(we're a) Fine Line {HS}

XX - Inevitable

"no... No!" My mind is blank, I don't know why I cried those words. But something feels wrong, something out of my control happened and I can't have a hold on it. I don't feel right...

"I'm here, Sweetheart." My mom's voice whispering. Why is my mom here? Where am I? Why am I here? My breath is heavy and I don't need to pay attention to the fast beeps in the background to know my heart is struggling. Right, in a hospital. I manage to open my eyes reflexively.

Before I get a chance to acknowledge the surroundings, someone opens a door, scaring me, and approaches me and my mother next to me holding my hand.

"How are we feeling?" A nurse asks with a fake sweet voice, starting to mess with the machines beside the bed I'm laying in. I don't know how to answer and am not even sure if I can speak at all, so I don't, and proceed to look around, confused about everything and nothing, trying to get a hold on what is going on.

"She's very restless and uneasy, I would say... Could you tell me what happened to her, once and for all?" My mother speaks eagerly. The nurse changes to a more severe tone but keeps her focus on the screen and sheets.

"She stoped breathing out of a shock she suffered, eventually passing out with the lack of oxygen." A shock? My mind races around my memories as thoses words reach my ears. The beeps accelerate as I wide my eyes at them and at the brown cardigan I see laying at the end of the bed. Everything comes back and I break.

Both the nurse and my mom rush to me, but there's nothing they can do. Tears form in my eyes, I'm scared and worried.

"Where is he?" I ask breathless trying to get up. I'm about to run and look for him everywhere I have to, and I refuse to admit it is pointless. I'm sure he was released by now as it was all a misunderstanding. And he's not here only because maybe he went to the restroom meanwhile and I look sharply at their blurry figures above me, waiting for that answer.

There's also a part of me that for moments fears nothing happened. Nothing at all. I never met Harry or at least never went to LA with him to record. It was all a dream, of course, because it was all too good to be true and sometimes it didn't feel true. Maybe that was me hallucinating while I was off and the real reason I'm here is something else completely unrelated.

"An officer will be here soon to explain to you everything you need to know." I gasp and fall harshly back on the big pillows, realising the worst has happened, almost as everything was taken away from me. At least I really had it, for moments. Sobs take over me and I don't even care to stop them. For at bad things I easily cry, and how bad this one is.

"She's still unstable, all we can do now is keep her comfortable... and let her cry as much as she needs to." The nurse directs to my mother and my beeps eventually slow down a little as I take it all in, calmly but reluctantly having nothing more to do if not to accept the reality. But I still cry, silently and painfully.

After speaking, she exits the room and my mom turns a little bit more to me, evaluating my hurting state. I feel her wanting to say so many things and ask so many questions, but she's not sure she should.

"When you're ready to talk about it, and if you want to, I'm here to listen." She eventually says softly, but there's a severe hint in her words. As if I had been able to calm myself down, her words trigger my memories again.

I'm not sure how, but suddenly I'm hugging her, realising just now how much I needed it. I burst even more, hopefully reaching the high of it. Moments after, we separate again just in time for someone to knock on the door. My mother says "Come in" and my red swollen eyes meet the ones of an officer that does what my mother said.

I tremble a bit and my first instinct is to yell as if the person had any guilt in the situation. But exactly for that not being the case, I contain myself, looking sharply at the officer not knowing what to wait from him, at this point.

"Good evening, I'm officer Cameron. How are you feeling?" He seems playful and I'm not in the mood for playfulness.

"Where is he?" Is all I can ask, but now I do it dryly once my sadness is being taken over by anger.

"He's already in jail."I wide my eyes at the officer's unbothereness as if that was the most common thing to happen. "It's okay, you're safe now." He adds, missunderstanding my reaction.

"I'm safe, now?!"

"What?!"

Me and my mother, respectively, chuckle in the same sarcastic tone.

"Oh, you don't know?" I snap my head to her, next to me, and realise she doesn't, seeing her wondering gaze scanning both through me and the officer. "They've arrested Harry by an alleged minor abuse.." I explain, keeping the sarcasm, hoping it affects the officer in some way. I watch as my mother's face turns white while she looks me in the eye right into my soul.

"The minor being you.." She almost whispers, more as a statement than a question and I realise the almost betrayal she feels. I can't tell if she's angry with me, for some reason, or not.

"Yes.. but he didn't abuse me, you don't understand... This is all nonsense." I turn to the officer, desbeliveness in the situation explicit in my face. The officer matches me with a frown and says lower, as if I'm a confused child and he needs to explain things overly well "The evidences show otherwise."

I wide my eyes once again suddenly recalling what the security cameras captured nights before, remembering my mother doesn't know about them, and feeling embarrassed and nervous about the thought of her eventually seeing them, and realising Jeff is the reason behind all of this, for sure. It can only be because it only makes sense.

I look down, trying not to show any kind of expression, a part of me knowing that things just become harder with those evidences, if we can call them that.

"He didn't do anything." I reply lowly, almost inaudibly.

"Well, we'll know that for sure in court."

What could be a greater certainty than the victim's itself? I ask to myself and, once again, the officer misunderstands my expression and adds "He's waiting to be sentenced in court. We still don't have any date, though."

I slightly shake my head at the thought, still facing down at my hands, and he continues "It could be tomorrow, it could be next week, next month, in a year... We never know. But you'll be informed in case you want to be present."

I haven't thought about it but I don't think I can do it just now. "For how long have I been out?" I end up saying, more to my mother because I know that's not quite the officer's business, not caring about the sudden change of subject nor possibly making the officer feel ignored.

"Precisely 24 hours." I never heard her voice so sharp and if I had no intentions of looking at her, now I have even less. She must be thinking the worst things of Harry, maybe even the worst things of me as well.

How could me and Harry come to this? Now we're both screwed, him in jail and me without him, having to face any consequence that's coming from my mother. Something tells me she's disappointed with me, although I didn't do anything. This is all a crazy nonsense and nobody did anything... right?

"Very well..." The officer speaks after what I realise to have been a long silence. "If you don't have any other questions I think my job here is done."

I remain immobilized and my mom nods "Thank you very much, officer."

The officer nods and exits saying "Good night." leaving a lasting silence inside the room, in which I almost jump when my mom breaks it, "Are you thinking about explaining to me what happen?"

I close my eyes and sigh, before my beeps could get any faster. I knew this would come, it's inevitable, the more I want it not to be.