Chapter 20. Ophelia
OPHELIA
Shockingly, and against all the statistical odds, the plane landed. After seven hours—the hardest, most draining seven hours of my life—I find myself in New York.
As a girl who hasn’t ventured outside of rural Scotland much these past few years, I can’t help but find it completely wild.
The buildings are bigger, cars are bigger. The taxis are yellow. The city is a never-ending square grid of fancy looking cafés, hotels, and restaurants. Bustling pizza joints and leafy green parks. Tacky sports bars and luxury boutiques.
As we make our way across a bridge over a glittering river, I stare out at the dense mass of skyscrapers beyond like I’ve somehow landed on the moon.
No wonder Divya finds Sorrowsong boring.
Rocco sent a driver to pick us up from LaGuardia Airport. Now we’re in the back of a huge black SUV, furnished similarly to the private jet. There’s a small mini fridge at the back that we’ve left completely untouched.
No one has heard from Alex. Not me, not Vin, not Belladonna. The mood in the car is grim and downcast.
Whatever condition his mom is in right now, I already know what he’ll be doing to himself. Heaping more blame onto his already weary shoulders, overanalyzing everything he could’ve done to prevent this.
We’re stuck in a long slug of traffic ten minutes from the hospital when Vincenzo finally gets through to Fleur.
“Vin?” she asks, crackly through his speaker. She’s holding back tears.
“Fleur, where are you?”
“We’re still waiting at the hospital. I only just charged my phone.”
“Who’s we?”
“Alex and I. He’s just checking to see if there’s any update. He wants me to go home to eat and sleep.”
Alex is okay. He’s with Fleur and he’s okay. The relief that courses through me is overwhelming.
“I’m ten minutes away.”
“You’re in New York?”
“Yeah. Do you want me to drop you home?”
I hear her side of a conversation, hear Alex convince her to go and rest, promise that he’ll call if he finds anything else out.
He sounds strong. Steady and calm.
I doubt that’s how he really feels.
“You can take me home?” she asks, sounding so much younger than seventeen.
“We’ll stay for the night, too,” says Belladonna. “Help the staff with the girls.”
There is so much love in this car. It’s in the way Vincenzo guides Fleur through some steady breaths. It’s in the way Belladonna calls her father to say she won’t be coming home tonight anymore. It’s in the way Jack has spent the entire journey reading up on how best to help Alex and his mom.
I’ve never been struck so hard with it, never had it put in front of me so plainly to see.
Alex is bathed in love, swimming in it. And suddenly I understand his internal battle more than ever. How frustrating it is for him to feel so low with such a support network around him, to have family and friends and still feel lonely.
It must be so exhausting.
The car stops outside a hospital near Central Park. “Call us if you need anything, okay?”
I nod at Vincenzo, stepping out of the car and into the busy rush of an unfamiliar city. Cars rush by, honking their horns like it’ll make the lights turn green faster. The people hurry around like they have places to be.
For all the trauma in my life, I’ve hardly ever set foot in a hospital. Before the helicopter crash, my life was very uneventful. Still, everything looks shinier, newer, more luxurious than the tired hospitals back home. It looks more like a technology store.
I go up to three different receptions, passed around like a pinball. The fourth woman looks me up and down, chewing her gum. “You from the media?”
“No, I’m … I’m family.”
“You that girl who leaked the article?”
My exasperation reaches new levels. “No, that wasn’t me. But please just let me see Alex.”
“Never really liked Cain Green, anyway,” she says. “Have you got our app?”
“No,” I say, feeling my final shred of patience slither out onto the busy streets below.
“It’s got a map on it.”
Why must everything be an app? If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times. Everything is becoming an app. “Please could you just point me in the right direction?”
It takes another ten minutes, but I’m finally taken to a quieter hallway several floors up. I know I’m in the right place, because a tall, stocky bald guy with an earpiece is in the hallway.
He recognizes me, somehow. “Ms. Winters.”
“Did Alex leave with Fleur?”
He shakes his head and tilts it toward a doorway to his left.
It’s a dim examination room, mostly covered by a paper curtain. I gently push down the handle and step inside. “Alex?”
I round the curtain and find him sitting in an armchair, elbows on his knees and head in his hands.
“Alex.”
He looks up, and fuck. A sharp pain twists my stomach.
He looks completely broken. And he clearly hasn’t seen any of the texts I’ve sent him, because he looks like he can’t believe I’m here. For the briefest of seconds, I see all the questions he’s too exhausted to ask flit through his eyes. The why and the how and the when.
