Chapter 47

Lilly's POV

Everything hurts.

My whole body feels like it's been ran over by a MAC truck, there being no sense of relief anywhere. I hear a slight buzzing noise in my ear, and I want to open my eyes and look around me, but I'm scared to move. Scared it'll make the pain even more real.

I have no idea where I am, or what the hell happened. I try to go back in my memories to see if there's anything that'll give me some clues as to where I am, and why I hurt so bad.

But nothing is coming to me.

I try to focus harder on the buzzing around me, and I slowly realize it's actually other people's voices, there's just so many and so fast that it's hard for my fuzzy mind to keep up.

"...femur is broken...need to check for swelling on the brain..severed fingers need to be sewn back on if they are able to be saved..how is she still alive.."

Are they talking about me? No wonder my fucking body hurts like it does if all of that's true.

Was I in a car accident?

Hit by a MAC truck for real?

Just when I start to build up the strength to open my eyes, I feel a slight pinch go into the elbow crease of my arm, and then a couple seconds later, a warm fuzzy feeling starts to spread throughout my body, and everywhere it touches the pain lifts up just a little bit more.

"Please don't leave me." A voice says, and I know it's Sutter, cause I would know his voice even if it was played with a thousand others at the same time.

I'm going to do my best to do as he asks.

Sutter's POV

"Please let me ride with you!" I yell at the ambulance as they load Lilly's stretcher into the back.

It seems like it took them hours to get here, seeing as how there was so much damage to roads and all the things surrounding them. Not to mention probably every ambulance within a 50 mile radius is being called in and needed right now.

"Are you her family sir?" One of the EMT's ask me.

"My parents are her legal guardians and she lives with us. So basically, yes I am."

"Good enough for me, cmon." He says, and I wonder if he really believes me or can just see the pure panic that I know is boldly written across my face.

I jump into the back of the opening, and do my best to find a spot that isn't in the way of the medics. But at the same time I can't make myself move away from Lilly.

I haven't taken my eyes off her face for long, waiting on them to open up and give me some sort of hope.

"Her right leg has a large lump in the middle, looks like her femur is broken."

"Large bruises and knots covering her scalp, need to check her for any swelling on the brain or possible contusions."

"Third and fourth digits on the right hand are in bad shape. Severed middle finger needs to be sewn back on if we can save it. Not sure if it's salvageable or not."

     "How this girl is still alive is crazy, it doesn't make sense."

     The EMTS have been talking back and forth the each other, patting down every single part of Lilly's body, and all the while inserting an IV into her arm and cutting her clothes off of her. What was left of them anyway.

     "She loves to swim." I say.

     One of the EMTS looks up at me. "I'm sorry?"

     "She loves to swim. She's the best swimmer I've ever seen, could probably make it to the Olympics. So please save her fingers, she would be devastated if she woke up and was told she couldn't swim anymore."

     The man looks at me with pity on his face. "Son, she'll be lucky to wake up and remember her name, but we'll do everything we can for her."

     His words bring me to my knees, and I place my hands on the stretcher that's holding the body of the girl that I've loved since we were five years old.

    How the fuck did we get here? From chasing each other everyday in the woods, falling in love a little more day by day.

    Now I'm in the back of the ambulance praying to someone that I'm not even sure exists, but at this point I'll do anything.

     "Please don't leave me." I whisper to Lilly, knowing it's probably useless and that she can't hear me.

      We get to the hospital finally an hour later, having to take so many detours from all the destruction that it turned a ten minute drive into sixty minutes.

     The second we pull up to the back of the hospital, and I jump out after the paramedics, I'm overwhelmed by the amount of people running around all the ambulances that are continuously pulling in and out of the drive.

     The medics take off running, pushing Lilly on the gurney into the trauma unit of the hospital. I try to follow them but a nurse in navy blue scrubs stops me from going through the swinging doors.

    "I'm sorry, you'll have to wait out here."

     "But I have to know what happens with her, she needs me." I need her more, but telling that doesn't help me out with the nurse.

     "I will come out and give you any updates that the doctors gives to me. I will come and get you personally, okay?" She says, and I don't know what it is about her, but I think she's telling me the truth. I can see the endearment on her face.

