I felt guilty for leaving the Grangers to deal with the news they received as I did, but at the time I had felt like I had no choice but to escape the confines of the ER waiting area. Had Gerald not found me when I did, I don’t know what I would’ve done. Probably walked into the traffic, judging by how distraught I was.How distraught I still am.The doctor told us that they would give us the final verdict after a day of observation, and Gerald is telling me that we had to go to the police soon to give them a sentence.“We have to get our story straight,” he tells me, and I don’t know if he’s oblivious to my fuming or is ignoring it for the sake of focusing on what’s more important than my temper tantrums. “We’ve botched this up already, and if not for Erikkson’s quick thinking in notifying the police in Clandestine City before attempting the rescue we’d have been in more heated waters. But now, we at least have some sort of a justification in case they try to turn this case around to
The aftermath of a crime is always messier than the crime itself especially when you’re a witness who just might be an accomplice to the crime as well. And this, coupled with the sadness of losing a loved one, and the anger of having a loved one taken away due to the crime itself, is bound to be tricky to navigate through. I know that I shouldn’t be angry with the Empire City police department because they were not the ones who were in charge of the investigation. They were not the ones who had been bought off by criminals, those problems belonged to Clandestine City. In fact, ECPD had been more than accommodating and very focused on the case, which was refreshing after the leg pulling the CCPD did, had I been in a better state of mind I have very much appreciated it. But I had not had any sleep the night before, and now I had been told that my girlfriend had died. There was nothing I wanted more than to return home to yesterday where Coraline was still alive. Hurt, yes, but alive ju
I stumble out of the police station with a wad of tissues in my hand and another pressed to my nose as blood keeps spilling down my skull. I was instructed to put my head down so the blood flow won't choke me from trickling down my throat, so that’s exactly what I do. The officers release me, and rather than look for Gerald and the company I find another exit and get out of the police station. I’m not ready to face them yet, especially not with a nosebleed that seems to have come out of nowhere.Or maybe not nowhere. I’ve heard that people could get nosebleeds from stress, and God knows how much stress I’ve been under for the last few days. I should be grateful that I did not collapse because of it.But as soon as I step out into the crisp afternoon air, I feel dizzy. The smell of my own blood reminds me of the night before, and I’m so tired of the thick, red liquid. I feel like I’ve seen too much of it in my life. First, my mother, hit by a car and bleeding out in the street, and now
“I’ve never gotten a nosebleed before like this,” suddenly I find myself saying to this woman who I met just minutes ago. “Think it’s serious?”“It does look like that,” the masked woman notes, and digs into her pocket before handing me an unopened package of tissues, “here you go, I have a feeling you’re going to need more of these. Did you hit your head somewhere? Got a headache?” she looks around, “I mean, with a place like this I might have wondered if you had said the wrong thing to the wrong person.”“Nothing that exciting,” I do not know why I’m speaking to her as if I had known her forever. This level of familiarity is bizarre, but it doesn’t feel wrong. She’s still holding out the tissues, and wiggles her hand trying to get my attention, “thank you very much.” I take the tissues.“If it’s not too forward of me, can I ask you what’s wrong?” the woman questions conversationally, “I caught sight of you just a while ago, and I swear I wasn’t talking to you. I noticed that you loo
The nosebleed stops moments after the woman leaves me, and I find Gerald and the gang.Lemon breaks down when I relay to him the news of Coraline’s fate. Mal and Erikkson look extremely upset, and Clara who had finally made her way to the police station after spending the night at the hospital looks sympathetically at all of us. I hold onto Lemon as he starts to sob, after putting much effort to hold in his tears. Gerald stands by the side, looking dark and desolate. He’s got his phone in his hand as if it’s a weapon and I think maybe it is. He could get so many things done with one phone call. I wonder if he had called my father and notified him of this new development, but I won’t keep holding my breath. Dad had gone abroad again due to some emergency in his business somewhere, and although he said that he would be in touch, he had not even called. Maybe he called Gerald, but not me.And I can’t help but resent him a bit for it.We make our way out of the police station, feeling wor
I close my eyes as my body freezes right there in the middle of the road. The SUV keeps barreling towards me, and I think, with my feet planted firmly to the ground, this is it. I’m going to be hit, and with the speed that car is traveling, I’m going to be badly damaged. And I can only hope then that I would be damaged enough to end it all.To my surprise, I don’t feel the vehicle colliding with my skin.Instead, I hear the sharp sound of tires screeching against the asphalt, and people scream all around me. I feel the gush of wind coming from a vehicle stopping right in front of you after coming at you at full speed.For a moment, it feels like the world had stopped.After a beat of two when my heart slows down enough to not give me a heart attack, I slowly open my eyes to see what the hell had happened.The car had stopped just inches away from me. As I watch with a racing heart, the doors on either side of the backseat open, and out steps two men dressed in suits and black mirrored
As if someone had played pause on the outside world as soon as the two men in black appeared, because the moment they get into the car, reverses out, turn, moves in the opposite direction, and disappears at the end of the road, Gerald, Lemon, and Mal all come running towards me.“Jace!” Lemon calls out as soon as he sees me, and I jump, whipping my whole body toward where his voice had come from.I blink at the three frantic-looking men before asking, “Did you just see that?”“See what?” Gerald questions, “You ran out of the building, and we followed you here only to see you gawking at the road like it personally wronged you and had the audacity to deny it.”“You didn’t see the car and the two guys who looked like they walked out of a Men in Black set?!” I demand, “Also if you had been following me after I exited the building, what took you so long to get here?”“Too long? It’s barely been a minute!” Mal exclaims, “Look, man, are you alright? You’re acting much too weird.”“Is it the
The funeral arrives faster than I imagined it would.I did not go to the hospital to witness Coraline being killed. That’s what it was to me, regardless of the fact that she’d already been dead. Her heart flatlines, and according to Gerald and Lemon who had been there for the event while I had traveled to the CCPD to give my statement and answer all their questions regarding how much I wanted to strangle each and every one of them, her parents had wailed. The whole hospital seemed to have gone into shock at it.And I had been too much of a coward to witness it. Instead, I glared across the table at Hank Reverend, focusing all my hate on him even though he was the only one in the CCPD to give a shit about what happened to us. He apologized profusely for not being there, but I could not forgive them. I could not be the one to forgive them, because the crimes had not been committed against me. The victim had been Coraline, and now she was dead. It didn’t matter how sorry they were, nothi