Broken (Broken #1) (11 page)

The burning ache in my chest
expands and my lungs constrict. I’m not sure how I feel, there’s no
word to describe it. Devastation isn’t enough. This isn’t
devastation, this is so many things that I don’t want to feel, all
rolling into one giant mess of an emotion.

“
You broke
your promise,” I say softly. “You broke all of them.”

I half expected to walk in here
and some strange paranormal force to bring him back to me. It would
happen in a movie, he’d wake up and we’d live happily ever after.
Realising it’s not going to happen, I shrink back into my pit of
despair and weep silently by his side. I never want to leave his
body.

“
Time’s up,”
the doctor says softly and places his hand on my shoulder. “I’m
very sorry for your loss.”

The sobs tear through me as he
leads me away from the love of my life. So lifeless and cold and
pale. He’s never been pale. His skin is like liquid gold. It almost
sparkles when the sun hits it.

Sasha holds me tight as I exit,
I sob into her shoulder and the cries tearing through me are so
painful I almost lose my footing.

“
I want to go
home,” I demand, tears still falling. This pain is
unbearable.

“
Sure.”

When I’m in the car I stare out
of the window. My mind can’t seem to grasp onto the reality of
this. It’s not possible. None of this is possible. Caleb isn’t
dead, he didn’t die last night. He’s going to die when we’re both
old and grey and he’s going to let me die first like he
promised.

Sasha and Tommy speak quietly
but I don’t care what they’re saying.

The journey home seems to last
forever. I rush inside, I know he’s not here but I can’t stop
hoping this is some sort of elaborate joke. They’re fucking with me
I just know it.

But they aren’t.

I race up the stairs and look
at the blanket on the floor. It hurts, it hurts so badly. I’ve
never felt pain so potent, so thick and so powerful. The bed sheet
has been stripped and the mattress has been cleaned.

“
Babe,” Sasha
says softly. I feel her hand on my shoulder.

“
He wouldn’t
leave me. He wouldn’t.” I snap but I know this isn’t true. He’s
left me. He’s gone.

He’s dead.

I break. I completely
break.

I’m a mess. I’m a crying heap
on the ground. She holds me but it brings me no comfort.

My world just ended.

Caleb… he’s gone. He’s gone and
he’s not coming back.

I scream, I shout. I blame
everyone. I blame myself.

Sasha cries with me, she calls
my mum. My mum’s not in town. I don’t care.

“
I don’t want
you.” I cry at them both. Tommy and Sasha both try to comfort me. I
won’t allow it. “I want him! I need him!”

“
We know
baby,” Sasha says on a choked breath and reaches for me. I move
away, “Please,” I beg. “Please I just need to be alone.”

“
We’ll be
downstairs,” Tommy looks devastated, so does Sasha but they don’t
get it.

They’ll never get it because
they’ll never have a Caleb. Caleb was one of a kind. Caleb was
mine.

He’s my world and I was
his.

They don’t get it.

They’ll never get it.

I hate them for that.

Chapter
Six

The blanket, it still smells
like him so I wrap it around my face and inhale deeply. He always
did smell good. My hand goes to my belly, we find out if it’s a boy
or a girl next week. Caleb was so excited.

We were supposed to get married
today.

We were both so excited.

Why would God give me such an
amazing man, such an amazing gift and then just rip it away? Why
can’t he take me too? Why Caleb?

Is this some sort of
punishment? Did I do something to offend him?

I’m sorry! Now send him back!
Please, just send him back.

“
You need to
eat,” I hear Sasha say.

Eat? How can I eat? Why are
they even here? Just let me be.

“
If you don’t
eat…”

“
I’ll
die.”

“
You have a
baby to think about.”

Tears spill from my eyes, one
of them trickles over the bridge of my nose but I make no move to
wipe it away. He died in this spot, I want him to feel it. I want
him to feel my sorrow.

“
Come on,”
Tommy sits me up and kneels beside the bed. Sasha holds a tray of
food. “You need to eat something.”

“
It all
tastes the same,” I whimper as she feeds me yoghurt. “It all tastes
like ash.”