     I back up slowly, and don't stop until my legs bump into a chair, and my body collapses into it. I'm so tired, I feel like I could close my eyes and sleep for days. But my eyes won't close until they make contact with those icy blue ones that know every part of me.

     I'm not sitting by myself long, before the door to the waiting room is flung open and all my friends and sister are filing into the room.

    Jo comes over and sits beside me. "I called mom and dad, they're okay and on their way. Seems like it didn't hit as bad over on that side of town."

     I nod my head, not muttering a word back, but feeling grateful that my parents are okay.

     "Any word on Lilly?" Bobby asks, and I shake my head as his answer.

     "How bad was it?" Jesse asks, and when I'm unable to even move my head to that question, you feel all of them inflate with the same emotion that's drowning inside me right now.

     They all sit in some way around me, Nadine leaning her head back against the front of my knee. Like me, she hasn't spoke either. Lilly is just as important to her and she is to me, just in a different way.

     "Cross?" I ask, feeling myself worry about him as well. He never woke up the whole time I saw him either, his injuries I'm sure parallel to Lilly's, if not worse since he was laying over her, trying to shield her from the collapse of the house.

     Jesse shakes his head. "When paramedics left with him right behind Lilly, it didn't look good. He wasn't waking up."

     "Neither was Lilly." I tell him.

    Cross's POV

   When I open my eyes, I'm laying in bed at home in my room. The ceiling fan is the only noise being heard in the room, and everything feels normal, but I feel like somethings not right.

    I feel a sock covered foot kick me in the leg, and when I glance over, I see a sleeping Lilly laying next to me.

   "Lil?" I ask, wondering what she's doing here. She hasn't been coming here ever since she started hooking up with Denny.

    She groans, but slowly opens her eyes. Shock covers her face, and she shoots up in the bed, only to stop and grab her head, groaning in pain.

     "Lilly? What's wrong? Are you okay?"

     "I don't know, my head hurts so bad." She says softly. She eventually moves her hands away from her head and looks at me again. "What the hell am I doing here?"

     "I don't know..I can't remember." Why can't I remember what I was doing last night?

   She moans dramatically out of frustration. "Fuck, Denny is going to kill me."

     "We're you with Denny last night?" I ask her, unable to keep the disdain out of my voice when his name is said.

     She starts to answer me, but then stops slowly, as if considering her answer. "I don't remember." She says.

     "Do you remember anything about last night?"

    "No," she shakes her head. "Do you?"

    "No." I tell her.

    "Come to think of it..I can't remember anything." She says, and starts to breathe faster.

    I start trying to go back in my mind and remember what I had been doing too, but I keep coming up blank. "What day is it?" I ask her.

     "I don't know." She says, and then reaches over to grab the remote to my TV off the nightstand on my side of the bed. She flips the tv on, and turns on a local news channel.      "Category F4 Tornado has taken small Oklahoma town by the neck, practically ripping and raging through every bit of it that this massive storm could reach. Authorities and residents say this is the worst they have seen since they can remember, and don't know how long it will take for the town to rebuild itself after this tragic event. There will be a website at the bottom of the screen where you can send in donations, or volunteer to help this town put itself back together." The news lady switches over the weather, and Lilly shuts the TV off.

     "Tornado.." She says, and her words trail off, because she must be remembering everything that I am.

    Going to the shack, fighting with Sutter, hearing the siren, running to the bridge, hitting Lilly with the rock, going to the house, getting hit in the head, blackness, waking up to Lilly trying to save me, running into the house with the huge twister behind us, hiding in the closet, wood snapping so loud I can tell it's right over us, throwing my body over Lilly's at the last second, darkness again..

     And then waking up here, in bed. But that makes no sense.

     "But how did we end up here?" I ask out loud, hoping her memories may be able to fill in that blank for me.

     "Are we dead?" She asks, in a whispered voice that sounds terrified. Her face is pale and she's breathing hard again. "Oh shit, we're dead aren't we? Oh fuck. Fuck fuck fuck." She stands up and starts pacing my room.

     "Well I highly doubt we're dead because I don't think heaven is in my room." Truth is, my heaven is waking up next to her in bed everyday.

    So maybe I am dead; but for this, I would take it.

