Chapter Twenty Nine
"And who are you?" The nurse asked as Percy asked to see Annabeth Chase at the front desk. "Are you related to her at all?"
"I'm her boyfriend," Percy said firmly. And then he took off his sunglasses and winked at the young nurse. Her eyes instantly shot open and she blushed bright red and then lowered her voice so that only Percy could hear her.
"Oh my gods, are you two back together?" She asked her voice excited. "My girlfriends and I have been taking bets to see when you two would get back together. We are major big Percabeth fans," she said. Percy had to resist the urge to roll his eyes and tell the girl that Annabeth was far more important at the time than what she thought about their relationship.
"Yes we're back together and I would really like to try and see if my girlfriend is alright. Her dad's dead and her mom ran away from her family when she was a newborn so I'm all that she has," Percy said, deciding to play the tragedy card.
"Oh my gods that's so terrible!" The nurse squealed. "Of course I'll let you in. Do you want the folder with her medical report in it?" She asked.
"Yeah that'd be nice if it isn't too much of a hassle," Percy said.
"Not at all," the nurse responded. "I'll be right back."
Last night had been the hardest night of his life. When the ambulance showed up Percy fought with them to let go of Annabeth. For some reason, he wouldn't stop holding her. He just remembered yelled and crying, and yelling some more, and crying some more. He hadn't cried as much as he had that night. He wouldn't let his Annabeth be taken away from him.
They finally settled that Percy could ride in the ambulance with Annabeth as long as he didn't get in the way. The medics said that they only had a few short minutes before they wouldn't be able to do anything so if Percy wanted results then he better let them work.
He remembered holding Annabeth's hand the whole time as the paramedics worked in the back of the ambulance as they spend down the streets of New York. When he was younger, Percy used to think that it would be fun to ride in an ambulance. But now that he was sitting in the back of one, clutching the hand of the girl he loved he couldn't think of anything worse that riding in an ambulance.
The doctors had then shoved him to the side as they wheeled Annabeth out and into the emergency room. They had shoved him aside like he didn't matter. Which really at the time he didn't matter at all.
The only person that mattered was Annabeth.
He had spent that night in the waiting room, his head in his hands. He was positive that towards the beginning of it all people were taking pictures of him and all of that junk but then someone must have shooed them out of the waiting room.
Why couldn't he have saved her? Why did he just stare and watch her get hit?
Damn it all! Had he not grown up? He had just stood by when Tyson got hit and now Annabeth.
And it was all his fault.
Maybe he was like a bomb, one day he was going to explode and everyone was going to die with him. He seemed to hurt everyone that he loved no matter how hard he tried. People tried to tell him that everyone went through a hard time in life, that everyone makes mistakes, everybody has those days. But why was he having so damn many of them? Why was he making the same mistake again and again! Why couldn't he save her?
Why couldn't he save her?
That question tossed and turned in his mind again and again. He didn't call anyone about Annabeth that night. Maybe he was selfish but he didn't want anyone else with her when she woke up. He wanted to be the first one there so that he could be the first one to apologize.
Apologize for what a jackass he was.
He was just like Thalia had claimed. He wasn't good enough for Annabeth.
And he never would be.
But still he stayed all night at the hospital, drinking four cups of the lukewarm, watered down coffee that they offered him with two packs of sugar just to keep himself from curling up in a ball on the floor and crying.
And now he was going to go and see Annabeth no matter what anyone told him.
"Here you go Mr. Jackson," the nurse said cheerfully as she handed him the folder.
"Thank you," Percy grumbled as he took the folder.
"She's in room one on floor six," the nurse said. Percy nodded but didn't look up as he headed towards the elevators.
On the way up he read through the doctors' notes on Annabeth's condition. She had suffered from two broken ribs, a shattered wrist, fractured leg in three different places, cuts and scrapes all around, a concussion, but it was the last thing that made Percy's heart stop. According to the folder, Annabeth Christine Chase was in a coma.
One that she wasn't predicted to wake up from.
Percy swore under his breath and had to resist the temptation to throw the folder across the elevator or at the next person who stepped in with him. Since when did something like this happen other than in soap operas or those stupid chick flicks that girls liked? These things never happened to regular people at all.
But then Percy had to remind himself that he wasn't a regular person.
Percy knocked softly on the door to Annabeth's room. Another nurse opened it and introduced herself as Tessa Ilium. She was a young girl probably a few years older than Percy himself with soft grey hair and pretty eyes. "I'm sorry Mr. Jackson," she said respectfully and that was all.
