1045: Chapter 28

The word hit me like a bolt of lightning. It excited and terrified me.

My name. How long had it been since someone had said my name? How long had it been since someone had actually acknowledged my existence, since someone had shown that they had the slightest idea who I was, since someone had shown me that I mattered to someone out there? There it was. My “weak connection” to this world, strengthened once again with just a single word.

“Joshua,” she said again. “Please.”

I knew it was selfish. I knew that I didn’t deserve to be liked, loved, respected, acknowledged. I knew that it was better for everyone if I just faded into obscurity, to be forgotten. What I did was not something you can forgive; everything I felt from that point on was my fault, my punishment.

“Joshua,” she said again. I could have sworn I heard another voice along with hers, but there was no-one else around in this eerie scene.

Or was there? I looked over my shoulder again to check, but sure enough, there was only Alice.

Aril and Laura and Alice were asking me to come to terms with so much. To accept that what had happened wasn’t my fault, that it was the fault of chaos; the fault of random chance; the fault of no-one. There was no-one to blame, least of all me, and that there was nothing I could have done differently.

But that wasn’t true. I could have done something differently. I could have stayed with them. I could have waited in that wreckage rather than fleeing like a coward. I could have called for help. I could have done something to save them. Instead, I chose to look out only for myself, and the guilt was tearing me apart.

“Joshua,” she said again. Every time she said it, I felt stronger. Every time she said it, it felt like more voices were adding themselves to hers, but still I could see no-one; still I was unaware of any other presences.

And where were they now? I thought. What was the result of my running away? I had escaped that horrific situation, and to what end? I had just assumed that they–

I had just assumed–

I had believed–

I didn’t even know if they were alive or… dead.

Tears came to my eyes as this thought occurred to me. My selfishness really knew no bounds. I had been so wrapped up in my own personal self-pitying that I hadn’t once tried to find out whether or not they were still alive, whether someone had been able to save them, whether my guilt was justified.

My parents. Alice. They had taken the brunt of the damage from the crash, but somehow I had walked away from it. Didn’t it stand to reason that they, too, might be able to pull through?

“Joshua!” came Alice’s voice again. Once more, it felt like she wasn’t alone.

I thought back to my ride home with the stranger, and seeing the ambulance’s blue flashing lights marking the site of my sin. How had that ambulance got there so quickly? How had someone known that it had happened? How did–

Was this, too, the work of chaos? Random chance? Things happening without a reason? And if so, was it possible that, as much as it had the power to destroy lives and take away precious things, it also had the power to save?

“Joshua,” said Alice’s voice. It seemed softer this time, but full of warmth. There seemed to be echoes, repeating her words after she’d said it. “Joshua. Joshua. Joshua.”

Dammit. What was this?

Did I really want this? Would the pain really go away if I jumped?

I looked down into the murky depths below. It would be so easy to just let go. It would be so easy to just leave this all behind. But–

“Joshua, please don’t do this,” said Alice’s voice. It sounded different. Weaker. Weary. Scared. But unmistakably still her. “Joshua, please. I’m here. It’s all right. I’m here. And so are–”

I looked over my shoulder again.

Alice was standing there, but not the Alice who had been there a moment before. This Alice was bruised and battered, with stitches and bandages on her face. This Alice was wearing some baggy, loose-fitting clothing that was easy to put on. This Alice was holding herself up on a pair of crutches and looking absolutely exhausted.

“Alice?” I said in a voice barely more than a whisper. “Is that really–”

Time seemed to stand still. Could this really be–

“Yes,” she said. “It’s really me. Please look at me. Please see. Please understand. Please come back to me — back to us.”

Us?

I looked at Alice. Her eyes were full of tears and she looked like she would keel over at any moment. I twisted my body and turned around atop the barrier to look at her more closely, but I didn’t step down — not yet. I needed to understand for sure.

“Joshua,” she said. “You don’t need to do this.”

As I looked at her, the ominous dark mist surrounding us seemed to lift slightly, and colour seemed to slowly fill the world, as if someone was adjusting the controls on a television. As the world — my world — gradually came back into focus, I could tell that Alice was not alone. Flanking her on either side were two figures in wheelchairs, and behind them was a small group of people. A group of people whom I thought I recognised.

