DEAD INSIDE

(31)

"Ali..." Somebody flicked my nose. "Ali..." I opened my eyes and had a strange sense of déjà vu when I came face to face with Moira's big green eyes.

I blinked twice and then it all came back to me.

"Hey Mo..." I said, my voice still sleepy.

"Can I join you and Lip?" She asked and after glancing at her brother's sleeping body, I opened my second arm so she could lie down in her brother's bed too.

Philip must have felt her presence because he started moving.

"You're awake?" Moira asked a few seconds later and I frowned. Hadn't we talked just a moment before?

I was about to tell her so when her brother said. "Yeah..." in a sad voice.

"What happened to Dad?" She went on and for some reason, I felt like I was intruding.

"H-he fell into his shower..." He squeezed my hand tightly and I squeezed his back to let him know that I wouldn't say a word. "I heard him shout and when I got there he'd fainted so I used his phone to call Ali who came and called an ambulance..."

"So Daddy's at the hospital?" My heart broke at her sorrowful voice.

"Yeah..."

"When will he be back?" She questioned.

"We're still waiting for news..." Lip answered sternly. It must have been his Drop it! voice because she immediately grew quiet.

After that, they both took one of my hands and the three of us wordlessly waited for my phone to ring.

I had already counted all the glow in the dark stars, moons and planets on the ceiling a hundred times, and imagined several stories based on the dinosaurs' shadows Lip's night lamp cast on the wall facing us when the phone started ringing loudly in my sweats' pocket.

Lip sat up, freeing my arm so I was able to get it.

It was Mel.

"Mel?"

"He's going to be ok..." She said and I let out the breath I didn't know I'd been holding. "They've pumped his stomach and stitched his wounds, that's all they can do for now..."

"Are they keeping him?" I already knew the answer but thought I'd ask anyway.

"Yeah, but only for the night." She answered. "His Dad's there along with the White T's and they're arranging for things to be dealt at his place..."

"You mean counseling?" I used the wrong term on purpose to keep the twins in the dark.

"Amongst other things, but at least he's remorseful and really want to get better..."

"That's good..." I muttered regretting that he'd had to take things that far to realize that.

"That was what you meant when you said that it wasn't like that with him, wasn't it?" She then whispered so I gathered that just like me, she wasn't alone.

"Hmm..." I wasn't sure any more.

"I understand now..." She commented. "Do you know what happened to him?"

"No..."

I heard a male voice in the background. He must have been talking to her because she answered him.

"Mr. Bellucci wants to speak to you..."

"Oh, ok..."

"Alison, it's Kevin Bellucci."