Love and the Sea and Everything in Between

chapter thirty-eight

With each passing day that Adam doesn't wake up, his chances grow slimmer. I know the doctors grow worried. And I know Adam's parents grow more scared with each second. I feel it too, the fear. I am crushed beneath a thousand thoughts. What if he doesn't make it? What about the baby inside me? Even though I know it's impossible, I can feel it growing inside me with each day that comes and goes. With each day, I grow more and more unsure about my original decision – how can I get rid of this baby when it might be all I have left of Adam?

But how can I take care of this baby on my own? I try to shove these thoughts aside – they don't matter right now – but the days are long and the hours are cruel.

* * *

It's the last day of the month when visitors start to come. Relatives and family friends all come and even though no one says it directly, I know they're coming to say their goodbyes.

But I won't.

I refuse to say goodbye to him. He's still in there and he's still fighting and he's going to find his way back to me – to us. I know he will. He has to. Because I love him. And what good is love if it doesn't make life worth living?

I stand outside his room as the visitors come and go, watching them through the window. Then students from our school start to arrive, one by one. People I don't know and people that I know Adam doesn't know.

I'm mad because these people are here acting like they cared about Adam when they never stopped to notice him – never once.

Fingering my necklace, I watch as my RA stands at his bedside, talking to him. I think these are the first words she's ever said to him. As Cassidy opens the door, I realize my jaw is set and my teeth grind against each other. I try to loosen them up when Cassidy walks up to me. She puts a gentle hand on my shoulder and says, "He's gonna pull through."

Smiling, I say, "Thank you." I blink back the tears. Sometimes the words of a veritable stranger mean little – sometimes, though, they touch your heart in just the right place and gives you that last ounce of strength you need to push on.

Cassidy gives my shoulder a gentle squeeze and walks away.

I stay outside his room, never daring to take my eyes off him. After a while, though, I have to pee and when I've held it for as long as I can, I leave to find the restroom.

When I come back, I see him through the window, sitting in the chair by his bed.

Jeremiah's lips are moving, but I can't hear what he's saying. His face looks tired and worn and his eyes are red, but I'm too stunned by the fact that he dared to even show up here.

Shoving the door open, I march into Adam's room and Jeremiah jumps to his feet, startled by the intrusion.

He's the intruder. Not me.

"What do you think you're doing here?" I demand.

"I just came to-"

"You just came to what?" My voice is loud – too loud for a hospital room. I try to take it down an octave and succeed after much difficulty.

"To see how he's doing." Jeremiah seems taken aback by my outburst. Given that he and I have never once spoken, that's not altogether surprising.

"Why do you care?" I scoff.

"What are you talking about?" he asks, his words laced with a thin layer of genuine confusion, which only makes me angrier.

I give a disgusted laugh. "He wrote about you, you know," I say, my lips drawn tight, my nostrils flaring, the scowl seering itself to my expression. "In his journal. He wrote all about how you made all these promises only to break them. About how you talked down about him to one of his friends behind his back. About how you stopped believing in him. Do you even care what it did to him?"

"Look, I should go. I just wanted to see him."

"Fine!" I snarl. "Leave! It's what you're good at, isn't it? Adam looked up to you. He loved you like a brother and what did you do to him?" I point at Adam, lying in the hospital bed. "That. You put him there. It's your fault he tried to kill himself."

"No!" he shouts, his voice cracking just a little. "I didn't force Adam to cut himself."

"No, but you sure did what you could to put the knife in his hands, didn't you?" I'm close to him now, in his face, jabbing my index finger into his chest. I hope he sees in my eyes the utter contempt I have for him, for what he did. "You knew the stuff he was dealing with. You knew how insecure and alone and worthless and empty he felt and you abandoned him to it. You left him to die. What right do you think you have to be here by his side in this hospital room when you're the one who put him in that bed? Huh?"

Jeremiah doesn't respond. He's a deer in the headlights, which is good enough for me. I don't need his excuses. Just like Adam didn't.

"You live your life as if nothing happened, as if Adam never mattered to you. You get to move on while he is forced to carry the burden of your betrayal on his own. What makes you think that you should get to be happy while the pain that you caused eats him alive? Do you think you're some universal anomaly that you don't have to take responsibility for your actions?"

"Look, Adam made his own choices. I'm sorry for what I did, but it's not like I can change the past. What happened, happened." Jeremiah tries to walk around me, but I block his path to the door. He's not getting out of this that easily.

"Yeah, and you made your own choices too. The only difference is that Adam had to bear the consequences of both your choices."

"I'm sorry you feel that way."

I laugh. "No, you're not. You don't care. Not really. The only reason you even came here is to try and appease your conscience. What? Did you think that by sitting at his bedside you could be free of your guilt? Do you think it's that easy?"

"That's not why I-"

I raise my hand to silence him. "I don't want to hear it. You think you're free of him. You think you can just forget that all of this happened. But you will always be the man that crushed the broken boy. You can never escape that."

My entire body trembles – with rage, with disgust, with anguish. I don't know what else to say. I feel empty now. So I just let Jeremiah leave this time and I sit down in the chair beside Adam's bed and bury my face in my hands, letting the tears come.

Because, deep down, I know that I wasn't just saying all those things to Jeremiah.

I was saying them to myself too.

I am the girl who crushed the broken boy.

And I can never escape that.

*If you enjoyed this chapter, please VOTE or COMMENT.