A/N: Hey there! Hoping to update this story a bit quicker than I have recently been doing with some of my other stuff. School starts back soon but this is a happy distraction for the first few weeks of the semester :-)
Hope you enjoy-let me know how you're liking the dynamics of the story thus far!
When they were nearing the hospital, she clears her throat and keeps her eyes fixed on the looming building. Her hands are in her lap, her thumbs wrapped in her fist as she squeezes and releases. The throbbing in her head has eased, but it's still a faint reminder of the night before. All that has consumed her mind has been the throbbing, the subsequent nauseous feeling from either the partying or the worry, and memories of Will. Right now, her mind is filled with her brother once more.
Stop thinking about how bad it must have been.
She squeezes her fists tighter—if she would've ever taken the time to look down, she'd notice that her thumbs were turning purple.
It had to have been bad for them to fly him all the way here.
There were other trauma units in the state he could've gone to. Right?
This is a level one trauma hospital.
Stop, Elizabeth. Maybe it's because it's a pediatric hospital. You know this. Think. Use logic.
Her reprimands aren't helping much, though, because she's found that she has tears in her eyes yet again. She blinks the blurriness away as Henry pulls under the awning for the emergency department. Her head is facing the door, her seatbelt still locked.
"Is this the right door?" Henry asks, surely prodding her to go ahead and get out. "I'll just park and—"
She opens her mouth to respond, but the words get caught in her throat by that strangling feeling. Then, without warning, her breath hitches, and a sob escapes while her shoulders wrench forward. The truck had been so quiet—the hum of the tires against the asphalt, the traffic radio playing low in the background. Now, her sobs shatter that silence that almost acted as a cocoon this entire ride.
"I'll drop you off at the door," the taxi driver said to Elizabeth as she looked at the emergency room door that she, somehow, was supposed to be brave enough to walk herself in to and confirm that it was her parents' corpses and go tell her little brother that their parents, in fact, were dead.
Her hands shook as she reached for the door handle in the car, taking one last look at the back of the taxi driver's head, and then she finally made her foot touch the cement. Then the other. Then she stood and took a deep breath, her diaphragm almost failing her as it wavers. The taxi door had barely slammed shut before the driver squealed his tires to get out of the way. She didn't look back. She sniffled, wrapped her arms around her stomach, and forced her feet to push her into the hospital.
Finally, she turns her body toward Henry. She pumps her fists tightly again around her thumbs, shaking her head.
You're nineteen years old, Elizabeth. You did this when you were fifteen. It's nothing this time.
Why are you being so childish?
"I don't want to go in alone again," she can barely hear her own voice, and she clears her throat to try and sound more human, "I can't do it again."
The look on Henry's face briefly brings Elizabeth back to reality—he has no idea what she's talking about. He's, basically, a complete stranger. She's ridden hours with him, but she's stayed silent. He hadn't pressed her with questions that she probably wouldn't have answered anyway. Aside from giving him directions occasionally, she'd maybe spoken a total of five sentences to this man.
She looks at the clock and feels the tug of time pulling her into that hospital. She can't continue to wait for this dumbfounded (and rightfully so) man's answer. She turns and reaches for the door, taking a deep and shaky breath in as if to trick herself into having courage.
"No," Henry says quickly as her hand touches the door handle, "No, I'll go in with you. Okay…I'll go in." His voice sounds heavy, thick with confusion. But he puts the truck in drive again and presses the gas pedal down quickly, throwing her backwards against the seat.
Her head falls over to the side, looking out the window at the image burned in her mind of her parents' bodies. She always wondered how two people with so much color splashed all over them—blood and bruises and even dirt—could simultaneously be so colorless, so white and pale and, well, lifeless.
Her head rocks with her upper body, almost in a lifeless rhythm herself, as he turns into the parking garage and goes up the ramp.