Tommy rubs the back of my neck,
his eyes swollen and his face showing his pain. “I know, but you
still need to eat it. Please.”

I nod, he’s right. “And then
can I sleep?”

“
Sure,” he
whispers and squeezes my hand.

They leave the room when I’m
done, I feel like throwing it back up. It stays down somehow and my
stomach settles long enough for me to close my eyes.

It’s such an empty feeling,
knowing he’s not coming back. You see it happen to other people and
you cry but you never truly feel what they feel. I know this
because I’ve never felt this. Never.

“
You need a
shower sweetie,” Sasha whispers and slides the cover from over my
head. “It’s been three days nearly. It’s time to start moving.” Her
words are soft but her demands still hit me deep. I don’t want to
move. “Come on.”

“
I’m tired,”
I say and reach for the blanket. It’s tugged away completely, much
to my annoyance.

“
No, you need
to get up and shower,” Sasha says more forcefully this time. I sigh
and climb out of bed, she leads me out of the room and into the
bathroom. “And you’re not sleeping in that bed another
night.”

Where the hell am I supposed to
sleep then?

“
Tommy is
bringing over some new bed sheets after class.” She answers my
inner monologue. She’s psychic as well as a nuisance. Brilliant.
“Don’t look at me like that, I’m only trying to help.”

“
I don’t need
help,” I whisper.

She sighs and hugs me from
behind, “His funeral is in two days. You need to pull yourself
together.”

“
I don’t want
to,” I admit. I just want to sleep and waste away.

“
I know,” she
unbuttons my shirt, knowing I barely have the energy to do it
myself. “But you need to. Because of this,” her hand rests on my
protruding stomach. “And for Caleb. But mostly, you need to do it
for you. Before you sink into a darkness so final you probably
won’t be able to find your way back.”

My lower lip trembles, I don’t
think it’s stopped trembling since that night. “I’m sorry
Sasha.”

“
Hey,” she
turns the shower on after releasing me and gives me a smile. “It’s
okay. It’s not your fault. Come on, get undressed and get
in.”

I nod and peel off the rest of
the clothes after she leaves the room.

My reflection in the mirror
stares back at me, she looks tired, heartbroken, and hideously
unkempt. She looks broken. A mirror doesn’t show you the opposite
of everything, sure it looks like everything is on the opposite
side to what it actually is, but everything is still exactly the
same. In mirror land I’m still a mess and Caleb is still dead.

How does a twenty three year
old die from heart failure? It makes no sense! He was healthy.

I knew I should’ve taken him to
the doctors. If I’d rung that ambulance when he had the fever he’d
still be here now!

This is all my fault.

The water does its job but I
don’t feel it. The hot spray cleans away the dirt but it’ll never
clean my soul. I want it to. I want it to wash away the pain and
leave the girl I once was in its wake, but it won’t. It’ll only
cleanse my skin and leave me feeling more awake than I was before I
got in.

Which is bad because I just
want to sleep. I don’t want to feel this.

My tears blend with the water
as it falls down my body. I know they’re there, I can feel them
leaking from my eyes. So many tears, do we ever run out? Has
anybody ever truly run out of tears? Does their body dehydrate and
whither or do they merely fall asleep?

If Caleb were here, we’d Google
it.

I don’t feel any better after
my shower, especially not when I see the bed. It’s been completely
stripped. My body can’t muster the right emotion for it though, so
I just stare blankly at the naked bed and try not to picture his
lifeless body lying on the mattress. Naked bed or not, the image is
still there.

My tears have run out.

“
I don’t feel
anything,” I say to no one and make my way to my closet. It doesn’t
take me long to find something black. Seeing as that something is
one of Caleb’s hoodies that I insisted he stopped wearing. It’s too
big on me, it buries me. It’s perfect, it even smells of him. I
wear my own jeans and a pair of socks before slowly descending the
stairs.

Sasha is on the phone to her
mum, I know she’s worried but no advice can be given. I’d say I
feel bad for putting this on my friend, for loading my grief onto
her and being ungrateful about it but I don’t feel anything.

There isn’t a day that doesn’t
rain in ones grieving mind.

