Chapter 83
83
Drew
I don’t usually watch the six-o’clock news. I reached a point around the time Mum died when I realized my quota of “darkness” was full.
Tonight, I have the television on in the background—probably for company—while I’m processing photos in Lightroom. This is the part of photography that I love most. Taking the raw files and creating art with them. Subtly enhancing the colors. Adjusting the balance. Wherever the mood takes me, creatively.
Monochrome tonight. Unsurprising, in the circumstances.
I’m trying to ignore the way Evie ended our friendship, for good this time. Her email had a level of formality bordering on callousness that I know I don’t deserve. But rather than get angry, I just feel defeated. Defeated by an entire friendship that began with all the promise in the world and ended in inexplicable silence.
“A thirty-year-old man was killed this afternoon on Macquarie Pass when he lost control of the BMW he was driving on the notoriously dangerous stretch of road. A woman, twenty-nine, was injured in the crash and airlifted to Saint Vincent’s Private Hospital, where it’s understood she remains in serious but stable condition. No further details have been released about the accident, but police have urged any witnesses to come forward, appealing for dash cam footage of the crash.”
My heart stills. Somehow, I know. Time shudders and lurches over some fault line in the universe.
Even before looking at the screen, I know I’ll see images of Oliver’s crumpled white BMW sedan. I’m already imagining her lying in a hospital bed. No, I’m already reaching for my keys and jacket. My body leaves my apartment and gets in the car before my brain can catch up with the plan. They hadn’t even named the couple. I just know . And, as pictures of our friendship flit across my mind, I’m compelled to go to her. I don’t even care if she pushes me away again. I just have to see her.
The drive to the hospital is clogged with traffic, and, when I eventually arrive, the garage is full. My blood pressure hits the roof. I don’t even know why I’m rushing. She might not even agree to see me. I just want to see with my own eyes that she is alive.
Finally, I pull into half a car space at the end of a row and risk a fine. I slam the door and lock it, the sound reverberating off the concrete walls. I stride in through a maze of corridors and approach the reception desk.
“Evie Hudson,” I say, then correct myself. “Sorry, Roche.”
The receptionist types the name into the computer and tells me Evie’s in the acute-care ward. She points me through and I find my way to a nurses’ station. It’s all too reminiscent of being here with Mum.
“I’m afraid we can only let family in,” she tells me.
“I’m her brother-in-law.” I hate the words. I’m so much more than that.
She looks at me and shapes her expression into pity. “Oh, I’m terribly sorry for your loss.”
The words punch me, before I realize she means Oliver. I stare at her and say thank you, even though Oliver’s loss feels like nothing to me. Absolutely nothing. Just a static buzz where grief would be, if this had been a normal brotherly relationship.
I’m shown to a cubicle where Evie is unconscious, monitors beeping around her.
“You’re the first family member to have been in.”
“Has anyone called her parents?”
She shakes her head. “The only next-of-kin information we had was for Oliver Roche. I’m sorry, we didn’t know there was a brother.”
Brother still feels like an empty word. I shake it off and put my jacket over the back of a chair, moving closer to her bed.
She looks peaceful. A little battered, but not as bad as I’d envisaged. Her wrists, lying still at her sides, are bruised, and there’s a red mark across her neck where the seat belt must have tightened against her. I brush the dark hair, straightened to glossiness from its natural curl, across her face, and her eyelids flutter as if they’re going to open, but they don’t. All I can think about is how much she’s already been through, the traumatic way it ended, and what’s ahead of her. My heart races the way it always does around her, but with an extra impetus this time, because I came so dangerously close to giving up on her.
I gently take her hand. “Evie? It’s me.”
The heart rate monitor beside her has a sudden uptick in resting pulse. The nurse walks in, checks it, and looks from her to me. “Her brain needs to rest,” she says. “It might be too early for the excitement of visitors.”
Excitement. I’m not sure that’s the right word in this case, but the nurse reads my wretched expression.
“We’ll tell her you stopped by,” she says softly, then checks the equipment and pats me on the arm. “Judging by that monitor, though, I think she already knows.”