All It Takes (19 page)

Chapter 19

Ash

I
try to open my eyes but I can’t.

I can’t focus.

All I can see is flashes. Flashes of light and of darkness. All I can hear is the thunder of my heart and snatches of voices. But they’re all talking over one another and it’s like I’m in a dream, like they’re all out of order, out of sequence. Or that I am.

“—other. We’re his pa—”

“—e’s crashing. We need to in—”

Someone’s crying. Sobbing. I want to reach out, to move.

But I can’t.

I’m trying so hard that the shock of the jolt, of my body jerking without my permission stuns me and I start to fall back in on myself.

“—eed to get—”

“—epped for sur—”

I try to follow the voices, try to make them make sense, but it’s no use.

They’re fading.

Everything’s fading.

No.

No.

No no no,
I think. I try to scream it but the words won’t come out.

The light is gone now. The voices, too.

Fuck,
I think as I slide into the darkness.

It’s happening again.

Star

W
hen I wake up, I do it slowly. I’m groggy. Sluggish. I feel like I’m deep under water, and it’s a struggle to fight my way to the surface. To consciousness.

But slowly, I edge my way back, bit by bit. And finally,
finally,
I open my eyes.

The first thing that filters through my hazy mind is just how incredibly bright everything is. Walls gleaming white in the sunlight that filters through the window by my side, bits of metal catching in the light, sending off little glints that dance like fairies across my vision.

The second thing is the
pain.

Everything hurts. Every last inch of me aches, and as I breathe in, I feel a shooting, stabbing pain in my side. I try to squeeze my eyes shut and breathe through it, but I can’t quite stop the whimper that escapes my lips. Struggling, trying not to scream, I shift myself on my side and lay there, exhausted, just breathing. In and out.

In and out.

The machine next to me lets out a beep, and, once the pain has faded into the background, I open my eyes.

I’m in a hospital room.

What the hell happened to me?
I wonder.
How did I even get here?

And then . . .
Oh god.

Ash.

Where’s Ash?

I try to surge forward, to pull myself out of the bed, but I can’t. The pain is so bad I want to scream and I have to grit my teeth and ease myself back down, and wait for it to pass again.

My heart is thundering in my chest.

Where is Ash?

I open my mouth to call out for someone. Anyone. But the haze that keeps threatening to envelop me is too great, and I can’t quite get the words out. I still, squeezing my eyes shut and try to concentrate. I can do this. I have to do this. I suck in as much air as I can, and let out a yell before I collapse back onto the mattress. A moment passes, two, and I’m lost in the whirling, dizzying cloud of pain that surrounds me. There’s a noise from the other side of the door, and my eyes blink open just in time to see the doorknob begin to turn. I reach out with my left hand to grasp the edge of the bed and push myself up into a more upright position, but as I set my hand down, my hand begins to hurt. Bad.

I look down and my heart catches in my throat. And as soon as I lay eyes on it, the pain hits me in full force. My hand is wrapped in gauze, my fingers are trembling, from the pain or the fear, I’m not certain. But there’s something wrong.

My hand is too small, too narrow to be my own.

I turn my hand over, palm up, just to be sure, and my throat starts to close up as I realize what has happened.

My pinkie finger, the one I’ve linked with Ash dozens of times as we made promises to each other, is gone.

It’s just . . . gone.

Ash

I
hear them talking before I open my eyes. My parents. I can’t make out what they’re saying, but I know their voices better than anyone’s. And that’s definitely my mother.

I groan before I can stop myself, and try to turn over to go back to sleep. It’s early—what the fuck does she think she’s doing, trying to wake me up at this time? But as soon as I shift, I can feel it, the pain, and I fucking
jolt.

Jesus Christ. Everything fucking hurts. What the hell happened to me?

“Ash?” Mom’s voice cuts through the haze. “Ash, are you all right, honey?”

Why is that familiar? Why have I heard those words before? Well, almost. I’m pretty sure there wasn’t a
honey
attached to it last time.

What the fuck happened?

I grit my teeth and force my eyes to open. There’s a flash of white, and then my vision clears. I’m in the hospital. Jesus.

