You're Not in this Alone *The final book in the We'll Carry on Series*

Let's say goodbye, The hundreth time...

Two weeks later…

“C’mon man, you have to eat… and shower, Jesus Christ! You reek! It’s been two weeks, Gerard. I miss her too.” Frank lectured as I sat at the island in what was once mine and Stormy’s kitchen.

Once… It’s funny how one minute, everything can be so great and amazing, and the next, it’s all fucking gone. Now your wife – your one true love that means everything to you-is in a coma and you’re left alone to take care of a little girl who looks more and more like her each day, acts like her. Everything around me reminds me of Stormy. The birds outside the window, Bee’s laugh which has dwindled to a rare occurrence. We were told that she wasn’t technically dead, but she wasn’t exactly alive either. She was just… just fucking there. We had gotten home too late. We were minutes too late to save her immediately. My world crashed and burned the moment the doctors told me my wife may never wake up.

I spent the first couple of days consoling Bandit, but she only screamed for her mom. A mom I couldn’t give back to her. The funny part is I wasn’t sure what hurt me more. Knowing I had lost my wife, or knowing that Bandit had lost her mother. Either way we were both messes to say the least. Bandit had nightmares now; they were worse the first week of Storm’s absence. She would wake up screaming and not even I could calm her down. She seemed to stop coloring all at once and she wouldn’t dare go near a piano or guitar; the instruments her mother played her as she would sing to her. Last night Band begged me to sing her Storm’s song to her.

“Daddy, pwease. I wanna hear mommy’s nigh-nigh song. She wote it fo me.” She sobbed, pleading with her brown eyes. I wish she had gotten Stormy’s blue ones.

“My sweet little miracle, you mean so much to me.” I began singing as she climbed into my lap, resting her head on my shoulder.

“Now’s the time to close your eyes and let your body sleep, when you wake my darling girl, mommy will be here. We will spend the day just you and I never feeling fear. I love you so my sweet gumdrop, but now it’s time to go. Close your eyes and go to sleep, tomorrow we will know. Butterflies and unicorns await you in your dreams, Mommy loves you baby girl, so much more than it may seem. Now it’s time for us to rest, no more time for play, but when you open up those eyes, we will play all day.” Stormy sand that song to her whenever the ‘villains’ invaded her dreams. Bandit cried into my arms as I wiped my own tears with my sleeve.

“C’mon baby, you can sleep with daddy tonight in mommy’s spot.”

And that is where Bandit slept every single night from that moment on. I missed Stormy so much. I visited her every day and sometimes it seemed like she was coming back to me. A twitch of her hand, a deep sigh that belonged to her lips, not the machines. Small signs of hope that I and everyone else hung to, needed. Lindsey stopped playing bass, actually the whole band stopped. They’re on hiatus now. My Chemical Romance hasn’t made any attempts in recording. How could we when the girl we all loved so much was wasting away. Audrey stares at walls in our living room, not sure what to do. Stormy was like a sister to her, she took her in and gave her someone who swore she’d never leave her. Frank was angry half of the time and sobbing the other while Jamia tried holding herself together for the twins. The twins asked where ‘torm’ was every day.

Mikey though… well, Mikey isn’t the same. He picked up alcohol, but then again, so have I. Not extensively, I mean, Bandit needed me to be sober for her. But I drank enough to take the edge off. Alicia never left the hospital and neither did my mom. Dad still hasn’t had the courage to see her yet.

Two weeks without her felt like a lifetime. It was like she was never actually real. She seems like something I must have made up in my head. I mean, someone as perfect and beautiful as her couldn’t possibly be real. Then I look at Bandit and realize that this isn’t some dream that I’ll jolt awake from on tour, this isn’t a figment of my imagination. Stormy was real, our love was real, and she was really dead. There was no other word for it that made any sense. Stormy was dead and machines were in her place, forcing her to breathe.