Don't Save My Life

Chapter 25

Emmett

     It was five months ago when I woke up in the boxy hospital room. My first breath-with my eyes open-being one filled with smells of sterilized utensils and discarded gauze. I could distinctly recollect how weak, almost nonexistent my arms felt when I tried to lift them to see the tubes stuck in me. Take the dead weight of my arms and my whole upper body, and my underused legs were practically useless.

      Even then all I could think was that I was missing a bigger piece of me. Hours later, when I was surrounded by strangers who called themselves family, I find out that my instinct had been correct and that bigger piece of me was my brother. As far as my useless memory went, I'd never even met Benet, and I still felt close to him.

      How was it that now-with the presence of my amnesia absent- did I not feel anything? No connection, no bond. No familiarity? How could I have these memories of growing up with this guy, who at the moment, felt like an unwanted stranger in my home?

 "What is it that you want again?" Frank said impatiently.

 After an awkward salutation, I took a seat on an ottoman a few feet away from Benet's seat. A sheet of tears enveloped my mother's eyes, but she didn't dare let a single one fall.

 "I don't need, want, and will not except anything from you Frank." Benet addressed my father in a businesslike manner that made us all sit upright.

 "I just need to talk to my brother." he finished, his eyes resting on me.

 I took in his unshaven face, his hair that had seemed to outgrow his head. He dressed decent. Not like that of someone who was homeless or had lost his unborn baby a year ago. His grey worn in Metallica t-shirt and jeans that were probably once dark washed were the right size and less wrinkled than the Nirvana one I wore?

 I didn't know why I felt the need for my parent’s approval of this, but I cast a glance at my father.

 "Go ahead." Mom said, patting Frank on the shoulder gently. "We'll give you a moment."

 Being the ever combative dick he was, my father directed and icy glare at my mother before turning back to Bennett.

 "Leave them? Why? So he can brainwash Emmett too?" She touched his shoulder but he shrugged it off. "No. Bennett you left our family during a hard time. You ran away like a coward, and left us to clean up a mess we didn't even know you'd caused with Daisy's family and her lawyers."

 I didn't have to look in his direction to feel how deep the words had cut into my brother. I winced, wishing I'd never come back home.

 Bennett rose now though, not looking nearly as broken as my father. "No!" he said. "I left to find the girl I loved and my child. I needed to make sure she was alright and it didn't help that you would actually accept a bribe to keep me away from her and your grandchild!"

 "Wait what?" I said, asking the question seemed to appear in my mother’s eyes.

 "Tell him." Benet growled at my father.

 Frank swallowed, running a hand over his peppered hair. He cleared his throat, but it still shook somewhere deep below his assertive tone. "I was approached by a man at the hospital that night, after Emmett had fallen into the coma. The man said that his daughter had also been in the accident and just had an emergency delivery in an attempt to save the child. To my surprise, he said Bennett was the father."

His brows furrowed, and I knew he was trying to hide the disappointment in his eyes. "Imagine I find out my two sons have just been in a bombing. One is in the operating room getting his leg stitched up and the other has literally just fallen into a coma. I can't even sleep on these things before I'm approached by a man who then tells me that my son, who I've trusted, not only got a girl pregnant, but had apparently been planning on marrying her?"