Chapter 3
Chapter Three
GHOST
Ididn’t think there was anything worse than her running from me in terror, but here it was. She was hurting, dazed, and there was blood. There was enough blood that I panicked, digging out my phone and calling for an ambulance.
“Is she conscious?” The woman on the phone was asking, and I dropped to my knees beside Elizabeth, loath to touch her and scare her, but desperate to make sure she was okay.
“Just about. She’s dazed, blinking slowly, and doesn’t seem to see anything. Send help please,” I begged, putting my phone on speaker and laying it on the concrete beside me.
“Elizabeth, can you hear me?”
“Is she okay? I called security,” someone said from behind me, and I waved them off.
“Don’t crowd her, please. They’re sending help.”
“You shouldn’t move her,” someone else said, and I shot him a glare.
“Back off. She doesn’t need to be gawked at!”
I spent the next ten minutes fending off do-gooders, and the security guy when he finally made an appearance, because nobody else was touching her. Not because she was mine to touch, but because she deserved to choose who touched her, and this time I had the power to make sure of that.
The ambulance arrived, and she was loaded into it, while I followed with her shopping bags. Why was I hanging onto those? I had no fucking idea.
“You’re her partner?”
I nodded, sitting where they put me, and watching avidly as they tended to her.
“And she fell forward at speed?”
Fuck, my heart damn near stopped when I watched her pitch forward like that.
“She tripped and fell on her arms and face. Is she okay?”
“She’s drifting in and out of consciousness, her heart’s racing, and she’s trembling. I won’t have an answer for you ‘til a doctor’s checked her over. At the very least I’d suspect concussion.”
Ouch. I’d been there, so I knew she’d be in hell with that.
“I’m staying with her.”
The paramedic nodded, handing me a clipboard with a form on it.
“Add her details, so I can focus on her.”
I stared at it, noting her name and frowning at the rest. I didn’t know her date of birth, or her address, and admitting those two facts would prove me a liar, and I wouldn’t get to stay with her.
I had to watch over her. In the end I put my own address, the clubhouse, and knowing she would be 26 or 27 now, I picked a date of birth for her that fit her age.
It was unethical but hey, many significant others don’t remember things like that.
“Why’s she still shaking like that? Is it a seizure?”
“I don’t think so, no. Pass me those packs, I’m going to cover her in case she’s going into shock.”
When we reached A&E, they rushed her in, leaving me in the lobby with the form on the clipboard, and pure panic burning through me. I couldn’t even call anyone for her, because I didn’t know who she knew. I only knew her, and that information felt like a lifetime ago.
“Sir, you can wait over there.” The form was lifted from my hands, and I stepped out of the way, still carrying her two shopping bags like a dickhead.
I waited for three hours before they told me I could sit with her, but she was resting so I couldn’t talk to her. Maybe that was a good thing. Maybe better for her at least.
I set her bags down by the small unit beside her bed, and sat in the chair, reaching for her hand. Something stopped me at the last second, and I rested it on the bed instead.
“Elizabeth, all I wanted to do was say hi,” I whispered, not wanting to wake her, or scare her, but feeling like a monster again for putting her here.
I swallowed against the tide of painful emotions trying to overtake me, because this woman just kept going through hell because of me. I squeezed my eyes closed against a flashback from that night. Jesus.
“I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to cause you harm, not again. Not ever. Fucking hate myself for being the reason those things happened to you.” Those things. Like I was too much of a coward to even say the word. Rape. That’s what happened to her, and it was all my fault.
I stood up, leaning closer to whisper to her, not too close, but close enough to hear her soft breaths.
“I never meant for them to hurt you. I thought I was taking a date. A potential old lady in the future, ya know? I thought they’d…
I don’t know why I thought they’d be respectful, but I never expected…
fuck… Elizabeth, I’m so fucking sorry. It kills me that I couldn’t stop them.
That I couldn’t get you out of there faster. ”
Someone tapped on the door and stepped into the room.
“Just checking her over. I’ll be out of your way in a moment.”
I forced slow breaths while the nurse pottered around, checking monitors and noting things down.
I felt like the world’s biggest coward for whispering the things I should be saying to her face, while she was fast asleep and couldn’t hear me.
