nine
I saw Cain's complexion become cadaverous as his hand turned to ice in mine. I looked down to see what had come over him and saw a pool of blood slowly creeping around our shoes. Instinctively I pulled him very close to me as his knees went weak underneath him. He had turned the key in the lock and I cautiously opened the door. It came in contact with something almost immediately and I stopped pushing, not knowing what it had hit. Then, dragging Cain with me, I led us both through the part of the door that was open and came face to face with one of the most horrific sights I have ever seen.
The blood that had surrounded us on the way in was coming from a gash in the back of Able's head. He was lying in a heap on the floor, not moving and barely breathing. Cain let out a terrified squeak and immediately dropped to his brother's side.
"Don't move him!" I almost yelled, but then lowering my voice as to not panic him I added, “You could end up making things worse if you do."
My mind was swimming but I managed to maintain my grasp on reality. Cain was staring helplessly at his brother while I looked around the room, trying to make sense of everything. Cain seemed only to have eyes for Able. I suppose that was a good thing because I would have hated to see his reaction if he noticed what was on the couch.
A bottle of some kind of alcohol fell from Mordred's limp hand, spilling the small amount of its remaining contents onto the meticulously kept floor. He was beyond asleep, probably drunk out of his own mind. I picked up the bottle and examined it. It read "100 proof". Even a guy Mordred's size would get alcohol poisoning from that amount of liquor. Then again, Mordred is always the exception, not the rule.
"Call 9-1-1!" I said to Cain as I tried to rouse Mordred. "Quickly Cain, the bleeding isn't going to stop."
Cain ran to the phone and jabbed at the buttons with shaky fingers. I heard someone pick up on the other end and he immediately started spouting gibberish at them. I'm surprised anyone could actually understand anything he was saying. After he hung up he dropped back down at Able's side and lay with his head on his chest, listening to him breathe. It was heart wrenching.
I kept shaking Mordred and he finally came around. "What do you want?" He snapped as if I was in some way inconveniencing him. Cain jerked his head away from Able and glared at Mordred him with a rage I had never seen in him before.
"Mordred, what the hell did you do?" I asked, my own angry tone surprising me. He stared at me and then blinked, rolling over onto his side with his arm tucked between his legs. I stole a glance over at Cain who was crying silently over his brother.
"Able, please wake up." I heard him whisper desperately into his ear. I felt my heart tug painfully in my chest. "Please say something. I swear I'll never do anything mean to you ever again if you just wake up now. I'll even give you the bathroom for a whole hour in the morning, just wake up for the love of God!" It was only a matter of seconds before he would start to panic. I could hear his voice breaking.
Mordred grunted in his sleep. It took all my will power to keep from hitting him. I picked him up by his shirt and dragged him off the couch into a standing position. He wasn't quite awake. He appeared to be in some type of hung-over daze.
"Mordred!" I shouted at him, shaking him while I talked. "What the fuck did you do to Able?" He stared at me with that stupid glossed over look. I lost my temper and slammed him into the wall, shaking all the pictures off their nails. His eyes rolled back as a drop of blood ran down the white wall from the back of his head. He then focused his gaze on me and spat. I slammed my fist against his forehead and dropped him to the floor.
Cain remained on the floor with Able. The blood was still running out of the gash in his head and was now all over Cain's hands. Not good. Where the hell could that ambulance be?
"He fucking deserved it anyway." I heard from a voice behind me. Mordred had gotten dangerously close to me while my back was turned.
"Why?" Cain cried between sobs. He sat clutching Able's limp arm to his chest. I wanted to pull him to me and make everything better, but knew that nothing I could do would have made a difference anyway.
"He would have left me." Mordred said, still crawling towards me. His breath came out in shudders like a possessed man's. "I had to stop him before he could. If I can't have him, nobody can."
Fire blazed in Cain's eyes. His chest violently pumped air into his lungs, his hands balled into fists as he carefully set Able's arm down. I'm sure Mordred didn't know what he was in for.
