30. Declan
DECLAN
I don’t remember the ride to the hospital.
Maybe that’s for the best. Maybe it’s better that I remember my last moments with her when it was just the two of us, her head on my shoulder, confessing that she never stopped loving me.
It hurts more than remembering the wire cutters they used to free her, the tubes they stuck in her pale, almost translucent skin, the paddles they used to shock her heart, the pained screams that rubbed my throat raw.
It hurts more to know she said it and I didn’t say it back, too stubborn to believe the world could take her from me, but at least that moment will always be ours.
Not tainted by the paramedics cutting off her blood-soaked sweatshirt, their soothing voices doing nothing to calm me, or the squeaking of the wheels from the stretcher moving against the damp ground.
I do remember getting to the hospital. The memory of them wheeling her away, every inch of distance a stab to my heart, is burned into my mind. Then they stuck me in a waiting room.
Sir, you need to let us do our job. We’ll let you know when we have more information.
Sir, we’re going to have to call security.
I didn't care. I fought them with everything I had, demanding they let me go back there with her.
Sir, you’re bleeding. You need to get that checked out.
“My wife.”
I kept repeating it over and over as if those two words would be able to communicate the way she attached herself to my soul, to my very being.
As if they could make them understand that she’s not just my other half, she’s everything.
Every part of me belongs to her in a way I can’t describe.
I pushed past them, knocking over carts and supplies, running past drawn curtains, until I smacked into the security guard they were threatening me with.
Which is where I currently am, being dragged by two men back to the waiting room, repeating, “She’s my fucking wife!”
They force me down into a chair by the shoulders, and one of them curses when he looks down and sees the blood soaking through my shirt and onto his arm. “Is this yours?” he asks, but I don’t respond.
“Shit,” the other one says. “His knuckles are bleeding too. He needs a room.”
“Thanks, Billy. I’ll take it from here.” A feminine voice, gentle but firm, floats through the room.
“Hey, Emory,” the man I bled on says in surprise. “Thanks for the offer, but he's been putting up a fight. I can’t leave him with you.”
“I understand,” she says delicately, “but he’s going to calm down now so we can take care of that gash. Isn’t he?”
I look up at her, her hazel eyes swirling with soft concern, and I nod slowly.
“Okay, well, we’ll be on standby,” the one she called Billy says. “Press the button if you have any issues.” With that, he and the other man release me and walk off down the hallway.
“Emory,” I plead as soon as they’re gone. “Let me see her. Please. I need to see her.”
“You need to have the glass removed from your knuckles and get that stitched up.” She points to my side where the blood has now completely soaked through my shirt. “You won’t be there for her when she wakes up if you bleed out.”
She’s right. I know she’s right, but it doesn’t make it any easier to give up. Skylar is here because of me. I feel it deep in my bones. She’s fighting for her life because of me.
My mom knew where she was, and even though I haven’t been able to really think about the implications of that, I know it somehow leads back to me.
Something warm grazes my arm, and I realize it’s Emory’s hand. “I’ve got her, Declan. We’re doing everything we can, but you have to let me get back to her. I can’t do that if you’re refusing to let us help you.”
Out of options, I stand up and follow her to a room, where she leaves me with another nurse who takes the glass out of my knuckles, bandages my fist and cleans the cut on my side before a fresh-faced doctor comes in.
She has blonde hair that bounces as she walks and is way too perky for the middle of the night.
“Nasty bugger,” she says, her British accent cheery, as she takes in the abrasion.
“Nothing a needle and thread can’t fix, though.
” I don’t respond. I’m stone silent as she injects the lidocaine to numb the area.
I don’t tell her it’s not necessary because I still can’t feel anything.
I don’t flinch when she inserts the needle into my skin, and I don’t answer when she asks what happened.
She eventually takes the hint, stops talking, and finishes her job, snapping off her gloves when she’s satisfied with her work.
“Teddy will give you instructions,” she says, a little less animated now. “Take care.”
Teddy starts rattling off care instructions, but I don’t hear a word he says. I’m too focused on the curtain that separates me from the rest of the emergency room. Somewhere, mere feet away, my wife is dying and there’s not a goddamn thing I can do about it.
