Lose the Road

By – TempestRaces

Chapter 6 – Somewhere alone in the Bitterness

"Another soldier says he's not afraid to die. I am scared. I'm so scared."

Jesse looked up at her earnestly. "I know you hate him. And I know he hurt you beyond hurt. And I know I have no right to ask it from you. But they won't tell me anything and I really need to know. Will you go check on Vince, find out what's wrong with him?"

Tempest was very glad she was sitting on the bed for that one. Otherwise she would have melted onto the floor in a weak little puddle. "Excuse me? What do you mean check on Vince? He bailed with the rest of them."

"No he didn't. I heard the nurses talking. He was brought in here. Something went wrong. I told you."

"You didn't tell me the something ended Vince up in the hospital." She closed her eyes, tipped her head back. This could not be happening to her. He was supposed to be gone with his friends. It was supposed to be ok for her to keep hating him. He was not supposed to be in the ICU hurt. Her eyes opened again when she felt Jesse's hand on her cheek.

"I know what he did to you. Leon told me. Don't be mad at Le, he was right. I needed to know. But now he's hurt and it must be pretty bad and I can't deal with it if I don't know just what's wrong with him. And you're the only one who can find out, and you're the only one I trust to tell me the truth once you know. He's the only piece of my life I have left."

"Jesse," she moaned. "It was nearly the end of me to come here and find you like this. I only came because I was sure he was gone with the others. I love you more than pretty much anyone else in the world, and if I'd known he was still here I still can't promise you I would have came down here. Finding out he's still here on top of what's going on with you," she sighed, tipping her head back and fighting tears. "I don't know how much more I can take."

"I'm tired now anyway T. Peek in on V and go home. Get a good night's sleep. Everything will look better in the morning."

How could she deny Jesse this? She couldn't. You just have to see him, see that he's alive so you can tell Jess, and you never have to see him again then. It'll just take a second. You can do it. "Ok, I'll look in on him. What room is he in?"

"The room right across the hall."

Tempest got up in a dreamland as the shock of Jesse's words sunk in. It couldn't be real. It wasn't ok and it couldn't be real. She wouldn't have it. The young—what a man!—man across the hall that was dying because he had no will to live was her V? Just no.

"T, you ok?"

"Fine," she answered. Her voice sounded like she was off in la la land even to her, but she couldn't help it. "I'm fine. I'm just going to look into the room across the hall before I go home and get some sleep. I'll see you in the morning, after I wake up."

"You're sure you're ok?"

"Yeah, just tired. Good night."

"Night," Jesse answered as he watched her walk across the room and out the door. She was lying. But he couldn't do a damn thing about it. So was she lying because she already knew something about the patient across the hall, and it wasn't good? Or was she lying because it was Vince, and he'd broken her into a hundred pieces, and now she was scared he'd be able to do it again?

Tempest walked out of Jesse's room and into the hall with no idea how she'd done it or when. She didn't become aware of herself or where she was until her hands were again braced flat against a door. And then she became aware she had her hands pressed flat against the three inch thick wooden barrier between her and where Vince was lying in an ICU hospital bed. She realized that she was about to enter a room where Vince was dying in a hospital bed all alone.

Jesse was right. She did hate Vince. Hated him so much the emotion scared her sometimes. But yet, she still loved him too, and the love she still had for him was so strong, it scared her all the time. Every time she thought about her love for him, she was terrified by the intensity of it. It was so impossible to stop loving someone you loved so much, no matter what they did to you. But you could hate them for what they'd done at the same time. And she knew it first hand because she lived it every day.

No matter how much she hated him, or what he'd done to her, for the last two years she'd always known he was alive and well. She always knew that with one word from her to tell him she needed him, he'd come running. He was just that kind of person. He had been her safety net. She had always known that she could fall into him and he would catch her, if the time ever came when she wasn't strong enough to catch herself. She'd never had to make that call. But she had still felt him behind her, waiting for the day to come. And now he couldn't catch her, couldn't be strong for her, because he was dying. And when he did, that vague sense of always being safe in the world because he was in it would die with him.

At first, when she'd come home broken by what she'd seen, she hadn't known how she would go on. But she had, because in the back of her mind she had always wondered if he wasn't just staging what she'd seen in some misguided attempt to prove to her she could do better than him, whether she wanted to or not. She had been able to pick herself up off the ground and march onward because someday, when she was ready, he would still be there and she could confront him about it. They would fight about it, roar and kick and scream about it. Fuck over it. They could work past it. They could be they again, when she was ready. He was so strong and stubborn, it had never entered her mind to dream that he wouldn't be there when she was ready.

He was Vince. He was an immovable force in her mind. He was immortal. He was the toughest man she knew. The strongest. The most determined. He was her touchstone. Because when she started to break down, she could touch the memories of him with her mind and put herself back together. She could march forward because one day, when she was ready, when she was older and more grown, she would find him again. Why she had never once entertained the idea that he might meet someone else and move on she didn't know. But it was just one of those things she knew. Or had figured she had known. That when she was ready for him, he would make himself ready for her. They were two halves of the same whole. Never complete when they were apart, and destined to be together. Fate had brought them together and she had always figured stubborn will would bring them back together some day.

