Losing Grip

Chapter 23➷ Good News, Good News... Please

It had now been a full year. A full year without her.

I couldn't believe I had survived twelve months alone. Twelve months sounded like a lot but I could recall every painful second.

As I knelt by the grave, I took out the marker I carried around in the back pocket of my jeans just for her.

Dad had been here earlier but I had not seen any sign of Avan all day. I hoped he was okay wherever he was.

My tears were steady now as I thought about her, and not as hysterical as when I had first woken up this morning. I still felt crushed, but it was a far cry from true distress—the kind of distress I felt a year ago.

—A year ago when that phone call first came in. Dad and I were settling in on the couch to watch the first baseball game of the high school season. He had bought a car for Riley's eighteenth birthday and after spending the morning celebrating with us, she had taken off to show it to Avan.

One of Dad's pet peeves was having to move from the couch once his games started. And naturally, like any teenager would, Riley and I went out of our way to make sure he had to, by casually forgetting to turn off the oven or forgetting to mention that we would have friends over.

So, when the house phone rang, like the mature sixteen-year-old I was, I hurried to yell "Not it."

He groaned and shook his head but still stood up to walk to the phone.

Distress was what I felt as I watched his amused expression melt into panic. The phone slipped out of his hand and he ran to grab his keys on the coffee table, knocking over the vase of flowers without a second glance.

"Is there something wrong, Dad?" I asked, but something inside me must have sensed the anxiety in his clumsy actions.

"Accident. She's— Accident," he stammered, barely making sense, already rushing toward the front door. "Please, stay here," he said, but he must have known that I wouldn't listen.

I ran after him, unable to register the contact of the broken pieces of glass under my bare feet. I did not think about changing from the pajamas I was wearing either.

Everything else between this and arriving at the hospital was a blur: doors slamming, my heart pounding in my chest, rain pouring over the windshield, Dad breaking all the rules of driving he had lectured to my sister this very same morning, and the silence in the car that, in hindsight, seemed to scream that nothing would ever be the same.

The doors of the hospital flew open before us as if sensing our affliction.

We rushed to the admittance desk, drenching the clear marble floor with the water dripping from our clothes. I despised the white-colored walls intended to bring me tranquility when all I could really feel was gnawing anxiety in the pit of my stomach.

I vaguely noticed that we were out of place in the immaculate building. Around us, everyone else calmly strolled as if the hospital was nothing more than a literal walk in the park. But I couldn't see any of them. My mind was too busy playing over and over the accident scenes that I watched in movies.

I tried to ignore the smell of blood and pills filling my nostrils as Dad and I ran to the nurse behind the desk.

She looked up at us, her eyes narrowing slightly at our appearances. She shook her head, chasing the disapproval away, and offered a polite smile. "How can I—"

"My daughter. She's been... accident," Dad cut in, and I hoped she could understand his stammers because my words probably wouldn't make any more sense. "Where is she?"