Beyond the end

I'm here

Dylan had called Andrea by the nurse. He had seen her start her job and the Walshs go out. Especially Brandon. The fact that they took a taxi meant he had a few hours available.
Andrea looked out and her face immediately twisted but Dylan's unarmed look hurt her.
"Please."
"If Brandon or the Walshs come back here..."
"They just left, please."
Andrea let him in but could not support the guilt towards Brandon. He imagined that would be everyone's fate from that moment on. Either you were with them or you were against them.
This hurt her more.
Brenda's condition was stable but she was slow to wake up. Andrea didn't tell him anything else. She didn't tell her about the damage that the accident had caused her and that would change her life forever.
"You have a minute D, one."
He nodded and approached her. His face twisted into familiar tears. Seeing her in that way. Knowing about the lost child. Dylan's old monster came back and destroying everything he touched. He had made him want to drink. Several times in the last few hours. He wasn't even able to support Kelly who like him was trying not to drown. He had warned her that Brandon had probably come home and that maybe he could have a chance to talk to him. But he had had no news and imagined the failure of that desperate venture. He tried for a moment to focus on what Brenda and Brandon had seen. He touched Brenda's desperation and Brandon's anger for a moment.
However his Bren, she wasn't Brandon, he knew she would listen to him, that she would give him a chance, that she would welcome him. If only she had woken up.
He took her hand and held it tight "Bren, it's me. I know you can hear me. Please come back to me. We have so many things to do together. The world is falling apart Bren. I love you. Io I don't exist without you." The voice broke definitively into a cry hidden behind the throat.
Andrea looked out at him at that moment.
"You have to go Dylan or you'll get me in trouble. Please."
He kissed Brenda on the lips and then on the hand. He couldn't do anything else.
Andrea was confused by Dylan's attitude.
My mother and father kiss and don't want to be disturbed. Or something like that. Those words from Sammy sanctioned how wrong it had been to let Dylan in. Not just for Brandon but for Brenda. Would she had wanted him there?
In her experience as a doctor Andrea was certain that somehow unconscious people could feel, were somehow in a world parallel and mixed with reality.
Dylan gave her one last look from the glass.
Asleep. Full of wires. A plastered leg. Her face quite.. so far from the desperation of 24 hours before. For a moment Dylan had the feeling that he would never see her again. A shadow that was falling out from under her bed. She was almost certain.
Then Andrea accompanied him out and neither of them noticed the slow movement of Brenda's hand.
"Hei.."
Brandon immediately took her hands and gained the space between Cindy and Jim.
"What the hell happened to your face?" Brenda asked ironically.
"Did you see yours?" Brandon answered her.
Brenda laughed and the movement caused her rib pain "please tell me you didn't punch Dylan".
"Then don't ask me."
Brenda got serious.
Andrea was witnessing the scene a step back. As soon as Brenda had opened her eyes, she had greeted her with a smile and she had responded. Then he had tried to contact Brandon and the Walshs. She wasn't sure if her awakening had anything to do with Dylan's presence that morning and she certainly couldn't tell anyone. Brandon would be infuriated but in fact Brenda had gone back as soon as he left.
Brenda's voice was hoarse. But the parameters recovered quickly.
"How are you?" He asked her.
"Maybe i would have to be the one should ask you." Brenda whispered as she watched Brandon's sadness.
"A little broken but I'm fine. You?" Brenda insisted on asking him because she knew him better than anyone else. He saw the man lost at the bottom of those eyes more blue than his own.
"Better," he replied.
"You are a liar" his sister told him.
Andrea intervened for a few seconds turning to Jim and Cindy.
"Dr. Ferguson would like to talk to you," she told them and then he will come to you" she said to Brenda.
Brandon sensed that her sister knew nothing about what had happened to her. The doctor would explain it to her while Cindy would support her pain. He was grateful that his parents were there. Some things are from parents. He wouldn't have had the courage.
"Let's go," Jim told Cindy, taking her away. Old Jim had his eyes marked by fear. He believed he was in a safe harbor and instead the storm had spilled the boats in his soul.
Cindy moved slowly guided by him.
Brandon took a chair and approached Brenda.
"Then champion, how is the situation?" Brenda asked him.
"I don't know. I honestly don't know anything anymore."
