Types of Fracture – Chapter Three (Sean POV)
Unstable Fracture: In this fracture, the broken bone ends can easily be displaced by movement or muscle contraction. The injured limb should be immobilised immediately to avoid further damage.
I think it's over. Possibly.
I've been looking over the last few months constantly. Not just thinking about you – Charlotte does that enough for a world of mourners – but thinking of us. Charlotte and I, and how we almost tore our entire family apart over one stupid lawsuit which, all things considered, shouldn't have ever crossed our mind. But it's too late for turning back now.
I still try. I remember that day near the line of traffic, how my face burned with pain from her slaps and embarrassment from the pitying looks of the workers. How I just stood there, my heart perfectly intact because I didn't want to let Charlotte get to me. I can't help wondering how I could have done things differently. This insecurity carries on, nagging and pinching at me with every step I take as I retrace my path. Sometimes the pain is dull: that feeling when I make you happy and everything could be normal. However, a lot of the time it decides to scream in my face as the bones holding me together suddenly slip. Memories speed by: the whites of your eyes turning a sickening blue, your alarming jolts as the morphine did its work, that kiss with Piper, my reconciliation with Charlotte…
But I always come back to you, even when I try not to. I always come back to the moment I pulled your frozen body out from under the ice and began to desperately recall the first aid training I'd had. The moment when Charlotte hung onto my sleeve, screeching and wailing, ordering that I bring our daughter back right now, even though we both knew nothing could be done. The time that passed afterwards also hurts particularly badly. The emptiness in Charlotte's eyes, the stubborn way she refused to even open the curtains in the morning, the lacklustre way she walked around the house. Amelia's paintings, often subtly disguised portraits of you, filling our walls with memories that we can't avoid.
We seem to be holding together. But we're all fragile, possibly more so than you ever were. Perhaps it will just take one second, one movement in what appears to be the right direction, one ill-judged situation where the memories come back, and we all break into pieces that can't ever be mended.
Maybe that's what Charlotte was doing in the aftermath of your death. She was immobilised, immobilising us along with herself.
Holding our broken lives together.
A/N: Just one more drabble left! I wasn't going to update this for a while, but it just so happens that my other story is going quite slowly, and the idea for this chapter just came to me. So, feedback appreciated, as always.