Breathless (28 page)

Jack ran to the side of the building, near where the basement would have been. Of course Lewis would have thought to run down there with Helen as soon as he heard the sirens. But now, it looked as if everything had collapsed in. There wasn't any movement…except for the figure of a man in a blue suit, crouched low over the debris.

"Lewis!" Charlotte heard Jack cry from afar as he ran to his father, nearly bowling him over with an embrace. But startlingly, Lewis didn't react to Jack. He couldn't be torn away from the debris, looking down at it, clutching at something, his body shaking with sobs. Jack looked down, and even from so far away, Charlotte could see his face immediately change from relief to unspeakable sorrow and disbelief. He looked up, searching for Charlotte's face among the ruins, and when he caught her eyes in his, he gave her a terrifying stare which could only mean one thing.

Jack found Charlotte some time later. She sat by herself in silence, away from all of the commotion, the ambulances, the police, the injured, the grieving. It was all too much. If she ignored it, maybe it would all go away. But Jack had found her, and as he sat beside her on a piece of rubble, she knew that he had brought everything terrible with him.

He sat quietly for a few moments, but then confirmed the worst. "Helen is dead," he told her in a strangely calm tone, just matter-of-factly.

Charlotte nodded. She had assumed as much. But she hadn't wanted to think about it. She had forced herself to be stone cold, to not cry, to not wish for otherwise. But she knew that if Jack had cried, she would cry as well. Maybe they were more similar than she had thought. Maybe neither of them wanted to show that they cared, because that would mean that this was all real. That would mean that Helen would really never walk through the front doors of the house again, carrying a bouquet of flowers or weighed down with shopping parcels. She would never rush out the door for a show, in such an excited flurry as she always was. She would never sit down to dinner with her usual flair or hug Lewis around the shoulders and plant a kiss on the top of his head, as she always did when she interrupted him in his study. That was all over. But neither Charlotte or Jack were ready to admit it.

Charlotte could do nothing but nod.

"I tried to console Lewis," Jack said dryly. "But there is no use. He's terrible. He's like I've never ever seen him before. He needs to go home. I need to take him home. There's nothing more we can do here."

Charlotte managed to nod again and tried to speak through her clogged throat. "I'll come," she croaked.

"No," Jack told her.

Charlotte looked up at him in surprise, wondering why he was going to be stubborn in a time like this. But when she looked at him, her heart melted. He was looking down at her with the saddest smile she had ever seen. It could hardly be called a smile, for it barely reached the corners of his lips. But she could make it out all the same. He was trying, in his own way, to tell her that everything really would be alright, that now they really had experienced the worst of it. Nothing could be worse than this. Charlotte gently reached up to his face, where tears, now dry, had run their course down his dirty face. She cupped her had around his cheeks, looking up at his blue eyes, so dry, so emotionless.

"I want to go," she said quietly, although she really didn't. What she wanted was to be there for him, to comfort him, to hold him.

But he shook his head again. "No," he repeated. He looked at her solemnly. "I can do this. You need to go to the hospital, to be there for Wesley and the rest of your cast. They need someone there. They need you there."

Charlotte sighed, her breath short and shaky. "I don't know if I'm the right person to see them," she confessed. "I'm not sure how I can help them."

Jack gently put his hand on her back and shivers ran down Charlotte's spine as his palm skinned her hair. "You can help them," he said quietly, "by just being you."

Charlotte looked up at Jack with the smallest smile, now matching his. And although everything was so terrible, so inconceivable, she felt a little less weak knowing that he had such confidence in her.

She got to her feet, although the heels of her shoes crackled unsteadily against the gravel from the explosions.

"It won't be easy to find a car in this chaos," Jack told her, standing up and taking her elbow in his hand, as if to steady her. "And the tube won't be in order."

"It's alright," Charlotte told him confidently. "I can walk. It isn't very far, is it? A few blocks?"

"Yeah, but your ankle…" Jack began before Charlotte silenced him with a cocky smile.

