Forget Me Not

Chapter 4: Hold My Hand

Following a nurse to the Intensive Care Unit—room number 1649, Doug braced himself to see Evie. With a quiet sigh, he crossed the doorframe into the room. 

Stark white walls covered the space as a television hung on the wall. There was a bench by the window and two chairs against the wall diagonal from the hospital bed. The curtain was drawn around the bed preventing him from immediately seeing Evie. 

Stepping to the other side of the curtain, he stared at his girlfriend who though was alive, looked lifeless. She was connected to various sets of tubing that Doug knew were keeping her alive. She lay peacefully, the silence now surrounding him as the nurse had gone. He stepped across from the bed and grabbed one of the cushioned chairs.

As he approached her bedside again, he instinctively moved strands of her ocean blue waves out of her face and sighed once more. With the plethora of tubes connected to her, his eyes knew that it was Evie, but he couldn't get through in his mind that she was in this state. He was in complete shock. The comforting tip to simply think of the patient as being asleep wasn't as helpful for him as he anticipated. He instantly reminded himself that she had been asleep for almost the span of a day and may stay this way for weeks.

He reached for her open palm, but stopped mid-distance. Retracting his hand he instead placed it back in his lap.

"Evie?" He said, despite not expecting an answer. "I feel terrible. I had the chance to catch you, but I reacted too slow. I saw the dimensions were off too. I saw the fear in your eyes. What kind of a boyfriend am I that I wasn't there when you needed me most. I'm feeling at a loss right now and I'm not sure what to do with myself. I love you so much and I'm sorry, Princess. I will stay with you this entire time. I'll be here everyday when I can."

Gaining the courage to take her hand as he previously did that night, he held it, hoping she'd grip his hand back. But nothing happened. Glancing away from her to the EKG machine that measured her heart rate, there was a sudden jump. Letting go of her hand, Doug pressed the button for the nurse. He watched her heartbeat slow to a normal rate again. In a split second, the nurse appeared on the other side of the curtain.

"Is she okay?" The nurse asked, eyeing the monitors around the hospital bed.

"Well, sort of. I held her hand," Doug said, taking her hand again as a demonstration. "And her heartbeat got faster."

The nurse nodded her head, closely checking some of the monitors again. "It is a little frightening, but she can sense a familiar touch. Depending on the extent of her brain injury which we will find out from Dr. Thomas soon, she is slightly responsive. Essentially, you are witnessing what happens to her heart when you hold her hand."

A smile emerged on Doug's face. It was odd, but he'd take it. A little ray of sunshine came alive in his soul as he chuckled. Next time (aka. tomorrow) he'd try again. Having even such a small interaction with her made him feel hopeful as if everything was going to be okay.

As he stood up and took his hand from hers, her heartbeat slowed and the nurse escorted him back to the waiting room. Doug left through the sliding doors and turned his phone back on, finding a message from Ben checking up on him. Before starting his car, he replied back and turned his phone off.

***

Dinner was unbelievably awkward. Sitting across from an empty seat between Carlos and Ben, Doug picked at his food. The friend group had been avoiding discussing the event of the previous night. That is until Lonnie looked to Doug.

"Hey, how are you holding up?" She asked with a kind smile. Mal looked over with a scoff.

"I'm okay," he answered, his voice quiet.

"Okay?" Mal questioned, "If you really loved Evie in the first place you'd be losing your mind, sobbing when her name came up and you'd feel devastated." She argued. Lonnie and the rest of the table glanced at Mal, then to Doug. No one said a word.

Doug placed the metal fork on his plate and stood up. "I'll be in my dorm, if anyone needs me."

Just a quick minute later, he was already at the compost and recycle bins.

Back at the table, Jay spoke up.

"Would you lay off, Mal? None of us are not mentally straight, but you're only making him feel worse," Jay challenged as he placed his napkin on the empty plate, no trace of chicken curry left.

"She's like my sister and I'm only looking out for her," Mal defended herself. With that, the table stayed quiet, the only sound being of chewing food, forks against plates and napkins rustling.

Finishing in a mere 20 minutes, they all dismissed themselves from the table and went their ways.

Mal specifically had been having trouble without her best friend. Since learning how Doug could have caught Evie, she'd been holding that against him. Approaching her dorm without Evie rambling on about her latest design or the upcoming Castlecoming dance, it was awfully lonely. Because of her own pain, she was taking it out on the only person she felt she could blame. As she opened the wooden door, she took off her purple leather jacket and flopped on her mattress. Eyeing the perfectly made bed of her best friend, Mal felt her eyes welling with tears.

This is unbelievable, Mal thought to herself.

***

As the two boys left the cafeteria, Jay was in his own world which was strange to Carlos. Trying to make conversation, Carlos soon gave up. Jay wasn't interested in discussing the pro tourney season. That's how Carlos knew something was up.

"Hey, dude? Just thinking?" Carlos asked, receiving a head nod from the long haired boy.

"Yeah, it's kind of crazy how fast things go. Like one minute we were out on the field, the next, Evie's unconscious, Mal's blaming Doug, and the group is fractured," Jay admitted.

"I was thinking about that too. I might go see what's up with Jane. Wanna come?" Carlos offered. Jay declined with a shake of his head.

"I'm just gonna head to sleep."

Strange silence, no dessert, no late-night video games, just as Jay had said, the accident had fractured the group like nothing before.

***

Down the hallway and up the other stairwell was the single occupied dorm of Jane and Audrey.

While Audrey was away with Flora, Fauna and Merriwether dealing with the accident in their presence, Jane was alone.

She was still scarred as she periodically would hallucinate the feeling of Evie losing her balance and her falling before her eyes. She herself nearly fell, if not for the girls below her who in a split second, caught both she and Audrey.

She had been holding onto Evie. She was supposed to have caught her.

Jane just wanted to be alone for now. She simply lay on her bed, staring at her ceiling trying to figure out what would become of her and her friends if Evie never awoke again. It only made things worse as Jane wiped stray tears from her eyes. Despite Evie being in an utterly terrible situation, Jane couldn't help but wish to close her eyes and take a break for days too.