Chapter 5



Elle's morning wasn't going by much faster. She couldn't believe that she'd slipped up like that. She'd never even come close to doing that before, and all of a sudden she's nearly spilling her guts to some kid she's known for all of a day. "Yeah, he was friendly, and didn't seem to want anything, but even so it was stupid of me." She thought to herself. But at the same time, she couldn't help but be glad that she didn't push Jeff away with her attack afterwards, and that really shocked her. She wasn't used to caring about people, or what they thought of her. Not to mention she wasn't used to being around a real friend. Even the couple of friends she had she wasn't really close to; not in the sense that she could really talk to any of them about her life.

Yet with Jeff it seemed different, she felt like she could talk to him for some reason. He was easy to talk to, and she almost found herself trusting him, and boy was that a change of pace. After all, it wasn't just that Elle didn't trust easily -- she didn't trust at all. When she told him that she wasn't used to being around a friend she hadn't been lying, she could hardly remember the last time she had a friend, someone that she was comfortable and could relax with, but it had certainly been a long time ago. Katie was great, but Elle hadn't really felt totally comfortable around her for a while now, their worlds were just too different now. Katie was the good student, the hard worker, the good girl. In short, everything that Elle wasn't, and because of it she felt like she had to hide bits and pieces of herself around her. Which was strange, really, since most of those things could apply to Jeff, too. He wasn't the kind of person she usually spent time with. He really was a bit geeky, but she was comfortable with him.

She spent most of math tuned out like usual. Having math first thing in the morning was bad enough normally, it was a tough subject, but when you consider that she hadn't opened her book that year unless her teacher was staring at her, it made the class that much tougher. She'd been lost for so long that she didn't even bother trying to figure out where they were anymore, and that was fine, since it wasn't like she gave a damn about the class or anything. They had a pop quiz, and she knew she'd failed it -- after all, she didn't even try to answer half the questions. The teacher didn't even bother saying anything about it, just handed back the quiz with the grade and moved on to the next student. She was nearly invisible by now, just like she wanted to be.

Things didn't get any better in English, and she found her mind drifting again. This time it was back to thoughts of her mother, remembering the life she'd had before everything changed. More and more lately she found herself wishing that she'd died with her mother, rather than being left in the hellish life that she was leading. Her teacher broke her from her thoughts when he stuck a book in her hands and told her to read. After that, the class moved along quickly. Of course, the teacher kept her back after the bell to yell at her for not paying attention, but that was par for the course. With the day she was having, she wasn't really surprised. It seemed like the kind of thing that should happen after all. Anything to make the day worse.

As she finally made it into the hall, rushing to try and make it to chemistry without being late, she thought she saw Jeff a little ways behind her. She wasn't sure, but right then she really didn't care, either. She needed time to sort things out in her mind. She was confused, and didn't want to say or do anything she'd regret when she wasn't thinking clearly. Since her mind was on that, she didn't notice the classroom door starting to open just ahead of her.

Didn't notice it until it swung open right into her face, that is. She was moving at a good pace, and it was a solid, heavy door. It didn't take a straight-A student to understand that Newton was right; an object in motion stays that way until stopped. In this case, Elle was the object in motion, and the door was the object doing the stopping, and the door won. It hit her straight in the face, having been pushed open in a hurry, and sent her flying backwards knocked off her feet. She would've hit the floor hard if it weren't for Jeff being a few feet behind her. He saw the door hit her and pushed his way past the students between them, managing to get behind Elle just before she hit the floor. Unfortunately, there was no time for him to try and actually catch her; it was more like using his whole body to break her fall -- by getting between her and the ground. She crashed into him hard and the two of them ended up on the floor, her backpack hitting him in the arm, where he was already bruised, and he yelped in pain. The two of them lay on the ground for a moment, just taking stock of the situation and waiting for the immediate shock to wear off enough to be sure that neither of them had seriously injured anything. Jeff's back was throbbing, and his arm was screaming in pain, but it didn't seem to be broken at least.