“You’re not real.”
I squat down opposite him and thread my fingers through his. “I’m real.”
“You’re not here.”
For him, I keep my tears at bay. “I’m here.”
And like he’d been waiting for me without even realizing it, his head collapses forward, face buried in my hair.
The first silent sob that racks his body sends a hairline crack down the middle of my heart, the second splits it into two. I snake my arms around him and use everything that’s left in my tired muscles to hold him together.
“I’m so tired of treading water, Ophelia. I just want to let go.”
I scratch my fingers through his hair. “I know.”
“I’m all out of fight. I don’t want any of this anymore.”
“I know. But I’m here to tread water for the both of us.”
And so we sit like that. Me on my knees, him on the chair. Him falling apart, me holding myself together. Him convinced the world is ending, and me, for once, convinced we have a place in it.
We stay completely still while the sun sets outside, until he’s able to take steady breaths and I’m sure my knees must be bruised.
Until he pulls away, runs his hands over my lips, nose, eyebrows, jaw, checking I’m real.
He presses a gentle kiss to my lips. “I’m tired, Ophelia. Not the short-term kind.”
“That’s okay. I am too.”
He holds me at arm’s length, the ghost of a laugh sneaking inside his next exhale. “You know I love you, yeah?”
“Yeah, why?”
“You look fucking dreadful.”
My laughter echoes around the cold, clinical room. “I think it’d be fair to say I didn’t handle the flight well.” I take in the tired lines around his face, the red tinge to his eyes. He’s beautiful. “You look like shit, too.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
“Is your mom …” I trail off, unsure what I’m even asking. Obviously, she’s not okay.
“I don’t know,” he says, swiping the back of his hand over his eyes.
“They’ve hardly told me anything. Her heart is weak because she’s been so underweight for so long and the antipsychotics she’s on make it worse and how the hell am I supposed to explain all of this to the girls when I don’t even understand—”
“Hey,” I interrupt, running my hands through his hair to try to catch him before he spirals into a panic.
I of all people know not to promise him that she’ll be okay, or that he’ll feel better tomorrow.
So I make him the only promise I know to be true.
“I’m here for you. I’ll always be here for you. ”
I reach down to my tired-looking duffel, pulling out a bag of Jelly Babies and dropping them onto the cupboard beside us.
The tiny smile on his lips gives me hope. He drags me onto his lap on the armchair. The heat of his body encompasses mine, his familiar smell like a blanket around my shoulders. “Until midnight?”
“A hundred years from now.”
“I love you,” he breathes, eyes fluttering shut.
The line between his brows smooths out, his breathing deepens, slows down.
I feel his body relax beneath me as I run my fingers through the mess of his hair.
I think he’s fallen asleep. So I hold my breath, and the pee I’ve been needing for hours, content to listen to the steady beat of his pulse.
A doctor in scrubs comes into the room a short while later. She nods at Alex. “Should I come back? It’s positive news.”
Thank fuck. I shake my head and gently wake Alex, rising to my feet.
“She’s been awake for a little while and she’s alert,” the doctor says, before Alex can ask otherwise.
His head falls into his hands again, shoulders sinking with relief.
I excuse myself to go to the bathroom while the doctor explains everything that’s going on with Elise’s weakening heart.
It’d feel strange listening to it without her permission.
When I come back, Alex is in the hallway.
“I can visit her.”
“Would you rather I stay out here?”
He nods, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear. “I think so. She worries about her appearance. I think she’d like the chance to get changed and do her hair and makeup before she meets you.”
The world doesn’t deserve him.
“I’ll go find us coffee.”
He stares down at me, the muscles in his jaw relaxing just a fraction. His thumb swipes my cheek, like a sculptor adding his final touch. “I can’t believe you’re here.”
I let my lashes drift shut, lean into his caress. “I’m here.”
I’m here, and it feels like I’m exactly where I need to be.
THE CHARGE NURSE was kind enough to let us stay the night, spooning on a too-small hospital bed and surviving off vending machine crisps and energy drinks.
I’m not sure that Alex really gets any sleep, though. Stress radiates off him in waves, to the point where I’m surprised the windows in this room haven’t shattered.
It’s gone ten in the morning when he wakes me up. Someone from the security team brought him an overnight bag, and he’s changed into more casual clothes: a black jacket and loose jeans that have no business looking that good. “Hey.”
“Hey.”
He traces my bottom lip with his thumb. “Are you feeling jet-lagged?”
“Is that why I feel like shit?”