    "What other explanation is there?" She asks.

     "What's the last thing you remember?"

      "Being in the closet, hearing the wood snap, and then blackness. But then I felt like I heard people talking around me, telling me I may have swelling on the brain."

    "Last thing I remember is the wood snapping, and then everything goes black. I didn't hear anyone talking to me or saying anything about me."

     "So then what do we do?" She asks, but I have no answer for her.

    "Maybe we just need to go back to sleep, and when we wake up again, we'll be back where we're supposed to be." I have no other ideas on what we should do, but I feel my body tiring out already, even though I haven't done anything at all.

     "How did we end up here together Cross?" Lilly asks.

    "I don't know Lil, but I do know we're not dead, okay? Stop thinking that." I have no idea if we're really dead or not, but my gut is telling me no, and I hate to see her so worried about things.

     "So we just need to go to sleep and then try to wake up again in our actual bodies?"

    "Yes. Maybe this is just our minds way of giving us rest, until we're ready to come back."       She nods her head like she agrees with me, and moves back into her spot on the bed, and slides down under the covers.  

     I feel my eyes getting heavy, and when I glance down at my body, it looks like it's fading away, starting to turn translucent. "Lil, I think it's working." I say.

    But when I look over at her, her color is still solid, and not fading away like mine is.

     "You need to go to sleep Lil. We'll wake back up in our bodies again, everything will be okay." I want to grab her hand in case she's scared, but I'm too tired to even move my body unless it's my lips.

     She looks over at me, and there's a look on her face that I almost can't read, but it would be best described as hope. "What if I don't want to wake up?" She asks.

     "What? Why would you say that?"

    "Maybe I could see Annie.." she whispers, and even in this weird place that we're in, I see the tears of hope start shining in Lilly's eyes.

    She doesn't want to come back, she wants to die.

    "Lilly, no, please no. You need to come back, we need to wake up."

    "I want to see her so bad, Cross." She says, her words trembling and the tears finally spilling over the edges of her eyelids.

    "I know, I know you do. And you will see her again, but not like this. Not when it seems like we still get the chance to fight to live. You are not someone who gives up Lilly, you fight. So fight to stay alive and come back with me, okay? Annie wouldn't want you to give up like this." I'm starting to lose the feeling of my body and talking is starting to feel impossible.

    "I really think she would want to see me." Lilly says, and looks so sad that it makes me feel like someone's punching a hole in my chest.

    "I'm sure she does baby, but only when the time is right. And that's not right now, if you saw her now it would make her sad. You would miss out on so many things."

    "I don't want to make her sad." Lilly says, and relief fills me so much it's almost painful.

    But everything goes black before I get to see if Lilly ever closed her eyes like I did.

  Lilly's POV

  When I wake up, I'm in a hospital bed, and the lights are dimmed and it's dark outside. My body hurts, but it's a dull ache.

    I look around me and see all kinds of machines, and I can feel the tubes of IV's and oxygen tubes. I'm about to hit the nurse button that sits beside me, when one opens up the large wooden door that's connected to my room.

    "Oh! You're awake, that's amazing. How do you feel?" She asks, in a voice that is way too bubbly for me right now. I have so many questions.

    "I'm sure you have tons of questions and concerns, let me go get the doctor in here to talk to you and we can notify your family that you're awake." She smiles at me one last time before going to walk out of the room. 

   "Oh, nurse!" I yell, as the memory of Cross barrels into me at full speed. "There was a boy that was brought in here right after me, he was with me in the house that collapsed. Cross Mayfield. How is he doing?"

    Her bubbly face crumples a little, and she gives me a look of sympathy. "I'm sorry dear, but it seems that he hasn't woke up yet. You're the only one right now who has."

    A/N! Hello!! Hope you guys are enjoying the story! I'm not sure how much further we have, because I have a lot of things in mind. So maybe a sequel? Maybe a super long story?

Who knows right now.

Hope you guys are loving the story and please comment and vote! It makes my day.

   Fun fact!! I've actually broke my femur and it was awful. So much worse than child birth and easily the worst pain of my life.

    But on that negative note, hope you guys are doing great!! Thank you so much! Xoxo

Bay 💗