Elle wasn't quite as lucky. She looked back to see who it was that she'd fallen onto and ask him what was going on when she felt something warm dripping down her face. At the same time Jeff noticed the blood pouring from her nose, which was swelling fairly quickly. It was about that time that Elle noticed the pain from her obviously broken nose.

"Fuck, that hurts! Ouch!"

"Yeah, it looks like it would," Jeff said, pulling out a couple of kleenex from his backpack and handing them to her. "Are you alright? Does it feel like anything else is broken?"

She pressed the kleenex against the bottom of her nose to try and slow the bleeding and grimaced again. "You mean besides my face and my head? No, I don't think so -- I think you took most of the impact onto the floor, it was just the door that really nailed me. "

Jeff nodded and groaned, feeling the bruise that he was sure was already forming on his back where he hit the floor, not to mention his arm. "We'd better get you to the nurse's office, that nose does not look good. I think I'd better get my arm checked out, too."

Elizabeth nodded and made to stand up, making it but starting to waver as soon as she was fully upright. The hallway seemed to be spinning, and her eyes just didn't seem to want to focus clearly on anything. She leaned against the wall for balance, trying her best not to fall over.

"Do you think you can walk?"

"Well, my legs are alright at least, but I'm very dizzy all of a sudden, it feels like the hallway keeps spinning around me, so I don't know how steady I am," she said, swaying as she tried to take a step, almost falling back against the wall.

"That's okay, lean against me, I'll support you," Jeff said softly, wrapping his arm around her back around her arms and helping to steady her. He noticed that she winced and sucked in a breath when his hand tightened around her shoulder as she started to sway again but didn't have any time to dwell on it as they stumbled down the hall towards the nurse's office.

What am I going to do? Elle thought. The nurse is going to want to look beyond my nose and face, and she'll be able to tell in a heartbeat. How am I supposed to... That train of thought was stopped in it's tracks when her stomach decided to make itself known, announcing that it wasn't happy, either. She mumbled something impossible to decipher and held a hand in front of her mouth, desperately trying to force back the rising tide of bile, moving as fast as she could towards the nearest bathroom, with Jeff trying to help steady her.

She didn't make it.

They made it as far as the water fountain when she couldn't hold back anymore. The contents of her stomach, albeit meager and mostly liquid, came back up in a flood. On top of that, the retching seemed to only aggravate her already sore ribs, leaving her leaning over the water fountain trying her hardest to catch her breath, gasping and sucking in breaths.

The rest of the trip to the nurse's office went almost equally slowly. Elle trying to figure out how she was going to explain things to the nurse, and Jeff unable to help but feel like things were about to get much, much worse.

They walked in to the waiting area of the nurse's office and found it empty. Jeff yelled in for the nurse and she came rushing out, to find the two students looking like they'd been in a fight - and lost. Elizabeth's nose was still bleeding, and she still had the kleenex held against it trying to catch the worst of the blood. On top of that it looked like a black eye was quickly worsening, and at first glance it looked like her eyes weren't quite focusing right. Jeff looked better, but not a whole lot; his arm was clearly in pretty bad shape, and he was walking rather gingerly as well.

"Okay, follow me into the back, it looks like you both took quite a beating, what happened?" the nurse asked as she led the pair back into one of the treatment rooms in the office.

Jeff spoke up. "Well, Elizabeth here had a rather intimate meeting with a door, and I saw it flying open and figured she was going to take the brunt of the damage, so I tried to get behind her and catch her. I succeeded, sort of, I caught her, but wasn't able to stop both of us from falling, so I landed hard on my arm and back, which are both hurting. She mostly landed on me."

The nurse nodded and looked back at Elizabeth sitting on the cot, grimacing in pain. "Okay Elizabeth. Where does it hurt besides your nose?"