She's not sure when her blink turned into closing her eyes, but Will's face comes into her mind. Twelve. Precious. Her baby brother—a cut above his eyebrow and a nasty black eye. He didn't remember how it got there and there was no one else to ask. He suffered a minor concussion, the doctors explained to her before her aunt and uncle's flight landed and they could get to the hospital. They said that he would have some memory loss, but most likely due to the trauma he'd witnessed, not necessarily because of the concussion. She'd nodded, but none of their words really stuck except "the trauma he'd witnessed." Her chest had tightened then just as it did now when she thinks of that—the fact that her baby brother had to see their parents die.
Elizabeth hears the gearshift move into park, and she feels the rocking of the truck from the release of the brakes. Henry's seatbelt is off when she looks over at him, her mind feeling syrupy and muddled. She presses down the lump in her throat leftover from her sobbing just moments earlier, and she sees Henry reaching across the seat to her seatbelt. He unlocks it and lets the seatbelt slide through his fingers carefully, "Do you need me to do anything?"
It snaps her back to reality, and she blinks once at him before taking her other arm out of the seatbelt, shaking her head and opening her door. Henry's already at her side by the time she gets out, and he shuts the door for her.
"It's this way," Henry says, pointing to a sign hanging from the concrete above them. The arrow beside the word "Emergency" makes her cloudy mind pause for a moment.
"Which way is it pointing?"
Henry doesn't answer her, instead she takes note of a now-familiar feeling. His hand is resting on her back, and he is pushing her in a direction, and her feet are following. She can't make her brain work well enough to understand much that's happening outside of the fact that she's here to see Will, but she gives in.
He seems like he knows what he's doing. Let him.
In the elevator, she leans against the back of the car and her hands push downward into her pockets. Henry's standing by the buttons that he'd pushed once they got inside, his arms folded over his chest as they wait to stop their downward descent and for the doors to open. She has to clear her throat to make the strangling go away, and she tries to take a deep breath, but she catches her reflection in the elevator doors and feels the urge to sob again.
Thankfully, the doors open, and Henry looks back at her before walking out of the car. She follows him, and immediately he starts walking her to the desk. She rests her hands on the top of it as the woman in front of her finishes up on a phone call. "How may I help you?"
Elizabeth freezes, her words caught again by the imaginary hands locking around her throat. Her mouth opens and then closes again, and she blinks, getting a sound out but nothing else.
"Will Adams," Henry says, then looks at Elizabeth. "He was life-flighted here a few hours ago."
"Right," the woman says.
Elizabeth's staring at her name tag: Betsy.
The woman who was working at the front desk a few years ago in a different emergency room when her brother was twelve and her parents were dead: Arden.
She blinks slowly, "Right, Will Adams." She says, not realizing the woman had already answered Henry.
Betsy ignores her. "What are your names?"
"Henry McCord," he answers quickly and turns to Elizabeth, "This is Will's sister, Elizabeth Adams."
She hears the conversation, but the language sounds foreign. Does Henry McCord speak French? Does she speak French? Does Betsy, this older woman with peppery hair and a thick Brooklyn accent speak French?
"So you're not family," Betsy states tartly, and it grabs Elizabeth's attention finally. She looks Betsy in the eyes now and then at Henry who's stuttering, clearly trying to figure out what to say and looking as though he's about to just turn and walk away.
No, he isn't family. Elizabeth is basically all Will has left.
"He's my boyfriend," she lies. Her voice is high and panicked, and Betsy notices, so Elizabeth smiles a little and continues to miraculously get her brain to work again, "We've dated since high school—he's like Will's big brother." The lie continues. But, based on the softening of Betsy's face, it's working.
Ultimately, the woman nods, pushing her glasses up on the bridge of her nose from where she'd been looking over their frames, "Alright," she says, her tone telling Elizabeth that she shouldn't be doing this, printing out name tags for the both of them. "He's just been moved from post-op," she explains, then points down the hall, "You need to go down this way, take two rights, and then a left. He's in the ICU in room 112."
