Dorthy

Four

Hope is a fragile thing. You hope to succeed, only to have your success shredded by a casual word. You hope to find love and find, instead, betrayal wrapped in a smile and tied with a promise. You hope for health while disease devours your organs in a silent feast.

You hope for hope when your eyes are blinded by despair.

Dorothy and hope were best friends. They were life-long companions who walked hand in hand through the slings and arrows of outrageous life. She hoped her parents would return, though she knew they could not. She hoped Hayley and James would live forever so she wouldn't have to face the grief her own parents' deaths had visited upon her again. She hoped she would be able to achieve the grades she needed for the career she thought she wanted but didn't know if she really craved. It would come. Inspiration, one day, would hit and she would discover her calling. She hoped the day would be soon.

She hoped the crying would stop. The pain would ease. Her breath would be less ragged. The weight on her legs would lift. The drip that was falling on her face would cease.

Family, on the other hand, are attached by an invisible cord that binds them together regardless of how hate might push them apart. A brother is a brother. A mother, a mother. Friends can be chosen and discarded, to be cast adrift if your own life takes you on another journey or if they forget the meaning of the word 'friend'. Family is a lofty title for something - or someone - stitched to you by the thread of birth. And, often, you can feel the needle's prick throughout your life.

The sibling of Hope is Hopelessness. Dorothy was drowning in this part of the Emotion dynasty. Her eyes were closed, too heavy to open, the fear of what they might see preventing them from even taking a peek. She wished for her bed. Her home. Her aunt's arms. Her mother's embrace.

Instead, she had noise and pain and breathlessness, all wrapped up in a shroud of anxiety.

A cough and moan close by startled her. She recognised the sound. Julian. She forced her eyes to open and looked around.

The bus was on its side. The exit doors were open above her, with one hanging limply and the other missing completely. The other passengers were... crumpled. It was the only thing she could think to call them. They were lying strewn across the length of the bus, looking like the ragdolls thrown by that impatient, tantrumming child whose bottom lip was stuck so far out they ran the risk of tripping over it.

A young girl had fallen across the back of a seat. Backwards. She was bent all wrong. The human spine was not meant to go that way. That far. Her eyes were closed and blood trickled from her nose, a feeble attempt to escape the broken body before life faded.

The driver was face down against the entrance. The door to his cubicle was open and his hand was still holding onto the handle, as if he'd tried to open it whilst they were in flight. It gripped the handle but was attached to nothing else. The stump dangled down, almost beseechingly, reaching out towards the rest of him. Dorothy couldn't see his unfinished arm. She was thankful.

A head a short distance from her turned and a boy looked at her. He was roughly her age. Handsome. Well... he would have been. One eye was bloodshot. The other was swollen shut, a crack in the nectarine of its socket. She smiled at him. It was empty of spirit, but all she had. He smiled back, his as devoid of meaning as hers. They were too stunned for anything to mean anything.

The moan again. She looked up and saw Julian. He was trapped above her, his legs caught between the seat opposite where they'd been - and Dorothy somehow still was - and the one in front. The back of the latter was pushed back and twisted, holding Julian's legs as firmly as the driver's hand clutched its handle. Luckily, the remainder of his torso had not become separated. He groaned and moved slowly, but at least he was alive.