"Where doesn't it, it's a shorter list. My nose, my face, my ribs are killing me, I'm dizzy as all hell, and my shoulder isn't feeling too great either."

Mrs. Martens nodded again and took her pen light to look into the girls eyes, and frowned. "Well, it looks like you're definitely going to be taking a trip to the hospital this afternoon. I think you probably have a concussion, and from the looks of your face I wouldn't be surprised if your ribs were either bruised or cracked, too. That's not something that I can do anything for here. And if your nose is badly broken they may need to try to reset it too, but that may take an x-ray to tell."

Elle grimaced again. A trip to the hospital would certainly make the day worse, that was for sure.

"Go ahead and lie down for the moment Elizabeth," the nurse said as she lifted the head of the cot so it was almost vertical. "and try to relax. I'll get you an ice pack for your nose while I check out Jeff over there. Then we'll figure out how to get you to the hospital, after we know whether or not Jeff is going to be keeping you company."

She walked over to the other side of the room, where Jeff was sitting on a chair cradling his arm. "Let's take a look at this. Can you roll up your sleeve, or would it be easier to just take your shirt off? I can take you into the other room if you'd rather."

"No, it's okay, I don't mind. I think I can just roll up my sleeve," he said as he started doing just that. He winced in pain just before it got to his elbow and changed his mind. "On second thought, I'll just open my shirt, that really hurt."

"That's fine, while you're doing that I want to take another look at Elizabeth, let me know when you have it off your arm and I'll take a look at your arm and your back."

Jeff unbuttoned his shirt and started sliding his left arm out, wincing again as he moved it and his shirt slipped over his bruised elbow.

"How're you feeling, does anything else hurt?" the nurse asked, running her hands over Elle's shoulder lightly to feel whether there was damage worse than a bruise, and noticing when the girl flinched hard.

"Not really... My head is still throbbing and I'm still a little bit dizzy, but it's not as bad as it was before I got in here, the ice seems to be helping my nose and my headache."

"Good, that's what I was hoping. You still need to go to the hospital, but it seems like you're more with it than you were when you first came in which is good. I'm still worried that you probably have a nasty concussion, and your nose is definitely going to need to be looked at, but it seems like you're breathing okay, which I was afraid might be a problem if you'd bruised your ribs."

Before Elle could reply Jeff called over, telling the nurse that he was ready. She glanced over and noticed that he had his shirt completely off now and she took the chance to take a good look at him. He wasn't buff by any means, but he had a few more muscles than she'd expected him to. His arm looked pretty badly bruised, and she could see that he was moving gingerly and trying not to turn and pull the muscles in his back, which she felt oddly bad about; he hurt himself protecting her. Yeah, it was a minor thing really, but she didn't remember anyone really trying to protect her since her mother died, and he'd done it more than once now. Just the idea of it struck her to the core.

The nurse walked over and looked at his arm, gently pressing on it in a few places and noticing his grimacing. She moved around to his back and noticed a good sized bruise forming at the side of his back, but it didn't seem to be especially tender when she pressed on it, and Jeff said he wasn't really having any back pain, so she wasn't too worried. "Okay, here's what I think," she said, motioning to Jeff to put his shirt back on, "Elle, you definitely need to go to the hospital. Both your nose and your shoulder should be looked at, and I'm fairly worried about the hit you must have taken to your head to cause the concussion that you seem to have. That needs to be checked out. Jeff, I don't think you need to go to the hospital necessarily, it doesn't look like you have anything too seriously wrong with you, but I would suggest seeing your doctor in the next few days if the pain gets any worse or if you start having trouble moving your arm at all. If you want to head back to class I can give you a pass now, but if you'd rather wait until I get Elizabeth out to the hospital I don't mind."

Jeff nodded, looking over at Elle to see whether or not she wanted him to stay, and trying to decipher the expression on her face.