All at once, I’m back there. I’m back in Gina’s car, weaving back and forth completely wasted. I’m back at the crash, at the car I tried not to hit but did, anyway. I hear the horn, the scrape and scream of metal against metal, and then I see the white of the hospital room, the dark uniformed figure, reading me my rights before I’m hauled off to holding. To the courtroom. To prison. It all hits me all at once, and then over and over again. It won’t stop.

It won’t ever stop.

Crash.

Scream.

Darkness.

Light.

Crash.

Scream.

Darkness.

Li—

A hand lands on my shoulder, jostling me hard enough to jerk me back into reality. I blink my eyes open, even though they feel heavy and I’m sluggish under the weight that’s pressing on my chest. What the fuck happened? Why am I here?

I must say it out loud, because Mom’s face comes into view, and I feel her cool hand rest on my forehead. It feels good, relaxing, but I shake off that feeling. I have to. I have to stay awake. Stay alert.

“It’s okay, honey. Everything is going to be all right.”

“What—what happened?” I ask, trying to pull myself up into a sitting position even as the room starts to spin around me. Mom’s hand is on my shoulder almost immediately, trying to push me back down against the pillows.

“Mom?” I say, desperate. I don’t remember. I don’t know why I’m here. “Mom, what happened to me?”

I manage to keep my eyes open long enough to see her glance behind her, and I hear the sound of footsteps against tile, and Dad appears beside her. They’re silent for a moment, doing that weird mental communication thing that all parents seem to be able to do, the ones that stay together, anyway. But I’m fighting against the pain and the drugs—goddamn, what the fuck do they have me on? I feel like I’m flying—and I need answers before I pass out.

“Mom. Please. What’s going on?”

She sighs and turns back to me, and I see her eyes are filled with unshed tears.

“You were in an accident. The car you were driving was hit.”

Fuck.

Star!

“Star,” I say, instantly more awake than I had been a moment ago. My hands are pulling at the blankets, trying to get them off me so I can sit up. “Where is she? Is she okay?” I fight back a wave of nausea as I swing my feet over the side of the bed and start to climb down. My parents’ hands are on me at once, trying to push me back, but I just shove them off. I need to find her. I need to make sure she’s okay.

Holy fuck. What if she’s not? What if she’s dead?

I think I’m gonna puke.

“Ash! Ash, stop!” Mom says, her fingers gripping the flimsy-ass hospital nightgown I’m wearing. I don’t remember putting that on. I reach up and start prying her fingers off. I need to find Star.

“Let me go,” I say, pulling her hands away. “I need to see Star. I need to know if she’s okay.”

“She’s fine.” Dad’s voice comes from the edge of the inky blackness that’s hovering all around the edge of my vision. I shake my head, trying to clear it, but all that does is make it start to spin even worse. I lean back against the edge of the bed, and feel his warm hand come down on the back of my neck. “Ash. Did you hear me?” he asks, his voice deep and close. “Your friend is okay. She’s banged up, but she’s alive.”

Jesus Christ. Relief spreads through me like a tidal wave.

Holy shit.

I lean forward, resting my throbbing head in my hands for a moment, trying to get the fog to pass. My entire body’s shaking and I feel like I’m freezing and sweating my ass off at the same damn time. I don’t remember feeling like this before. Not even the last time I was in the hospital.

But my relief is short lived. I feel like only seconds have passed before my body is thrumming again. I open my eyes to see both of my parents staring down at me, concern written all over their faces, clear as if it were tattooed right there on their skin for everyone to see.

“I need to see her,” I force the words out, clenching my hands into fists as I struggle to stop shaking. “I need to see that she’s okay.”

I reach down and brace my hands against the edge of the mattress, and try to work up the strength to get back on my feet. My mother’s hands are on me again in a heartbeat. “You can’t,” she says, trying to push me back onto the hospital bed. “You’ll hurt yourself.” Her voice is firm but her hands are gentle. Too gentle. I push past them easily.

“I don’t care,” I say. “I have to find her.” God, she doesn’t even have any family left. Both of her parents are dead and she’s never really talked about any of her foster parents. She’ll be all alone. I can’t leave her all alone. I make it all of two steps away from the bed when I feel the painful tug and look down. My left arm is in a cast, and the other is hooked up to about a million different wires. Fuck. How bad had the accident been? I reach down and, using the half-numb fingers on my broken hand—at least, I’m assuming it’s my hand that’s broken. It’s hard to tell when the cast starts close to my fingertips and goes nearly all the way up to my elbow—I tug the little heart-rate monitoring clip off my finger and then reach for the IV line.