"Jack," she told him. "I'm stronger than I look."

He chuckled a bit, but nodded, smiling back at her with the same sad smile. "I know that, Char," he said admiringly. "But still, my mum would be so upset with me if she knew you were walking three blocks by yourself…" His voice drifted off as he realized what he had just said. For a moment he was silent in pure shock, but Charlotte couldn't risk seeing him break down.

"I'll be fine," she assured him with another smile."Like we've established, I can handle myself."

"Okay," he finally agreed and pulled her into an embrace. "Be safe."

Charlotte nodded against his chest. "I will," she told him.

"He's still unconscious from surgery," a nurse told Charlotte as she led her to Wesley's hospital room. "But you can see him. Five minutes."

"Thank you," Charlotte said quietly. This had been the general response she had received about nearly all of her castmates, but she hadn't been able to bring herself to visit most of them, who would be lying in their beds unable to even hear her well wishes, let alone talk back. But she had to see Wesley. After everything he had done for her, she owed this to him.

Charlotte timidly stepped into his room, dimly lit at such a late hour but still illuminated by the stark white-washed walls. And there lay Wesley in the hospital bed, his face very pale and a bandage covering his left cheek. His bloody clothing had been changed and he now lay in clean, white hospital bedclothes with the sheets and blankets drawn up to his chest, except for on his leg with had been wrapped in a cast and was elevated above the bed. Charlotte looked down at the flowers in her hands. She had seen a florist on the way to the hospital and picked out a small bouquet of lilies. It felt so strange to be giving him flowers just as he had given her only earlier that same day, but under very different circumstances.

Charlotte set the bouquet down on the nightstand and pulled a chair up beside the bed, smoothing her skirt under her as she took a seat, her gaze still lingering on Wesley's face. She reached out and took his hand in her own, intertwining her fingers with his, just like they used to do when they took their walks together. Everything had seemed so simple and easy.

She sighed and leaned closer to him, watching his easy breathing as his chest rose and fell, rose and fell, so calmly, as if he were only sleeping and not dreadfully hurt. She brushed her fingers along his forehead, the wisps of hair delicately bending beneath her fingertips. It was strange. In France, Charlotte had only ever been the little girl who needed caring for. But here, whether it be Wesley or Lewis or Jack, all she wanted to do was care for them, make sure they were alright. How things had changed.

"I'm sorry that this ever happened," Charlotte told him apologetically. "I'm sorry. We shouldn't have had the party after the show tonight. And I was so stupid to fall over that rope and have to visit the doctor. I should never have left the theater. I should have stayed with all of you. Maybe the party would have ended early and we all would have already been on our ways home before the bombs began to fall. Maybe we could have hidden in the tube together, like Jack and I did." She paused, remembering how he had cared for her while she was so dizzy and disoriented. How sweet he had been. "I never should have left you all there. I should have been there with you. I should be laying in this hospital bed right here, instead of you. I'm the one who deserves it."

She sighed and stared at the pristine sheets on the bed, making out patterns in the wrinkles where his hand lay. "Helen is dead," she finally said aloud, bringing her eyes up to Wesley's face, as though expecting a reaction from him. "I'm so sorry," she told him, her voice quivering. "I'm so sorry, Wesley. You've always been so perfect, such a perfect gentleman, and I always seems to ruin everything. With you, everything is perfect. Everything is like a novel or a film or a play. And with Jack, everything is always so terrible. And still, I always find myself running back to him whenever he gives me the slightest notion that he doesn't absolutely hate me. It's terrible. And now…Helen was like your mother. She was your mother. And now she's dead. And I can't help but blame myself for everything. Because it was my play," she rambled, her breath coming in short spurts. "If Lewis hadn't written it for me, she wouldn't have even been there tonight. And now she's dead.

