Chapter 39
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Henry
“ T hese kids have to be three of the luckiest bastards alive,” someone muttered.
“They’re not kids, Oscar. Have you seen the size of this guy in the passenger seat?”
“What’s taking so long? That’s my brother! Why aren’t you moving him? For God’s sake, get him out of there… please! ”
“Andy, mate. Calm down. He’s going to be okay,” Jace said.
“We’re doing everything we can, I promise. Give us some space.”
Andy grumbled and groaned. “I can’t lose him. Jace. Not like this. The way I’ve treated him. The things I’ve said…”
“Don’t even think like that. This is Cohen. He’s stronger than that.”
The voices around me were distorted, fragments of conversation filtering in and out of my pounding head as my tight chest struggled to pull enough oxygen into my lungs.
“Henry?” unfamiliar voice number one said. “Henry Cohen. I’m Oscar, the paramedic on scene. I want you to know that you’re okay. We just need you to open your eyes before we move you out of here. Can you do that for me?”
Someone or something squeezed my tingling hand, making me try to squeeze back as reality slowly seeped its way back into my dark world.
“That’s it. Good. Good.”
“Is he awake?” I heard Andy ask. “Is he?—”
Oscar’s voice seemed to turn away from me as he responded. “I know you’re worried, but I can’t do my job if you don’t let me give him the attention he needs.”
“Come on, Andy, man. Give them room,” Jace said.
“I can’t cope with this,” Andy cried out, a sob tearing from him. He sounded worse than I’d ever heard him, his fear obvious even for my mangled mind. I imagined him pacing, tearing at his hair, his body tense and raging. He never had been good at being out of control.
“You with me, Henry?” Oscar spoke again, closer this time.
A groan of acknowledgement crawled up my throat, and the simple action made my rigid body ache from head to toe. My head rolled to the side, and I flared my nostrils, trying to breathe in as much air as possible, only to realise there was a fucking mask over my mouth.
What the hell had…?
The memories of the last moments came flooding back, the argument with Andy and his confession, the banking speeding towards us only to disappear beneath the car as we flew over the edge of it.
Then darkness, just like now.
“Open your eyes for me, pal, yeah?”
After blinking slowly, I opened my eyes to see a man crouched down in front of me, his face filled with concern as he took me in, a small smile forming.
I may have been fucked up, but even I could see relief flash across his face.
“Hi there,” he said. “You’re safe. You’re okay. Don’t panic. The oxygen mask is just precautionary.”
I blinked slowly again, trying to take him in with slightly blurred vision.
“You’ve taken a nasty blow to the head, and you’re probably going to be sore as hell for a few days, but other than that…”
“You’re one hell of a lucky kid,” unfamiliar voice number two said, his tone deeper, filled with an aged timbre that spoke of an older man who would no doubt see me as a kid no matter how old I grew.
Which almost hadn’t been another year older from the looks of everything around me.
“What my colleague Guy means is that it could have been a lot worse, but you clearly had someone watching over you this morning.”
My parents’ faces came into view as though they were in front of me, and emotion welled in my dry throat.
The reality of their absence seemed to hit me harder than it ever had, because weren’t they the very people you ran to when life threw you over a banking like this?
Weren’t they the hands supposed to pull you out of the wreckage and hold you close no matter how old you got, reassuring you that everything would be okay?
Instead, I had two strangers bringing me back to life, while the parents I wanted more than anything or anyone no longer existed in any form other than my memory.
“Cohen!” Andy shouted. “Cohen, you okay, man?”
Oscar the paramedic leaned closer. “You’ve also got some very concerned friends.
I probably shouldn’t let them, but for the sake of all our sanities, I’m going to let the loudest one stick his head in and see you for himself, okay?
Then we’re going to work on getting you out of here and onto a stretcher. ”
A stretcher? No. I couldn’t let that happen. I wasn’t about to leave what had clearly been a wreckage the same way my parents had, even if I still had breath in my lungs.
I reached up slowly and began to pull the oxygen mask off my face.
“Woah, woah. Easy now,” Oscar said, but I ignored him, pulling the mask off completely, just in time for Andy to push his way forward, his breathing erratic as he stuck his head over Oscar’s shoulder.
Within a few blinks, the unshed tears in his eyes became my focal point.
I’d never seen such panic on Andy’s face. Never seen tears in his eyes.
Were they all for me?
