[5 Weeks, 2 Days Coma]
The silence of Room 412 was the loudest thing Ellie had ever heard. It was a thick, suffocating quiet, punctuated only by the mechanical hiss-click of the ventilator- a sound that reminded her, every few seconds, that her best friend wasn't actually breathing on her own.
Ellie sat in the vinyl chair, her legs pulled up to her chest, her chin resting on her knees. Her silver tongue, usually her greatest weapon, felt like lead in her mouth. For 5 weeks and 2 days, she had been a permanent fixture in this room, a sentry guarding a fortress that had already been breached.
Every time she closed her eyes, she saw it. The parking lot. The bruised sky. Annie's small frame leaning against the car. "Stay right here," she had told her. "I'll be back in two minutes."
Those two minutes were the greatest failure of Ellie's life.
"I should have just left the bag," Ellie whispered, her voice cracking. The sound was raw, stripped of the bravado she wore like armor at school. "It was just a backpack. Why did I care about a stupid backpack?"
She looked at Annie. The fair skin of her friend's arm was marred by the red pinch marks Ethan had discovered earlier- marks Ellie had seen, too, and felt a fresh wave of nausea over. She felt like a failure as a protector. She was supposed to be the silver-tongued one, the one who could talk them out of any corner or bite back twice as hard as Vanessa or Peggy. But words hadn't stopped an SUV.
Words hadn't stopped Peggy from pinning Annie against a locker or Vanessa from being a petty, relentless shadow.
"I'm sorry, Annie," Ellie sobbed, the first of many tears splashing onto her denim jacket. "I'm so sorry I left you. I knew they were around. I knew the air felt wrong that day, and I still walked away."
The tough-girl persona didn't just crack- it disintegrated. Ellie leaned forward, burying her face in the side of Annie's mattress, her shoulders heaving with the kind of jagged, ugly grief that comes from survivor's guilt. She felt helpless.
Since she met Annie, she had been the one to stand in front of her, to shield the shy painter from the world's sharp edges. But now, Annie was in a place where Ellie couldn't follow. She was drifting in a grey sea, and no matter how much Ellie talked, shouted, or cried, she couldn't reach her.
The door creaked open. Riley stepped in, carrying two greasy brown paper bags that smelled like the diner down the street. He looked at his twin sister, his usual flirtatious energy dampened by the heavy atmosphere of the ICU.
"Hey," Riley said softly, setting the bags on the small tray table. "I brought the 'Double-Decker Heart Attack' burger you like. Extra pickles."
Ellie didn't move. "I'm not hungry."
"El, you haven't eaten anything but vending machine crackers in twenty-four hours," Riley said, walking over and placing a hand on her shoulder.
"I don't deserve a burger, Riley!" Ellie snapped, spinning around with red-rimmed eyes. "She's hooked up to a machine! She's being fed through a tube because I was too lazy to remember my bag! If I had been there, I would have seen the car. I would have pushed her out of the way. It should be me in that bed, not her."
Riley didn't flinch at her outburst. He'd been the target of Ellie's temper for eighteen years, he knew how to look past the fire to the house that was burning down inside. He sat on the edge of the radiator cover, looking at Annie's peaceful, terrifyingly still face.
"You're not that powerful, Ellie," Riley said quietly. "You're a lot of things- scary, loud, way too smart for your own good, but you aren't a mind reader. You didn't know some psycho was going to use a car as a weapon. If you stay here and starve yourself to death, you aren't helping her. You're just making it so there's one less person to defend her when she wakes up."
"What if she doesn't?" Ellie whispered, the fear finally escaping her lips. "What if she just... stays like this? Forever?"
Riley felt a lump in his own throat. He thought of the way he'd flirted with Annie, the way she'd give him that small, knowing smile before shutting him down because her heart belonged to the boy with the green eyes. He thought of her poetry and the way she could make a canvas look like it was breathing.
"She's Annie," Riley said, trying to force a bit of his trademark boldness into his voice. "She's stubborn. She spent three years away from the people she loved and she came back. She's a fighter, even if she's a quiet one. But she's going to be really annoyed if she wakes up and you look like a castaway."
He stood up and pulled Ellie to her feet. She felt fragile in his grip, a sensation he wasn't used to.
"Come on," Riley coached, guiding her toward the door. "We're going to the diner. You're going to eat. Then you're going home. You're going to take a shower- a long one, because honestly, you're starting to smell like hospital cafeteria coffee and despair. And then you're going to sleep in a real bed for six hours."
"I can't leave her," Ellie protested, reaching back toward Annie's hand.
"Annie wouldn't want you hungry, stinky, and tired," Riley insisted, his tone firm but kind. "She'd want you ready. Because when she opens those eyes, she's going to need that silver tongue of yours to tell her exactly what happened. And she's going to need you to be strong enough to help Ethan burn down whoever did this."
Ellie let out a shaky breath, looking back at Annie one last time. The image of her friend- still, silent, but alive, burned into her mind. Riley was right. She was no use to Annie as a wreck. She needed to be the Ellie that Annie relied on: the fierce, loyal, and unbreakable shield.
"Six hours," Ellie bargained, wiping her face with her sleeve. "Then I'm coming back."
"Six hours," Riley agreed, leading her into the hallway. "And a shower. Seriously, El. The soap is your friend."
As they walked down the corridor, Ellie felt the weight of her guilt shifting. It didn't disappear- it never would, but it transformed from a crushing stone into a cold, hard resolve. She wasn't just Annie's best friend anymore. She was a witness. And once she was fed and rested, she was going to make sure that everyone who had ever put a bruise on Annie Combs- whether with a hand, a word, or a car, paid the price.