But she wasn't ready yet. And now here she was anyway. But he wasn't waiting to catch her. He wasn't going to be her rock this time. Because he was dying. She screwed her eyes shut and started trying the deep breathing again.

In.

Out.

Keep it together.

In.

Out.

It wasn't working. Get it over with, like taking off a Band-Aid. Rip it off. No anaesthetic. The faster you got it done, the less it hurt, the more it didn't live up to the anticipation of how awful it would be.

She cracked the door and slid sideways into the room. The lighting in the room was dim. The lights had already been lowered to night mode. There was only a single bed in the center of the left hand wall. There was a window on the back wall and it would look out over the parking lot, were the drapes not closed. The door to the small bathroom contained in the room was beside the window. There was a night stand beside the bed on one side, and two chairs beside the other. The walls were antiseptic white, and the floor was an off grey tile. She realized that she was out of things to look at in the room that weren't the bed and the man lying on it.

That same human need to stare at the wreckage even when you knew you shouldn't drew her further into the room and over beside the bed. She walked through the room and the air felt like glue. It took so much effort for her body just to cut through the air that it was like a living force trying to keep her from the bedside. When she finally allowed herself to look right at him, wreckage about summed things up. He was a wreck, and so was she, for having seen him this way.

The white and blue checked gown with the snaps across the shoulders served reminder to just where they were. The indignity of it drove things home. It wasn't something he ever would have put up with had he a choice. It made him look vulnerable, and he wouldn't have had that if he had a choice. So the fact that he didn't have one at all was pressed home rather unmistakably. Remarkably, he wasn't on artificial respiration. A machine monitored his heart rate, just as with Jesse.

Other than the unnatural stillness of him, he might have just been sleeping. But she knew Vince, and how he slept. And he wasn't that quiet in his sleep. He wasn't that still. She knew he wouldn't know it, but in his sleep he caressed her side, her hip. Muttered to her. Moved under her. He did not lie on his back with his arms at his sides in total stillness.

Jesse's state was hard. But she could deal. He was awake. He was talking. He was looking forward to getting better. He had always left her with a feeling that he needed her to take care of him anyway. She was used to it. But not so with Vince.

All her life she had felt like she needed to take care of everyone. That she had to be the strong one. The one who was always there for everyone. The one who could handle anything and deal with anything. The one who knew everything, and could do anything that needed doing. The one that was never shaken by circumstances. Calm, cool and collected. That was her. She couldn't trust anyone to be stronger than her so she simply had to make sure she was stronger than everyone. Until Vince. In him she had found someone who she had figured might just be able to be there for her for a change.

She was an alpha, no way around it. But he was more so. She was tough, but he was more so. She was street smart, but he was more so. Not that she'd ever tell him any of it to his face. His head would explode with how big it would get. But in his presence, she could allow him to be strong for everyone and just be a normal person. Could even have a weak moment. Until now. Until she found him like this. Now there was no one to be strong for her. Now she was thrust back into the role of being strong for everyone because there was no one left to do it.

Wearily, she sat in one of the chairs beside the bed. She looked at Vince and wished he'd look back at her. Not just lay there so still and quiet. He wasn't Vince without some layered tank tops, dirty jeans and a huge mouth running. Robbed of his larger than life attitude and that huge helping of arrogance, he was just a very well toned and tattooed man hurt badly, lying unconscious in a hospital bed. She couldn't take it.

"I can be strong for everyone else. I mean, I can. I'll do it. I'll be strong for Jesse. I'll be strong for my aunt when I break this to her. I'll be strong for Jesse's dad when I have to tell him. I'll be strong for my mom when I have to tell her. I'll be strong for everyone else like I always am." Her voice broke. "But if you die, who's gonna be strong for me?" She took a shuddering breath in, the corners of her mouth turned down into a frown that was more heartbroken grimace, and she started to cry. "If you die, who's gonna be strong for me?" She put her head down on the edge of the bed and cried. She didn't want to, but she couldn't stop. That was such a horrible question. If you die, what will I do? He was dying and her question was what would she do without him. But if he died, she couldn't do anything for him either. Her sobbing reached new proportions. She knew she looked like shit. Her eyes would be all red, her nose was running. And she could barely breathe. And always, she sat sobbing onto the woven cotton blanket draped over his bed as he lay there; still and silent in the night as she filled it with her muffled cries.

A wave of guilt crashed into her. When those two nurses had been talking about what a tragedy it was their patient wasn't going to get better, she'd shrugged it off as sad but not her problem. When she'd picked up the team picture and looked at him, she'd said some perfectly awful things thinking he was off with his friends where ever, and thought some even worse things too. And all that time he'd been lying here dying. He'd been lying here dying and she'd been calling him every name under the sun in her mind.

All she could do is sit in the chair, lay her head onto the white cotton blanket of his bed, and sob out all her pain, guilt, and uncertainty.