Down For The Count

Numb

Paisley's POV

I remember when Mom died, I was in shock for hours. My body wouldn't react, I couldn't process the fact that she wasn't right there with me.

I think this is the same instance.

I couldn't feel my body. It was like someone had shoved me into freezing water.

I couldn't react.

Surrounded by the loud cries and pleads for Alex, I felt myself getting suffocated. I couldn't be in that waiting room a second longer or I would lose it.

I turned, walking over to the stairwell and making my way down the steps.

One foot after another, the same way it always is.

But I couldn't feel it.

The world was a blur as I walked, the nurses and doctors that I passed all looking the same as I blurred their faces together.

I took a sharp inhale once I walked out the hospital doors, the same way one would if they had been underwater for a while and were coming to the surface for a breath.

I made my way to the curb at the end of the premises, sitting down on the pavement as my feet sat comfortably against the concrete of the parking lot.

I was half-expecting for Jess to appear behind me, tell me that they had made a mistake and Alex was okay. It was just a health scare, but Alex would be okay.

I turned around every time I heard the metal doors open, but it was always just people leaving and entering the hospital. Never someone to tell me that it was a mix-up. That Alex was alive and alert just as I had seen her nearly two hours ago.

One time I heard the metal doors open, and I didn't even bother to turn around because I didn't want to be disappointed.

But I knew who it was before I even saw, because I heard Violet's quiet cries.

Both Winter and Vi settled on either side of me, Winter resting her head on my shoulder and Violet immediately burying her face in my jacket as she cried.

And all I could do was stare.

I looked out at the busy street a couple hundred feet ahead of us, cars passing and swerving, horns honking, bicyclists dodging traffic.

But just like inside, all the colors of the road meshed together and looked the same, like one giant blur.

The sky was an ugly gray, the heavy rainclouds looming over the city. It was almost like the sky knew that today wasn't a happy day. Almost like the sky knew that Alex was gone.

Violet's cries brought me back to reality a little, but I tried not to think about that. I tried to zone off as best as I could, trying to go back to blurring everyone and everything out.

"We're gonna be okay, Vi." Winter whispered from beside me. The shaky tone of her voice made it very evident that she didn't believe that.

None us believed it.

We won't ever be okay without Alex.

"Is she really gone?" I heard Winter ask me.

"I...I don't know." I whispered. I was very on the fence about the whole thing. But Alex being dead was so far from realistic that I refused to believe it. I don't know, I just feel like maybe if we wait it out one of the nurses will come out and tell us that she's okay. That's the only logical explanation at this point.