She gave him a smile and then headed out the door, closing it softly behind her after she had added, "I'll be just outside at the nurses' station if you need me at all. Just press the button on Ms. Chase's bedside and I'll come."
Percy couldn't even choke out a thank you.
Annabeth was lying on the hospital bed, hooked up to so many machines he couldn't even tell what was for what purpose. Some were beeping and others were dripping a strange sort of fluid. Percy had to resist the urge to throw up. He had never been good in hospitals.
He sat in the chair next to Annabeth's bed and ran his fingers through her blond curls, staring at her bruised face.
"I'm sorry Wise Girl," he said to no one in particular. "It's all my fault," he said. "I wish… I wish that I could take back last night, I wish that I had moved, that I had helped you, that I had pushed you out of the way." He took a deep breath.
"But I was so scared Annabeth, I was scared. You would have done it for me, I know you would have. Why couldn't I have done it for you?" He asked. "Sometimes I think I should get an award for being such a good actor because that's all I am Annabeth. Under all of the clothes, the smirks, the award winning smiles I'm broken. And I need you Annabeth Chase. Without you I don't know who I would be. Without you I'd be nothing but bones and blood."
"You're the only way I can live. Without you… gods I don't even want to think about it. I can't think about it, you're far too important to me. Without you I'm just a skeleton, I have no spirit. It's like you said, without love we are nothing. And you are the only person I love."
"Love is cruel. Love has always been cruel to you and me, it's broken us so many times I can't even count them all. But I swear when this is over, we'll finally be able to love freely and completely without chains. I swear when this is over I'll give you your happy ending that you deserve. If you just will wake up. Please will you just wake up?"
He started sobbing, clutching Annabeth's cold hands. "Please, wake up… please. Don't die. Please, will you do that for me? Just don't die. Just wake up. Please… please," he whispered one last time, resting his forehead on the edge of her bed and crying.
"I'll sing for you… would that help Wise Girl?" He whispered, his whole body wracking with sobs. Because weeping as he was doing was not the same thing as crying. Weeping takes your whole body and when you finally stop weeping you feel like you don't have any bones left to hold you up again. Weeping is your whole soul lying bare before you.
He began to sing a song, low and rough filled with chokes and sobs. He couldn't make it through the whole song so he resorted to merely singing the chorus.
She is the days I can't get over
She is the nights that I call home endlessly
For you I'll always wait
Caught in the waves of hesitation
Lost in the sea of my own doubt, endlessly
For you I'll always wait
For you I'll always wait
He couldn't sing anymore, he finally let the flood gates lower and the tears kept coming. He knew that there was some unwritten law that men weren't supposed to cry, but damn everyone who thought it was unmanly for him to cry, it took more bravery to lay his soul bare than for him to stop from crying.
Percy felt someone touch his shoulder and he looked up to see Annabeth's boss, Athena standing over him, looking down at Annabeth sympathetically.
"What are you doing here?" Percy asked, trying to keep the bitterness that he was thinking in his mind out of his words. It didn't turn out that well.
"I came to see my daughter," Athena said softly. Percy suddenly jerked up out of his seat and whirled around to stare at Athena.
"What!" Percy said. "Annabeth is not your daughter."
Athena rolled her eyes. "Honestly Mr. Jackson, her DNA test would indicate otherwise. Perhaps you would like the blood work sample."
Percy crossed his arms, prepared to defend Annabeth. "I'm sorry but a parent who leaves her child as a baby doesn't fit my definition of a mother. You can't just waltz in here and expect everyone to be okay with it. I mean why the hell wouldn't you tell your own daughter?"
Athena sighed and shook her head. "There are things that you cannot know of Mr. Jackson," she said.
"Well there are some things I know. And one of them is that even though you and Annabeth might share the same DNA, that does not mean that you are her mother. The door's right behind you, feel free to show yourself out."
Athena stared at him with those dark grey and eyes. Percy had to stop himself from breaking down in front of her and begging for mercy. Instead he stood boldly in front of Athena. "You are a strange boy Percy Jackson," Athena said. "And watch your back. I do not believe you are good enough for my daughter."
And she swept out of the room.
Percy sank into the seat next to Annabeth's bed again. "Well that was weird," he said running his hand throw his black hair. "Did you see that coming?" he asked Annabeth's sleeping form. "Because to be honest I didn't. You probably would have, you are a genius after all."
He stared at her for a few more moments and then kissed her forehead. "I've got to go and call some people," he said to her comatose state.
Percy gritted his teeth, damn it, it would not be fun to call old Pinecone Face and tell her that her best friend was in the hospital.