Before Mordred had a chance to react, Cain was on top of him. He beat his fists into his stomach with a strength I never knew he had. Mordred tried to retaliate by hooking Cain's jaw, but he dodged it before he could make contact.
Mordred became weaker with every punch Cain threw, and Cain seemed to be hitting every sensitive area on Mordred's body. Cain wasn't one to fight fair.
The sound of sirens suddenly broke through the night air and Cain was still beating the living shit out of Mordred.
Thinking quickly, I ran into the kitchen with a towel and grabbed the biggest knife I could find, bringing it over to where the two fought. I placed then placed it a few feet away from them but first made sure that Mordred's fingers brushed the handle. That way, it would look like Mordred attacked first and nothing would happen to Cain.
All of a sudden, an entire drove of people appeared at the door. They saw the beaten Able and immediately got to work with their bandages and braces.
Cain was lurched back to his senses by everyone arriving and jumped off Mordred, leaving him there to bleed by himself. I swept Cain into my arms and held him close to my chest as another round of sobs racked his body. The help was finally here. Now was the time to comfort.
***
The hospital still had its same eerie feeling of excessive cleanliness and disease. Sick people surrounded everything. Déjà freakin' vu, huh? Only this time it was Able who fought for his life in some strange hospital bed, not my Cain.
The two of us sat alone in a waiting room as people frantically rushed by us. Cain sat on my lap with his legs wrapped around my waist, face tucked into my neck. We had waited for a few hours with still no word on Able's condition. Cain had crashed after his big adrenaline rush and now lay calmly breathing against my skin.
I wrapped my arms around his small waist and ran my hands along his side. Poor boy. I knew exactly how he felt.
Everything reminded me of that fateful time Cain had been in the hospital. A whole memory of blocked experiences and questions came flooding back to me. I had made the biggest mistake of my life when I walked out on Cain. Sure it was a long time ago and everything had righted itself but that night still haunted everything about me.
"Cain?" I quietly asked, running my fingers over his hair. "What happened after I left you?"
I got no response for several minutes and feared that I had upset him. It was obviously a sensitive subject, seeing that he had never brought it up before so I guessed he really didn't want to talk about it. I accepted this and remained quiet. He then surprised me by lifting his head to look at me.
"I can't really remember." he said, his voice coming out small and hushed. "I was in a coma for about five weeks." I felt my body freeze with shock. Never had I dreamed that he had been that bad! Sure when I left him he wasn't awake but I just assumed he had woken up quickly after that. Never had I dreamed that he had been out for five weeks!
"When I woke up I had no idea what had happened. I could only remember the actual accident. Ever since then I've been having horrible nightmares in which I keep going through it over and over again. It's terrifying. My mother said that I kept asking for you after I woke up but your family had moved away on account of me. I was crushed." He paused to gauge my reaction. I was blown away by what he was telling me. He continued. "Then I had to learn to talk properly and once my leg healed, I had to start to walk. It was one of the hardest things I've ever learned to do. I had damaged some part of my brain, which made everything extra hard." I continued to stare at him in shocked silence. He took my hand and moved it on his stomach, underneath his shirt. I felt a long line of raised skin. "That's where they took out the glass from the windshield. It was infected for a while but now its fine."
Guilt washed over me in giant waves. I shouldn't have been a coward and ran away. Maybe he would have woken up earlier of I had been there. I could have helped him through his recovery. I was so stupid for running away!
"Don't beat yourself up over this." he said, easily reading me. "It wasn't your fault. You weren't the one that put me behind the wheel of the car in the first place. I got myself into it so that fault is all my own." I opened my mouth to start to say something but he covered it with his. "Don't make this harder for us then it already is. We're together now and as healthy as we ever were. That's all that matters now." He touched the side of my face and kissed me again, this time long and deep.
"Cain, we need to get married now!" I gasped out after we broke.
"Yeah, we do." he said, then grabbed my face and forced me into kiss. "As soon as Able gets out of here."
