"Kendall, get up!"
Kendall rolled over to see Griffin standing over the bed, his eyes narrowed in anger. She couldn't help but notice that he looked exhausted but Kendall didn't want to see him. She wanted to be left alone.
She turned away again.
"How can you be so selfish?" Griffin exclaimed.
"Leave me alone!" Kendall groaned, trying to bury herself into her husband's pillow.
"I refuse to let you wallow in self-pity!"
Griffin ripped open the blinds, flooding the dark room with brilliant sunlight. Kendall was almost blinded by it. Then Griffin unceremoniously picked Kendal up, threw her over his shoulder and carried her, protesting, to the bathroom. Kendall gave out a scream of indignation as he threw her under a cold shower and held her there.
"You need to pull yourself together for the sake of your family."
"But Zack is dead." Kendall moaned, and she realised that was the first time she had spoken those words aloud.
"Yes, Zack is gone. It's a tragedy and we have let you grieve. But it has been weeks Kendall and at some point you have to stop grieving and come back to the world. At some point you have to focus on the living."
Kendall looked at his determined face and she heard his words, the cold water shocking her to her senses.
"My boys." she said softly.
"Right now they have lost a father and a mother…" said Griffin.
"Mom."
"She is battling for her life. She is a fighter, your mother, but she will need all the help she can get. She can't do it all on her own."
"She has Bianca." Kendall said; she wasn't ready for this. She couldn't step out into the world yet, not yet. She just needed a little longer.
"Bianca needs you too." said Griffin.
"She knows where I am." said Kendall bitterly. If she were honest Kendall knew she had been waiting for her sister all this time. Waiting for her to put her arms around her and tell her everything was going to be alright – waiting because she knew her couragous little sister was the only person in the world who could say those words and she would believe her.
Griffin stared at her, his eyes wide. He let her go and turned off the water. Kendall sank to the bottom of the shower stall.
"Kendal, has no one told you? Don't you know?"
"Know what?"
"Bianca was shot."
The heart Kendall had been so sure no longer functioned skipped a beat.
"Bianca!" she gasped, her face a mask of horror. "But she's alive."
She knew she couldn't stand the grief if her baby sister was gone as well.
"She's in hospital – They removed a bullet from her neck. She's paralysed."
"Oh god!" sobbed Kendall. "I didn't know… I didn't know."
...