WATTPAD FEATURED NOV 2020 AND OCT 2021 - FROM OUR STARS LIST
WATTPAD MULTICULTURAL FEATURED SEP 2022 - AUSTRALIAN WHISPERERS READING LIST
It's difficult to save someone who doesn't want saving, particularly when they're lying to you.
...
Claudia and...
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Posting early cause I felt terrible for leaving it the way I did!
- Skylar xx
...
The next few hours pass in a blur of red and blue lights and soft, tentative voices that don't reach me. I'm aware of Lewis's arms around me, of Sylvia and Peter's faces flashing before mine, but none of it seems real.
The only thing that pulls me out of my coma-like state is when I reach the hospital and Jake is lying before me.
He's unconscious, his face almost unrecognisable.
I hear the doctor's words as if through water as they explain to Sylvia, Peter and I the extent of his injuries.
Broken back and pelvic bone, smashed legs, skin lacerations, internal bleeding, severe concussion. Hours in surgery that would lead to months of recovery.
Jake tried to kill himself.
The words run through my head.
But even as I stare at the proof, I can't believe it. I can't understand how I could've been so oblivious, so certain that the worst was behind us.
The nurses check Jake's vitals once more, and then one of them gestures for us to follow her into the hall.
Once the door to the ICU closes behind us, she tells us that Jake won't wake for several hours, if not days. She says the doctors operated on him but he'd be in a critical condition until his vitals stabilised and it might be better if we went home.
Sylvia and Peter agree, their faces drawn and puffy, but I don't. And I find myself seated back inside the ICU, perched beside Jake on an uncomfortable plastic chair, with Sylvia or Peter visiting every few hours with food and water or jackets.
I try to show some gratitude every time they appear, giving them small smiles and hugs, but something inside me has shut down - slamming the door to any emotion or sense of self - and I spend the next day in a numb limbo.
I stare at Jake; I stare at the wall; I stare at my phone, which pings with messages from Lewis and Emmy and Aleisha. I stare as other people move in and out of the ward and give me strange looks, eyeing my low cut jumpsuit and heels.
Nothing makes me react until Jake shifts, until his eyelids flutter and slide open.
He looks at me for a long time, hazy and confused, and then it all come back. I watch as he remembers who he is, and what he's done, and why he's here.
And the distress that settles onto his face makes my hands shake and my voice turn all wobbly.
I reach forward and stroke back his hair and he closes his eyes, tears sliding out from beneath the lids.
"I'm sorry, Claude," he slurs.
"It's okay."
"I just needed to make it stop. I didn't know what else to do."
He falls silent, hovering in the darkness behind his lids, and I can tell he's working up to what I've already figured out. What I missed for months and months and didn't realise until it might've been too late.
"The fire," he whispers. "It was all my fault. Everyone's lost so much because of me."
I think of Matt, of his sister and mother. I think of Mum sitting in jail. I think of the list of the dead and all the destroyed houses.
"I know, Jakey."
And then he starts crying. Sobbing out a year's worth of guilt and lies and heartbreak, sobbing for the worlds he destroyed and the happiness I'm realising he'll never get back.
The nurses return, scowling at me for distressing him, and inject sedatives into his IV. I watch, unable to help the tears sliding down my face, as he slips back under.
