutes after that, because he needed something to eat again. Chips would be fine, he supposed. Maybe chips and some M&Ms. He was getting used to eating a whole bunch of crap.
He dug around in his pocket for loose change, afraid he'd have to go ask Miller for a couple bucks; but he heard Miller's voice as he approached the vending machine. He was talking about . . . Jackson?
"Yeah, I don't think I wanna waste any more time," he was saying. "I think I'm gonna ask him to marry me at some point this summer."
Bellamy stopped, hanging back, peering around the corner. Monty and Jasper and Roan were there, along with Murphy, who was hitting the side of the vending machine to dislodge something that was stuck.
"This whole thing kinda just . . . puts things in perspective," Miller said, and the other guys all nodded in agreement.
"I know what you mean," Murphy said, finally just inserting more quarter to get his candy out. "I never used to tell Emori I love her. Not because I don't, you know, but just because . . ." He shrugged as two Snickers bars dropped from their position. "I don't really say it."
"Yeah, but she knows," Monty assured him.
"But I'm gonna tell her," Murphy decided as he bent down to retrieve his purchases. "I'm gonna tell her every day now. She deserves to hear it."
Bellamy stayed concealed, watching as his friends all stood there solemnly, each one looking lost in their own thoughts. What had happened to Clarke seemed to have opened their eyes to just how special their significant others were to them. Murphy, especially, seemed profoundly affected by the whole thing, and Bellamy had a feeling Miller wasn't going to be the only one popping the question in the next few months.
Murphy and Emori. Miller and Jackson. Yeah, they'd get married soon enough. It all seemed sort of inevitable. Raven and Roan, Monty and Harper, Jasper and Maya, Niylah and Luna . . . they'd all probably tie the knot someday, too. And hell, Lincoln and Octavia already had.
So what about him and Clarke then? Where did that leave them?
He forgot about his hunger for the time being and turned, heading back to Clarke's hospital room. He felt . . . inspired, oddly enough. Overhearing his friends made him realize he was still holding something back. And he couldn't do that anymore.
There was something he had to tell her.
Raven and Niylah were playing music for Clarke off of Raven's phone when he walked into the room. Sounded a lot like the Spice Girls. Or Britney Spears. He really couldn't tell the difference.
"I heard sometimes music can . . . get people to wake up after this kind of thing," Raven said. "We all got drunk and danced to this song a few years ago."
"Well, Clarke tried to dance," Niylah amended.
"Tried," Raven agreed. She stopped the song and sighed. "Well, it was worth a shot."
"Yeah," Bellamy said. It was good of them to try. And he didn't want to kick them out or make them stop trying or anything, but . . . he needed a minute alone with his girl. Desperately.
"Do you want us to go?" Niylah asked.
He did. But he didn't know how to say that without sounding like a jackass.
"We'll go," Raven said. She and Niylah both gave his arm a supportive squeeze as they slid past him on their way out of the room.
He shut the door, wishing he could lock it, because he didn't want anyone to interrupt him. And he definitely didn't want anyone to walk in and overhear him. But it didn't lock, so a closed door was gonna have to do.
"Clarke," he said, walking towards her bed. "You gotta help me out here. Because I'm trying, but . . ." He pulled the chair close to the side of the bed and sat down, folding his hands over his mouth. "Dammit," he swore. Even now, this wasn't easy.
"I've tried talking to you; I've tried talking to the baby," he said. "We're having a baby, Clarke. But I guess you . . . probably already know that." He sniffed back tears, wanting to just be happy about that instead of being filled with dread and fear. He wanted to celebrate it with her. He wanted to watch her sketch what their child might look like. He wanted to talk through ideas for names. If she'd driven through that intersection just five seconds earlier, he would have been doing all those things.
"But nothing works," he bemoaned. "You haven't moved. You haven't said anything. And it's been two days now. Two days, Clarke." That was forty-eight hours. Forty-eight of the most stressful, anxious hours of his life.
He took her hand, holding it tightly between both of his, and kissed the back of it. "I'm so sorry," he apologized tearfully. "I know I screwed things up. I pushed you away. And I didn't mean to. 'cause you're the best thing that's happened to me in a long time. And I need you to know that." Even now, though . . . she probably wasn't hearing him. He hated that. He hated knowing that he should have said all of this sooner, back when she'd been able to hear it.
This wasn't what he needed to say, though. Not really. These weren't the words on the tip of his tongue. They were right there, but part of him wanted to wait just a little longer, to see if she'd wake up. And then he could tell her when she was listening.
But hadn't he already waited long enough?
