Page 103 of Cuts Like An Angel: Part 3

Chapter Forty-One

William

Run. That was what he wanted. There was no other thing in the world that he’d consider right then. He wanted to throw off his cast and put aside his crutches so he could run all the way to the hospital. She was still here. God. Rosie was still in England.

It was throwing it down outside. The rain had been relentless these last few days. Not that it bothered William so much. He’d liked it mostly, some part of him felt like it was a sign for his life. That rain, the unyielding patter on his roof.

Hard rain and an icy blast smacked William right in the face as he got out of his house and headed towards Mark’s car, William didn’t let it stop him. He couldn’t.

“She didn’t leave,” William said to Mark. Not really to him, but more for himself, for the ability to hear his own words. “She did not leave.” Maybe if he said it enough, he’d actually believe it.

“She might if you don’t get in this damn car,” Mark said. He flung open the passenger side for William and helped him in. He’d no coat, but who cared about that.

It had been easy enough to tell himself he could do this without her. He could cope with her gone, but really, all he’d managed to do was put a cage over his emotions and lock them away. Mark’s words had been a fist through the bars, shattering them, making every feeling William had had since Rosie had walked out of the hospital come back with terrifying force.

He should have listened, heard her out. Yet, whenever that thought came to him--the possibility that it wasn’t as it seemed--William couldn’t see past the part where his heart felt like it had been torn into two.

“She knows you’re coming for me?” William asked when Mark got in and started the engine. It occurred to William that if Rosie didn’t know he’d be coming, maybe she wouldn’t want to see him. Yeah, she had written to him. She’d called him more times than he could count, but how many notches would she allow before it was her turn to tell him to leave?

“Nope. But I figured I’d at least try. She thinks I’m at work and is expecting me to meet her there.”

“What? What if she tells me--”

“Too late now.”

Mark put his foot down and sped them across the dual carriageway that would lead them through the industrial site and to the hospital on the other side of the park. That hospital. The one where she’d almost run over him. Where he was glad, she almost had.

“Maybe you should call her? Warn her that I’m coming?”

“And give her the chance to be just like you? Hell no. Between the two of you …”

William could tell her himself, and he even pulled his mobile phone out to do so, but when he navigated to her name and the array of messages that she’d sent these last weeks, he couldn’t bring himself to type any of the words. He’d not read her messages before. Like the letter, he’d decided what was the point? It would be more lies.

Seeing them now, though, made his chest hurt. The pleading in the way she had messaged him. “Please, William.”

“Can we talk?”

“I miss you so much.”

But worse than that, the text message that was only three dots was perhaps the one that stung him the most. She’d wanted contact.

“I’m sorry,” he wanted to type out. Hell, he wanted to type out so much more than that, but there was no way he was going to be able to put into words what the shattered pieces of himself wanted to say.

“Pull over here,” William said when they got to the hospital grounds. The hospital was one huge building. It could take a person almost an hour to walk the entire perimeter and that was someone who had the use of both legs properly.

“The car park’s just there.”

“Yep. And the women’s unit is here. This is where she is, right?”

The place was divided by major functions. Cardiac got its own unit, as did the mental health side. Women, gynaecology and maternity got a whole section to themselves, even with their own set of main doors. If he went with Mark to the car park, the lifts came down at the other side of the hospital, closer to the geriatric wards and the main entrance for day cases. In William’s case, a good thirty-minute trek that he could neither afford to do or manage.

“I can’t make it all the way around.”

“I can push you in a chair. Rosie will wait. She’s waiting for me.”

“No. Let me out here. I want to go in myself.”

Mark stared at him for a few seconds. Maybe a few seconds too long and then he nodded and reached down to release the door locks. “She’s in room two-twenty. Go to the yellow reception.” He glanced at the clock display above the radio. “You’ve got time. She goes in at half past.”

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