It's time

chapter 1

                Almost thirteen years later, I was sitting in Cub’s arms on a beach just like we always did on a Saturday night. Some people felt the need to discuss trivial things like who wore what to whose party last weekend and who hooked up with who, not us. We are just as happy in silence as we were talking, happier even.

                I felt rather than heard his phone ringing in his shirt pocket, so I leant forward, and let him fish it out. “Hello?... Oh, oh right, okay, we’re on our way” at this point he tugged me into his new car that he got for his seventeenth birthday “Do you want to tell her now, or shall I, or would it be better face to face?” I was panicking now, surely I was the ‘her’ they were talking about; it had to be serious if Cub thought I needed to be told face to face whatever it was, “Sure, okay, that’s probably sensible, we’re halfway there now, so I’ll see you there in a minute, okay, bye.”

                It took a minute for what he had said to sink in, we were already halfway there; I hadn’t even noticed him start the car. I turned my eyes to the road we were driving down, and was taken aback for a moment at Cub’s driving. He was always so safe and sensible: never wanting to even scratch his baby, but in the past fifteen seconds that I had been watching him, he had jumped three red lights, and completely smashed the speed limit. Before I knew it, we were driving into the car park of-       

                Oh crap.

It was a hospital, of course it was, something had happened, and, and, and, I couldn’t come up with anything as a million different scenarios were flying through my head. As if he could read my thoughts, Cub shot me a sympathetic smile, and said “We didn’t know the situation, just wait until we know what’s happening. If your whole family’s dead, and you’re an orphan, then you can panic” Okay fine, I added that last bit myself, but still, what if they all were? What would I do then? “Petal, calm down and stop thinking!” He demanded as he stopped the car and turned the engine off.

                I shot out of the car and ran into the reception of the hospital, I spotted what was left of my Dad’s grey hair that was poking out over the top of the crowd before I saw his tall broad physique, and he seemed to spot me as soon as I spotted him.

                “Lilypad, thank God you’re here, there’s, there’s been an-an accident, you see-“

                I cut him off before he could finish “Oh God, Oh God, Oh God, Oh God, I’m going to be an orphan, Oh God, Oh God” In my state of shock, my mind seemed to completely bypass the fact that I was taking to my perfectly healthy Dad, and i couldn’t be an orphan if he was still here. He seemed to notice the same thing though.

                “Lilypad, you won’t be an orphan, I’m still here,  and I’ll be here as long as you need me for” He smiled but it didn’t nearly meet his eyes.

                “Then, then, why’re we he-?” I cut myself off when I realised, “Oh God, where are Mum and Liam? Oh God, are they okay?” I was panicking and rambling, but I couldn’t stop. It was then that I felt I strong warm hand encasing my own; I didn’t have to look down to know that that hand belonged to Cub, and I felt some of the tension slip away from my body, until, that was, my Dad said the next sentence.

                “Liam’s in a coma, and they don’t know if he’ll wake up,” my Dad all but whispered.

                “And Mum?” I prompted,

                A tear dripped down his cheek, and he didn’t bother to brush it away. Now that I looked closer, his eyes were all bloodshot and swollen, as if he had been crying a lot. “Sh-She, well she didn’t, didn’t… I mean, she isn’t, anymore… they, they couldn’t… They tried but they just couldn’t…” he trailed off still mumbling half formed sentences that I couldn’t make sense of.

                I looked up at Cub to see if he could make any sense of my Dad’s incoherent rumbling. All he had to do was shake his head, and everything my Dad was saying came crashing down on me “Where is, she?” I asked, I wanted, no- needed to see her, I had to check that they were right, I had no choice but to see for myself. “I want to see her “ Cub knew from my tone of voice that I was serious.

                He walked over to the desk and spoke swiftly and smoothly and before I knew it, he was off up a hallway with me following swiftly after him.

                “Is this it?” I asked when we stopped outside the plain white door with the curtain pulled, he nodded, and knew from the look I gave him that I needed to be left alone, so he walked a little way up the hallway so that he was far enough to give me space, but close enough to be there if I needed him.

                I took a deep breath and pushed open the sterile white doors with shaking hands.

***********************************Hey guys, thanks for reading my last chapter, and yeah... Oh, and sorry it's short, it just seemed like a natural stop in the story.