Elizabeth's mouth opens and she tries to catch the breath that feels like it's been punched out of her, "Post op?" She asks, but Betsy is answering another phone call at the time. And there's that hand again, guiding her down the hall.
She stops midway, turning toward Henry. "Just because I lied to get you here doesn't mean you need to keep pushing me." She snaps, looking up into his eyes. Immediately, she feels a tug at her heart, but she doesn't waver. She just balls her fists at her sides as he slides his hand off her back.
"Got it," he mumbles.
She turns toward the direction they were heading again and starts walking. Her mind is swirling again, but it feels like it's firing much quicker now that she made up that lie for Betsy. The guilt from snapping at Henry adds to the weight on her chest and shoulders, though she carries it all with a straight back and near-perfect posture. She turns the corner toward the left, looking for signs down the hall.
"Betsy said to the right," Henry interjects from behind her.
She stops and turns around, seeing the man just standing at the corner and pointing down the right side. She sighs, turning her entire body around toward him and opting to follow him. He was probably right. His listening skills were much sharper than hers right now, but she wasn't going to admit any of that to him. She just needed to find her brother.
After following his lead for one more right turn and then a left, they find room 112. All that kept her from her little brother was some glass panes and a door with a glass window. His leg is wrapped in a cast and elevated, a brace around his neck looks as though it's smothering him, and his eyes are closed. He looks peaceful.
And the peacefulness realization causes Elizabeth to grab at the metal on the door, holding herself up as her knees start to buckle underneath her. Her parents, in all their blood and grass and dirt and bruises somehow looked peaceful, too.
"Are you Will Adams' family?"
The voice startles her enough to cause her to jump. She whips around quickly to see where it's coming from and pairs the voice to a man in a white coat, an older guy who was also carrying a clipboard and wore glasses on top of his head.
"Yes," she manages, "I'm his sister."
He nods, looking at his chart and pulling back a paper on the top. Elizabeth's eyes strain to read anything she can on the chart, but they're too tired from the lack of sleep and frequent crying she'd done on the way here. After a moment, the doctor clears his throat, "Will had a broken fibula when he came in to us and a broken collarbone as well. He just came out of surgery where a rod was placed in his leg and—"
"He's okay though?" She interrupts, shaking her head, "I'm sorry—I'm just…not a doctor. I don't need the details. I just want to know that he's going to make it." The thought crosses her mind again that they'd made the effort to find the hotel she was staying in and call her room—getting Amy, but still making that effort. It couldn't have been great news if they'd done all that.
The doctor gives her a sympathetic smile, then nods a little. "He should be just fine," he answers. With those five words, she takes a sharp breath in and looks over at Henry through blurry eyes, then back at the doctor, "He'll need physical therapy for the leg. He did suffer a concussion though, but we're waiting until he's feeling a little less groggy to do any more testing to understand the severity."
She grabs the metal again, this time behind her, and rests her back against the glass. The coolness shocks her and she almost jumps forward, but soon it even relaxes her. "He'll be okay?" She asks once more.
"He'll be okay," the doctor says, "We have no reason to believe he won't be."
She closes her eyes, hanging her head down and resting her chin on her chest. Her hand comes up to her eyes, her palm resting against the bridge of her nose as she can no longer keep the whimper from happening.
"Hey," she hears Henry's voice, then feels his body move closer to her. She doesn't feel him, though, and she almost wants him to touch her. To comfort her. "He's going to be okay."
"I know," she whispers. Her eyes flutter open for a moment and find his hands hanging down by his sides, and she swallows hard, then takes another deep breath and turns to face the glass.
"You can go in there if you'd like," the doctor says before walking off in the other direction.
Henry looks at her from the side, and she feels as though she's being studied. Her breath quickens, shortens, and then she looks at him.
"You want to go in?" He asks her, his hand resting on the doorhandle already.
She looks down at his fingers, studies the way they are holding on so lightly to that handle. Her own hands are balled up against the pane, and she forces her grip to release. She nods, looking over her shoulder still at his hand as he pushes down on the handle. The door is silent when it opens—no squeaking at all to risk waking Will up. She moves in slowly and picks her head up again, looking at him resting on the bed.