A group of people who had had my back all along. A group of people to whom I had reached out for help. A group of people who–

“Joshua,” she said again. “You see us, don’t you? All of us.”

“Yes,” I whispered.

“Joshua,” came my mother’s tired-sounding voice from one of the wheelchairs either side of Alice. “Please come down.”

“Joshua,” came my father’s voice from the other side. “Don’t do this.”

As they spoke, my vision became clearer still, and I saw that the figures either side of my sister were indeed my parents. They looked even more bruised and broken than my sister, but they were still fighting on. Chaos hadn’t taken them; chaos had, perhaps, saved them.

Tears came to my eyes again.

“Oh, God,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

Those two words weren’t enough. But within them was everything I’d been holding inside. My guilt at leaving them behind. My lack of concern for them. My focus on myself. My shutting out of everyone dear to me, and my embracing of a world that was full of self-inflicted horrors; but a world that was mine.

I wailed, and stepped down off the barrier. I couldn’t stop the tears. I sank to my knees before my sister and parents, and cried. I cried, and cried, and cried. It didn’t feel like it would ever stop. It felt like my soul was pouring out of me; like my very life force was flowing out of my tear ducts and plopping onto the pavement. It was exhausting, but refreshing at the same time, because I knew that these tears were not for an ending; they were for a beginning.

I heard a “clack, clack, clack” sound as Alice hobbled over on her crutches to me, and I became aware of being surrounded. I felt a hand on the top of my head and one on either shoulder. The feeling gave me a sense of comfort.

I was home.

*

Joshua blacked out, but he was all right — just exhausted. We decided to take him home. One of his friends from college had picked us up from the hospital in his car, so we loaded him into the middle seat at the back and put our parents either side of him, with their wheelchairs folded up and put in the boot. I sat in the front.

“So,” I said, turning to his friend, a guy with messy brown hair and glasses. “Do you know what happened to him?”

“I can’t say for sure,” he said in a low voice. “But we didn’t see him for a few days. We just thought he was ill. But then we heard about your accident, and we got worried. We tried to go over and visit him, but he wouldn’t let anyone in. The lights were all off in the house, but we knew he was home — some of us wandered past and just looked in on him occasionally, and we saw him through the windows sometimes. But he still wouldn’t see anyone.”

“Uh-huh,” I said. I winced as one of my bruises throbbed a bit.

“Then a couple of days ago, he came to us,” he said. “He just wandered in like a zombie, said nothing, gave us a piece of paper and then ran away. Hang on.”

He fumbled in his chest pocket and withdrew a crumpled, ragged-looking piece of paper.

“He gave us this,” he said.

I unfolded the scrap of paper and looked at the words on it. A couple of lines down I started to cry.

“Yeah,” said Joshua’s friend. “Pretty intense stuff, huh.”

The note was like a confession and a suicide note all in one. He felt sorry to be alive — what a horrible way to feel! — and just wanted the pain to go away. The note ended with his plans to be at the bridge, and asked anyone reading it to come at the time he’d written and stop him. It had ended with just one word.

“HELP.”

“What does it say?” asked my mother from the back seat. I turned around and looked at them. It looked like Joshua was sleeping soundly, so I passed the crumpled note to her. Within a moment she was in tears, too, as was my father, who was reading over her shoulder.

He’d been in pain. A different kind of pain to what we’d been feeling, but still pain. He’d been blaming himself for what happened to us when really it was no-one’s fault at all. He’d been feeling guilty for running away from what must have been a horrible sight. He’d started to think he didn’t deserve to be alive. That must have been awful. I couldn’t even begin to imagine how he felt.

I’d always been a bit harsh towards my brother in the past, as he’d always been a bit of a loner and didn’t have many friends besides the group who’d shown up today. But I could tell now that he needed help and support, not a little sister taking the piss.

I hoped I could help him feel safe. I probably wouldn’t be able to do it by myself, but I hoped that I could at least play a part in his recovery. I didn’t want him to feel that lonely again.