"I wouldn't blame you if you hated me forever," Charlotte continued, clutching his hand, feeling hot tears pricking her eyes. "You should hate me forever. But I still don't want you to. Because I love you. So much. Maybe I don't love you as a soul mate or as a boyfriend. Maybe I love you as a brother. I don't know. But I do know that I love you, and that I don't want anything bad to happen to you. And lately, I'm the bad thing that's happening to you. So now…I don't know what to do." She angrily brushed away the tears that fell from her eyes.

"I just want you to be happy," she finally told him. "Whether that's with me or not, I don't know. But you need to be happy. I need you to be happy."

"Miss," said the nurse from the doorway. "I'm going to have to ask you to leave now. The doctors have to change his dressings."

Charlotte nodded and grasped his hand a last time, leaning over to plant a kiss on his forehead. "I'll be back. I promise. I'll be here for you." She finally let go and exited the room, leaning on the wall of the corridor, regaining her breath and waiting for the tears to cease. After she had dried her face and controlled her breathing, she made her way down to the waiting room and sat on one of the hard-backed chairs. She stared down at her dirty hands, clasped in her lap, looking at the soiled palms and crusted nail-beds. They were just dreadful reminders of everything that had happened.

It may have only been moments later or hours, but Charlotte looked up in surprise when someone sat down next to her. But she smelled the familiar cologne amongst the smell of smoke, and she knew who had come for her. And for whatever reason, this just made everything fall apart.

"I…" Charlotte began, her voice sounding very thick as tears clogged her throat. "I can't do this anymore, Jack." She shook her head miserably and couldn't control the tears which now escaped her eyes. "I thought leaving France and coming to England was supposed to make me safe. I thought things would be better. And they were. But it was all a cruel joke," she said bitterly. "Because then it all just got taken away. First my father. We weren't close, but I always knew that he cared for me in his own quiet way, which was more than I could say for my mother. But even thinking that, that my mother might not have cared for me at all, was just so terrible that I just wanted a second chance. I just wanted to make things better with her again.

"And then there is Luc. And I've barely given him any attention lately. I haven't written letters and I haven't thought about him like I should. He could be dead in France for all I know, and here I've been having a grand time in London, while hardly paying a thought to him. I'm terrible. I'm such a terrible person. Because now Wesley is laying in a hospital bed and I have no idea how to help him. I have no idea how to help anyone. Helen is dead. My father is dead. Maybe Luc and my mother are dead and maybe Wesley might die. And I can't do anything. I'm so helpless," she sobbed to him.

Jack stared solemnly at the opposite wall, not blinking, not moving. "Lewis has shut himself up in his study," he said monotonously. "He won't let anyone in. He won't come out. I don't know what he's doing in there. I don't hear anything, even when I stand right outside and put my ear against the door. There's nothing to hear, except for the sound of his crying."

Charlotte looked up at Jack, the tears streaming down her cheeks. But he wasn't crying.

"I always used to think that my parents didn't make time for me because they didn't like me," he mused quietly. "Maybe because I wasn't as interested in the theatre as they were. Maybe because I was so reckless, rebellious. Maybe because I wasn't like Wesley. But I think I've realized recently...or maybe it's been over time...that I can't blame myself for their disinterest in me. Maybe their relationship with each other was just so perfect that there wasn't any room for anyone else. Because it was. They were perfect together."

He looked down at his hands. "I used to spend my time thinking about the person who I would spend the rest of my life with. I used to wonder what she would be like, the Helen to my Lewis. I always tried to imagine what a perfect girl would be like. A perfect girl...she would like the same books as me. She would love cars and taking drives. She would listen to me when I had a problem. She would make biscuits with Mrs. Dawes and would be waiting for me at the house when I would get home from school. I had so many ideas of what she would be like.

"And then I realized that it was all wrong," Jack concluded, swallowing. His eyes darted frantically. "One day I looked at my parents and I realized...it wasn't what they had in common that made them perfect for eachother. Perfection can't be forced. Perfection is grown with every new experience together, every meaningful conversation, every gentle touch and kiss. Perfection is gained by growing closer to each other every day. Perfection isn't love at first sight. It's learning to love throughout the years, and keeping that love through forever."