"I love you, Clarke," he told her, his voice merely a hoarse whisper. "I love you so much." He gazed down at their hands, pulling the long-hidden words out of their confines, finally working up the courage to tell her what she both deserved and longed to hear. "I'm in love with you." His eyes fluttered back to hers, hoping beyond hope to see some movement. Here he was, finally pouring his heart out to the girl, and he wanted it to be enough. He wanted these words to be the words that brought her back to him. If there was anything that would, that could . . . wouldn't this be it?
"God, I'm so in love with you, Clarke," he said, the words spilling out like a waterfall now. "I love the things you say, the things you do." He touched her face with his free hand, stroking her cheek adoringly. "I love the way you think. The way you move." What he would have given to see even the most microscopic of movements out of her right now, or even to hear just one tiny sound. "I love everything about you, Clarke," he told her. "And I wanna be with you. I wanna be with you and—and raise this baby with you. If we still have one." He blinked rapidly as the tears fell out at the same rate his words now did. "I wanna spend my life with you, because you're my best friend and the love of my life and my family and . . . and if you don't wake up . . ." He squeezed his eyes shut, shaking his head stubbornly. "You gotta wake up, Clarke," he said pitifully. "Please."
He stopped and studied her face, holding his breath as he watched her. He paid close attention for any movement. Any movement whatsoever. Anything.
"Come on, please," he begged. This was pretty much the most powerful thing he'd ever said to her. If this didn't work, if it wasn't enough . . .
She didn't move. She didn't wake up.
No, he thought, feeling, in that moment, like all the hope was leaving him. He'd allowed himself to believe that this might work, but . . . loving Roma hadn't saved her. Loving Gina hadn't saved her or his child. Love couldn't fix this.
He felt it fully in that moment, the agony, the despair. He felt like she was truly gone, that even though her body was there, she was never really coming back to him. So he let go of her hand and got up, trudging over to the window, looking out on the familiar streets of Arkadia at night time with tears clouding his eyes. Three girls loved, three girls lost. Not one of them was coming back to him. Not one of them was ever . . .
"Bellamy?"
He spun around, thinking he was hearing things. Going crazy or something. But her mouth was open ever so slightly, and her eyelids were fluttering.
"Clarke?" He rushed to her side, swooping her hand up into his own again. "Can you hear me?"
She didn't answer, but her hand—her soft, beautiful hand—actually squeezed his a little bit. For the first time in days. And it felt amazing.
"Bell," she said again, and slowly, slowly but surely . . . she opened her eyes.
"I'm here," he told her, his heart leaping with joy as he smiled down at her. "I'm here, Princess."
The nickname didn't elicit the same response as it usually did, mostly because . . . she was still kind of out of it. Her eyes closed again for a few seconds, but then she turned her head to the side and opened them again. She looked right at him; their eyes actually met. And she was the most goddamn beautiful thing he'd ever seen.
"Water," she croaked out.
His ridiculously relieved and overjoyed mind barely registered the request. "Oh," he said, reaching for the glass on the bedside table. He'd drank some of it earlier himself, but there was still plenty left for her. "Here," he said, cupping one hand behind her head while he brought the rim of the glass up to her dry lips. She'd been getting fluid through a tube for two days straight now. No wonder she was thirsty.
She didn't drink much, but her voice wasn't as scratchy when she spoke again. "What happened to me?" she asked weakly.
"You got in an accident," he told her, keeping it simple. "But you're gonna be okay now." Not only had she just woken up, but she'd woken up saying his name. She knew him, remembered him. Hopefully that meant there wasn't any long-term damage.
"Am I . . . in the hospital?" she asked, squinting her eyes as she looked around the bright room.
"Yeah." It was probably a bit disorienting seeing so much of her stuff there in a room that clearly wasn't hers. "I gotta tell the doctors you woke up, okay?"
She nodded a little, as best she could. "Okay."
She woke up, his mind screamed in ecstasy as he walked towards the closed door. He wanted to go shout it from the rooftops that she'd actually woken up. But instead, he grabbed the first doctor he saw and told him as much, and that doctor instructed one of the nurses, "Go tell her parents."
"Can you get Dr. Tsing in here?" Bellamy asked him.
The doctor nodded. "I'll go find her."
"Thanks." He slipped back into the room, wanting to selfishly enjoy a few more moments alone with Clarke before they were invaded by doctors and nurses and before her parents came in. He sat down on the edge of the bed and bent down to kiss her forehead, murmuring thankfully against her skin, "You came back."
"Mmm," she purred in response. She still sounded tired.
A moment later, he heard an eruption of happy cries and shouts coming from the waiting room, and he knew everyone out there had just heard the good news. He wasn't sure if Clarke heard it, too, or not. He wasn't sure if she'd heard anything he'd said at her bedside, either. But it didn't matter. She was awake now.
She was alive.
