A Memory Faded - [Nineteen]

The next morning, Alex waited for fifteen minutes outside Fletcher’s house. There wasn’t a car in the drive, but maybe his parents had gone shopping. Knocking on the door, she peered through the glass in the door. It looked like no-one was home. The alarm seemed to be on too. Shrugging, she pulled out her phone and called Fletcher. The answer phone message played, and she began to worry. Where the hell had he gone? Maybe his sister had taken a turn for the worse during the night…
A car horn honked, and the Redfearn’s Chrysler Stratus pulled up next to her, Fletcher’s mom sat inside it. She opened the window and gestured to Alex.
“Alex?”
“Mrs. Redfearn?”
“Yeah, it’s me…Fletcher’s had an accident and Alice is in theater. It’s not nice having both your kids unconscious. We’re probably gonna have to get the house repossessed too…everything’s going downhill at the moment…c’mon. I’m sure he wants to see you. He was muttering something delirious about dying, and wanting to see you so I figured…”
Fletcher’s mom rubbed a tear from her eye.
“I figured I’d come get you.”
“Alright. This is more important than school.”
Alex opened the passenger door and climbed in, slipping her bag between her feet. The streets seemed to roll along like water, Alex wasn’t really concentrating, and she was far from talkative. Rubbing a bead bracelet around her arm, she started humming, When It Rains by Paramore. It was a pretty emotional song…and she shed a tear as it got to the line in her head ‘I never saw it coming…’
Shaking her head, she convinced herself Fletcher wasn’t going to die. He couldn’t…he meant everything to her, to his band, to his family…especially his sister. He sometimes didn’t realize it, but the way she acted when he was around, it was obvious.
“How’s Fletcher coping?” Alex asked, breaking the silence, “And what happened?”
“He was coming to see Alice and he got hit by a van. The bumper damaged anyway, but this hit cut into Fletcher’s leg and hit an artery. I think they managed to slow the hemorrhaging but…he’ll be okay, he’s a strong kid with a good heart.”
“Let’s hope he’s alright, cause if he isn’t, his body won’t be the only one taken to the morgue.”
“What do you mean?”
“It doesn’t matter…”
She didn’t believe what she had just said. She had pretty much said she loved him so much, she couldn’t carry on without him. It was almost laughable…she’d known this guy for a few weeks at most and now she was pretty much insanely in love with him. Enough to make a stupid slip up like that in front of his already troubled mother. She wasn’t much help. But then again, someone needed to watch Fletcher, and someone needed to stay with Alice. She’d look after her boyfriend. Then his parents could watch over Alice. That would be fair. Even if she had to stay in her school uniform for the next few days. She didn’t care, as long as she was with him, things would be okay, she knew they would.
Or maybe that was just reassurance in vain.
Her optimistic side was beginning to become overpowered by her cynical side.
What use would she be without any happiness to spread to Fletcher…they say laughter is the best medicine. It’s also free, which might be a small weight off of the Redfearns’ shoulders. She’d sit there and hold his hand through it all. She could never ignore his touch. The roughness of his guitarists’ fingers, the smoothness of his palms. And then, his eyes, full of soul and the fire of life. If she could gain pyrokinesis to tame that fire, to bring it back up when he was fading out like a note held for one bar too long, she’d make sure that the Redfearns would only have to suffer one loss, even none at all.
The car pulled up and Alex stepped out with Fletcher’s mom.
“He’s in Ward 42. I’ll take you there.”
“Thank you.”
Fletcher was laid, sedated with sleep-inducing painkillers, staring around the grey, lifeless ward. It was hell. A place of white and overt cleanliness and people with empty faces. Nurses that looked at him as if he was something inanimate and undesirable, taking up space. The beep of his heart monitor felt like the only sound in the room, every single one echoing through his head. He wanted out, and soon.