I woke up a few hours later in a hospital bed, with my mother’s face, shiny with tears and mascara stains, looming over me. “Hi sweetheart, its ok, I’m here now.” She said, her voice cracked and strained with worry. I tried to move my arms and legs before realising I was wrapped up in tinfoil. My mother, noticing my confused face, smiled and said “Its fine love, it just to keep you warm. The doctors want to keep you in over night to check that everything’s ok, and then you and me can go home.”
“Where’s Jake, Mum?” “ Didn’t he come with you to the hospital?” Mum’s body stiffened and she quickly turned her face away from mine. “What’s the matter?” “Where is Jake?” I asked again, a hint of despair creeping into my voice. Just then the door inched open and Chloe’s head popped round the door. “ Lily?” “Lily, are you in there, I think they said room 2b.”
“LILY!” Jessie squealed, as she pushed passed Chloe and embraced me in a hug as best she could, considering the way in which I was wrapped up. “Oh my god you look like a chicken drumstick!” joked Nia as she, Chloe and Jessie surrounded the bed. Mum quietly slipped out of the room and I smiled back at my friends soaking up the attention. Everyone that I cared about was around this bed. Except Jake. I felt a pang of sadness and rejection as it sank in that he had not yet come to visit.
“You have missed so much!” Chloe stressed as she sat down on the comfy chair beside my bed. “Have I?” “I've only been here for half a day.” Chloe grimaced, “Yeah, well a lot happens in half a day you know!” she said. “Especially if someone’s after your man!” added Jesse with a nod at Nia. “You know how Amy’s been trying to steal Drey for ages, yeah?” “Well Nia caught Amy at a party, all over him like a rash!” she said raising her voice shrilly at the end of her sentence, causing the other two to glare and stare pointedly at the ‘please be quiet’ sign. “Oops,” she giggled. “Sorry.”
“What did you do Nia? I hope it wasn’t anything stupid!” I said trying to sound mature. “Of course I wasn’t stupid. She just needed teaching a lesson.”
“She smacked her one!” Chloe whispered stifling a giggle. ”And broke her nose.”
“You broke Amy’s nose?” I questioned disbelievingly as Nia turned the colour of an over-ripe tomato. “No! You didn’t?” I looked at Nia and the smug, satisfied look on her face said it all. “I chucked Drey of course. He wasn’t exactly beating her off with a barge pole.”
“Men! Who needs ‘em?” cried Jessie loudly, only to be kicked and elbowed into silence. Jesse looked surprised but then, as though remembering herself, she quietened and sank back into the other chair looking upset.
What the hell was going on? “Err… What’s wrong, guys?” I asked suspiciously. “Nothing...nothing” they all assured me. I was too tired to persist and suddenly felt overwhelmed by their noise. As though sensing this Nia announced, “Well we best be off” and nodding to the group they stood up and busied themselves putting the chairs and bedclothes straight, unnecessarily. One by one they all said goodbye bending over me for hugs. As they did so, I noticed that Jessie had glistening, held back tears in her eyes and she turned her head away as they left together.
I slept for the rest of the day slipping in and out of dreams as my mum vigilantly sat beside my bed. The next morning I was allowed to go home. “You feeling ok, love?” asked my mum as she leaned across the car for a hug but I shrugged her off. “I’m fine thanks, mum; let’s just get home, eh?” As we reached the main road mum questioned my sullen behaviour. “Are you sure you all right, love? You’ve hardly said a word.”
“I’m fine, it’s just that Jake hasn’t called or come to see me in hospital. Doesn’t he care?” Mum’s eyes welled up and silent tears started to run down her face. She slowed down as her vision was blurred. I am no longer a child but when a parent starts crying you begin to worry. “Mum?” She just shook her head and continued driving in silence, along the slippery winter roads.
When we pulled up to the house I got out of the car, stumbling toward the house in my eagerness to ring Jake. As mum followed me in she asked, “What do you want to do now, love?” with a tight, hollow smile on her face. “I’m just going to ring Jake for a chat. Don’t worry I won’t be on too long.”
“Lily” mum said, catching hold of my arm; “We need to talk.”
“Why? What’s wrong?”
“Sit down, love.” Mum said placing herself beside me and taking my red, chapped hands in hers. “I’m sorry to tell you this but… Jake has passed away…” she trailed off.
“No!” I cried jumping up from the settee “NO!”
“Calm down sweetheart!” Mum said pulling me back down beside her. I flopped down and searched her dark brown eyes trying to see some sense but as our eyes connected I knew it was true. Jake was gone.