"Did you beat him at least?"
"Enough," Brandon smiled. And that was the first smile that came out in hours "I don't know how you feel like joking."
"What else is left?" Asked Brenda with a choked voice.
She remembered everything. Probably that respite given by the sleep she had been forced to had doubled the weight of the absurd pain, which was the same as Brandon.
"You have to do something for me."
"What?"
"Call JT. Tell him what happened. Let him come here."
"Why?"
"Bran, I won't stay a minute longer in this city. And I can't get by on my own. Look at me."
"You can stay with me."
"And wait for you to get back from work and then be angry and sad both of us?" Brenda laughed "no, thank you".
"Don't laugh that your ribs hurt."
"It's true. Call JT. He doesn't like to fly but he will come."
"And what are you going to do?"
"I could go to Minneapolis for a while. Or somewhere else. I don't know."
Brenda stared at him with her cerulean eyes.
"What are you going to do?" She asked him.
"I don't know, honestly I don't.."
"Did you talk to them"? Brenda asked him.
"No, did I have to?"
"No. Maybe not. What we saw was enough."
"I can't even look them in the face" Brenda gave him a caress.
"You'll be fine. We'll be fine."
Suddenly Brandon realized that Brenda's apparent calm was not real and even if she was soon Dr. Ferguson would come in and tell her the truth. Nothing would be left.
"Did I lose the baby right Bran?" She asked her without warning.
She knew. She knew without anyone telling her.
"Did you know?"
"I can feeling It.
"Dylan knew. You were pregnant?"
"No." Brenda replied, "I hadn't told him yet. Actually "she stopped to look at an indefinite point in front of her " I wanted to tell him when we were going back to London" she paused and then looked him in the eye "it's all over Bran."
He had no strength.
" I want to leave without hearing anything. Brandon,
please help me"
"I'll call JT," Brandon promised her.
Dr. Ferguson came in at that moment followed by Jim and Cindy.
Brandon went out and looked at them over the window. He could follow Brenda's face writhing in a grimace of pain. The officiality of something that her body and mind already knew without having given any name.
Andrea was behind him.
"How are you?"
"Better now that she's awake"
"She will recover very soon."
"Really?" Brandon asked her sarcastically.
"The body sure" said Andrea "I can only take care of that."
"I know," Brandon whispered.
"What are you going to do now?"
"I'll call JT and that's the short-term project. After that I haven't thought about it yet. Maybe I'll disappear for a while?" Brandon said raising her interlocutor eyebrow.
"And where are you going?"
"I don't know but I've always heard it in the movies and I wanted to say it too."
Andrea laughed and he nodded.
Brenda was crying in Cindy's arms.
Now she also knew what had happened to his body.
When he went back to greet her, he found a different Brenda. More desperate and more dignified.
Andrea and Brenda were left alone.
"How do you feel? Do you want something for the pain?"
"No thanks. I can stand it."
She stroked her hair.
"You'll see that you'll feel better every day."
"Has Dylan been here?" Brenda asked her.
"Why are you asking me?"
"I know he's been here. I heard him."
Andrea had a worried face.
"Your brother forbade anyone to approach you and if he knew I let him in Bren. But he was so desperate. He's been in the garage all night waiting for your brother to leave."
Andrea told her everything that had happened. SHe didn't save anything.
"We don't know what to do," she concluded.
"Brandon is like that but sooner or later things will get right. Everyone has to find their own way," Brenda said, "he's suffering like me. Maybe even worse and I don't know if he knows the word forgiveness." SHe stopped for a second looking with her eyes for something he couldn't find "where is my ring?"
Andrea open the drawer.
"It's here."
Brenda looked serene. Inexplicably quiet. As if she had reached some level of peace or acceptance that was not accessible to others.
"You have to do something for me."
"Tell me."
"Dylan will be back. I know he will. And you'll have to give him this back and tell him it's better that way. For both of us. I don't want to look at him and be with him. What life would it be?"
Andrea took the ring and put it in the gown.
Then Brenda turned a deep prayer to her friend.
"If you can, you and Steve, take care of Brandon because he's about to collapse."
"what about you?" Andrea asked.
"I will leave as soon as possible, as I have already done, and I will rebuild my life, I am better than this grief and this pain"