"Actually, Mrs. Martens, is there any way Jeff could come with me to the hospital? I really don't want to be there alone, I'm not all that fond of hospitals really. Especially not since my mother..." she said, tapering off.

The nurse thought for a minute and nodded, looking over at Jeff. "Yeah, I can understand that... I think we can handle that, as long as Jeff doesn't mind. I can make a case that you need that arm x-rayed, and since we're sending Elle anyways it'd just be more convenient to send both of you together."

Jeff smiled slightly. "I'll be happy to go along, Mrs. Martens. Though I'd appreciate it if you could call my mom and let her know that it's not anything serious and not to get worried if they call her."

"Alright, I'm going to turn out the overhead light and let you two get a bit of rest while I try to make arrangements to get both of you to the hospital and call your mom Jeff. Elizabeth, you should try not to fall asleep - if you have a concussion it's not a good idea to go to sleep until they can do some tests and make sure there isn't any more serious damage, okay?" the nurse asked, waiting for Elle's nod. "Do you want me to turn the radio on?"

"If you don't mind," Elizabeth said softly.

The nurse switched the radio on adjusted the volume so that it was quiet but audible. "I'll be back in in a little while. Just push the button on the wall there if you need me," she said, walking out and closing the door partway, so the light from the hallway didn't disturb them.

Jeff got up off his cot and walked across the room to where Elle was lying down, pulling up a chair and sitting down next to her. "I couldn't help but overhear when you were talking to the nurse about going to the hospital... Is it okay if I ask what happened to your mom?" He asked quietly, putting his hand near hers on the cot.

Elle looked over at him a little startled. She didn't realize that he'd overheard that, and she didn't realize that she hadn't ever told him about her mother. She shook her head and looked down, remembering. Then she started talking softly:

"My mother and I were close... really close. She'd wanted a daughter all her life, and was 38 by the time she finally had me. She was ecstatic, she stopped working the day I was born so she could stay at home and raise me. She wasn't just my mom, she was my best friend. I was always on the quiet side growing up; in elementary school I didn't have many friends, and since we didn't have a whole lot of money I got picked on a lot. I'd come home from school in tears and mom would sit me down and talk, until she had me laughing and feeling better.

"When I was 10 she started having headaches... at first they weren't too bad, she'd just lay down for a couple of hours and she'd be fine. After a while though they got worse. She'd spend days in bed with the lights out and dad and I walking on tiptoes, so the noise wouldn't make them worse. When she started fainting she finally went to the doctor, and they told her she had cancer..." Elle felt a single tear roll down her cheek, and then another. Jeff picked up a kleenex and reached over to wipe the tears away. She tried to give him a grateful look as she took a deep breath and continued.

"They started her on chemotherapy and radiation. She tried to keep me from seeing the worst of it, since I was only 10, but I still saw what it was doing to her. She went from being my invincible mother, my best friend, to this wasted shell that could barely feed herself or hold me, all in under a year. A month before my birthday she went back to the doctor for tests, and they told her there was nothing more they could do.

"She had inoperable, terminal brain cancer and would have maybe a year at the most, if that long. Of course, she didn't tell me that then, just told me that she'd start feeling better soon, which was true I guess. She spent that next month by my side if I wasn't in school, and finally tried to explain to me that she wouldn't be around for too much longer, but she thought she'd at least have a few more months... As it turned out, she didn't."

She was crying openly now, the tears pouring down her face, and Jeff handed her another kleenex and put his hand on hers for support. "It's okay Elle, you don't have to tell me anything more, I didn't mean to bring back such painful memories," he said, but she squeezed his hand and continued.

"She collapsed during my birthday party, while she was cutting the cake, having a seizure. I grabbed her hand and yelled at her to wake up, to talk to me, not to leave, anything, but she never woke up. By the time the paramedics got there she was gone."

"Wow," Jeff said, taking a deep breath himself and trying to think of something to say. He squeezed her hand in a gesture of sympathy and they sat for a few moments, not saying anything, both lost in thought.