After what seemed a lifetime, I found my voice. “How?” I croaked as my throat began to close and bright spots invaded my vision as I broke down, but I had to know. “ Car crash” came the strangled reply. “He was on his way to the hospital, and a lorry skidded on the roads….they’re so icy this time of year….anyway, I’m sorry love, they hit Jake’s car straight on.” “The doctors said he felt no pain.” My mum put her arms round me pulling me toward her as she did when I was a child. It had worked so well then, a mother’s love could beat off all the evil in the world, but not now, not this time. I couldn’t see how anything could be true anymore.
I pulled away from her warm bond, chilled to the bone, and ran upstairs to my room, my sanctuary. I looked at the pictures on the wall, Jake. Jake. JAKE I wanted to scream but no words came out. I began tearing them all down, the pain inside me forcing itself into a ball, which welled up in my gut and rose to my throat but which I refused to set free. Staring at the defaced walls, something inside me snapped and I collapsed sobbing on my freshly-made bed and drifted into coma-like sleep.
I awoke later wondering where I was and what had happened. Looking around and seeing the floor littered with torn pictures, the anguish and pain returned, tearing at my mind, body and soul. I rolled onto the floor and looked under the bed pulling out the pink and silver box Jake had given me for our first anniversary. I carefully withdrew the letters he had written to me and inhaled the deep, musky scent he always sprayed on the paper, as he knew I loved the aroma so much.
I looked down to see his loopy handwriting on the very first letter he had sent to me and began to read words that I knew would never be spoken by him again. ‘My darling Lily, I love you with all my heart and I wish you were here, with me now. I wish I could be near you always, you are my heart and soul and I would give my life to you…’ I crumpled the paper tightly in my fist and held it to my heart which was shattered in pieces inside my chest.
Mum found me still clutching his letter hours later. “Come on, Lily.” “Jake’s mum has just been on the phone. It’s the funeral tomorrow, are you up to it?” Unable to find my tongue, I nodded.
At the funeral I stood with Jake’s mother, Cheryl. As a widow, Jake was her only son and now he was gone too. I was all she had left to cling to; ‘the daughter she never had’. Speeches were made about Jake by his best friend James and his uncle Peter, who had been like a father to Jake since his own had died when he was only a small boy. Sermons over, the black, shiny coffin was carried down the aisle by Jake’s friends and relatives. I held Cheryl’s hand tightly, holding on to let her know I was there for her.
Cheryl had arranged the whole thing, right down to what he was wearing inside the silk-lined coffin-his last resting place. As “I’ll be missing you” echoed around the full church, all my emotions flooded in and I began to weep for this was “our song”; Jake’s and mine. My chest tightened as I gasped for breath, yet taking no air. It was just like drowning again, except this time there were no strong arms to pull me up. I was alone. Jake was gone.
After the funeral, things didn’t get better. Each day I sank deeper and deeper into depression, as I didn’t see the point of going on without Jake by my side. Now he was no longer there to share my life I couldn’t give a toss about anything; he used to be my backbone; my strength.
Soon my friends tired of my depressive moods and each one wavered before eventually wilting away under the constant sorrow I was wallowing in. Mum tried of course but day by day our relationship became more strained as she tried to cheer me up and get me to take an interest in what was going on around me again. But the self-pity was all consuming and all efforts to encourage me to move forward were pushed away and rejected.
After a couple of months, or maybe longer, something snapped. Black, black everything was black. But everything was clear to me, I would go and join Jake. The tablets that the doctor had left to help me to overcome my depression suddenly had a new purpose. They were my means of escape and one-way ticket to wherever Jake, my love, my life, was.
It was so simply, quick and easy really. Why did I not think of it before? Why had I waited all this time and put all my friends through hell? Two packets of tablets later, nice, small pink ones each one bringing me closer to Jake I slipped into unconsciousness waiting to see the light I’d read about in magazines.
But there was no light, only pain as the paramedics pumped the drugs out of my stomach. Mum crying again and angry at me for so selfishly wanting to waste my life in this way. Not that I cared then, but that was then and this is now.
Waking up in the hospital once again, I felt the weight of depression that had pulled me down, like my clothes and boots under the ice, had lifted from me. I knew nothing would ever replace Jake and that my life would never truly be whole without him in it but somehow, some way after two close encounters with death I had seen a light and realised that life was a precious gift not to be wasted.
It was different leaving the hospital with mum this time, knowing I was going home to start afresh. This time, instead of calling Jake, I went to say goodbye carefully putting all the things he had given to me in the box before sliding it under my bed.
End
Suzie Berry
10C
2,532 words.
