A Path Through the Woods(A RiaEgg Story)

CHAPTER 7: "We Can Hope."

The sun rose over the horizon, and the light of morning shone into Ria and MrEgg's bedroom, alerting her to the new day. But she didn't care. She just stayed under the covers, awake, but without energy to do much else but keep her eyes open...By 9:00, Ria was still in bed, and she had no plans to get up yet.

She reached out over to her night table, grabbed her phone to make sure nobody had tried to contact her overnight, and sighed when she saw that there were no new messages.

...Hospital hasn't called yet, she said to herself. I guess that means things haven't really changed.

She finally mustered the will to sit up, and she scanned the room. She expected to hear something like footsteps or clattering coming from one of the other rooms at first, but no such noise made itself known. The house seemed so empty without MrEgg. Even though he'd have already been at his job at that point, it felt strange not hearing him washing up in the bathroom, or humming to himself as he gathered his sheet music for the day...or quietly saying her name as he tried to wake her.

...It only occurred to her then that he'd still been doing all of those things even when he started "working for TheGentleman" on the sly. He acted as if nothing was wrong. As though there was nothing to hide...He'd only acted suspicious when he was asked about the whole ordeal.

...Odd, she said to herself.

Deciding that the house was too quiet, Ria stretched herself out, then slid over to the side of the bed and slid her feet into her slippers before planting them on the ground. As she fixed herself up in the bathroom, she began to think about the situation between her and MrEgg again...What happened to all of the anger she felt yesterday? It hadn't been there ever since she found out about the accident. Shouldn't she still be mad at him for cheating on her? Furious, even? And what about TheGentleman? She remembered now that she didn't have a single thought about him from when they go to the hospital to when she went to bed that night.

But even while thinking about all of this, she couldn't find the will to be angry anymore.

...He didn't deserve this, she said to herself as she dabbed her face dry, a fresh stream of tears mixing with the water she'd splashed onto her face. He'd already lost my trust...He doesn't deserve to lose his life too. Why did this have to happen...?

Ria let out a strained sob as she stepped out of the bathroom, hugging herself as she trudged slowly out into the living room, sat down on the couch and curled up onto it...Maybe if she hadn't exploded at him like that, he wouldn't have left. Maybe he wouldn't have been in that awful car wreck. Maybe-

...Oh my God.

"...This is my fault," she whispered to herself. "It's my fault, it's all my fault this happened..."

She fell to pieces on the sofa, hiding her face away in her hands as she curled up into a tighter ball and cried harder...MrEgg had been her one and only. Her better half for almost two years...And now he was on the verge of death.

"I'll never forgive myself," she lamented, her voice muffled behind a pillow she'd grabbed hold of and squished against her face. "Never, never, never..."

Ria stayed there for an hour, her cries only growing longer and louder, and what shreds of hope she had left burning to a crisp in her fiery pit of guilt...Everything was ruined.

And she was to blame for hammering the last nail into the coffin.

...Her crying only stopped when she heard the phone ringing from the bedroom. At first, she wasn't sure who might be trying to contact her, but then her fuzzy head finally snapped back into order.