How to Say Goodbye

Chapter 5

Harry stayed with me while I cried and cried and cried in his arms in the hospital. The ambulance took forever to get to the scene of the accident, but they eventually showed up and got him out. There was blood everywhere in the car, and his foot was facing the wrong direction. It took them a while to find a pulse, and in that time, I made a whole mess on Harry's shirt as I poured my eyes out.

Zayn went back to the hotel after Harry and I went into the hospital, so he could tell Liam and Louis to get their butts over. Harry and I sat in the waiting room. I gently cried into his chest as he held me and stroked my hair, singing me a lullaby softly in my ear. He was so supportive and didn't shed one tear. Harry again reminded me of the way Jeremiah acted when I relapsed. He had been strong for me, and the only time he cried was before I went in for surgery. That had been when it finally sank in for him that I might not survive.

My heart ached over the events of the day. I was falling for a great guy, only to have him mauled by a truck and struggling to survive. The memories or Jeremiah that surfaced throughout the day made my heart hurt worse. What had I done? Because of me, Jeremiah was dead. Because of me, Niall was in the ICU. Because of me, Niall might die as well. Why was life so unfair?

At one point, my tears finally stopped, and I had a legitimate conversation with Harry.

“Do you need to get your mind off of Niall?” he asked after a few hours of nothing but waiting.

I smiled at his attempt of being kind. “I don’t think that’s possible.”

He shrugged. “Sure it is. Let’s talk about your favorite type of music.”

I thought it over a moment. “I don’t have a favorite type of music. I like pretty much all genres.”

He smiled. “Have you heard of Augustana?”

My eyes went wide, and I shook my head. “I have no idea who that is. I’m guessing Indie-type because I don’t avidly listen to that kind of stuff. I mean, I know some artists, but not many.”

Harry nodded. “So what’s the last song you listened to?”

I tried to remember, and blushed when I did. “I think it was a French song.”

His eyebrows went up in surprise. “You listen to French music?”

I nodded and smiled. “When I was in high school, I took three years of French, and my teacher was crazy. She was very scatter-brained and unorganized, bless her heart. But a lot of the time, she just played French songs and French movies and musicals for us, and I liked some of them so much that I felt the urge to download a lot of them.”

He grinned. “Do you understand what the artist is saying?”

I laughed and shook my head. “Oh heavens, no. Romantic languages are so hard for me to understand because they link their words together so fast and so much.”

Harry chuckled and winked at me. “Then you have people like me who talk very slowly.”

I smirked. “When I get very excited, I talk a mile a minute, so it’s hard for people to understand me. I have one friend who can keep up, but besides her, there’s no one.”

We continued the conversation with me talking about Rylee and my time in high school and little quirks about me.

I eventually fell asleep with Harry's arm wrapped around me as we waited in the waiting room for Niall to be done with another surgery. I awoke when I heard a nurse talking to Harry.

"You two should go home. You’ve been here for three days. He’s done with surgery and is back in his room, but he isn’t awake. And we don’t know when he will," she said.