Chapter Twenty Three

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Like the first time I'd woken up in the hospital, we had to wait a while before I was allowed to leave. I spent over three days in the lifeless room, watching as the light turned to dark and the dark turned to light. Sometimes, the moonlight would enter the room in the evenings and paint the wall across from it in a much lighter shade, and I wondered if it could be as easy as that. Couldn't we, just for a moment, let everything rest and wait for the world to bring us that weightless feeling? Couldn't we just let something else take over? Couldn't we simply exist in a world that was living around us?

Whilst I was staying there, Claire negotiated with the hospital staff, desperately trying to get me home. It was strange, I thought, as she ran up a nervous frenzy amongst the workers. She was a different person from what I remembered. She wasn't deliberate in her actions or as closed up; it was natural and wonderful that she now had the opportunity to be carefree and reckless. Tim wasn't there to ruin it -whatever it was - anymore, even though I knew it was going to take ages for her to get over the whole ordeal. It was the fact that the possibility was there that mattered.

I thought this as she came in with David on Monday morning, both of them carrying a mass of shopping bags in their hands. It looked as though they were mostly clothes, but I saw a few food items in there as well, along with a couple of picture frames.

"Don't crane your neck, sweetheart," she instructed, gently. "You'll hurt yourself."

Putting the bags down, David scoffed. "You realise that she's not going to break, right? She's not fragile and all this caring stuff is creeping me out. Since when did you become nice?"

I noticed that he was wearing a simple black shirt, a pair of faded scruffy jeans and paint splattered shoes. His normally floppy brown hair was shaved shorter at the sides, whilst being longer at the top. It made his face look thinner and his features more defined, though one of those features was completely new to me.

"Are you wearing contact lenses?" I asked sceptically. "I'm pretty sure your eyes were brown before and now they're... green. I can't be imagining that."

Claire face palmed. "He said he's going incognito. Apparently, this is going to make him untraceable, because David has convinced himself that he's part of a mafia throw down or something. Any time now, he's going to leap into action and defeat-"

"No need to be sarcastic," he muttered. "And I don't think I'm part of a mafia throw down. I've just taken the mature decision to not draw attention to myself. I mean, I know now I should've thought of the press taking pictures before, but that wasn't at the front of my mind at the time. I was hoping that we could all just settle down and start again, start anew."

Nobody said anything for a while, especially Claire who was busy fiddling with the watch dial on her wrist. She turned the clock handles backwards and forwards over and over again, eventually deciding to turn back the time to what seemed like five days ago. I suppose she liked that, being in control of something again. It was nice to know that you could grasp time in your hands and not let go, because it would only flee through your fingertips if you gave it the chance. By then, you would have lost the power over it completely.

"Do you know when I'm going home?" I questioned aloud. "I figured the food in the bags wasn't just for snacking in the hospital."

Claire looked up quickly. "Oh, yeah," she said. "It took us both ages, but we finally managed to convince them to let you go. I think we're safe to leave this afternoon."

I smiled. I was glad that I wouldn't have so much time on my own now, because that nearly always led to uncontrollable thinking. There were just too many thoughts to contain and not enough that were actually being contained. It wasn't something I liked to dwell on.

Sincerely, RedWhere stories live. Discover now