21. Chapter 21
After a few more minutes of wallowing on his doorstep, I wipe the tears and probably snot against my hoodie sleeve and pull out my phone.
Fuck.
Twenty missed calls from Cassie.
I’d put my phone on silent when I tried to take my focus off obsessing that he hadn’t text. As I swipe to hit my notifications, my phone starts to ring in my hand and it’s the man himself.
“Cass–”
“Oh my god Miles, where are you?” It’s Teddy, which makes me frown.
“I’m sitting outside of Cass's house, why?”
“Oh thank god. There's a fire at Grace’s party and Cass just showed up here panicked, looking for you. He couldn’t get through to your phone! What have you been doing?”
“I walked over to his house, but he wasn’t in! I thought he was with Grace.”
“What? Why!?”
“Ugh–it’s a long story. It doesn’t matter. He just showed up there?” I need my best friend to tell me Cass wasn’t already at the party, meaning he wasn’t with her.
“No. He came running down the street from the direction of our house, actually.”
Well shit, we must have missed each other if he walked via the streets or drove. I walked through murder park.
“Can you put him on?”
“Yeah–fuck! Cass, he’s answered his phone! Miles isn’t here! He’s not in the house!”
“What the hell is he doing?” I stand up, suddenly panicking over what the hell is happening on the other end of the phone. I don’t wait, starting to run back the way I came, because even if it feels dodgy to walk through at night, the park is the quickest way to travel between our houses.
“Fuck, Miles! Cass has climbed up a tree and kicked in a window! Oh my god, Faye!”
His shouting springs me faster, every muscle crying in protest but I’ve never felt fear like this.
I pant heavily, unable to speak into the phone, but try to listen out for any noise that is on the other end of the phone.
Teddy is shouting, I can hear others too, before it sounds like an arena of people all shriek at once.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
Hurling myself around the corner house onto our street, I spot the fire engine that is just pulling up outside of Grace's house. I can smell burning from here and clouds of smoke puff into the air, thick under the street lights which are the only source of light. People have come out of their houses to check the commotion, but I’m more focused on getting to wherever Cassie is.
Two police cars are parked behind the engine and a group of officers are already trying to control the crowd standing on the street, a flock of them also in the front garden.
I spot Teddy’s pink hair even in the night, he’s clinging to Faye who is crying furiously into his arms. Mason stands protectively with them both, stroking back her hair, but the paling fear in Teddy’s expression is what scares me.
“Teddy!” I shout as I try to not trip over my own feet, reaching the house and barreling my way past one of the officers attempting to keep everyone away from the house. “Where is Cassie?”
“Sir, I need you to go stand across the street. The house is on fire.” The same officer follows me, but I slip out of his arm again, pushing to get to Teddy who does not look relieved to see me. Steady streams of tears are falling down his face, and he chokes on them.
“He–he, Miles he fell–”
My eyes snap to the direction of where the tree stands to the side of Grace’s house and gravity is pulled from under my feet.
Cass is laid sprawled on the floor, his head facing away from me, but a patch of dark spreads under his head.
No.
A female officer is crouched beside him, shining a small torch into his eyes, but it’s Emery who steals my attention next, anxiously pacing whilst he cries into a phone.
“Sir, I need you to head onto the street and let the paramedics through.” The officer I gave the slip grabs me by the elbow and tries to move me, but the arrival of flashing lights from an ambulance makes me step out of the way.
He makes a grab for my jacket and I move forward towards Cass, Emery noticing me as I move.
“That's my boyfriend!” I shout, pointing down at his body on the floor. Sighing loudly, he tells me to stand with Emery to the side.
Both our arms wrap around one another and I can hear Harris on the other end of the call; the phone shaking in his hand.
“H-he fell out of the tree. Hit his head and then on the floor.” He sobs into my shoulder and somehow I keep it together to twist in his arms, keeping him against me but watching as paramedics reach Cass.
One calls out for the stretcher, whilst the other resumes looking into his eyes, checking his pulse, but he doesn’t even twitch.