“
Mum, I’ll
call you back,” Sasha says when she sees me stood in the doorway.
She places her phone on the side and smiles softly. “Come on, let’s
go for a walk.”

I shake my head, “I can’t face
the outside world yet Sash. Please don’t make me.”

She frowns slightly, so
slightly I barely see it. “Sure. Let’s play a board game then.”

“
No thanks.”
I sit on the stool, my head resting on my hands. “You can leave if
you have to. You have classes and a job.”

Sasha quirks a brow at me, “I
have been leaving. Have you been getting out of bed at all while
I’ve been gone?”

She’s been gone? “Sorry.”

“
I’m worried
about you,” this is said in kindness, her tone screams of sincerity
and concern.

“
Me too,” I
mutter and stare out of the window. “Why’d he leave me,
Sasha?”

“
He
didn’t.”

I shake my head, “Spare me the
spiritual bullshit.”

“
Shall we
cook something?” I shake my head in response. “I’m going to cook us
something.”

“
I’m going
back to bed,” I whisper and climb back off the stool.

“
I’m just
trying to help.”

I nod, my face as blank as my
soul. “I know babe and I’m sorry your efforts are lost on me.”

“
It’ll get
better,” she clasps my hand with her own and gazes at me with warm
eyes. “I promise it’ll get better.”

No it won’t. I don’t say this
though, I just retreat back to my naked bed and pull a pillow over
my head. I lie here in darkness waiting for it to consume me. Then
I realise… it already has.

******

We have to drive for three and
a half hours to get to the funeral. So do all of our friends from
town which is irritating. The journey doesn’t end quickly enough
and when we get there I keep my eyes on my shoes until I’m seated.
I don’t absorb anything, I daren’t.

I do scan the room though, I
want to see how many people Caleb touched in his short life.

I’m grateful when no one talks
to me from his side, although I doubt they even know who I am. I’m
just some knocked up woman in a navy dress. There was no way I was
going to wear black. Caleb wouldn’t have wanted me to.

His family sit on the opposite
side of the room, they don’t look at me. Not that I care.

I’m watching the coffin be
carried by people I don’t know. I glance around at faces I’ve never
seen and then glance at the ones I have. They’re all sad, all of
them. I don’t get it, it’s almost like his life has been split in
half. On one side of the room, the side I’m sat on, is everyone
from my town that knew him. On the other is everyone from his old
life, before I knew him. They’re all formal and distant with each
other. On my side everyone clings to each other. It’s strange. I
could never imagine Caleb on the opposite side, I can’t imagine him
ever being distant and aloof, especially not such a traumatic
time.

His picture sits on top of his
casket, baby blue flowers spell his name along the sides. It hurts,
I can’t look at his picture it slices me too deep.

His mother cries, his dad sheds
a tear, his brother doesn’t. His brother sits with a stern
expression on his face looking more bored than anything. Why are
they even here? They disowned him! Sure I know that they sorted
this funeral out and the wake, because Caleb and I aren’t married
therefore I’m apparently lucky to be here according to a harsh
whisper from his mother to his brother.

Lucky?

I don’t care. I don’t care
about any of them.

It's
emotional but I can contain my emotion and the urge to cry
uncontrollably by focusing my thoughts on other people in the room,
the flowers, the vicar and only the odd tear falls. The pain is
indescribable but it’s also shadowed by a numbness I’ve never felt.
I feel like I’m on the outside looking in, my soul is scratching at
the surface, wanting to leave my body and go with him. It’s an
almost desperate feeling of loneliness and nothingness, almost as
if there’s no longer a heart in my chest and only a gaping pit of
despair. My skin tingles and my eyes blink the tears that blur my
vision. I don’t want to miss this. I’m sadistic but I need to see
it. I need to feel it.

Until the
moment the curtains close and the coffin goes on the conveyor into
the furnace only small tears fall, tears that aren’t sure what
emotion it is they carry in their watery depths. Grief, pain,
sorrow, anger… I feel it all. Confusion. Why is this happening? I
shouldn’t be here. We should be at home feeling my bump and talking
about what colours to paint the nursery.