“Cohen, I’m sorry, brother. I’m so fucking sorry,” he cried, the first tear falling down his dirt-streaked face. “I never meant to hurt you. I never meant to lose control.”
The others would probably think he was talking about the car, but I could see it in his expression that those words meant something else entirely.
His apology was for everything that had come before the crash.
I closed my eyes slowly one last time before I looked back up at him again. “Forget… it…” I croaked, trying to clear my dry throat.
“Promise me you’ll be okay. I can’t lose you, Cohen.”
A barely there smile tugged at one corner of my mouth. “Stop… being… dramatic.”
He stared at me for a beat longer before a sob of relieved laughter broke free. “You got it, mate. Whatever you ask of me from now on. Just… get out of there, yeah?”
Oscar politely moved Andy back before he came closer to me, sticking his head into the car again as he said, “Let’s get to work on that, shall we?”
“Please,” I croaked, a feeling of determination washing over me.
Because I may have not had my parents there to save me this time, but there was another face pushing its way to the forefront of my mind now, and with my life having just flashed before my eyes, I realised time could not be wasted on any man’s fears.
Especially not mine.
I had to get out of here so I could go to her.
Whether she wanted me or not.
“I really would advise against doing what you’re thinking about doing.
” Oscar stood in front of me, all his kit in both hands while I sat on the back of the ambulance, a cold compress pressed against my head.
“That banking’s drop may not have been long, but you still hit the ground with some force. ”
I’d been out of Andy’s wrecked car for over an hour, having refused the gurney when it had been brought to me, telling them I had no need for the neck brace either.
We’d made our way back to the main road, where the ambulance waited for me, but Oscar and his colleague Guy were not hiding their frustrations over my decisions too well now.
Not that I cared. Why waste time on protocol when I knew my body better than anyone else did?
“You’re no doubt concussed, and that’s not even taking in to account the physical impact on your body.”
“You said nothing’s broken, right?” I adjusted the cold compress at the front of my head.
“I said it doesn’t appear to be. That doesn’t mean you’re not running on adrenaline right now, which could be masking any fractures or breaks. The best thing you can do is let us take you to the hospital and?—”
“No. No hospital. I’ve already told you.” I hadn’t been in one of those things since I’d been forced to identify the bodies of my parents. I didn’t intend on going back to one any time soon.
“Cohen,” Jace said in a tone one would use to try and reason with a three-year-old. “I think you should listen to them.”
“Please, mate. They know what they’re doing,” Andy said from his place beside me on the ambulance’s edge.
He hadn’t left my side from the moment they’d all helped me limp my way out of the vehicle—the one Andy had somehow manoeuvred enough to turn it on its side, so that when it hit the small tree, the back seat Jace wasn’t sat in took most of the impact.
How he’d done it, I didn’t know, but that was something we could figure out together another time.
“We like to think we do.” Oscar raised his brows at me.
“Can’t help someone who doesn’t want to be helped,” grumbled Guy from inside the ambulance. I’d been right. He was older and clearly tired of everyone’s bullshit. “We can only advise.”
“I appreciate it,” I told them, looking down at my feet. Feet I wanted to carry me away from all this and back to her. “I do.”
“But you’re not going to listen?” Oscar smiled flatly.
I shook my head, looking up at him again. “No, sir. But thanks all the same.”
He looked ready to argue with me one last time, when a car came screeching to a halt only a few metres away from us. Within seconds, Nina, James, and Lillie hopped out and came rushing towards the ambulance with worry etched in every crease of their expressions.
I glanced at Andy and scowled.
“Sorry.” He wasn’t sorry at all. “I had to tell them. Lillie knew we should have been home ages ago, and what with the storm…” He pushed up from the edge of the ambulance and stepped beside Jace, giving me some room as Nina rushed over, her hands carefully finding my cheeks with a tenderness only a mother could give.
“Oh, my boy,” she cried out, her fingers trembling against my skin. “Look at you. Just look at you.”
“Looks worse than it is,” I assured her, only for Oscar to clear his throat and raise his brows again, giving me one of those looks.
She turned to her actual son, frantically trying to take us all in. “Andy, you sure you’re okay?”
“I told you on the phone, Mum, I’m fine. Better than I should be. But Cohen… he…”
Nina turned to look at Oscar as though seeking out professional opinions instead of those of her son. “What’s wrong with my Henry?”
“Are you his mother?” he asked.
“In theory and in heart, yes.”