The Crashing Waves | COMPLETED

Chapter 8: The Aftermath

The next several days were a blur. Brooke took a redeye flight immediately and was with me by the morning after. I hadn't left the hospital yet. I couldn't go home to an empty apartment. I couldn't see all of him there, but physically being gone. I couldn't find the ocean in my head. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't move. Brooke was finally able to get me to leave the hospital and go to the apartment, but it was no easy task. I couldn't leave him. Even though he was already gone, I knew his body was there and I didn't want to leave him.

Once I was at the apartment I refused to leave. I laid in our bed wearing his dirty clothes for days. When a shirt would lose his scent, I'd put on another. I knew Brooke was worried about me. She didn't know how to fix me. But the truth was that I couldn't be fixed. My happily ever after had just burned to the ground.

***

Thank God for Brooke. I never would have been able to plan anything. She handled all of the arrangements for the funeral and for his body, since his funeral would be back in California. Brody and I had bought cemetery plots the last visit because we wanted to make sure we would be able to live out eternity there together. I guess that's what you do as an adult, although I had no intentions of needing to use them for 100 years. Brooke knew we bought them so she asked where the information was, and all I could do was point to a black box in the closet. The safe. With all our personal information that we could never do without. I knew what was in that safe, and I couldn't go near it. Not anymore. Not only did it hold the receipts for our cemetery plots, our wedding certificate, our passports, and social security cards, but it held photos from every year since we met. All the way back to my 16th birthday in the cove. We retook photos there every single year. And they sat in that black box. Taunting me.

"Ok Cam. Get up." Brooke was clearly frustrated with me, but I just looked at her blankly. "Get up. Get out of this bed. Stop this right now." I didn't move. "Damnit Cami, Brody would not want you to do this to yourself and you KNOW it!" She was yelling now.

"No you stop!" I belted back at her throwing my hands in the air. I could feel the rage building inside me now as I sat up on the bed staring her down. "You did not just lose the love of your life for no damn good reason, so you have NO right to tell me how to feel or what to do, do you hear me?!" I just sat there staring with anger in my face.

"Thank GOD!" And she gave me a sweet smile as she sat down with me and put her hand on my arm. "Thank God you are still in there Cami. I was sure we'd lost you too in this mess."

I didn't know how to react, but I could feel pain behind my eyes. Shooting pain and pressure and before I could say another word, the tears began to fall. I stopped breathing, and I stopped trying to speak, and I just cried as I buried my face into my best friends lap.

After a few minutes, Brooke pushed me up and looked at me in the eyes. "Cam, I need to give you something." And she had an envelope in her hand. I looked at it with a confused look. On it, it said 'To my everything, my love, my sweet Cami.' I looked up at her unsure of what she just handed me.

"What the hell is this? Is this a joke? Some sick joke!?" I was mad. I knew that handwriting. It was Brody's.

"What? No! Brody gave me this after your wedding 2 years ago." I looked at her utterly in shock. "He wanted me to hold onto this just in case something ever happened to him." My look just got worse as she continued on. "I was pissed when he explained what it was, trust me. I thought he was insane, but he made me promise I would give it to you." She paused and looked down at the envelope. "You need this right now, Cami. Just open it."

After staring at it for another minute, my guts told me I needed to do what she said. I was not at all prepared for what I found inside.