24. Cass
CASS
PLAYLIST: HALO – BEYONCé
The tires screech.
I brake the last possible moment.
Jump out of the car.
Race through the doors.
Up to the ICU.
Through the doors I am not allowed in.
I don’t care.
Someone tries to stop me.
A nurse I push out of the way.
“WHERE IS SHE?” I shout, running from room to room, unit to unit, but she isn’t anywhere.
No! She has to be here somewhere!
Panic surges through me.
I’m too late—
Too late.
I’m so stupid.
I stand in the middle of this wide corridor and glance around as my chest compresses my lungs from all sides.
She isn’t here anymore.
I—
NO!
Breathing is impossible.
I gasp for air, but no air is reaching my lungs.
I’m suffocating.
Everything zones out.
I fucking destroyed everything.
I destroyed everything because I put a ghost from the past over the only real thing I had.
“Cass,” says someone behind me.
A hand on my shoulder.
I spin round as the panic takes over my body.
“Breathe,” says Doctor Chang. She smiles pitifully. The smile I saw when the FBI came knocking with the news of Elise's death.
I shake my head.
Stumble back.
I need to protect myself from the wrecking ball that’s gonna hit me.
“Come with me,” she says and takes her arm onto my back, pushing me somewhere.
The floor I’m walking on feels like gell-o.
“Look,” Doctor Chang says as she pushes me through a glass door, through a corridor, and another door.
She’s taking me to the morgue.
I’m falling.
Falling so deep that I can’t see properly anymore, can’t distinguish where I am and what is happening—
I clutch to the wall.
The doctor puts a hand on my chest and walks me through another door, turns and pulls a curtain aside.
“We had to put her in a separate room because she is quite known and some paparazzi tried to sneak in,” says the doctor.
But I don’t listen to her anymore.
“Addy,” I breathe out as tears shoot into my eyes, running down my cheeks.
She lies in the bed, covered in bandages, but with her eyes open, looking directly at me.
A weak smile appears on her face.
Loud, uncontrollable sobs escape me.
I cover my nose and mouth with my praying hands as I send a prayer up to God.
And then I’m with her.
Her face falls slightly to the side.
I want to grasp her, but I don’t dare touch her; she looks so fragile.
So I frame her face with my hands at a distance.
“I’m so sorry,” I breathe out between my sobs.
“Don’t,” she whispers.
I smile through my crying because she said the word.
She’s okay.
“You’re alive,” I whisper back.
“You came back,” she says with a croaky voice, and she seems to have trouble breathing, but her eyes are smiling at me.
Those blue eyes.
“Yeah,” I whisper. “I always will.”
She grasps my hand and squeezes it softly, as she closes her eyes.
“Addy,” I say, fear consuming me.
“She’s exhausted,” says Doctor Chang with a hand on my shoulder. “Give her some time. She’s alright. She will be alright.”
She is alright, I repeat in my mind. She will be alright.
“Here,” I tell Addy as I feed her her favorite ice cream, pistachio. Something that makes me want to vomit just from the smell of it.
She sits in the hospital bed, finally on a normal station after the skin grafting happened and everything else she had to go through. We’re in a VIP section of the hospital, and I feel weirdly strange walking into it, but even I understand the necessity of it by now.
There had been a very uncomfortable moment, because the vultures—that’s what Addy calls the paparazzi—have been hovering at all entrances of the hospital, with some of them trying to sneak into the hospital to get a photo of Addy on multiple occasions.
One even went so far as to get admitted as a patient.
What happened four weeks ago is no secret. Every media outlet has covered our story. From the projection, to the wild chase, the accident, and the following takeover by Lilian Knightley of Whitney-Morgan.
What happened afterward can be described as massive uproar, wide speculation, heavy accusations, and even admiration. All things I can’t deal with. People tried to get to me, tried to follow me and all of the rest of the family, and we have been under attack from all sides.
It made me partially more understanding of the pressure Addy must have been under, because she tells us this is just a normal day for her.
Otherwise, many arrests happened. Arrests of well-known people, not that I would care.
We got interrogated and are probably facing charges for illegal street racing and everything else that comes with it, but it is safe to say we couldn’t care less.
“I don’t know how you get that down,” I tell Addy. “It tastes like dung.”
“Your taste buds are dumb,” she says like a child—with an attitude.
“Just because they didn’t grow up in caviar and truffle doesn’t mean they are dumb,” I shoot back at her.
“Someone probably drowned them in motor oil,” she says with a chuckle.
“I can’t wait till you’re healed up so I can kick your ass.”
“You two are complete idiots, you know that, right?” says Nikki, who lies upside down in an armchair with legs up the backrest and her head hanging down.
Illy and Joy sit on the other side of the room with chairs we stole from the waiting room.
“No,” we both say unanimously, and then laugh altogether.
In that moment, my brother’s face appears in the door.
“Fuck me, those paps are the pest,” he says, shaking off something we cannot see.
“Told you,” says Addy. “They’d eat your soul.”
“Meh,” says my brother. “Anyway, I smuggled in some beer. He hands everyone a beer. “Alcohol-free for you,” he says to Addy.
“That sucks,” she says flatly.
“Yeah,” he says, “But I’m not going to be murdered by my darling sister for jeopardizing your healing.”
“You better not,” I say threateningly.
We talk and joke all afternoon.
Ahmed and Blair join.
And suddenly the entire family is here.
We steal more chairs, and then everyone sits around Addy’s bed. I sit by her side and look into the room.
My family.
Who came without question.
Who stuck with me.
Who stuck with her.
Who stuck with us.
A wide grin appears on my face.
“To family,” I say and lift my second beer.
“To family,” they all say.
My free hand wanders onto Addy’s.
I squeeze it and risk one small glance before I drink.
She grins as broadly as I do, as the real Addy.
No role.
No pretend.
Just her.
Me.
Us.