Open
Arms—part 4:
This
is the next part…it's kinda short, but very important. The next part will be
the last.
When Hank was dictating the address of the call to Val, Tyler, and Jaime in the back of the ambulance, Jaime's heart skipped a beat upon hearing it. "Wait, number 137?" He called.
"Right." Hank returned.
His face turned white as a sheet,
and Val, worried, questioned.
"What is it? You look like you've
seen a ghost." She proclaimed.
He gripped the seat with all his
strength and then took a deep breath and let his grasp go weak. He watched out
the front window as they made a turn and the cars peeled away from their
vehicle like the skin from a banana. No. This couldn't be happening. This didn't
happen to him, this didn't happen, period. "It's Brianne. That's Brianne's
house."
Alex gave them the rest of the shift
off to stay with Brianne at the hospital. He had others who could do the same
things they could, and sometimes, just sometimes, he could feel some
compassion.
Val sat on the light blue couch in
the waiting room next to Tyler. Her feet rested straight in front of her on the
cheap, grained carpet and occasionally she stretched them to tap the low,
wooden coffee table in front of her, which held old sugar and bad drinks.
Tyler's hand rubbed hers and held it tight clasp, a warm, caring tight clasp.
She moved her fingers along his, in turn, and sighed, a weight resting on her
shoulders. She had known Brianne as long as Caitie had known her, and although
she never was a very good friend of hers, just the though that she wasn't doing
well laid over her like a dark cloud.
"Are you all right?" He asked
seriously, propping his other arm on the pillow at the end of the couch.
She managed a very weak smile. "Do I
look all right?"
He returned the faded smirk and
nodded understandingly, not probing her anymore, but she continued. "I just
can't believe she did this…I've known her and Caitie for the longest time…I
just don't believe it."
"And you don't know why she would
have done this." He said and she gently lifted her head as if in a nod. "I
know."
Jaime, on the couch across from her,
lowered his chin to look at the ground just as Tyler uttered those words. Val
gave him a sympathetic look but he just shook his head and ignored it. At
times, he would turn and sit back against the cushion behind him, but before he
had really stayed in that position, he jolted forward again and ran his hands
over his legs, sighing.
After a few more moments of a
resounding silence, Val sat up, thinking that Jaime needed some time alone. She
wanted to be alone with Tyler, as well. "Would you come with me to get
something to eat?" She inquired in a whisper, "Please?"
He nodded, knowing exactly what she
was thinking, and got up with her to wander down the hallway.
Val kept her head low and watched her feet move along the floor like shadows. The darkness outside the window caught the corner of her eye and it was so dreary that she almost felt it surround her.
Tyler broke the silence.
"Are you sure you're okay?" He asked quietly.
They stopped in the hallway and she nodded. "I think so. I was just thinking…about the past few days."
The two of them continued down the corridor watching others scurry by. Val wondered for a moment how their lives were going—they must have been better than hers. But, hurriedly, she took the thought back. Maybe someone else was losing her best friend, or maybe the man on the other side of the hallway had been slowly suffering the loss of his wife…or the two kids crying their mother or father…comparatively she wasn't all that bad off. She still had great friends, a guy who loved her, and her father had survived a heart attack. She was lucky. The thought hit her like a thousand knives.
"You know." She started as Tyler stuffed three quarters in the candy machine and out fell a Snickers bar. "I've been pretty stupid lately."
"How so?" He shoved in another three quarters and got a Snickers bar for her.
"I guess…" The words escaped her momentarily. "That I've been so caught up in the small stuff that I forgot what was really important to me. I mean, I thought I was going to die because I got a C-."
"Well, it seems like those things are really important until life catches up with us." They reached the waiting room without either of them saying anything more, Val contemplating what Tyler had said.
Jaime still sat sprawled on the couch, a dead look on his face. They sat down without a word to him and before even a few minutes had passed, Val spotted Caitie walking slowly into the waiting room. She completely ignored Jaime and went to sit on the chair next to Val, Jaime turning his face away, as well. Val gave a sideways glance to Tyler, who just shrugged.
Tears had formed in Caitie's eyes, running the makeup she was wearing, as she uttered. "I tried to stop her. I tried, but she just wouldn't listen."
Val reached over and hugged her best friend tightly. "You did what you could."
Jaime, apparently troubled by Caitie's presence stood up and muttered something inaudible, for he had seen the doctor walking towards them long before the others. He met the man as Val and Caitie parted and exchanged a few words. While he was talking, his face fell farther than it had when he had found out the news in the ambulance. He nodded slightly and turned back to his friends, shaking his head.
"She didn't make it." Jaime whispered. He saw Caitie start to stand up but she held herself back, the water rolling down her cheeks now in a real flow. "She passed away a few minutes ago."
This time, Caitie rose without a word, thought, or gesture and ran out of the waiting room and down the hallway, out the door into the night's darkness, and Jaime couldn't help but follow her, whatever the consequences might end up being.