Making her way over to his bedside, she finds his hand and rests hers on top of it, "I'm so glad you're okay," she whispers. He doesn't budge. She glances at his monitors and though she has no idea what she's looking at, she hears a steady heartbeat, and that's all that matters.
Alongside that beautiful rhythm of the beeping, she hears a chair scooting across the floor. She turns her head to see Henry with a chair, pushing it toward her. It squeaks once and he stops immediately, picking it up and putting it down behind her. "There, sit." He instructs gently.
Her eyes flutter and her breath catches when she realizes her cheeks were hot. She turns her head away from him so that he cannot see her, looking at Will and thinking, "If you were awake right now, I'd be begging you with a look that says 'don't say anything.'" But he's not awake, so she lets a sleeping Will "watch" as her face turns a shade of red.
When she hears footsteps again, she looks over and sees Henry moving toward the door. He leans against the metal panes and crosses his legs, folding his arms over his chest. He notices that she's watching him, and she closes her mouth curtly, sucking her lips together and turning her gaze back to Will. She'd be lying if she said she turned her attention back to him, too.
They sit there in silence, and finally, Henry clears his throat quietly. "I'm going to call my mom—I told her I'd check in with her today." He announces.
She nods quickly, "Yeah, yeah. Of course." She says, waving him off gently.
He pushes the door open and lets it shut behind him, and she watches as he walks to the phone on the wall, punching a number in and putting the phone to his ear. She can't hear the conversation—not even his side of it—but she can tell he's saying something to the effect of, "Calm down, Mom." She swallows hard as she watches him, her fingers mindlessly rubbing the back of Will's hand in little circles. Her head tilts slightly and her chest aches again, wondering what it would be like to fight with her mother at her age now.
She turns her gaze onto Will again as he stirs, and she watches as his eyes flutter open just slightly, then close abruptly. "Hey," she whispers, sliding her hand underneath his and holding it tight, "Hey Will," she says a little louder, "It's me, Liz. You're at Bellevue." She says.
His left eye opens and searches for the voice, then shuts again as he lets out a sigh. "What happened?" He mumbles, sounding groggier than she's ever heard him sound.
"You were in an accident," she says, then raises her brows, "I actually don't know any other details than that." She tries to keep the surprise out of her voice, but when he opens both eyes and stares at her, she knows it didn't work. "But you're okay."
"What about Jessica?"
"Jessica?"
"My girlfriend."
"I didn't—"
"She was with me." He groans, stirring enough that he was about to sit up.
Elizabeth places a careful hand on his chest and gently stops him, "I'll find out." She says, looking out the glass at Henry with worried eyes. He still has his back turned to her and the phone against his ear. She swallows hard, "You need to lie down and rest." Her sisterly tone shifted into that motherly once again, and he stares at her for a moment before relaxing his body once more, sinking into the bed further.
She watches as his breathing settles again and the beeping on the monitor becomes more steady, then she hears the door handle click open. Her head raises and she looks up at Henry, "He's awake," she says softly, "Can you ask the desk about the girl who was with him?"
Henry looks at Will, and Elizabeth looks down at her brother to note that he's staring at Henry wildly. His eyes are squinted, and the hand that she was holding has released hers. "Yeah of course," he answers, "What's her name?"
"Jessica," Elizabeth and Will both answer. Will's voice, however, was thick with suspicion of the man who's standing in his hospital room while Elizabeth's was becoming brighter by the minute.
"Got it," Henry says, turning and walking out the door.
Elizabeth watches Will stare at him until he is no longer visible, and then he slowly turns his head toward his sister and raises a brow. She swallows thick, immediately thinking of when she'd visited him in the hospital the first car wreck and how that brow had a cut over it then. "Who's that?" He asks pointedly.
She shrugs, "A man who gave me a ride last minute."
"Oh yeah, that's why you look at him like that."
