Dear Maya » rilaya

seven - crisis-mode

this gets kinda dark really quick, just a warning. -e

-

Dear Maya,

        Within three days of me setting out, I found you. (Selfish insert, I'm really glad it was me and not Lucas. Anyhow, I digress.) It was the middle of the night and you were passed out at the counter of a dingy old café, your head in a puddle of something that did not look like coffee, choking. I nearly passed the place by, it wasn't lit up whatsoever, but I needed a bathroom break. So I stopped.

        And there you were, your beautiful blonde hair in tangles, clothes covered in dirt and torn in so many places you almost didn't have sleeves at all. You had so, so much skin exposed for a chilly night like that one and so, so much of that was covered in grotesque purple bruises. Your body kept lurching and the noise you were making was terrible.

        Here's will I will admit I screamed when I saw you. Really loudly. They tried to kick me out, but by then I had your head in my lap, dialing 911, screaming directions at everyone in the café. I was panicking, thinking you were dead, dying, that the old hag running the place had just left you to die on her own counter top. I went into a mode I didn't know I possessed, which is apparently my crisis-mode, because by the time an ambulance showed up you weren't choking and your flailing had stopped completely. To this minute I still have no idea how I made it stop, many asked me, I could never give an answer.

        Lucas showed up at the same moment as the cops, he hadn't been far away (but he had been heading the wrong direction), just in time to proclaim he was the boyfriend and that no parent was present to ride in the ambulance with you; therefore he would have to go. I was literally two seconds from climbing in with you, Maya. Literally. But then the medics quickly thanked me for my help and said that "the boyfriend could take it from here", before ushering me away from you. I didn't have any screams left to yell at them for it.

        So I sat down against the door frame of the stupid hole-in-a-wall café and cried for the first time since I first saw you. Giant, loud sobs that wracked my entire body violently. I didn't know what else to do but to cry for you and hope that you were okay. But don't get me wrong, I cried for myself too. I cried because I couldn't be there for you, I wouldn't be the first face you saw when you opened your eyes, I cried because no one would probably even tell you that I saved your life.

        One policewoman (who looked to be early twenties) came over to me after my sobs became dry and handed me a blanket, asking if I had a way home. After I replied with a few nods she asked me what to do with Lucas's empty car.

        I told her to send it down a cliff or something. To call it an accident.

        She smiled, then looked into my dead eyes and told me quietly that she'd been through a similar situation. Somehow I knew she wasn't talking about her best friend choking in a puddle of alcohol. In those two seconds after she said it and I looked back into her eyes, though, I feel as if we connected in some way. She handed me her number "in case I had any extra details about what happened".

        Her name was Heidi. She made me forget about you for fifty-seven seconds.

                                                                                                                                           Riley