Blameless ✔

Chapter 23: ❝Please Father, save him...❞

Chapter 23: ❝Please Father, save him...❞

♡Mark's POV♡  

"He's stable."

That was what I was told by an old man covered from head to toe in a white coat, using his stethoscope as a scarf and the fading plastic of his ID to show that he had some authority. Well, that authority meant nothing to me if he failed to save my brother who I had heartbrokenly met laying still on the white, crusty hospital bed that hardly accommodated for his long limbs - his limbs that were now bandaged up with the same monotonous colour.

I blamed myself.

I blamed myself because I knew why Anthony had decided to take his car out that night to drive around with no destination.

He was looking for me.

He was worried about me because of my foolishness that led me to go to a restaurant at such a preposterous hour. Of course, Evelyn was with me but the difference between her and I was that she had actually told her parents where she was going and called them before I had insisted that she stay at mine for a bit due to the terrible weather.

"My house is closer."

It was then that images of Rachel had unceasingly begun to pop up in my mind, making me restless and bothered. I was scared and it was because of my fear that I had made Evelyn succumb to my selfish desire. My desire to forget. I had hoped that the physical pleasure would distract from the emotional distress but transparently, I had failed.

Unlocking the door to my home, I dragged my feet in and tossed my keys somewhere on the tiny, oakwood table situated beside the entrance. I threw off my shoes, not concerned about tidiness at that moment as there was too much going on in my world to really care about where I should put my new sneakers given as a gift from Anthony who had still decided to buy my forgiveness even after I had verbally abused his fiancé. 

He was too kind but it turned out that kindness wasn't enough to make it in this cruel, unforgiving world. It was because of his angelic trait that he was now lying unconscious on an uncomfortable bed and it was because of my foolishness that I now had to bear the traumatising aftermath.

I hadn't been going to school. Didn't have the motivation to. All I had been doing these past few days was going in and out of the hospital to get news on Anthony but he was always in the same worrying disposition. He never moved an inch. He never reacted to the sound of my voice that accompanied the muffled noises of his maze of tubes that helped him to breathe. He never opened his iridescent green eyes just to look around curiously at his surroundings and it was all due to the repetitive statement I'd grown to loathe: "He's stable."

I had always thought of him as lucky for inheriting the eyes and pure-heartedness of our father and always thought of myself as unlucky for having the evil eyes of my mother; the one who had left us all those years ago to go start a new life with another man. That really took a toll on my father no matter how hard he had tried to hide it but everything he had bottled up eventually reached the surface when he signed his name off on his will that he had written right before he committed suicide. 

Ever since that day, I had made a pact with my brother to never open our hearts out to any woman but unbeknownst to him, I had already broken that promise long before he did. He didn't know about Rachel and I intended to keep it that way to avoid looking like a hypocrite who had put him through hell based solely on the fact that I didn't want him to experience the heartbreak I once had to suffer. Love made my father weak and I didn't want to be a victim of that ever again.

Finally moving my feet, I made a move to walk into my bedroom but something stopped me - or rather someone.

There kneeled on the carpeted floor of the living room with both hands pressed together and raised towards the ceiling was none other than Sarah. She had been coming over frequently to check up on me, ignoring my constant pleading that there was no need. She hadn't noticed I had walked in so I watched as she continued to pray fervently as if there was a God compassionate enough to hear her.

"Please Father, save him..."

Shaking my head, I silently made my way into my dimly lit bedroom and let myself collapse onto the bed that shook with the force of my weight.

My father was a very religious person and used to read my brother and I a bible story every night. They stuck with me so I always used to confide in God when I felt like things had gotten to difficult to handle, however, in non-literal terms, he had left me on read so what Luke and the others must've been feeling when I had seen their endless text messages with no reply wasn't a foreign one.

I released a magnitude of lifeless sighs to partner up with Sarah's incessant prayers but unforeseeably, they didn't annoy as much as I thought they would've.

I fell asleep.

-

Now you know a little bit about Mark's background.

I hope some things were cleared up.