Probably couldn’t hear me. I wasn’t sure.
She deserved to hear the words. She deserved a chance to punch me and scream at me, but she wasn’t the type.
Clearly she’d stepped further inside herself than she’d ever been, making her quieter and more diminutive, but I wished she’d scream and yell, punch and kick.
Hell, take a knife to me. I had one in my damn cut she could borrow. I deserved the pain.
The nurse left, and I realised that was my only option too.
Approaching her like that had been a mistake.
Not fair on her, because it trapped her, and forced her to be in my presence, when I didn’t deserve her time.
My guilt was mine to suffer for eternity, and it wasn’t her burden to rescue me from.
“I’m… I shouldn’t be here, Elizabeth. I’m sorry.
I’m sorry for everything. All I wanted to do was spend time with you, fall in love with you…
deeper in love… I messed it all up by trusting bad people, and you paid the price.
I’ll stay away. I… I don’t have the right to be anywhere near you.
Be safe. Get better. Enjoy life again, please. ”
Fucking hell. Get out of here, you asshole, and leave a vulnerable injured woman in peace. For once I listened to the voice of reason in my head.
ELIZABETH
I woke up in a hospital bed, alone, confused, and with a throbbing head. My arms were bandaged, and my fingers burned as I located the button to call for a nurse. It felt like forever before a woman old enough to be my mother popped in, smiling gently at me.
“Ah you’re awake, love. How are you feeling? Ready for more pain relief?”
I blinked at her for a moment, my mind struggling to pull reality from the sluggish thoughts filling my head.
“I…”
“You had a fall, love. You hit your head, and landed on your arms.”
Oh. I had a vague idea that someone had been talking to me while I slept, a deep male voice, filled with sorrow and regret. Did I dream that?
“How did I…”
“Your boyfriend called an ambulance, love. He was with you the whole time, but he left about half an hour ago. I’m sure he’ll be back.” Boyfriend?
She pointed down beside the bed. “He brought your shopping for you.”
Shopping. SHOPPING. Recollection slammed back into me so sharply I gasped, lifting an aching hand to my mouth.
“Oh god. He was here.”
She nodded, smoothing the bedding, and fetching some water for me.
“He sat with you, love. He was very concerned.”
Yeah, I bet he was.
“Don’t… don’t let him back in.”
Her smile dropped, and she set down the plastic cup on the foldout table.
“He… he wasn’t your boyfriend?”
I shook my head. “I… he’s who I was running from.”
She grumbled under her breath, but I picked up a few swearwords she probably hoped to conceal.
“He filled in your details. Let me just get the paperwork, and we can make sure your information is correct.”
It wasn’t. The address was for some place out in the country by town, and my date of birth?
Nowhere near right. It made me twenty six, but I was only twenty four.
It was a shocking reminder of how little he knew about me.
Also a relief in some ways, because if he’d noted my actual address, I’d have had to move before he found me there.
Why did he come to the hospital? Why did he pretend to be with me, and why did he put some made up information on the paperwork?
The date he chose wasn’t close, and the address?
I had my phone so I tapped it in, and it was a field in the middle of nowhere.
Why would he pick that? I bookmarked it and set the phone aside, because my eyes burned just from that quick look at the screen.
On second thought, I lifted it again, just to drop a quick message to Melody, letting her know where I was and what had happened, and after that, I drifted off again.
Still… that date was bugging me. The year was meaningless, but the date?
It was relevant, but I couldn’t remember why.
My dreams were filled with him, but not in the way they’d been before now.
In my dream, he was sitting beside me in a coffee shop, and he was saying things.
Sweet things. Apologetic things. Hating on himself for what happened to me, showing me his regret, his pain at what happened.
Telling me he wished he could have prevented it, but he trusted the wrong people. Bad people.
By that evening, they were releasing me into Melody’s care, and I was spending the night at her place instead of my flat.
It was nice to not be alone for once, to sleep with another person in the house.
Ever since my ‘recovery’, I’d insisted on having my own place again, but it was like a fortress, but whether my intention had been keeping myself safe inside, or keeping others out, I had no idea.
For one night, it was just really nice to not be alone.