The wall is cold, but I welcome it, pressing my stinging side into the partition, my legs splayed out in front of me.
Some of the adrenaline is finally wearing off, along with the Lidocaine, and now the cut along my ribs is throbbing.
It’s nothing compared to the ache in my chest, though.
Allie and Ash got here a little while ago.
They chose to sit on a couch instead of the floor.
Emory pulled some strings and got us into a private waiting room.
It’s been hours, but they still won’t tell me a fucking thing about my wife other than she’s in surgery.
I don’t care if anyone sees me losing it. Let them see the blood all over my shirt—hers and mine mixed together. Let them watch in horror as I slam my remaining good fist against the drywall. Let them stare as I bury my head in my hands and weep. I don’t give a shit.
Allie cries softly, thick tears tracking down her cheeks while Ash rubs circles on her back.
It reminds me of the way I held Skylar during her panic attack the first time I drove her home.
What if I never get to console her again, feel her skin beneath my fingers, or feel her heart beating rhythmically against my own as we face each other?
Standing up, I walk over to the other side of the room and pick up one of the cheap plastic chairs across from Allie and Ashton. I hurl it against the wall and it hits with a heavy thud, leaving behind a small indent.
“Dec,” Ashton whispers from where he’s sitting. He’s still rubbing Allie’s back.
“Don’t,” I sneer. “Don’t tell me what to fucking do right now.”
He nods and Allie leans her head against his shoulder. That simple act shouldn’t make me want to destroy the rest of this waiting room, but it’s the last position Skylar and I were in before they came and got her.
“Maybe you should take a break? Grab a coffee?” Ashton suggests, to which I pin him with a look that communicates exactly where he can shove his coffee.
I’m about to sit back down on the floor when Emory comes in with an older man wearing scrubs and a surgical cap.
I try to get a read on her face, but it’s completely stoic.
“Declan Astor?” the man asks. I walk forward, crowding his space and forcing him to take a step back. “You’re Skylar’s husband?”
“Yes.”
He nods, looking around the room, his faded blue eyes landing on Ashton and Allie. “I’m Dr. Andover. And these are…friends, I assume?”
“Family,” I correct him. “They’re family.”
“I see. So I have your consent to share medical details with them in the room?”
“Yes. Just fucking tell me. Is she okay?”
He looks to Emory, who gives a slight, almost imperceptible nod.
“Mr. Astor, your wife sustained significant internal injuries from the collision. She suffered from a laceration to her spleen as well as a tear in one of the major blood vessels in her abdomen. She lost a lot of blood, and when she arrived, she was in shock due to the blood loss.” I don’t miss the way he’s saying everything in the past tense, which could be because they fixed everything or because they couldn’t.
Either way, I want to clock this guy in his round fucking face.
“We performed emergency surgery,” he continues.
“We were able to remove the damaged spleen and repair the blood vessel, but she required several blood transfusions—”
“Can I see her?” I cut in, and Dr. Andover opens his mouth to answer, but Emory beats him to it.
“She’s in the ICU, but she’s allowed one visitor at a time. I can take you to see her.”
This earns her a glare from the doctor. Clearly, she’s overstepping, and I couldn’t love her more for it.
“Mr. Astor,” he calls as I start to follow Emory. “Your wife has not regained consciousness. Part of that is the anesthesia, but it’s also the trauma. Her body has been through—”
I turn around swiftly, stepping toward the man. “What does that mean?”
His eyes soften, the wrinkles around them flattening. “It means she’s fighting, but you should be prepared for the possibility that she might not wake up.”
I look him up and down. “Thank you for everything you’ve done, but you clearly don’t know my wife.” With that, I turn around and follow Emory down the hallway and into the elevator that leads to the intensive care unit.
“Declan,” Emory says as we step out onto the floor. “She’s not going to look like herself. She’s still intubated from surgery, so she’s going to have a tube in her mouth.”
I tip my head in her direction, and she leads me down the hallway until we get to her room.
The moment she opens the door, the shrill scent of antiseptic invades my nostrils.
