Becoming Hers

37

*GRACIE'S POV*
What happened to Caleb on the football pitch scared the life out of lme and honestly, I thought he was going to die. The way he was lying there, still and barely breathing. It shocked me that someone would intentionally do that to someone else.

I thought I'd lost my brother forever.

The ambulance had arrived and taken Caleb away on a stretcher. My mother rode with him. Lexi drove Caleb's car to the hospital with me in the passenger seat and Blake and Charlie seated in the back. I was too shaken to drive my own car, as was Blake.

When we got to the hospital, we were instructed to stay seated in the waiting area. I couldn't sit still because I was so nervous. I wasn't able to stop shaking and I tried to calm myself down.

Lexi held my hand and squeezed it vaguely, she then pressed her head to my shoulder and whispered a sentence, "It'll be okay, Caleb will be okay," but he wasn't. And she knew that he wouldn't have just walked out the hospital without a scratch.

*LEXI'S POV*
Just before the game I spoke to Caleb in the guys locker room. I had motivated him and made sure his head was in the right place.

"Right, go out there and fucking win," I shouted at him, "you can do this,"

He flipped me off when he looked over his shoulder. His grin stood out though, plastered on his structured face.

I wished that I could have saw him smile like that again.

He ran out of the locker room without looking back. He didn't want to say anything else encase he was to jinx it.

Knowing that pissing three times before the game was his lucky thing made me chuckle. I had something like that but it was that I had to kiss Gracie right before the game started. She didn't know that it was my good luck charm, but she knew that I had to kiss her before my games.

I followed after him out of the locker room and then walked over to the bleachers. On the second highest row was Gracie, Blake, Charlie, Mrs H and the whole of the basketball team except for Audrey, Stella and Casey. They all waved me over when they saw me.

Everyone looked so happy, how did it manage to end up like that? It was fucked.

After a few hours we were able to see Caleb. It was meant to be just family but Gracie demanded I come too, so I said I was his sister which was somehow believed. I had blonde hair and everyone in the Heron family had dark brown. I guess I could have been adopted.

Caleb was plugged into a machine which was helping him to breathe. His football shirt had been torn open so they could get to his chest and check for injuries. They'd given him bandages on his arm and a few small ones on his forehead. I couldn't see how deep they were under the plasters but I knew they were bad.

Mrs H gasped at the sight of her son, she tried to stay strong but it was too much for her seeing Caleb connected to machinery and breathing tubes.

The slight buzz that every hospital room had became clear to me. It got louder the more I focused on the noise. But that wasn't my main concern so I tried to ignore it.

Caleb.

He was what I needed to concentrate on. My best friend was in a hospital bed unconscious and I wasn't even sure what his injuries were.

I couldn't look at him for long without recreating the scene from the field in my head. But each time it got worse. I'd imagined that Jake and Brock went even further and killed him in front of everyone. Or that his body got ripped to shreds and there was blood everywhere.

I couldn't be in the room any longer, I had to get it out of my head.

I just rushed out of the room and headed straight out of the hospital, hoping that the fresh air would calm me. I couldn't breathe even though I was no longer crowded in a small hospital room. As much as I tried, I still couldn't get my breathing to return to its normal rate. Tears formed at my eyes at the same time my head began to feel heavy.