Her eyes squint down at her brother, "Glad to see you're feeling more like yourself." Her words are sharp, and she squeezes his hand a little harder than she maybe would've under normal circumstances. But if he's feeling good enough to be a brotherly prick, he can feel good enough to have a little sisterly physical violence enacted toward him.
"Ow!" He hisses, unable to jerk his hand away because of his collarbone. He groans a little and stares up at the ceiling, "What's his name then?" He asks.
"Henry," she answers, looking out through the glass to see if she can get a glimpse of him. Saying his name immediately caused her eyes to move and find him. But he wasn't there—probably still at the desk.
"Is he your boyfriend?"
"For the purposes of the hospital, yes." She admits, then takes a deep breath and moves her head from side to side to try and pop her stiff neck. "They wouldn't let him in otherwise. I told them you've known him for a long time because we dated all through high school."
Will squints his eyes at her this time, "Why'd he need to come in?"
She shakes her head, her eyes darting back to the window and hoping he was there. Still not back. "Get some rest."
"Elizabeth," Will protests.
"I'm not saying it again."
She stands up from the chair and walks over to the TV remote on the table, walking it back over to him. "Knicks are playing." She says.
"Not interested," Will replies, pushing the remote away from his hand on the bed. "I just want to know if Jessica is okay."
She looks over at him and swallows thick, "I didn't know you had a girlfriend."
"I didn't know you had a Henry."
The dryness in his voice almost sounds hostile, and she folds her arms over her chest and hears the door open. She turns around to see Henry coming through the door, and he gives her a reassuring smile.
"Jessica is okay," he says, "She walked away with just a few bruises and a sprained wrist."
She hears Will sigh, and looks over to see the breath of relief coming from his lips. She tightens her arms around her body.
"She's here waiting to see you, but she's not family." Henry points out.
Elizabeth looks at him and swallows hard, "I'll talk to them, see if they'll let her in." She says, "Come on—come with me?" She asks Henry, starting to demand it then asking him nicely.
The way he follows her so quickly, though, she's not even sure she would've had to ask. "What are you going to say?" Henry asks.
"That Jessica should be here and I shouldn't," she says, her voice cracking a little as she focuses on a spot at the end of the hallway—the doors. "She can sit with Will."
Henry's silent for a moment, "And not you?"
"Catching on," Elizabeth mumbles sarcastically, then feels the guilt immediately wash over her. She stops walking and turns to him, "Truth is, Will and I haven't been talking much." She admits, cocking her jaw to the side and tucking her hands down in her pockets, "I said some things he didn't want to hear, and he said some hurtful things back. We haven't spoken in a few months."
"Oh," he whispers, his eyes darting back and forth to each of hers, studying them hard from what she can tell.
She stands stock still, then feels her head shaking just slightly back and forth, "Maybe I shouldn't have said what I did," she says, not wanting to offer up her exact words because, in truth, they hurt her to say them, "But I did. And now we're here, and he doesn't really care to see me. I'm sorry for making you bring me up here."
"Don't be sorry," Henry answers immediately, "I'm—"
"Your mom is probably furious."
"No."
"I saw you on the phone with—"
"She was panicked," Henry admits, then shakes his head, "But she's not furious. She understands why I did what I did. I mean, she was much more furious when I joined the Marines straight out of high school, you know?"
Her eyes meet his again and she stares up into them, feeling as though something otherworldly is holding her upright on her feet right now. Something about the way he looks at her makes her feel safe, it makes her feel like she's seen and taken care of. She looks away abruptly when she thinks of Andrew and how they, officially, have not broken up yet. Does he even deserve an official breakup, though? She swallows thick and clears her voice, "Let's just go talk to the desk."
Maybe she should've put up more of a fight, but maybe this was the right thing to do. Her mind wouldn't let her rest as Henry drove through the city traffic.