“Don’t touch that!” my mother snaps, reaching out and batting my hand away. “You need that medicine right now.”

“Fine,” I say, and reach out with my good hand and grab the IV pole next to my bed. It’s not hooked up to anything else, and it wheels freely toward me when I pull it. Good. With my other hand, I reach up and start pulling off the monitoring sensors they’ve attached to my chest. Beside me, a machine starts beeping like it’s doing some sort of end-of-the-world countdown, but I don’t care. Finally free, I start heading toward the door.

“Ashley! Get back here! You need to rest.”

My mother’s voice keeps getting louder with every word, but nothing she says is going to stop me. I feel a smirk start to pull at my lips as I limp forward out the door. I don’t even need to turn around; I know that behind me, Mom looks like she’s about to blow a gasket, and Dad’s looking helplessly around the room. They’re never going to change. “At least let me get you a wheelchair!” is the last thing I hear from the room as I turn and start hustling down the hallway.

The hospital is surprisingly quiet. I keep expecting nurses to jump out of nowhere and drag me back to my room, to have doctors rushing by with gurneys of people bound for emergency surgery, shoving me out of the way. But it’s calm out in the hall.

I don’t know where I’m going. For all I know, Star could be in the room beside me or on the other side of the fucking hospital, if she’s even in this hospital at all.

A million thoughts run through my mind at once as I approach the counter of the nurses’ station. What if my parents were lying? What if Star isn’t okay? What if she didn’t survive the crash?

Fuck. I need to find her. Right now.

I take the last few steps a little too quick and hit the counter with an amount of force that I really didn’t intend, and the pressure slams through my chest and makes black spots swirl in front of my eyes all over again. Fuck. I’m more hurt than I thought. I can hear the rapid clip of footsteps coming up behind me, and I know my mother is hot on my tail, so I have to make this quick.

“Hey!” I yell, leaning across the deserted counter, hoping against hell that there’s someone in the room behind it. “Hey!”

A second later a guy in pale blue scrubs hustles out, his eyes widening when he sees me. “You, Nurse-Dude. I need to know where my girlfriend is.” I’ve never called her that before, but damned if it isn’t true.

“Uh, sir? I think you should be in bed,” he says, blinking at me like he’s never seen a fucking beat-up guy before in his life. Some shitty nurse he is.

“Not gonna happen, asshole,” I say, and lean farther over the counter, shrugging off my mother’s hand when it hits my shoulder. “Star Collins. S-T-A-R C-O-L-L-I-N-S. Look it up in your little computer there and tell me where she is.” The guy looks back and forth between me and my mom, and for a second I think he’s going to piss himself.

“Sir, really,” he says. “I’m going to have to insist that you return to your room. The doctor will be in to see you shortly—”

“Fuck that,” I snap, and push myself off the counter. The hallway spins around me and I have to stop for a second and breathe through it, get my feet under me again. After a second, I shake it off and open my eyes. There’s probably a dozen people in the hallway now, and every single fucking one of them is staring at me.

“Ash—”

“No,” I say and start walking—
limping
—down the hallway. “I’ll find her myself.”

I’m booking it down the hall, and I can hear my mom and the nurse whispering behind me, but I couldn’t give a shit if I tried. I pull in a deep breath and start yelling for Star. Everyone who’s got their eyes on me seem to jerk in unison, and a couple people actually turn and scurry back into their rooms like rats. Good. Stay out of my way.

“Star!” I yell, but other than my mother and the nurse, the hallway is silent. Fuck. Where is she? I move faster, half pulling the IV stand and half using it for balance when my knees start to get weak. My right thigh is aching like a bitch, but I don’t look down. If I see it, whatever it is, it’ll just hurt worse.

“Star! Baby, where are you?” I say, my voice dropping low. The hallway is fucking spinning around me, and I have to squeeze my eyes shut for a moment. I’ve got the IV pole in a death grip, but it isn’t helping. If I don’t sit down soon, I’m going to be going down, anyway. I have to find her.