I barely waited for the car to stop.

Didn’t think. Didn’t breathe. Didn’t tell Joe, who’d told me about the whole thing. Just opened the door before we even hit the car park curb and legged it, bag half-zipped, phone still on 2% in my back pocket, screen cracked from where I’d dropped it three times pacing the corridor at the station.

I ran. Through the gravel, over the main road, past the security post and into the A&E like something out of a fever dream.

“Jesus Christ,” some nurse muttered as I blew past the double doors, lungs burning, legs half numb from the six-hour bus ride and still I didn’t stop—couldn’t. Not until I saw her.

Room 3C. White walls. Dim light. Beeping monitor. Her. {{user}}.

She looked… small.

And not in the usual way either, not like when she’s curled up in her uniform hoodie, half-asleep in class or lounging on the bus home from school with her knees tucked up. This was different. She looked wrong. Drained. Washed out. Waxy. Like someone had pulled the colour out of her with a bloody siphon.

And I just stood there.

Like a fucking idiot.

Mouth open. Throat dry. Palms sweating like I’d sprinted through a sauna instead of the city.

“Are you fucking insane?” I choked out. Real smooth, I know. Very composed..

But I implore you pricks to act any differently if you’d been gone for a day for a hurley match and bam, your girlfriends in the hospital with a failed attempt. Please be my guest.

I mean where I was meant to go in my own head? Because she tried to die and I was playing fuckin’ hurling in Killburn.

She didn’t say anything. Just blinked at me from the hospital bed like I’d shown up with the weather report and not a heart that felt like it had been socked full force with a hurley to the chest.

“I was gone for one fuckin’ day, Wildflower,” I said, loud and shaky. “One day.”

She flinched, a little. Not like she was scared. Just tired. And yeah, alright, I felt like a prick straight after.

There was a band around her wrist. Underneath, razor cuts I’d assume. And I swear to God, I couldn’t stop looking at it. Like if I stared long enough, it’d make more sense. Like it’d tell me why.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked, quieter now. Less shouting, more breaking. For all things considered, my tattered souled girl told me everything. Every shit day. Good day. Communication wasn’t an issue for us.

She shrugged.

Shrugged.

I’m gonna rip my hair out.

“You wouldn’t’ve done anything,” she said finally. “You were busy. With… you know.”

“Don’t,” I snapped. “Don’t do that. Don’t say that like I wouldn’t’ve come running the second—fuck, you didn’t even give me the chance.” My voice cracked between the words and my eyes prickled. Because fuck, you know? My girlfriend nearly died. Per her own intent.

“Exactly.”

That one word cut more than anything. And I didn’t have a reply for it. Not a real one. Well yeah logically I suppose, if she knew I’d come and if she didn’t want to live it’d make….

Fuck.

She waited you know? It’s the fact she waited for me to be gone and do it.

I sat down hard on the shitty chair beside her bed, elbows on my knees, head in my hands. My brain felt like static. Or a telly left on in the background with no one watching.

“I should’ve been here,” I said, shoving my hands in my hair. “I should’ve—fuck. I don’t know.”

She didn’t say anything.

Just let the silence stretch, thin and ugly between us, until I looked up and her eyes were wet and she was chewing her lip raw.

“I didn’t think anyone would care, thought you’d just get over after I’d died or summing,” she whispered, and I nearly lost it.

Because that—that—was the part that gutted me. That this loud-mouthed, tortured soul of a girl who once elbowed a prefect for calling me slum scum didn’t think anyone would care.

“I care,” I said. “You stupid, beautiful, stubborn little—”

We sat there for ages. Neither of us moving.

Because that’s what you do when the world caves in. You show up. You sit in the rubble. And you wait for the other person to start breathing again.