Thalia Grace wasn't one who liked to cry.
She just wasn't. She tended to make snide comments whenever she was in pain or whenever she saw something that made her heart break. She found that the best way to hide pain was to laugh about it or to make a sarcastic comment.
But when she saw Annabeth lying on that hospital bed, her face pale, Thalia couldn't help but cry. And she hated herself for crying.
She had been chopping potatoes at the local soup kitchen (she was under strict orders from her father to volunteer there once a month, Jason did it once a week with Piper, apparently it was good for the family image. Thalia didn't even know that they had a family image) when Percy had called.
She almost hadn't answered it. Percy's picture had popped up with x's over his eyes (courtesy of the internet, she wasn't the only one who hated Percy… okay so hate was a very, very strong word. Probably a very too many) and the word ASSHOLE written underneath it. She wasn't ready to pick up the phone and listen to him rant again about how he wanted Annie's number or something like that. Plus she'd probably end up using language which would not be appropriate at the soup kitchen. (Was there an appropriate language at a soup kitchen? She'd have to check that out).
"What do you want Asshole?" She asked, picking the phone up and holding it with her shoulder and chin as she continued to chop at the potatoes. Thank the gods that no one bothered to even look at her, they probably all had their own assholes in life.
She had been prepared for Percy's usual response: 'Nice to hear from you too Pinecone Face, sounding as prickly as ever.' But what she heard next made her drop the phone.
Literally.
She dropped it into the pot of soup which was simmering on the stove next to her potatoes.
Annabeth was in the hospital.
Thalia had grabbed her black jacket from the back room (she never wore it while working, didn't want to give any bad ideas as according to her father) and ran out of the door. She had completely forgotten about her phone in the soup, maybe whoever got it could get a few bucks off of it somehow.
She didn't even know what hospital Annabeth was in but the third try she found the right one. When the nurse tried to tell her that she wasn't allowed to see Annabeth because she wasn't "family", Thalia nearly murdered her.
Honestly, she got this close from murdering her. (So what she had anger issues, yeah, yeah whatever).
She had yelled at the nurse, used a few bad words that would have gotten her mouth washed at the preschool she went to by the Catholic nun and a swat on her butt, and then finally managed to threaten the whole hospital staff by saying her dad was Zeus.
It worked every time.
She ran into Percy in the hallway. He grabbed her arms and spun her around. "Okay before you go in there, you've got to take a few deep breaths," he said to her.
Needless to say, Thalia didn't take the advice and flew into the room.
Thalia had been hurt and mad a lot in life.
A lot more than she cared to ever admit to.
She had been hurt by her father for abandoning her mother which led her mother to go off the deep end and abandon Thalia and Jason. She was mad at her mother for not being stable enough to care for Jason and her. She was mad at the foster care system for separating Jason and her. She was mad at her third grade teacher for blaming her for gluing Frank Sinistra's pants to his seat which later got her expelled. She was mad at her highschool principal who called her a "miscreant" and her seventh grade Physical science teacher had called her a girl who would never amount to anything.
Everyone around her told her that she was a punk, she was unruly and was a troublemaker who could never do good.
And that pissed Thalia off.
She rebelled because rebelling got the attention of everyone. She didn't want to be classified as someone who was the perfect daughter, with the polite smile and who had long curly, pretty hair. She wanted to be her own person.
Maybe that was why she became best friends with Annabeth Chase.
She hated Annabeth at first.
Annabeth was everything that Thalia wasn't. She was smart, pretty, athletic, and all the teachers loved her. Her classmates loved her. She was the classic form of "beautiful". And Thalia hated that. When Luke had become friends with Annabeth when they were little, Thalia hated even being in the same room as Annabeth. She had everything. She had pretty clothes and food to eat and most of all she had a dad and a mom, even if that mom was a stepmom.
But it was when Annabeth had helped her get back at Jilly Taylor in first grade for teasing Thalia about being a "wacko" (Jilly Taylor never had that great of a vocabulary). The two of them had worked together to pull the greatest prank Thalia had ever done in her life. As first graders.
Annabeth was a genius.
And it was then that Thalia realized that Annabeth was just as much a rebel she was. And from that moment on they were best friends.
