REJOIN | ✔️

Chapter Twenty-One

It had been a while since I'd checked my phone and when I finally did, I noticed it was out of battery. I knew exactly where I'd find an iPhone charger in the house, but I wasn't quite yet ready to tackle the door at the end of the landing.

After searching the downstairs for an inhumane amount of time, I finally located a charger in the dish by the front door and took it into the living room with me. I mulled over the idea of scrolling through TikToks, trying to determine if the activity would bring back too many bittersweet memories.

The Apple logo flashed on the screen, then my background appeared. After a second my phone was buzzing off the hook. To any normal, socially active individual, that wouldn't have been quite so alarming, but alarmed I certainly was.

Swiping to unlock the screen, I opened the Notification Centre and my heart stopped. Seventeen missed calls from Clara and an innumerable amount of text messages, all saying basically the same thing:

Dad got in an accident! Get to the hospital!

I was shouting Bruno's name before I'd even read the full message.

A door creaked open upstairs and he peeked his head over the bannister. "What?"

"Can you drive?" I demanded.

He looked confused, almost like I'd woken him from a nap. "Yes, why?"

"My dad got in an accident and I have to get to the hospital."

His shoes were already on his feet and he'd dragged me down to the car before I even had chance to blink. "Put your seatbelt on," he ordered. "Dépêche-toi!"

I did as I was told. "Are you even insured to drive this?" I asked. He was proving that his driving was not the smoothest and I worried about Olivier's pristine Mercedes.

"That would require even having a license, so that would be a no."

"You don't have a license?!" The words came out a shriek. I grabbed at the handhold on the roof and hung on for dear life.

Bruno shielded the ear closest to me but bellowed a laugh. "Dude, relax. British people are so uptight. You asked if I could drive, not if I was allowed to."

A noise of frustration bristled its way up my throat. "I don't understand how someone whose-" I realised what I'd been about to say and how it would sound. Looking at him worriedly, I clamped my mouth shut, horrified at myself.

"Someone whose, what?" he asked. His voice had turned hostile and I can't say I blamed him. "Go on. Say it. Someone whose parents died in a car accident. You seriously can't understand how someone whose parents died in a car accident doesn't have a license, is that what you meant to say?"

"No, I-"

He reached over and turned up the radio, signalling the end of the conversation and we drove in silence the rest of the way.

***

Bruno dropped me off outside the hospital and left without saying a word, which was fine with me. I'd think about the raging guilt later, first I had to focus on my family.

I ran past the ambulance bays and up the ramp to A&E, passing several police officers on my way in. Even more of them were littered throughout the waiting room, seemingly taking statements, and my heart screamed in my chest. How bad had this accident been?

On my way to the front desk, Clara called my name and my head whipped round at the sound. I pushed through the small crowd towards her.

Her face looked red and swollen with tears and I pulled her into a tight embrace. "What happened, Clara? How bad is it?"