K. Bromberg - Crashed

“Stop!” I say, not understanding a fucking word she’s saying, and I just look at her like a goddamn deer in the headlights.

“The vessels attaching her to the baby severed somehow—they’re trying to determine everything right now—but she lost a lot of blood. She’s getting transfusions now to help with—”

“Is she awake?” My mind can’t process what she just said. I hear baby, blood, transfusion. “I didn’t hear you say she’s going to be okay, because I need to hear you say she’s going to be fucking okay!” I shout at her as everything in my life comes crashing down around me, like I’m back in the fucking race car, but this time I’m not sure what parts I’m going to be able to piece back together … and that more than anything scares the fuck out of me.

“Yes,” she says softly, that soothing voice of hers makes me want to shake her like an Etch A Sketch until I get a little more assurance. Until I erase what’s there and create the perfect fucking picture that I want. “We’ve given her some meds to help with the pain of the D & C, and once she gets some more blood transfused, she should be in a lot better state, physically.”

I have no fucking clue what she just said, but I cling onto the words I understand: she’s going to be okay. I hang my head back into my hands and push my heels into my eyes so I don’t cry, because any relief I feel isn’t real until I can see her, touch her, feel her.

She squeezes my knee again and speaks. “I’m so sorry. The baby didn’t make it.”

I don’t know what I expected her to say because my heart knew the truth even though my head hadn’t quite grasped it yet. But her words stop the world spinning beneath my feet and I can’t breathe, can’t draw in any air. I shove myself to my feet and stagger a few feet one way and then turn to go the other way, completely overwhelmed by the buzzing in my ears.

“Colton!” I hear my dad, but I just shake my head and bend over as I try to catch my breath. I bring my hands to my head as if holding it is going to stop the turmoil bashing around inside of it. “ Colton .”

I push my hands out in front of me gesturing for him to back the fuck off. “I need a fucking pit stop!” I say to him as I see my hands again—the blood of something I created that was a part of Rylee and me—saint and sinner—on my hands.

Untouched innocence.

And I feel it happen, feel something shatter inside of me—the hold the demons have held over my soul for the last twenty-something-years—just like the mirror in that goddamn dive bar the night Rylee told me she loved me. Two moments in time where the one thing I never wanted to happen, happens and yet … I can’t help but feel, can’t help but wonder why hints of possibilities creep into my mind when I knew then and know now this just can’t be. This is something I never, ever wanted. And yet everything I’ve ever known has changed somehow.

And I don’t know what this means just yet.

Only how it feels: different, liberated, incomplete—fucking terrifying.

My stomach turns and my throat clogs with so many emotions, so many feelings that I can’t even begin to process this new reality. All I can do to keep from losing my fucking sanity is focus on the one thing I know that can be helped right now.

Rylee.

I can’t catch my breath and my heart’s pounding like a fucking freight train, but all I can think of is Rylee. All I want, all I need, is fucking Rylee.

“Colton.” It’s my dad’s hands on my shoulders again—the hands that have held me in my darkest hours—trying to help me break away from this fucking darkness trying to pull me back into its clutches. “Talk to me, son. What’s going through your head?”

Are you fucking kidding me? I want to scream at him because I really don’t know what else to do with the fear consuming me but lash out at the person closest to me. Fear that is so very different than ever before but still all the same. So I just shake my head as I look up at the brown-eyed lady trying to figure out what to do, what to feel, what to say.

“Does she know?” I don’t even recognize my own voice. The break in it, the tone of it, the complete disbelief owning it.

“The doctor’s spoken to her, yes,” she says with a shake of her head, and I realize in that moment Rylee is dealing with this all by herself, taking this all in … alone . The baby she’d give anything for—was told she would never have—she actually had.

And lost.

Again .

How did she take it? What is this going to do to her?

What is this going to do to us?

Everything is spiraling out of fucking control, and I just need it to be in control. Need the ground to stop fucking moving beneath me. Know the only thing that can right my world again is her. I need the feel of her skin beneath my fingers to assuage all of this chaos rioting through me.

Rylee.

“I need to see her.”

“She’s resting right now but you can go sit with her if you’d like,” she says as she stands.

I just nod and suck in my breath as she starts to walk down the corridor. My dad’s hand is still on my shoulder, and his silent show of support remains until we walk farther down the hallway to the door of her room.

“I’ll be just outside, if you need me. I’ll wait for Becks,” my dad says, and I just nod because the lump in my throat is so fucking huge that I can’t breathe. I walk through the doorway and stop dead in my tracks.

Rylee.

It’s the only word I can hold on to as my mind tries to process everything .

Rylee . She looks so small, so fucking pale, so much like a little girl lost in a bed of white sheets. When I walk to her side I have to remind myself to breathe because all I want to do is touch her, but when I reach out I’m so fucking scared that if I do, she’s going to break. Fucking shatter. And I’ll never get her back.

But I can’t help it because if I thought I felt helpless sitting in the back of the police cruiser, then I feel completely useless now. Because I can’t fix this. Can’t charge in and save the fucking day, but this … I just don’t know what to do next, what to say, where to go from here.

And it’s fucking ripping me to shreds.

I stand and look at her, take all of her in—from her pale bee-stung lips, to the soft-as-sin skin that I know smells like vanilla, especially in the spot beneath her ear; and I know this feisty woman full of her smart-mouthed defiance and non-negotiables, owns me.

Fucking owns me.

Every goddamn part of me. In our short time together she’s broken down fucking walls I never even knew I’d spent a lifetime building. And now without these walls, I’m fucking helpless without her, because when you feel nothing for so long—when you choose to be numb—and then learn to feel again, you can’t turn it off. You can’t make it stop. All I know right now, looking at her absolute fucking beauty inside and out, is that I need her more than anything. I need her to help me navigate through this foreign fucking territory before I drown in the knowledge that I did this to her.

I’m the reason she’s going to have to make a choice, one I’m not even sure I want her to make any more.

I sink into the seat beside her bed and give in to my one and only weakness now, the need to touch her. I gently place her limp hand between both of mine, and even though she’s asleep and doesn’t know I’m touching her, I still feel it—still feel that spark when we connect.

I love you.

The words flicker through my mind, and I gasp as every part of me revolts at the words I think, but not the feelings I feel. I focus on the fucking disconnect, on shoving those words that only represent hurt out, because I can’t have them taint this moment right now. I can’t have thoughts of him mixed with thoughts of her.