Seeing Annabeth hurt made Thalia feel as if she was the one lying in the bed with the machines all hooked up to her. It reminded Thalia of a letter Annabeth had written to her in sixth grade when she had begun her obsession with her words for the wise:
Dear Thalia aka Thals aka the Greatest Best Friend Ever,
I wanted to write this letter to you for no reason except to tell you that I think you are one of the most incredible girls I have ever met, you're even better than all of the guys I've met (other than Luke) but that's implied as boys are weird (except for Luke of course). I don't know what I would do without you Thalia. You're amazing and wonderful. I'm happy that we're best friends! And I even forgive you for cheating off of my math test (I could tutor you if you would like, I'm really good at fractions). In fact we're such good friends that I didn't even tell Mr. Horn when you did it because I knew that you would cover up for me.
Love you Thals! Thanks for being there for me! Oh and Words for the Wise for you (yes I think that these could actually be really cool)
Some people think that love is just the gooey stuff that we see in movies with all of the adults kissing and all that yucky stuff, but I think that when two girls have a friendship that is so close that it's inseparable, that's friendship. Friendship is feeling pain when you're best friend is getting picked on, friendship is being happy when your friend climbs to the top of the rope and you don't. Friendship is being selfless not selfish.
I know it's not amazing but I'm working on it! You know I want to be a writer one day. Maybe one day my writing will do something amazing! But all that to say, I'm glad we're best friends!
Your Best Friend,
Annabeth Chase
Thalia smiled at the memory and brushed a tear from her cheek. Damn it she promised she wouldn't cry.
"What happened?" Thalia asked Percy who stood at the doorway.
"She got hit," Percy said softly. "By a car. We…" he hesitated. "We were fighting and she walked into the street and it was dark and she never saw the car coming. I tried to move… I honestly did… but I couldn't! I couldn't work up the damn courage to." Thalia watched as Percy slumped into the seat near the door and buried his head in his hands.
"I'm a coward," he whispered so softly that Thalia could barely hear him.
She studied Perseus Erik Jackson with her electric blue eyes, trying to make him out. Thalia didn't really hate Percy. Okay so maybe she did when she was little. Percy had the mom that she never had which made her mad. But now, looking at Percy, he looked broken and tired. The poor kid. (okay so he wasn't a kid anymore).
Thalia sighed and walked up next to Percy and put her hand on his shoulder. "Listen, I'm not too good at this whole comforting thing. That's why Annie and I got along so well. One of us would fall and scrape our knee and we'd say 'tough it up princess' but you need to get over it Percy. It wasn't your fault."
"But it was my fault!" He said. "She wasn't watching the street because she was yelling at me! Because I was a first class asshole."
Thalia smirked. "You know that's my contact name for you," she snorted. Percy rolled his eyes.
"I'm spilling my soul to you Pincecone face and all you care about is that Siri will call me an asshole when you ask her to dial my name?" Percy said.
Thalia laughed a little. "Okay fine I'll work a bit harder on the comforting fact… okay think about it this way: Percy Jackson you have made a lot of mistake in your short 22 years but you know what that means?" She said.
"What?" Percy asked.
"That when you get older, you'll make less mistakes because you've already made all of them."
"Wow real encouraging Thalia," Percy said, looking at Annabeth.
"No I mean it, listen. A man lives like what eighty years on average? Subtract twenty-two from eight and you'll have…" she paused, trying to do the math in her hand. "Oh screw it, Annie was always the math one. But you'll still have a lot of time. You'll have all of those years to make right the mistakes you made."
Percy sighed and leaned back in his chair. "I don't know… I just wish I wasn't so dumb and so cowardly."
"Not all of us can be brave all of the time, it's sometimes the people who seem to be the weakest at times that do the greatest things in the world. We aren't born courageous, we have to put the courage on… like Iron Man's suit… you have to put on the courage."
"Did you really just connect that to superheroes?" Percy asked.
"What boys like Iron Man right?" Thalia said innocently. Percy rolled his eyes. "I'm serious though. We can't be brave all the time, sometimes we are the fearful ones who are helped by the brave people and other times, it's us who are the brave ones."
Percy stood up. "Thalia you sound like you've been reading Annabeth's stuff way too much."
"Nah… I don't read it till she's done or else she flips out."
"Then I'll tell you what Annabeth used to tell me. You should become a psychologist," Percy said.
"I think I'd end up chucking the damn tissue box at my client and telling them to buck up."
Percy grinned and for the first time in their lives, Thalia Grace and Percy Jackson actually acted like cousins. After years upon years of fighting, arguing and despising each other's guts, they realized that maybe they weren't too different. Maybe there was a reason they fought so much, because they were so similar that it hurt.
But as they say, hard times unite foes. And in that moment foes were united.
And on the hospital bed, a certain blonde moved her fingers.