Page 115 of When We Are Old

The only sound when silence ruled.

My stomach ached; not the pain of a bad meal or like a cramp from my period. But instead a sharp aching slice.

“How long do you think they'll be?” Lynn had her sons with her, but she kindly held onto my hand, squeezing so that her wedding ring pinched into my palm. The grip of a woman who’d already lived through enough.

Liam glanced up, his face bleary, dark shadow on his jaw. He scratched at it, filling the room with a noise other than the clock. “The nurse said that if the other motorist who stopped at the scene hadn’t had a compression blanket, he wouldn’t have made it to the hospital.”

Silence lapsed.

“What’s a compression blanket?” Ryan finally asked. The Carling joker had no jokes left. He’d been slipping out of the waiting room every ten minutes or so, but I think to check in with the rest of the family.

Hannah was fine.

So I’d heard.

I couldn’t talk to her.

I done this conversation once before.

My heart didn’t have it in me to do it again. Different with Matthew, I know. I mean, they’d only just met really and started to connect, but I’d been so pleased with how they were getting on… they had a natural friendship and camaraderie that had seemed almost too good to be true.

It had been too good to be true.

Matthew had come back to leave again. But this time he was going someplace where I couldn’t chase him.

Forever.

“Ronnie, love. You need to breathe.”

Lynn cut into my looping thoughts. My chest tightened with every tick of the clock. Groaning, I lurched forward and wrapped my arms around my legs.

I couldn’t lose him.

This was what it would feel like.

This was my payback for all the things I’d done. Coveting a man who wasn’t mine. For marrying someone I'd never loved. For living my entire life a mute lie.

This was it.

“Liam, try and get a nurse, she’s having a full-scale panic attack.” I tried to focus on Lynn’s words, but they whooshed in and out. In and out. In and out.

Dots danced across the yellow walls of the waiting room.

Too late I realised they were my eyesight darkening.

A ringing buzzed in my ears and I blinked up at the white ceiling, strip lights as bright as day burning my eyes.

Matthew.

His name branded in my brain.

Matthew’s had an accident.

“You okay there, lovey?” A blur of maroon blocked out the light and I blinked to focus on the shape in front of me. A nurse was close, her hand holding my wrist while she looked at a small watch face pinned onto the top of her dark red scrubs.

“Oh, shit.” I tried to pull my hand free.

“Just hold on, I’m checking your vitals.”