The room is dark except for the glowing screens of the monitors which beep rhythmically, and just as Emory warned, there’s a tube taped to Skylar’s mouth.
IV lines snake up from both of her hands as clear fluid drips from the bags hanging above her.
There’s a bandage on her head from where she was bleeding from her temple.
Her red hair is splayed out on the crisp white pillow, and even though she’s pale from the blood loss, she’s still the most beautiful woman I’ve ever laid eyes on.
I drag a chair over to the side of her bed, not wanting to jostle her by sitting directly on it.
Even after a car accident and being in surgery for hours, there’s a faint scent of green apple that clings to her.
Her hand is warm when I pick it up, brushing it against my cheek.
That’s a good sign, right? She’s warm. Alive.
Blood is coursing through her veins. The beeping on the monitor to my right shows her vitals are normal. Her heart is beating.
She’s still here with me.
So why, when I look at her, does my own heart break in half?
That’s when I notice her ring is gone.
“She had a lot of swelling,” Emory says. “We had to cut it off. I’m so sorry.”
I don’t say anything.
“But I did convince them to let me save this,” she continues, picking up a plastic baggie from the counter and handing it to me. It’s Skylar’s locket. The one her dad gave her. The one I was so jealous of because I thought it was from another man.
“Thank you,” I manage to grit out.
“I’ll give you some time alone,” Emory says from across the room. The door clicks closed. Then it’s just the two of us again, like in the car.
“I’m so sorry, Firefly,” I tell her. “So fucking sorry.”
Despite the wires and tubes, she looks peaceful, her lips soft with the most subtle shade of pink fighting to get through.
“Please wake up, baby. You have to wake up. I’ll do whatever you want. I’ll leave. I’ll sign the divorce papers. You never have to see me again. Just please fucking wake up.”
My voice doesn’t sound like my own. It’s faded and scratchy. Fresh tears stain my face as I beg her with everything I have and everything I am, but she doesn’t move. Her eyes stay closed. Despite all the prayers, the pleading, the bargaining, she doesn’t wake up.
Memories invade my brain no matter how hard I try to keep them out. This isn’t the end, I think. Memories like this are for the end, and this isn’t the fucking end. But they drift in like a breeze, soft and cool against my face, and they feel so good that I can’t fight them anymore.
Her dark red hair reaches her shoulders, and freckles spill across the bridge of her nose. Her green eyes are the color of spring, like tiny buds breaking through the dirt, giving it life, giving it beauty. I’ve never seen anyone so beautiful.
“I’m Skylar.”Her voice is musical, soft and rhythmic. It bounces against the trees. “What’s your name?”
“I can’t be your friend, Skylar.”
She looks down at her shoes, then up again at me, a smile breaking through her frown. “Why not?”
“Because I’ll hurt you.”
Her smile grows wider. “How do you know that?”
“I just do.”
She thinks for a moment, her brows crinkling in concentration before they smooth out again. “Let’s be friends anyway. We can watch a movie at my house. You can’t hurt me if we’re watching a movie.”
I don’t understand her logic or why she would even want to be friends with me. She should stick with Ash. He’ll be nice to her. He won’t hurt her. They can be friends or kiss or whatever. As much as I want to be near her, I know I can’t, so I lie.“I don’t watch movies.”
I expect her to pout or roll her eyes like girls my age usually do, but instead she beams, her eyes grow brighter, and light seems to pour out from every inch of her face.
“That’s perfect,” she squeals.“It means you’ll get to experience them all for the first time! I’ll get to watch you watching them, so it will be like my first time too.”
That’s the day her light broke through my darkness.
I was only thirteen, but I already held the weight of the world on my shoulders.
She didn’t take “no” for an answer, so I watched the movies she picked out, pretending I hadn’t seen any of them so she could experience them for the first time through me.
My heart squeezes when I think about what she admitted in the car.
I never knew that she had another first that day.
We both did. I started messing around with girls younger than I probably should have—but at thirteen I still had never actually kissed anyone.
I fell asleep on her couch that afternoon, and she kissed me.
I want to tell her that she was my first kiss, too, but she won’t fucking wake up.
Her light is fading, and when it goes out, I’ll be left alone in the dark again.