DaySleeper

I come to, on the floor, nurses rushing in. Kane is gone.

“His heart monitor isn’t connected!” one calls out, and I wonder if they thought I’d died. My mouth is dry and I am in a tight, uncomfortable, fetal position. I release the tension in my body and hiss as my fingernails pull from my palms, where eight crescent shaped cuts are now at, some bleeding slightly.

“Honey, what happened?” a nurse asks, helping me up.

“I think I had a seizure,” I mutter.

“Where did you visitor go?” she asks me, helping me back onto the bed.

“Don’t let him come back. Please.”

She nods and hooks me back up to everything, demanding for someone to call someone about me. I lay, shivering in the bed as they put all the tubes back into my body, right back into the perfect holes they left.

~~
Alice comes. I am glad. Maggie would get angry, not at me, but it would frighten me regardless. Avid would sit there, making me feel worse.
Alice just lies against my back, holding me while I stay quiet. She doesn’t know why she’s even here yet.

“Alice?” I whisper.

“Yeah?” she asks.

“Kane was here.”

Her body tenses against mine and I shove my face farther into the pillow.

“He will not come back.” She promises.

I nod.

“Alice?”

“Yeah?”

“Where… where will we go?” I whisper.

She doesn’t say anything for awhile.

“Alice?”

“I don’t know, babe,” she admits.

“I think I’ll go home.”

“East coast?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll miss you.”

“I’ll come back.”

~~
I am released from the hospital the next day. James has a room ready for me in his home, with his fiancée, who’s about to have their first child. I feel like an intruder, showing up there like this. They both insist I am welcome there as long as I want. I am getting on the plane this afternoon.

First though, I am stopping by the shelter and the volunteer house, where they have everything they could save from the fire. I am hoping some of my stuff is there.
Maggie stops the car and we get out. She does not look at the shelter. Instead, she goes directly inside the house, leaving me on the front porch, staring at the wreckage. The entire kitchen, the lounge, half the dining hall, and two wings are damaged beyond repair. I stare until a hand takes mine and pulls me to the door. Avid leads me inside and straight to the pile of things Alice declared were mine. I stare down at my suitcase, and I can imagine it as it was, tucked in the corner of the small closet back with Kane. I sink to the floor and begin to shove my things inside, pushing Kane away from my mind as best I can. A photo, my blanket, and a few day’s worth of clothing. I press my face into my hands. I will lose everything, inevitably.

“I don’t want to go.”

I don’t want to leave you.

“You don’t have to.”

You don’t have to lie to me.

I look up at Avid sadly.

I can almost pretend he stares back with something more than pity, the loss of a friend.

“I do.”

I wish I didn’t have to.

“You could stay here—”

I wish I could.

“I have no right to be here. You know that.”

And waste honest, good people’s air?

“You have every right—”

You’re such a bad liar.

“And then what, Avid? Everyone else has to leave? It wouldn’t be fair. You know it. Maggie knows it. That’s why I am going.”

Avid wipes hastily at his eyes.

“Will you come back?”

“Of course I will.”

No matter what.

“Cadence!” Maggie calls, “Someone’s here to say goodbye!”

I turn away from Avid, who wipes his eyes again, and head to the front door, limping, the brace still awkward. Josiah, Kyle, and Janelle stand there, waiting for me. The moment it opens up, Josiah has wrapped his arms around my legs, and I think I can definitively feel my heart break. I scoop him up and bury my face in his hair, and I tell him I’ll miss him, and I mean it.