So Sorry

The Prompt: The phone rings and rings and rings in the middle of the night.  It keeps ringing after the machine picks up.  Finally you answer it—groggy, irritated, and befuddled.  It’s the call we all dread and yet know will come more than once in our lives … The narrator’s (closest friend, lover, parent, brother, sister, you decide who to kill…) was in an accident, is at the hospital, and will not last until morning.  He or she dresses furiously, jumps in his or her car, get to the hospital, cursing at the slowness of traffic, and the stupidity of parking attendants, and arrives at the person’s bedside.  What happens next?  

He had been running, speeding, doing everything at top speed to get there as fast as possible, but he slowed the moment he reached the door. He shut it softly behind him before even looking at the bed.

She was there, just as they said she’d be. It took a moment for the recognition to hit. There were so many tubes, IVs, just things sticking out of her that beeped at regular intervals. He wasn’t a doctor, didn’t know the medical equipment, but even he could tell that it looked bad. It looked really bad.

“Jamie, are—” His voice cracked as he hurried to the side of the bed.

Her eyes were closed and she didn’t rouse at the sound of his voice. She just continued to lay there, unmoving. His hands found hers, one of the only parts of her body not marred in some way from the accident. Her face was cut and bruised, everything visible in some way hindered. But her hand was clear.

She seemed so small and fragile in the bed, the machines dwarfed her. He stroked her hand gently, his thumb over the back. “Oh god, Jamie,” he murmured quietly.

He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know if he even should say anything. If she could hear him. In movies didn’t they always say the unconscious patients could hear what was said? He didn’t know, but it couldn’t hurt.

“Jamie, it’s me. It’s—it’s Ben. I’m here.” He stopped. There was no response. It wasn’t as though he’d been expecting one, but one-sided conversations didn’t often workl. There was always going to be that pause. The pause where a response should have been.

“I’ll be here, okay? For as long as you’re here, I will be too.”

He meant in the hospital, but the second meaning hit him hard. They’d said on the phone she wouldn’t last until morning, but doctors were wrong all the time, weren’t they? Miracles happened. He wasn’t much the praying type, but he knelt his head beside the bed and said a silent prayer in his head. If Jamie could hear what he said, he didn’t want her to know how close she was to the edge.

When he finished he looked back at her, no sign of a change. The steady beeping continued. A tear trickled down his cheek and he wiped it away. He was the strong one, the shoulder to cry on. He had to be strong for her.

“You’re going to get through this,” he whispered fiercely. It wasn’t a lie, he didn’t see it as such. He was going to pull her through this with everything it took. “You’re going to be fine.”

Her eyelids fluttered and his heart jolted with hope, but the steady beeping of the machine evened out into a single long note.

He jerked at the sudden noise. A few nurses hurried into the room and he was pushed out of the way. “What—what’s going on?” He asked desperately.

The question was ignored as he pulled back to the door. “Is she—she’s okay right? She’s got to be okay.”

He didn’t know what the nurses were doing, but they stopped after a minute. One turned to him with pity in her eyes and he shook his head. “She’s gotta be okay. She just—she has to be.”

“I’m sorry,” the nurse said, shaking her head.

His stomach sank and for a moment he couldn’t think, couldn’t even feel his extremities. His whole body felt numb. “Jamie,” he murmured under his breath. He couldn’t look at the bed. Didn’t want to see her like that. “I’m so sorry.”