Typically, whenever she rides through the city, she feels on edge, she's gripping something like the seat or her legs, but this time, she's just slumped over against the door. She watches the buildings go by slowly and feels as though she may be dreaming—like the way those movies portray the city all the time with a dreamlike, hazy filter. Maybe the cameras slow it down, even. Maybe she's in a movie. Maybe she's in a nightmare.
"Can I be honest with you?" Henry asks out of the blue, disrupting her dreamlike trance.
She picks her head up off the door and turns to him, narrowing her eyes at him momentarily, "What?" She replies, less of a question and more of an answer.
He keeps his eyes on the road as he's bumper to bumper with the car in front of him—typical New York City traffic. "I don't think you should leave him," he states, a hint of nerves in his typically deep and gravelly voice. He blinks a few times and takes a breath when he gets to a red light, looking over at her. His eyes widen, and she's sure it's because of the death glare she's giving him. "Siblings are siblings. Family is family. He can get over whatever you said to him, and you can too. I know that—"
"You don't have a dog in this fight, Henry." She barks, turning her body to face him more, almost as if to fight him physically. She feels like she could. "You don't know anything that happened between us. You don't even know why I was so panicked in the first place!"
"Then tell me," Henry answers calmly, his gaze back on the road as the light turns green. "Sit right there and tell me what has happened that could be so bad that you were so panicked about losing your brother this morning and are ready to leave the state after seeing him today. Tell me." He says sternly, "Because I have three siblings, Elizabeth, and none of us get along. We never have. I don't know that I would've felt the same way you did this morning if one of my siblings were in the same situation. I love them, and I always will, but—"
"Just stop, Henry," she breathes, closing her eyes. "Just stop. You don't know the half of it."
"Why won't you tell me then?"
"Because you're a stranger to me," she says, looking at him again. She stares at the side of his jaw while he drives—he has a bit of stubble and his sideburns are longer than they were when she'd first met him. She remembers because he looked so clean cut, but he was fresh out of the Marines then. He's still a Marine, but maybe they don't have as strict rules when they're not active duty. "You are just a stranger who brought me to New York City because you happened to be in the wrong place at the right time. I'm sorry for that," she word vomits, "But now I just want to go home."
"I'm not taking you home." Henry says, pulling off into a parking spot on the street and managing to park his truck parallel after only two tries.
She stares at him, her mouth open just slightly. The way her heart is beating in her ears and even in her fingertips makes her feel as though she could fight him. "Excuse me?" She says. When he doesn't answer, doesn't budge, she reaches for the door handle. "Fine, I'll fly back."
"Elizabeth," Henry says sternly, and for some reason, it makes her stop.
She swallows hard and faces forward, staring at the New Jersey license plate in front of her. A few moments pass by before she finally looks down, "Our parents died in a car wreck when Will was twelve." She blurts out quietly, afraid that if she didn't get it out quickly she would lose the courage to say it at all. "He was there with them."
More silence passes. She doesn't want to look at Henry, buts she can feel his presence. She can feel him staring at her. She hears his hand move, and it sounds like he's swiping it across his stubble based on the scratchy noise. Her teeth are gritted together to keep her from crying, and she's about to reach for the door again when he finally answers.
"I'm sorry."
There it was. The words that made her want to lose her mind. She'd heard so many "I'm sorry's" over the past four years that she wanted to vomit every time she heard it again. Their funeral, every time she tells someone her parents were dead, any time she sees a distant family member. They all say "I'm sorry."
She balls her fist up again and runs her tongue across her lip, "What happened between Will and I is something I'm not ready to discuss." She admits, "But please, for the love of God, don't ever tell me you're sorry about my parents." Though she doesn't give any other context, he nods and lets his hands fall to his lap.
She blinks at the New Jersey tag, sees the letters blurred, then blinks again and feels a tear stream down her face. "I'll pay for a hotel," she says, unsure of how she'll even begin to do that. "For you, too."
"No," Henry says, shaking his head, "You don't have to pay for mine. I'll get a room."
With that, he puts the truck in drive and continues to roam around the city until he finds a hotel that looks to be in their price range.