He’s unconscious or worse–I can’t think about that.
“Is–is he ok?” I ask one of them, but they don’t answer me.
Maybe taking pity, the paramedic who was checking over him first, steps to our side and tells me she found his pulse, but he has a bleeding wound to the back of his head.
“Can we come in the ambulance?”
She leans away to ask one of her colleagues, who is strapping Cass to the stretcher. I didn’t even see them lift him onto it, but the sight of his head bloody and lolling to the side breaks the damn in me. I start to cry hard, clinging to Emery even harder.
“One of you can.” She relays the information, and we decide Em should go with him, so he can ring Cass’s parents and tell them what’s happened. Harris has just got home from the gym and is already on his way with the car, he can take me to the hospital behind the ambulance.
We’re moved away from the house as the fire fighters, fully kitted, start to tackle the fire and Cass is loaded into the back of the cramped ambulance space.
The team of paramedics are already hooking things up and fluttering over him.
Em jumps in and scampers to the back where there's a pull down seat, the doors are closed and they’re off.
I think Teddy calls out to me but I push through the crowd and head back down the street, past where police officers are cordoning the street off and thank god, Harris’s car stops in the middle of the road.
I waste no time throwing myself in and he makes a quick U-turn, lurching the car forward to get onto the right road to follow the ambulance.
We don’t greet each other, a frantic deep Scottish male voice is talking through the car's speakers and if I'm guessing, this is Cass’s father. Harris is calmly relaying the information he knows and the hospital he’s being taken to.
Emery has called his mother and I can hear her in the background shouting.
They’re packing and getting in the car to drive down right now.
I feel like I hold my breath the entire phone call and for most of the drive, only letting it out in a choked cough when we finally catch up to the ambulance.
The flashing lights are a beacon right until we reach the hospital, but they’re also a representation of everything I may lose if Cassie isn’t ok.
We have no idea where he is in the hospital and they also don’t let us go to him, so the three of us huddle together in the waiting room.
Emery was led from the ambulance to here--only overhearing how Cass was going to be sent to surgery for the damage to his head.
He also needs x-rays to make sure his skull is ok, and his spine.
That made me cry harder, both of them too.
In a crisis Harris is a natural born leader, keeping us together.
He lets us practically lay over him, Emery falling asleep after a few hours, but I just stare down at the floor like it can open up and offer me the solution to make everything better.
It doesn’t, obviously, and the soothing circles Harris rubs into my back has my lids growing heavy.
If I hadn't been at his house, if I had just stayed put and waited for him to come to me like a sane person, would this have happened? I mentally slap myself. This wasn’t anyone’s fault–it wasn’t mine.
It was an accident. Cass being the bravest, most kindest man I’d ever met saved our friends from a burning house.
The fucking idiot. I could kiss him until I stop breathing. I would if he wasn’t ok.
A few hours later, a couple rush the reception and Harris sits up straighter. It doesn’t stir Emery awake, but my eyes become more focused and I watch as they speed walk towards the wards, disappearing.
“That was Cass’s parents. I’ll drop them a text.
” He tells me, rubbing his eyes before he brings up the running chat with his mum and texts her that we’re in the waiting area.
He doesn’t get a response so he returns his phone to his pocket, adjusts his posture against the plastic bench and lets Emery snuggle into his neck.
Our eyes meet but I don’t say a thing. I only stretch my legs, hunch down and close my eyes.
I’ll wait here all night, all tomorrow and every day after that until they let me see him.
I only know it’s the next day because grey light spills into the waiting area, and staff who enter the building seem to be more awake than I’ve ever felt.
A hum sounds off in the distance and I can now smell coffee, so Harris decided to go to the now open canteen to get the three of us breakfast. I ask for two large coffees, because it may be the only thing to get me through the day.
It’s agreed we all equally feel like shit, especially sleeping sitting up on the plastic bench, but there was no way we were leaving until we could see Cass.