Elle's mind was in shambles. Between their earlier conversation that morning and the concussion, and then this she didn't know what to think about Jeff anymore. She hadn't talked to anyone about her mother in years, and here she is pouring out her life's story to this guy and he just sat there holding her hand and wiping her tears. She took a deep breath, all these thoughts running through her head, when she heard a song on the radio. It was one she hadn't heard before, but the melody drew her in. Then she heard the lyrics: "Someone ran away with her innocence, A memory she can't get out of her head, I can only imagine what she's feeling when she's praying, kneeling at the edge of her bed... And she says take me away, and take me farther..."

In the blink of an eye all of the walls that she'd spent years building to keep everything inside and everyone away crumbled to pieces. She completely fell apart, huge sobs wracking her body, her tears pouring out like water. As worn down as she already was between the last few days, and then her slip up earlier in the morning, and then the accident, she couldn't seem to muster up the energy to even try to prevent it. She clutched Jeff's hand in a death grip, thinking that it might be the only thing anchoring her, keeping her from losing her mind entirely. Somehow through the noise of her crying and the chaos that was her mind as everything she'd depended on for years came crashing down around her she still managed to hear the next verse of the song. "She wants someone to call her angel, someone to put the light back in her eyes, She's looking through the faces, The unfamiliar places, She needs someone to hold her when she crys..."

That was the last thing she heard for a while. She just shut down then, couldn't handle hearing anything else. The only thought running through her mind was that it was true: she needed someone to hold her when she cried.

Jeff was looking on in increasing horror. The conversation about her mother had upset her, he could tell, but he couldn't believe that it would make her fall apart like this. Her eyes were open, just staring into space, so he looked into them, trying to see past the flood of tears. It was like looking through a frosted up window. He could tell, albeit barely, that Elle was still inside there somewhere, but her eyes looked like they were a thousand miles away. He squeezed her hand tightly and she blinked.

For her part, Jeff's squeezing her hand seemed to help pull Elle back again from wherever she'd gone. Before she even had a chance to think about it she threw her arms around Jeff, leaning halfway off the bed just to reach him, and making him wince when she pressed against his bruised shoulder, but she didn't even notice. She started sobbing again, mumbling something that Jeff couldn't understand and rocking slightly.

Outside of his mother and his 9 year old sister Erin, Jeff had no experience with women, and even less with crying women who seemed like they weren't even fully there. He didn't have the foggiest clue what to do, and a part of him was scared out of his mind not knowing whether or not he had caused this with the questions about her mother. That was when something from the radio caught his attention. The announcer was reading through the last few songs in the playlist, and Jeff felt a shiver go down his neck.

"And that last song was a new single that's skyrocketing up on the charts, from Big & Rich, Holy Water."

The minute Jeff heard the name of the group something clicked in his brain. The look in her eyes the other day when he'd caught her from hitting the desk, the way she reacted when he'd lent her his coat, her apparent slip-up and then explosion this morning, and finally now her completely falling apart in the midst of their conversation. It all made sense. He felt his own stomach clench, threatening to make him sick like Elle was earlier, but he bit it back. The last thing he wanted was to have to get up right now and let her go. If he'd thought he wasn't sure how to handle a crying Elizabeth before, now he was even more concerned. He didn't have the foggiest clue what he should do, what he should say... Should he yell and call the nurse in? He decided the first thing he had to do was make sure Elle knew that she was safe and wasn't alone. He carefully stood up from the chair, leaning against the cot and shifting Elle back all the way onto the bed, trying not to let her go or push her off him. It seemed like she didn't even realize they were moving until she felt his weight settle on the edge of the bed and his good arm wrapped around her shoulder and held her.

The volume of her tears redoubled again and she started sobbing loudly and hiccuping. She wrapped her arms around Jeff and clung to him so tightly that it was almost hard to breathe, but he wasn't about to say anything.

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Chapter 6